App Review: Toshl
July 5, 2011 11 Comments
For many of us trying to run an efficient household, a main component in that efficiency is budgeting. Windows Phone 7 has a decent amount of applications to assist with setting up different budgets for your household, one such application is Toshl by SLOWP7APPS. Toshl is an expense tracker. With Toshl you can set up a budget and attach different tags to that budget. When you spend money on something you input that into the expenses tab and if you already have a budget setup for your expense the amount will automatically be deducted from your budget, showing you how much of that particular budget is still available. Toshl also keeps track of every expense added to it giving you an easily accessible rundown of your spending.
[smartads]
Toshl is a fairly easy application to use, and the only real challenge that comes along with it is the person using it. You have to remember to add your expenses and if you don’t then the whole point of having an application like Toshl becomes totally pointless. For those who prefer accessing their expenses and budgets online, Toshl also has a fully functional website that allows you to view your information from your desktop, though the mobile app works better for in the moment expense tracking. For those who feel more comfortable looking at an expense report, Toshl can take your reported expenses and send them to the email used to sign up in many different formats (.csv, .xls, . pdf and google docs).
One of the beneficial features of Toshl is the automatic saving to cloud. Because it is saved in this manner you are able to access your expenses added from any internet enabled device using your login information. Utilizing Cloud also enables Toshl to store all the information that you have added to your account giving you access to previous expenses whenever they are needed.
What I enjoyed about Toshl was not only the ease of use, but the fact that it is also eye candy. Most functional apps focus on only that, functionality. The Toshl app gives you the best of both worlds beauty and brains but it doesn’t stop there. During the few weeks that I used Toshl I was able to determine that my family were spending way too much money on our groceries due to frequent trips. We cut down our grocery store trips and were able to save a substantial amount of money weekly. My most favorite thing though small was that every time you open the app it automatically begins saving and the Toshl monster mascot thingy always has something to tell you. His comments are a little silly such as “saving is good for your skin”, but I really enjoy the humor in life so this really amuses me.
It was really difficult to find something that didn’t work properly with the Toshl app but I did find one little issue. Anytime I tried to edit a budget to add more tags it wouldn’t save the newly added tags. In order to get the budget to function properly with all the correct tags I would have to delete the particular budget and redo it entirely with all the correct tags and then it would save. This is something that I am sure the masterminds of Toshl will fix in no time. Also, with an app as beautiful as Toshl it would have been nicer if they would have spruced up their live tile a bit.
Toshl is compatible with fifteen different currencies including, the Euro, US dollar, Canadian, Yen etc…The Toshl app can be downloaded for free in the Marketplace, however Toshl is a service that goes for $20 per year. While $20 per year might make some people hesitate, it also has to be said that spending $20 for one year could save you so much more in the long run if you use the service the way it was intended and really examine your spending.
[Rating: 4 stars]
App info:
Toshl is a mobile expense tracking application with a twist. It offers extremely user friendly interface for tracking your financial expenses. With Toshl usage, users know where their money is going and can therefore change their spending habits and save some money on the long run.
Toshl provides the tools for tracking expenses, in multiple currencies (with automatic exchange ratio), syncs with cloud (so your data is backed-up constantly), allows users to tag their expenses, set up budgets and export data via Microsoft Excel, CSV, Google docs and PDF.
