+) Receipts lets you take pictures of your receipts (and crop the photos)

It has never been easier to track your spending. I found that I needn’t worry about forgetting a purchase from earlier in the day as Receipts is so quick that I logged all purchases immediately. Also, I like this feature because I can take a quick photo of my computer screen for online purchases and I have a backup receipt incase elves steal my fastidious filefolder catalogue of purchases since 1997.

+) Allows for + and – Receipts.

-) Does not account for the inept, and explain the advantages of + and – receipts.

I wish I had realized the potential here sooner as initially I logged all of my receipts as + figuring that I could export the compiled list as my expences. By setting all expenses as – receipts and all deposits as +, you can keep your finances in order from your phone.

+) Exports information

Now that you’re on top of your expences and income on your phone, you can easily back up the information on your computer. Export account report files over WiFi (WebDAV) or as text in email for import into spreadsheets.

+) Categorizes your expenditures

I can see where most of my money is going. It will be really interesting to see how this pans out over a month or longer.

+) Saves business names/ customizable categories

Receipts is so quick and user friendly that I am able to get rid of some pre-existing categories and input my own. I’d normally joke about my bear wrangling expenses but a) Its too pricy to mention and b) I don’t joke about money.

+) Supports international currency

This feature allows me to pretend that I have a Swiss bank account. If you do have a Swiss bank account, you may appreciate this feature for better reasons than I do.

+) Variety of charts

You can look at the totals in a variety of charts, which is very nice if you’re into pie or bars. If you aren’t into pie or bars but are into charts, you may find this helpful as well.

-) Aesthetics could use some work (is anyone else tired of simple text lists?)

+) (most importantly) Lazy proof!

I am notorious for not keeping up on my banking, let alone my receipts. This app not only gives me a system to easily keep track of my spending, it also gives me a sense of empowerment that even I, bear-wrangling number-opposing man, can keep up with his receipts!

Bottom Line

If you’ve let your banking slide, get this app! It’s the easiest thing and you’ll appreciate it in a month, then again in six months, and again… well, you get it. If anything, you can impress your banker by showing how excited you are about keeping track of the numbers.

Promotion Codes:

MKPJNYRRTXY4

WN6JWALJFH3X

*When using the promotion code to download for free, it’s on a first-come, first-served basis. Out of courtesy, please leave a comment below mentioning you’ve used the promotion code.

The siren song that tempted me to switch from using a Blackberry (Nasdaq: RIMM) to the iPhone was the native Stocks application on the iPhone. The ability to rapidly scroll through the list of stocks to view quotes and charts was in itself worth the price of admission.

The Internet sun may appear to be setting on AOL, which posted a 20% decline in advertising revenue in the first quarter of 2009 and ranks fourth for financial websites after Yahoo Finance, The Wall Street Journal network and MSN Money. However the DailyFinance app developed by AOL Money & Finance is a brilliant time saving app that is my chosen partner for breakfast every morning. In about 5 minutes it helps me quickly get a read for not only the market but the dozens of stocks I track everyday.

Before switching to the DailyFinance app, I used the native Stocks application for almost two years and then tried out the Bloomberg application for a few weeks. Neither app can hold a candle to the DailyFinance app.

My key frustration with the native iPhone Stocks app was its inability to show news related to the stock I was looking at. The little Yahoo! icon at the bottom left of the app would simply do a web search for the name of the stock and display a bunch of non-finance related results. So if Blackberry maker Research In Motion (Nasdaq: RIMM) jumped up by 20%, I would have no idea why unless I looked elsewhere for that information.

In contrast tapping on a stock from the DailyFinance app opens up a screen that displays real time quotes during trading hours and extended hour quotes after the close of the regular session. Income investors would be happy to see dividend and yield information at their fingertips. There are two additional tabs that display news and charts. Oddly enough these two tabs and the dividend information will only show up in portrait mode. Not only does the chart display volume information at the bottom, it also shows the gains in percentage for the time period you select. For example in the screenshot to the right, I am looking at a year-to-date chart of RIMM and it shows that RIMM gained 71.51% since the start of this year despite strong iPhone sales and a very favorable launch for the Palm Pre (Nasdaq: PALM) but over a 1 year period the stock has lost 51.35%.

