Wally - Smart Personal Finance Review

I’ve always felt that the best way to save money is to simply keep track of it all. None of that “Buy my book and learn how to make a fortune!” business. Of course the trick, at least with me, is to make such expense tracking simple to use and easy to read. Which means that Wally - Smart Personal Finance is pretty much perfect for me.

Wally is just what I’ve already described; an easy-to-use, easy-to-read personal finance tracking app. Users can add up their expenses for the week manually or by scanning receipts; choosing categories, times, and even locations as they go. New entries can be tossed in just about anywhere, so long as they aren’t in “the future,” and all of the math is calculated automatically. Once all is said and done there are also several different ways to break down those expense reports. Users can check on their spending for the week, month, or year, and view the categorical breakdown as a list, a series of pie charts, or by location.

There’s so much about Wally that’s just plain easy (in a good way). Adding a new expense only takes a tap or two, or can be theoretically done by snapping a photo of the receipt. If a particular entry is incorrect it can be edited easily. Even messing around with the dates simply shuffles the info into its proper category without any hassle. Of course most of this would be lost on a lot of users (myself included) if all the information were displayed poorly, which isn’t a problem here. All of the days and categories are color-coded, the relevant information (i.e. $$$) is nice and big, and getting a more detailed breakdown of a given day or week only takes a tap/swipe. I also have to admit I love that all the information is stored locally rather than on servers. I’m always a little leery of apps that ask for email access and the like.

Though Wally is most definitely right up my alley it’s still got its quirks. For one thing it won’t allow users to create entries in advance or set up repeating schedules; so if I’m planning on buying something in a few hours or days I can’t actually enter it in properly until I’ve actually spent the money. It also makes factoring in bills a bit of a grind. I was also disappointed after trying out the handy receipt-scanning feature. There’s little to no info explaining what areas of the receipt need to be in the frame and I’ve yet to actually get it to work regardless.

Minor issues aside, Wally is still a great finance tracking app for people like myself who prefer to keep things simple. It’s also helped me to realize just how much money I spend on video games, which is kind of scary.