I’ll be honest: I’ve never had to fill out an expense report. Still, the name alone conjures up horrific promises of tedium, hassle, and frustration; who wants to manually keep track of receipts and the like?

ProOnGo’s latest app, ProOnGo Expense, aims to bring time-saving smartphone goodness to expense reports. The app’s main feature is a “receipt reader”—take pictures of your receipts, send them to ProOnGo’s servers, and they’ll convert the images into text and send that data back to your app. Instead of manually punching in numbers, you can just take pictures of the receipts. ProOnGo Expense can also calculate mileage on a trip, using the iPhone’s GPS functionality.

Once you have all your expenses documented, you can finish off your expense report. ProOnGo Expense can export in a variety of data types, including .XLXS (Excel 2007), XML, and QuickBooks Online.

Though the app is listed as free, you’ll need a subscription after using your first 10 Receipt Reads. Subscriptions range from $0.99 to $4.99 per month. For three bucks a month you get 30 Receipt Reads and unlimited Expense Reports. ProOnGo also has another app, ProOnGo Business Card Reader, which utilizes the same general process…take a photo, have the company’s servers analyze it, and then receive the text. If you have unused Receipt Reads from your subscription, you can use them with the Business Card Reader, too.

Oh, and if you’re not completely dedicated to the iPhone? ProOnGO Expense is available on Android, Blackberry, and Windows Mobile phones, too. Be sure to watch the video to see ProOnGo in action!

FREE!

ProOnGo Expense Tracker

+ Universal App - Designed for iPhone and iPad
Released: 2009-12-22 :: Category: Finance

Oh, infaltion, thou art a wretched beast. A dollar fifty years ago is not the same as a dollar today—just look at the concept of a dime store to tell you that much. DimeTravel is the app to tell you exactly how your money has changed over time. Here’s the developer’s take on a typical usage scenario:

You’re watching an old episode of Columbo on a lazy Sunday afternoon. An episode from 1976. He gets a haircut and it costs him $25. He is shocked with the cost. You open up DimeTravel and ask it how much $25 from 1976 would be today. (answer = almost $100 – NOW i can feel poor old Columbo’s pain).

Pretty staggering, no? Of course, the app can calculate things the other way around, too. Here are a few samples for your amusement, with the numbers taken from this site:

• Coffee cost $1.11/lb in 1954…which is $14.47 today!
• A car (a Henry J, to be precise) for sale in New Jersey in 1950 was listed at $1,299…which is a whopping $27,771 today.
• $1 bought you two large bottles of Clorox Bleach in 1970…that would be $9.55 today.
• Someone needed an accountant and was willing to pay a $9,000 annual salary in 1970…or $85,942 in today’s money!

Conversely, if you take modern numbers and change them:

• A $60 video game would sell for a paltry $4.92 half a century ago,
• and that $200 you spent on your iPhone 3GS would have been just $153 back in 2000.

Playing with numbers is always fun. Sadly, DimeTravel only goes back to 1948 for us Americans. I don’t know why—Wolfram Alpha can handle prior centuries just fine—but even with the current data, it’s still nifty to look at these numbers! And you can look at them, too, because DimeTravel displays the path of inflation as a nice graph. If you’re a sucker for realizing how transient your money is, go ahead and give DimeTravel a look. And more importantly, invest your remaining money wisely, because if you leave it under your mattress, it’s likely to vanish into grasp of good ol’ inflation.

FREE!

DimeTravel

iPhone App - Designed for the iPhone, compatible with the iPad
Released: 2010-04-16 :: Category: Finance

Do you remember the billionth app downloaded on the App Store? It was Bump, a free app that lets you swap pictures and contact info by bumping two iPhones together. The concept was simple, the app was cheap, and lo and behold: people like gimmicks. For a while, Bump was a chart-topper.

PayPal has long had a free app on the App Store, which provided mundane features like managing your PayPal account. (Who needs that?) But recently, they added a new feature: just like Bump, PayPal’s app now allows you to exchange things by simply bumping phones. The difference is that PayPal lets you actually exchange money with the person you’re bumping phones with.

It looks like a gimmick on the surface, but the feature is actually pretty useful. If you’re using an iPhone and have a PayPal account, you can download the app from anywhere and quickly complete a transaction. The process is painless, requires no exchange of information, and it’s free. What more could you want?

It’s a neat feature, that’s for sure. I can just see it now: instead of paying the normal way, you’ll bump fists with an iPhone clenched in your fingers. Passersby will stare in bafflement, but that’s okay—because you’ll know that you’re at the cutting-edge of technology. Yeah, you could pay for stuff in cash, but this is the twenty-first century!

Yeah, it’s silly, but it’s still cool. And there’s nothing wrong with that. If you have a PayPal account, it’s probably worth downloading the free app just to manage your account and check your balance. And, hey, if the opportunity arises…bump-money-transfers are the way to go.

FREE!

PayPal

iPhone App - Designed for the iPhone, compatible with the iPad
Released: 2008-07-11 :: Category: Finance

Yesterday Apple announced its quarterly financial earnings for Q1 2010 which ended on Dec 26th 2009, calling it a “Record Breaking” first quarter. In fact, the company reported it turned over $15.68 Billion in revenue, managing to sell a staggering 8.7 Million iPhones which saw a 100% unit growth, 3.36 Million Macintosh computers which saw a 33% increase over last quarter, and finally reporting it had sold just 21 Million iPods which represented a slight decline of 8% in unit growth.

In a press release statement posted on Apple.com, Steve Jobs CEO commented that Apple has now become a $50 Billion company, and looking forward to future product announcements (Ahem .. Tablet) and gearing up for the fiscal quarters that lie ahead, he doesn’t see that slowing down anytime soon.

“If you annualize our quarterly revenue, it’s surprising that Apple is now a $50+ billion company. The new products we are planning to release this year are very strong, starting this week with a major new product that we’re really excited about.”

If this report suggests anything, it shows that despite the economic climate of 2009 and early 2010, Apple has boatloads of tenacity, managed to battle through it all, and is seeing, once again, a record breaking quarter in unit sales, especially in regards to its popular iPhone product line.

Games are great, but when you have a device as complex as the iPhone you want it to do a little more than just play games. I have a very specific goal for my iPhone – use it to help streamline everything that I do on a day to day basis. For anyone joining me in this quest to make the iPhone simplify your life, I will be posting an app every week that I have deemed worthy of everyday use. This app can be a utility, a productivity app, an education app, a finance app, etc – anything that’s not a game or entertainment app. You can make suggestions for the “Utility of the Week” thread on our forum.

My pick this week is “Groups”, developed by Guided Ways Technologies (check out the review). For $2.99, you’ll receive the most perfect contact organization companion in the app store. This app has replaced the Contacts app on my dock, and is now sitting beside Phone, Mail, and Text. Congratulations Groups! You are officially the first non-native application to earn a spot on my dock.

$4.99

Groups: SMS, Mail and Manage Contacts

iPhone App - Designed for the iPhone, compatible with the iPad
Released: 2009-02-08 :: Category: Productivity

The new year just recently passed, it’s only been a few weeks, but you might find yourself faltering a little on your new years resolutions. Now is the time to re-commit to your resolutions, before it’s too late. And maybe the iPhone can help.

Some of the most common resolutions have to do with health, money, and organization. Three things that the iPhone can help you track and organize. We’re going to share some of the best applications for this, hoping to help you stick to those resolutions.

Continue reading Let the iPhone Help You Stick to Your New Year’s Resolutions »