Version 1.2 of the DailyFinance app solved a couple of issues I had with the app. The app used to open by default to the markets section and it took a couple of clicks to get to my Watchlist. The new version is supposed to let you set a default screen to open to but I am yet to find this setting. I am just happy that it opens to the last section I was viewing before quitting the app.

The second issue the latest version solved was the ability to reorder your Watchlist so that you are not restricted to viewing stocks in the order you entered them. As you can see from some of the screenshots below, I have grouped the apartment REITs AvalonBay (AVB), AIMCO (AIV) and Essex Property Trust (ESS) together as well as software-as-a-service (SAAS in industry parlance) providers like NetSuite (N), Salesforce.com (CRM), Rightnow Technologies (RNOW) and SuccessFactors (SFSF) together.

The Markets section of the app allows you to stay on top of domestic markets, bonds (10 year treasury note), international markets, currencies (limited to Euro and Yen right now) and commodities (Oil and Gold) from a single page. It would have been cool if the app allowed users to update this section to view commodities of their choice (at this time corn futures interest me more than oil) and also view additional international markets.

The news section is organized by sector and the movers section allows you to view most active stocks as well as the top gainers/losers of the day. A few things the DailyFinance team could do to improve the app are,

1. Allow users to share Watchlists with other investors by email.
2. When adding a stock to the Watchlist or looking up the quote for a stock, automatically bring up the keyboard like the native iPhone Stock app does instead of making users go through the additional step of clicking on the search box to bring up the keyboard.
3. Allow users to customize the Markets section to suit their preferences.
4. Let me track multiple watchlists without having to sign on to AOL to create portfolios.

I was about to add “allow users to view charts in landscape mode” to the list when I discovered that the feature already exists and exudes “cool” as you can see below. A well deserved 5 star rating.

Additional Information:

Version Reviewed: 1.2

Release Date: April 17, 2009

Cost: Free

Tipulator by Tap Tap Tap is a tip calculator adorned in a festive mint julep color and that signature red and white restaurant mint served usually in glass bowls on the hostess stand. For $1.99 Tipulator offers you what QuikTip does for free, just in a more cheery and, at times, more cumbersome format. The interface is clean and jovial, with the check amount, tip amount, and total laid in descending rows, with even a Party amount, so you have the option of dividing the tip among 2 – 25 people. The tip percentage is a bit more extended, it ranging from 0 – 50% – in other words, from absolute scrimping to absolute generosity. I particularly liked how Tipulator automatically calculated the tip and total when typing in the check amount, so users may see the changes in action.

Some other reviews viewed the scrolling mechanism Tipulator employs as cumbersome compared to a simple typing in option. While I do agree with this consternation, I admit when changing the tip option through the scrolling tab, it’s nice to see the tip amount and bill total change automatically and easily in a whirring of numbers for you. For sheer showiness, I can see how some people may like this feature. Besides, it doesn’t add that many more steps, or taps, to cycle through. However, when it comes to the total, you have the option of selecting an exact amount, or rounding up or down, rounding the tip up or down, and even a bizarre palindrome option. I would have much preferred a few simple buttons along the bottom that noted either “round up” or “round down,” and frankly, when it comes to simple rounding, that’s easily achieved through a second of your brain’s mental acuity. Or at least it should. Maybe it’s a bit shameful that Tipulator assumes we would need a no-brainer rounding option. Or maybe it’s shameful because it’s largely true for many people.

On a last note, the party amount option – to split the tip among a group of people – would be a fantastic option if it took into account the oftentimes disparity between different menu orders. Since Javier, let’s call him, ordered the Veal, and Josie only ordered the small Caesar salad – a much cheaper order than Veal – she shouldn’t have to pay as much tip as he. However, Tipulator allocates the tip evenly between the party, assuming even generosity among its members, despite Josie paying a mere $10 for her dinner of greens.

For its cheeriness and bright interface, Tipulator is certainly a cute and useful app to have, but for its excessive options – palindrome? – and ineffective tip dividing selection, it seems more suited for showing off than putting to use. For $1.99 I would maybe buy Tipulator, or maybe instead download a free tipping calculator and focus on calculating divided tip percentages in my head.

