Intro
I’ve been waiting for this app for a long time; at least over a month. I was using Cha-Ching for a while because they had the iPhone app to sync with the desktop app for a bit before IGG’s iBank got on board. While Cha-Ching was cool, there is a high level of professionalism, forethought, and overall quality that IGG Software was concerned with that make iBank Mobile (and its desktop counterpart) a superior solution.

A brief background
If I haven’t said it yet, iBank Mobile is a solid 1.0 release. IGG has been working on this app for a long time and it shows. Check out their blog for the steady stream of updates about the mobile app—it’s painful to watch because of the anticipation that’s built up reading these. They’ve been working on iBank Mobile since October or November of 2008. A long time in the making and finally released to the App Store June 4, 2009, it wasn’t until July 15th, 2009 that developers posted an exhausted update the iBank Mobile was finally live.

And there was much rejoicing. The time and effort spent on this 1.0 is clearly visible. The app runs great, reliably syncs through several methods, and gives a great overview of your financial picture.

How does it work?
Opening iBank Mobile for the first time brings you to a database selection. Check out IGG Software’s iBank Mobile page for screenshots. You can setup a password (strongly recommended). I set up a 6-digit password without issue. I’m not sure how many digits you can do because I haven’t played with it, but even if it’s just six, this is stellar to offer security beyond the 4-digit max of other apps.

The home screen has little text and relies on icons to direct you to the appropriate actions. In addition to the function buttons, you get a beautiful and informative graph which gives you an overview of the accounts within the app. It’s easy to move into your accounts and different functions without much thought.

Entering transactions
Clicking the giant ‘+’ sign takes you to the entry screen. After choosing an account you enter your transaction amount. Decimal entry is not automatic, so be sure you don’t skip this critical step. You can select what kind of transaction this is and how it was charged. Then you move on to entering the category. A winning feature here is split transactions. This is stellar—great job, IGG.

Version one does not include any budget views, so you’ll have to work off of the desktop app for this app. This was an intentional omission for the first release because they really wanted to focus on releasing a solid and reliable first version. In lieu of this, the app does allow you to view how much you have spent within each category. If you’re responsible with budgeting this shouldn’t be a terrible loss—plus we know it will be coming in a future version.

Syncing
Syncing is the killer feature of this app. I went to using Cha-Ching for a while because they had an iPhone app to record my transactions and sync with my desktop app. If I don’t enter my purchases the time I do them then it’s going to get forgotten until they’re syncing from my bank. By then I’ve forgotten where I spent how much and I spend a lot of time Googling addresses.

iBank offers not one, but three ways(!) to sync your data from your iPhone/iPod to the desktop app. You can sync through Bonjour on your local WAN, MobileMe, or your own WebDAV server. For convenience I went with the wifi option. Syncing is flawless. I haven’t had an issue the week I’ve been using it.

Cons
It was a little bit of a process to setup syncing. So to save you some time just go to the ‘File’ menu in iBank. Select ‘Setup Device for Syncing…’. Then choose your syncing method. You must have the iPhone app running at the same time. I would expect this dialogue to pop up when clicking on the Sync Devices icon for the first time.

Another minor issue is the ‘memo’ option in the app. I entered a split level transaction with a memo on one of the line items. After saving the transaction I went to look at the memo, but was not given access to the note. I’m sure this is just a minor bug which is sure to be resolved in a future update. As long as the memo syncs to the desktop app it’s not a huge deal.

That’s all that I’ve noticed this week. I’m really happy with the app.

Conclusion
IGG Software put a great deal of attention into version 1 of iBank Mobile and it shows. Budgets are a much coveted feature, but overall, there’s no reason to be hatin’ on iBank Mobile for this. There are other options out there, but the overall quality will be lacking. iBank is a winner and I expect it to smoke all of the competition—that’s what I’m rooting for anyway.

The iPhone and iPod Touch are well known for their gaming and entertainment value. But the market doesn’t stop there – they also act as productivity tools; lifestyle tools; and business tools. Neon Surge’s iTrade Stock Market Simulator falls into door number three. It’s a fully-fledged, live-quote stock market simulator (did the title give that away already?) with one goal: earn a greater return than the initial $100,000 you are given.

Whenever this application dropped into our review queue, I snapped it immediately. As someone who is genuinely interested in the trading life, I had to see if this app was as good as I had hoped. This posed a little bit of a bias problem: if it didn’t live up to my overly-high expectations, what would I do? Thankfully I didn’t have to go down that road. iTrade met these expectations. And then some.

