Saver & iXpenseIt

Since I got my first iPhone three years ago, I’ve used iXpen­seIt to keep track of where my money goes. iXpen­seIt is a per­sonal finance app that lets you input and save your daily expen­di­tures, help­ing you to see just how much you’ve spent on what over time.

iXpen­seIt is a great app, with a lot of func­tion­al­ity, but there were always bits about it I didn’t like. Ever the geek, I kept my eye out for other per­sonal finance apps, but none caught my eye until Saver. I’ve been using Saver for the past month, and since then I’ve deleted iXpen­seIt off my iPhone.

Like the com­par­i­son between Things & Omni­fo­cus, iXpen­seIt and Saver sit on oppo­site ends of the spec­trum. iXpen­seIt is com­plex but pow­er­ful, Saver is sim­ple but easy to use. But whereas I chose com­plex­ity over sim­plic­ity in the case of Things and Omni­fo­cus, I chose sim­plic­ity over com­plex­ity in the case of iXpen­seIt and Saver.

Using Saver is just eas­ier. It feels like Saver’s designer has put more thought into mak­ing the app as fric­tion­less as pos­si­ble. To enter a ‘Food’ entry for a lunch of $5, for exam­ple, takes six steps in Saver, but takes eight steps in iXpen­seIt. Two extra steps may not sound like a lot, but add that up over the mul­ti­ple times you’re using the app in a day, and that’s a good num­ber of steps you shave off.

The sec­ond rea­son ties in with the first, and it’s that Saver is just so much more visu­ally pol­ished. It’s a visual delight to use, some­thing that iXpen­seIt never was.

Saver’s entry screen (left) and iXpenseIt’s (right).

When I first installed iXpen­seIt, I fig­ured the con­fus­ing app icon and silly expen­di­ture icons were birthing over­sights which would be over­come, but they never were. Instead, the app icon got more and more con­fus­ing over the years – if you took a look at iXpenseIt’s icon (the icon on the right in the open­ing graphic) with­out being told what it was, could you have guessed what the app does? In con­trast, Saver’s icon makes it obvi­ous what the app is about.

In gen­eral, iXpen­seIt feels like an app made by engi­neers, while Saver feels like an app made by design­ers. I appre­ci­ate iXpen­seIt’s flex­i­bil­ity, but I’d always hoped that they’d over­haul the fit and fin­ish of their app, and they never did. Saver, while not as com­plex, does just enough to sat­isfy my needs in a more pleas­ant way, so it gets my vote.