Below is a list featuring ten apps that save you time and money in those areas of life we tend to have the most need and interest. Best of all, the apps are all free to download, saving you money simply in the process.

1. AudioBooks – For those of you who love cracking open a good book, look no further. Audiobooks by Cross Forward Consulting gives you tens of thousands of books from the LibriVox Project right at your fingertips, or, more appropriately, right at your ear. For those of you not familiar with Librivox, it’s a fabulous volunteer-driven project where people upload chapters from their favorite books onto a public domain for all to share, for free. With all types of genres to choose from – science fiction, comedies, classics, self-help books – boredom is not an option, especially when downloading an entire book, War and Peace even, only takes a matter of seconds, minutes at most.

Selecting a book to download is extremely easy; you may browse by author, title, most popular, or even a cute “surprise me” which just tickled me senseless. I did notice a few famous novels were curiously absent – Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar and anything by John Steinbeck – and it seems the available titles sway more toward classics like The Odyssey and Shakespeare, and obscure historical books like The Bhagavad Gita; perhaps Audiobooks would best benefit those in High school and College English classes and those who enjoy a good read on The Arabian Art of Taming and Training Wild and Vicious Horses.

Nevertheless, for free titles from the ever-expanding, nearly limitless LibriVox Project, Audiobooks is sure to entertain and fascinate those who can’t or won’t spend another dollar at a bookstore, for a hardcopy they know they’ll either donate or forget within the next few years. So why not skip that step, and just digitally archive your book collection? For the carnal lovers of that rough thumbing through pages, Audiobooks will never replace the visceral sensation of reading, but it provides instead that long lost art of storytelling.

2. Say Where – As recently reviewed, Say Where by Excuse Me Services is a wonderful time-saving app that goes above and beyond the iPhone Maps feature by translating your spoken word into destinations and automatic directions to there from your current GPS location. With people no longer bothering with maps unless they’re topographically traversing the trail-less plains of backcountry Yosemite, online directions have been a boon in the last decade, and especially within the past few years with the advent of GPS car systems and, lately, the iPhone. The one drawback of the iPhone maps feature is the need to type out your addresses or business destinations; when driving in a car, this is not only illegal, but dangerous. Say Where prevents the hazard of texting on the road by allowing you to simply state where you wish to go; it them formulations directions immediately, and, since it operates through the same Google Maps feature, you follow these directions step by step with your blinking GPS tracking in suit. While it might be a bit much to claim Say Where can save you time and your life, it certainly does provide you with a hands-free, hassle-free direction system that prevents any future frustrating circling around city blocks.

3. CellFire – Coupons are finally making a comeback, only this time, they’ve modernized into the digital world. No longer need we clip them from magazines or print them from computers; with Cellfire we simply see what coupons, discounts and redeemable values are currently available to us, then we show them to the corresponding retailer on the iPhone screen, ready to scan. While some may balk at the idea of using coupons, when presented with a FREE rental from Hollywood Video, hopefully those pinched for money will realize when something is given for free, it is not to be snubbed. From movie rentals to food discounts, clothing sales and the like, saving money has become much easier with CellFire’s digital coupons, and racking up those 15% discounts makes for a more padded wallet, or – to escape old clichés – just a higher bank account statement. Read my full review about CellFire here.

4. AirFare – Nowhere is there a more pronounced desire for saving money than with purchasing airline tickets. Notoriously expensive, and more expensive the closer to departure date, airline tickets have never been considered throwaway expenses. People put considerable time and thought into buying a plane ticket because serious cash is involved here, often in the $400 and above range, more so for those travelling to the high-traffic areas of New York and other east coast ventures. JetBlue is perhaps the only airline that offers tickets as low as $28 roundtrip – only, of course, if you notice the deal within the existing timeframe of three seconds, before other travel-wary hunters pounce upon it.

Airfare by techTravelr not only finds you flights, a considerable process in itself, but cheap flights. On average, it has surprised me with cheaper flights than online sites like Expedia and Orbitz, which themselves find cheap flights quickly for you. Searching is easy with Airfare, and booking a flight is just a tap away once being linked to the ticket online. Airfare saves you plenty of time and money, and even stress, by navigating the confusing waters of airline tickets for you, and without a doubt, the best bargain for your budget. Learn more about AirFare here.