Whenever you open the application for the first time, you are greeted with a registration page. “Why?” you might ask. iTrade takes trading properly: all of your trades are logged, recorded and sent to a server so that they are saved on the web, guaranteeing that you won’t lose them. Once you have registered you have an account, and trading can begin immediately.

The home screen of the application is laid out as it should be, slightly resembling Apple’s “Stocks” application, but much more advanced. Up top, you have a clock of when the market is open; your net worth; your gain and even a performance graph illustrating your success. Basically, an overview of your trading. Down below is where the detail is: your stocks. Name, quantity, value, gain – it’s all there and easy to read off. For an application that needs to tell you so much in such a limited amount of space; it works well with the iPhone and its design is well thought out.

Before diving straight into the stocks, I’d like to quickly talk about a few of the app’s main features. There is a ‘News’ tab that tells you all about iTrade: what’s happening with the server, some tutorials etc. There’s also a “Scores” tab to keep the competitive nature of everyone alive: you can see where you are in relation to the top 20 in the world. But these are all additional features that you shouldn’t spend too much time with – trading time is your main focus.

The NASDAQ and NYSE, in their entirety, are at your fingertips. What I’m getting at is that you have no limitations on choice. Only money. Your $100,000 won’t buy you everything – so choose wisely. Before I go sounding all Morpheus-like, let me get back to the application itself. Buying stocks is a relatively simple procedure. Click on the stock you want, hit “Buy” (you can check out the latest news when you are at a particular stock also) and choose your quantity. You can enter in a quantity of a stock or a total price you are prepared to spend on it – having both is a nice little addition. Once you’re ready, by hitting “Submit” the information is sent to the server and your iPhone updates. If you aren’t too sure on what to pick, there’s a “Hot Stocks” list to help you get started – although the market can change at any second so don’t rely on it too much.

That’s really all there is to this application (and all there should be). When you refresh it gets all of the latest prices and adjusts your portfolio accordingly. From hereon, it’s just a matter of keeping your portfolio positive and your trade record clean. Little features such as tapping on the stock’s cell and get an adjustment between percentage change and value change make this application work well with the iPhone / iPod Touch.

There are, however, a few things that need sorted out. Most importantly is iTrade’s server – it keeps on failing to connect (and this is a problem not just voiced by here) which is a major problem for someone who wants to check their portfolio, and buy/sell stocks. Secondly, with the work gone into making a “Performance Graph” – we’d love to see the implement of a) a landscape view and b) a full screen performance graph. Lastly, as the app is available not just in the US – other stocks to choose from what would be nice. The FTSE, DOW JONES, S&P etc are all major markets and if it were to implement these it’d appeal more to the international community.

Overall, you get what you pay for. And you pay nothing. The application is free and for that it deserves a lot of credit. It is clear that a lot of work has gone into building it, and if you are in any way interested in trading then it’s a must-try. Neon Surge are no strangers to the app store – it’s a well built application and it shows. Buy now.

I think everyone can use some budgeting help in economic times like these. I used PocketMoney for a week and found out that I spend about 50% of my weekly income on fast food/dining out. Needless to say, I’m going to be paying close attention to this app to help with my spending.

PocketMoney is basically an all-around account-tracking tool. The paid version allows you to keep track of an unlimited amount of accounts through your iPhone. Be warned, this app DOES NOT connect with online bank tracking websites – you must manually enter each transaction into your phone. For a college student like myself, I was able to track my Cash, Checking, and Savings account. But the app leaves a lot of options for anyone who might want to use this app including: Credit Card tracking (keeps an eye on your limit), Assets, Liability, and Online accounts. In addition to tracking accounts, it allows you to create budgets, add repeating transactions, create a password to protect your information, make split category transactions, and generate pie charts (via Google Chart).

