Tracking your tuppence with Trail Wallet

The number one thing that my friends say is holding them back from traveling the world is money.  And it’s true, most of us travel on a budget and worry about how to pay for our trips.  After all, you don’t want to end up two months into a six month jaunt through India and realize you should have budgeted US$20 per day instead of US$15.  Trail Wallet by Voyage Travel Apps provides one way to calm your nerves and keep track of your expenses on the road.

Whip out your iPhone and punch in the ¥10 you spent for a bowl of noodles at a roadside stall in Chengdu and you don’t ever have to worry about remembering everything you spent throughout the day.  Trail Wallet has a simple interface letting you type in the amount of your expenditure, add a note about what it was, and choose the category of expense.  Record everything in the local currency and the app automatically translates it into your home currency, giving you a budget that reflects the money you have in your bank account.  You can update the exchange rate anytime from the settings screen, allowing the program to search for the daily rate online or by inputting your own exchange rate.  The summary page shows you if you are on budget for the day and for the month and the chart gives you a breakdown of your expenses by category.  You can look at your expense history and edit or delete entries and even email yourself a CSV report to convert into a spreadsheet or import into your bookkeeping software.

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App: Trail Wallet
Price: US$1.99
For: iPhone, iPod and iPhone with iOS 5.1 or later
More info: https://voyagetravelapps.com/trail-wallet/
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Pros:

• Quick, easy to use expense entry system.
• Effortlessly view your daily and monthly budget to see if you are on track.
• Work with multiple currencies while tracking your budget in your home currency.
•  The ‘bribes’ category is particularly fitting for a travelers’ app.

Cons:

• After choosing a category it took a while to figure out how to go back to the ‘add amount’ screen.  It is a bit counterintuitive to have to tap the screen rather than just double tap the category in this reviewers opinion.  Same goes for changing the currency and date in the ‘add amount’ screen.
• You can only email yourself daily reports in CSV format rather than monthly ones.
• Currently you can’t add a custom category, but Voyage travel apps assures us that this feature is coming soon.
• If you start traveling and recording expenses in the middle of the month, the monthly average is still calculated over the entire calendar month, making the data slightly skewed, but the daily budget is still accurate.

Overall, Trail Wallet is a solid app that helps you stay within your daily budget and see what might be pushing you a bit out of your limits.  I would even use it to keep track of my daily purchases when at home.