5. QuikTip Tip Caluculator – Seemingly more mundane and pedestrian than the other apps listed in this review, QuikTip Tip Calculator’s strength lies in its pedestrian value. Just as many women in America wear the wrong bra size, many restaurant-goers tip either too little or too much, often without intending to do so. Mental math is not the strong suit of many, and when it comes to quickly calculating that 15% tip that is the norm for many places – not as scrimping as 10% and not as overindulgent as 20%– most people forego the time to configure the answer in favor of estimates which are often several dollars off the mark. With QuikTip by Spare Change Software, all you do is adjust the tip percentage – from 0%, you thief, to 30% – type in the bill amount, and Quiktip immediately calculates the total amount you should leave. You can even round down or round up if you wish to adjust the price slightly in favor of you or the waiter. Really, it takes no more than five finger taps, seven at the most for you big thousand-dollar spenders at The French Laundry. So make friends with your waiter, and save a few bucks with QuikTip on your next night out.

6. RepairPal – In fictional lore, and maybe some truthful lore, mechanics are a scrupulous bunch. A notable episode of Seinfeld called “The Dealership” comically portrays mechanics as misleading and opportunistic when Putty – a mechanic – stops giving Jerry accurate repair prices after he ends his relationship with Jerry’s friend Elaine Benes. Since he and Jerry are no longer on friendship terms, he instead gives Jerry the usual inflated mechanic prices. While mechanics may not be as untrustworthy as depicted on television, there is always that underlying suspicion that consulting an expert on car repair, when you, yourself, are completely a laymen, only provides the right circumstance for being taken advantage of.

Regardless, RepairPal gives you average price estimates on car repairs in your area, and after choosing your car brand, model and year, shows you shops where you may have it done. RepairPal neatly breaks down the cost by parts and labor, and even offers some recommendations. When searching for a Drive Belt Replacement for a 2002 Hyundai Accent in the 94952 zip code area, RepairPal informed me the repair price would range on average from $114-$172 dollars, with parts roughly comprising $31-$68 and labor comprising $83-$106. It recommended me to replace the drive belt every 6,000 miles and even explained that leaking valve cover gaskets and engine oil could cause premature drive belt failure. Good to know. I could then select a shop nearby to get this repair, and even click on a “Directions to Shop” button to easily find the place. On a final, excellent note, RepairPal even offers 24/7 roadside assistance, from emergency towing to flat tire changes, with a simple “Call Now” button, and even offers a listing of various car manufacturer helpline numbers.

Easy and quick to use, RepairPal is a must for any car owner, and is especially helpful for those who do not possess much background knowledge on car jargon and appropriate prices.

7. Mint.com – Many banks offer their services through their own personalized app, such as Bank of America (their BofA app), and these serve the public well. However, to make matters even easier, and to keep an eye on your budget, Mint.com offers you a consolidated collection of all your financial records, including your checking and savings account, your investment portfolios, and even miscellaneous items of personal worth, should you decide to record them (these can include personal assets like cars owned, properties owned, even minute items like clothing, etc). To add accounts onto Mint.com, simply enter in your login information for the bank and the information will be saved onto the app; when setting up the account you’re given detailed calibration options, like setting your average monthly food and billing payments, so that Mint.com may develop budget plans for you and later alert you if you went over budget, or if your bank account is lower than average. Also, just like your banking site, it tracks your transactions for ease of financial records.
Having everything in one location, and in a password-protected application that tracks your budget, allows you to spend wisely and accordingly.

8. iWant – When walking the streets or navigating traffic, sometimes you find yourself in need a bite to eat, or a place to fill up on gas, or a nearby pharmacy, or something else of less pressing concern. iWant by Rudrajit Samanta searches for all kinds of amenities nearest to you based on a personally calibrated distance setting, from a mere 0.1 miles away to 15 miles away. It lists your options based on either distance or community rating, whichever you find more pertinent, and then finds directions to that place based on your current location. iWant even caters to the socially oriented, as you have the option of emailing your location to someone so they may meet you at said bar, restaurant, pharmacy, etc. Rather than asking someone on the street where the closest gas station is and maybe getting an answer, just fulfill your wants with iWant and get the closest amenity to you, always on the mark. Check out my full review of iWant here.