Paid vs. LITE. Lets start with the differences between the paid version and the “LITE”. Despite being a free version, PocketMoney LITE comes packed with most of the features included in the paid version, with a few restrictions. The free version only allows tracking two accounts and two repeating transactions, so if you’re someone who only wants to track maybe their Checking account and Cash and only has one or two repeating transactions, maybe the LITE version is for you. There are a few other minor restrictions, the only significant one being that you cannot split categories for transactions in the free version. Meaning if you went to Walmart and bought groceries but also saw a DVD you just had to have, you wouldn’t be able to categorize part of the transaction in groceries and part in maybe a Media or DVD category. To be honest, I wasn’t aware of this “splitting” feature until I read that the free version didn’t have it, probably because I’m not very experienced with financial software (and yet I still found this app easy to use). The LITE version also lacks filters, which was how I was able to notice that I spend WAY too much money dining out. In the paid version, you can create custom filters to track certain habits. For example, I created a Food filter, which shows me all of my purchases relating to food (combining categories such as Food, Groceries, etc.).

I feel like in that short paragraph describing the differences between the paid and LITE version I’ve touched on most of the features in the app, so lets get to my opinion on it.

Problems, Wishes and Misses.

Problems. I encountered two problems that were effective enough to bug me: emailing transactions and auto-complete for payees/categories. The emailing transactions feature seems like a nice addition, one that I personally have no use for but still nice. I tested this feature and the email it created was full of symbols that caused the email to look extremely confusing (a big overuse of quotation marks everywhere). Maybe this will be fixed in a later update, but to be honest I don’t care because it’s borderline useless (unless you have a spouse you want to keep updated on all of your transactions).

PocketMoney will auto-complete the text in the Payee and Category section if it recognizes what you are typing. I personally think this auto-complete happens way too early and on top of that there is a bit of a delay glitch. By early, I mean if you type “f” the category will instantly fill in “food”. This would be fine if not for the fact that when you press the next letter (and it isn’t “o”) you will have to wait a second or two to press the next letter or it won’t show up – a sort of typing lag. This needs to be fixed. An application that keeps track of your finances needs to be built for speed. No one wants to be fiddling with their iPhone for more than a few seconds every time that they make a transaction.

Wishes. I wish this looked more like an iPhone app. Good iPhone apps are simple and creative – the buttons are easy to touch, far apart, and hard to mistake for each other. This app has buttons cluttered, buttons that aren’t really apparent that they are buttons, and generally has too much on the screen at one time for an iPhone app. I would suggest a complete makeover of the visual element of this app. Though, this lack of better aesthetics doesn’t take away from the usefulness of the app.

Misses. Number one miss – emailing transactions (as I said earlier). This is basically a useless feature in every way.

Despite a few flaws and including just looking plain ugly, PocketMoney is the best account tracking app that I’ve used so far. But if you’re looking for something simpler than even PocketMoney LITE, maybe to just track your checkbook – take a look at Balance (also free).

When I moved from an iPod Touch to an iPhone last summer, mobile banking promised to become much more robust. My bank, Bank of America, was one of the first to release an iPhone app. I happily downloaded the app in anticipation of having a much more up-to-date handle on my finances and was instantly thwarted. I had chosen to protect my account with fairly robust passwords that took a lot of time to enter on an iPhone, and my bank refused to save my login (probably for security and privacy reasons). So the prospect was abandoned and I returned using their phone service for mobile banking.

I stumbled across Mint.com about a month ago, setup my accounts and downloaded the iPhone application. There are features that I’d love to see added, but overall Mint can give you easy access to all of your accounts and transactions.

Once you’ve added all your accounts and set up your budget, the site begins analyzing all of the transactions and categorizing them. When you open the iPhone application and log in, you will immediately see an overview of your Accounts (cash and credit), Budget, Cash Flow and Investments. Selecting Accounts will let you view each account’s balances, recent transactions, fees, etc. as well as an All Accounts section with every transaction and fee. The Budget section compiles all of the transactions and tallies them into categories that you’ve assigned on the site. Each category can then be selected and will show every transaction within that category for the current month. Its primary purpose, of course, is to show you how far over or under budget you are, and it does this very well. Some transactions may not always be interpreted correctly.

For example, Wet Seal is, at least in my region, women’s clothing retailer not a Sporting Goods store. A visit to the site will allow you to correct these sort of errors. The Cash Flow section sorts transactions by basic categories a lot like the Budget section, but also sorts by merchant name. So if you’re spending far too little in the App Store, you can put yourself back on track. The Investments section shows the performance of your accounts over time. I do not currently have investments that work with their system. Anywhere in the application you may also access the Alerts tab. Alerts provide customizable notification of anything from bank fees or credit balance to unusual spending and credit card due dates. You may delete these notifications at any time. This is the only place where a user may edit something in the application.

