5 Android apps to help manage your budget

With high economic pressures and rise in prices of commodities, your monthly budget can go completely haywire if you are an impulsive buyer. Keeping a tab on monthly expenditure can get really tedious at times. If you are an Android user, your smartphone could easily come to the rescue for tracking and budgeting your expenses. There are apps that help setting monthly budget goals, tracking expenditure and ensuring you don't spend on unnecessary items. Take a look at five such easy to use Android apps that will assist in managing your budget
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Moneywise – Free, Rs 350
Moneywise is one of the simplest apps to keep a track of your expenses. The app doesn't require setting up an account and you can directly get started by choosing INR as your default currency. You can create weekly, bi-weekly or monthly budget, and use filters like expenditure, income, cleared and pending. The app supports multiple accounts, budgets and budget types, allowing quick additions and deductions from the accounts. Just set your budget for the month and keep adding your expenses. While keying in your expenditure, there are several options like deposit, rent, food, entertainment, medical, shopping, tranportation and so on. You can monitor the balance amount and spend money accordingly for the rest of the week or month. The app also lets you analyse the complete expenditure with a neat graphical representation. It creates detailed pie charts for your better understanding of how you've been spending money. The app works offline without the need for an Internet connection and is password protected to avoid unauthorised access. Though the free app will suffice your basic needs, the ad-free paid version supports additional features such as support for limitless number of account, recurring transactions, transfer between accounts and more.

Tracks your expenses

MyUniverse – Free 
MyUniverse is the mobile version of industrialist Aditya Birla's online personal finance management platform. The app brings all your bank, credit card and investment accounts under one roof. Apart from bringing financial status of all your accounts (loans, transactions, investments and so on), it has features that will help you manage your monthly expenses too. The  “My Wallet” feature transfers all your ATM transactions to the wallet section of the app. This will help you record your cash expenses as and when you spend and categorise them with ease. It also lets you add details about where you spent the money and the images of the receipts. Moreover, all this can be done without the need for an Internet connection. The “Expense Manager” then collates all your bank and credit card transactions into expenses of various categories and gives you a clear analysis of the amount you've spent. It eventually helps you track every rupee you've spent. It also lets you set small budgets and monitor them. The app sends notifications to ensure that you don't overspend. The free account of MyUniverse has no limitations on the cash entries or usage of "My Wallet" feature. However, for complete benefits of the app, one will have to subscribe to their Premium or Premium Plus plans, which are available for Rs 500 and Rs 750 respectively. The prices are excluding taxes.

My Wallet feature helps keep a tab on your expenditure

Money Lover – Free, Rs 296

Managing your money can’t get any simpler. Money Lover has a very neat and straightforward UI. You can add income from salary and other payable or receivable amounts. It also has a debt management section. Apart from usual budget planning, there are some handy options like starting a saving campaign, which will help you set aside money for future trips, unforeseen medical expenses and so on. You can even manage your expenses by setting a particular amount for the various categories like shopping, transportation, entertainment and so on. Another factor that needs some serious money tracking is your monthly bills expenditure, for instance, like the amount spent on electricity, telephone, gas, Internet and more. The app has a "bills section" that lets you manage all your bills. The app also includes some tools like tip calculator, currency convertor, ATM finder and interest rate. The free version will suffice most of the budget management needs, but the app does offer a paid version that lets you add sub categories and Dropbox integration, and has a quick search bar.

Aptly named and feature loaded

Expense Manager – Free, Rs 298
This is a straightforward app to track your income and expenses by week, month and even year. Apart from setting or managing budget, the app also lets you schedule recurring payments. It comes with support for payment alerts, which ensure that you don’t have to shell out any fines for late payment. You can manage your expenses by day, week and month. It also lets you add pictures of receipts and take a backup of all the transactions on an SD card or Dropbox. You can get a more personalised experience by customising expenses as per categories, payment methods, deadlines and more.  The app also comes with convenient tools such calculator, currency converter, tip calculator, sales and tax calculator and credit card calculator. It also has an ad-free paid version.

Ensures that you don't overspend

Monthly Budget – Free
Monthly Budget is a great app for personal money management as well as family budget tracking. It has a neat income and expense log to add your transactions. Apart from your daily expenses, it lets you add bills and also their exact payment dates. Just like Moneywise, you can set up monthly budgets and even allot amount to a particular category. You can set a specific budget for the month or a particular category, and the app will keep track of how much you are spending. Like some of the previous apps, this one also makes analysing the budget easy with graphical representation. The data is password protected to avoid unauthorized access. The app lets you export all transaction records and monthly summary to an SD card.

Lets you take a backup on SD card

Besides, you could also check apps like EasyMoney and Bill Tracker and Reminder.