The beautiful part of this application is its integration. If your accounts are supported, you will be granted a lot of data about where your money is going or what you’re earning. The interface is simple and well sorted. With identity theft and phishing as major concerns, it is increasingly important to monitor accounts for strange transactions. Mint’s application makes it very easy to do so.

All of these features come with the inherent limitations of the site. While Mint.com advertises over 7,500 partners, there’s still a good chance that your particular bank, credit cards or investment broker won’t play nicely with Mint. For example, I tried to set my mother up with a Mint account but her credit union was not supported. A lot of people who prefer small banks or credit unions will probably run into the same situation. The blame for this limitation can’t really be placed on either Mint or small, local banks who may not have the resources to provide safe access through the portal. At times, even if your bank is supported, the data may update slowly or may not include the most recent pending transactions. So, while Mint is great for an overview, you will have to balance your checking account for a little while into the future.

If you can use the application with your accounts, there is the consideration of privacy. While what Mint.com does with your financial data is too large a discussion for this review, how it protects the data on your phone is worth considering. Mint offers no application-based passcode or password lock. They instead suggest enabling the iPhone’s passcode lock with short lock times. While this is good advice (that I follow), it would be nice to have a secondary layer of security. I might want to show my iPhone to a friend or business associate. However, I might not want them to know that I have spent over one hundred dollars in the last two weeks at the local Starbucks or at the little Boba joint down the street. I might not even want them to know how much my 401k is losing earning. I suppose that another solution would be to log out of the app before closing it, but that would encourage me to make my Mint password less robust and that would send me back to the Bank of America app. Mint takes a great step in this direction by allowing you to de-authorize your iPhone remotely in case of theft.

In addition, the application at this time only really allows one to view their data and delete notifications. While that is all that is really necessary for credit, investments and budgets, it falls short when used with a checking account. Adding transactions that could be reconciled later would propel this program to the realm of a must-have application for basic finance tracking. Such an update would make instant balance updates, available balance and pending transactions a lower priority. Simple charts and graphs would also be greatly appreciated for people with investments.

Mint.com is a free application. If you’re open to joining the site, it provides mobile financial data that is certainly worth the time it takes to setup. I hope that Mint will offer passcode protection in the future and that they’ll expand their base of partners. Beyond those two caveats it can only get better with updates. The foundation of the application shows a lot of promise and I look forward to seeing what it does in the future.

iSpend is a simple but feature rich app that allows you to create and maintain multiple expense logs. It isn’t intended to compete with Quicken or other programs that provide a single repository for all of your income and expenses. It is simply a way to track what you have spent during a given period of time.

At first glance iSpend seems like a pretty limited app, especially when you consider its price. But once you’ve delved into its feature set and figured out that not only can you maintain templates, custom categories, payment types, and currency, as well as multiple expense logs, but that you can also export them to Google Docs or e-mail them to others, you’ll see that its feature set is pretty robust.

Adding new expenses is simple and requires far fewer taps than most apps. None of this “tap to create an expense” then “tap to edit it” then “tap to save it” then “tap to go back to the list”. With two taps you can create an expense and return to the list. Deleting or editing an expense is similarly efficient. The expense log itself gives you a grand total and each category has its own total, which makes it a snap to find out what you’ve spent.

If you are looking for something more like Quicken, you will have to look elsewhere. While iSpend is a great way to track your daily, weekly, or weekend expenses, or see how much a particular trip has cost you, it won’t tell you who incurred the expense or filter the list based on a date range or other criteria.

If you wonder how much you are spending on coffee, snacks, or those daily lunches, or you often take trips and need an easy way to account for travel expenses, iSpend can help you out. It is a simple yet powerful tool that really focuses on ease of use while providing great customization options and the ability to export and e-mail expense logs.

Tipulator is a absolutely beautiful bill tip and splitting calculator. You enter the bill total, tip percentage, and the number of people and are shown the amount to be paid per person.

Tap Tap Tap is a different kind of iPhone application company. They have been very open with details on their sales and how the company operates. Their blog is great reading and highly recommended. All of their releases thus far have been absolutely beautifully designed.

While this application is beautifully designed, as are all Tap Tap Tap applications, the use of selection input for numbers may slow down and make more error prone the entry over use of a keyboard. Use of the selection entry does allow additional selection of the rounding option to be entered at the same time as the tip percentage which saves time. So, perhaps it’s a toss up.

Overall it’s an above average application for this area and one well worth the $0.99 price tag.