9. Good Guide – This is my new favorite app (sorry Yelp! You’re still dear to my heart). For a self-professed foodie who is a member of the fast growing green community, Good Guide offers detailed information for over 70,000 healthy and green products, including food, personal care items, household cleaners, and toys. When searching for a product, Good Guide gives you community ratings – which you may access live throughout the day with their unique text messaging feature – and after clicking on a specific product, gives you detailed information including health, environmental, and social ratings, the reasoning behind these ratings, and the product’s ingredients. Should you particularly like or dislike this product, you may add it to your Favorites list or Avoid list, and you may share it to an outside source.

Let’s search for peanut butter, shall we? I search for peanut butter under the Food tab, and the results include 10 peanut butter brands for me to sort through. At the top is the Santa Cruz Dark Roasted Creamy Peanut Butter with the high rating of 7.0. When I click on the product’s details, I can view its different ratings, and, more importantly, the ingredient label, which I can click on for even more information. The nutrition summary shows me an easily understood chart that tells me if various nutrients like saturated fat and cholesterol are in the low, medium, or high range according to nutritional guidelines set by institutions like the FDA, WHO, AHA, and CSPI. There is also a chart that compares these nutrients to other products in its category, showing whether they are better or worse than others. When reading through this peanut butter review, I was happy to see the Santa Cruz company has one of the highest scores in climate change, labor and human rights, and in recycled material use. Healthy and green.

Next time you’re in the market searching for the most environmentally friendly and nutritionally healthy food, make sure to consult Good Guide for featured products and for reviews on your usual Whole Foods market fare. You’ll never wonder about your choices again.

10. Truphone – This app is as versatile and money saving as they get. Knowing from personal experience by calling my family in Mexico, the cost of international communication on cell phones is definitely not cheap. Fortunately, with the advent of VoIP technology there are a wide range of voice services out there that can make communication quick, reliable and cost effective. Most of these services, like Skype, have been relegated to the desktop, making on the go communication cumbersome or downright impossible, but Truphone by Software Cellular Network, Ltd solves this problem by allowing you to use your existing handset and service provider to make cheap calls worldwide, using either Wi-Fi or your phone’s 3G data connection.

Making a call entails simply choosing someone from your contacts list or dialing a phone number and hitting “Call.” Since Truphone works in tandem with your existing iPhone plan, you keep your number, SIM card and current setup. All you have to do is download the app, save your credit card information online and use it when you want to make low-cost Internet calls.

The service works best when in range of a Wi-Fi hotspot, but you can use it anywhere. When connected to a hotspot, 100% of the call is routed over the Internet until it reaches the other users handset, allowing the company to offer some of the lowest rates on the Internet. When not connected to Wi-Fi but still in your home country Truphone routes as much of the call as it can over the Internet, and completes the call via your handsets phone connection. It also features a Bluetooth ability.

Truphone has integrated instant messenger clients such as Skype, MSN, Yahoo and AIM into their software, allowing you to use Truphone as a universal messaging application. There are also a few option screens that allow for integration with Twitter, or viewing data such as your account info or recent calls.

There are 3 different plans that you can choose from for the service, depending on how much calling you plan to make. For $17 per month on the TruUnlimited plan, unlimited calls can be made for no additional charges. If you don’t want to pay a charge each month, the TruStandard plan gives you rates around $.05 per minute. Finally, if you plan on making a fair number of calls, but don’t need unlimited access, the TruSaver plan is $4 per month, and cuts rates on the TruStandard plan by about 60%. If you are looking for an option to help you save money on making international calls, Truphone may have a plan for you. By using VoIP technology, they create multiple ways to make calls cheaply to anywhere, from anywhere.

While Skype may still be the current trend among internet callers, so ubiquitous now that some of my college professors would adamantly persuade us to contact them on their skype address, perhaps Truphone, with its all-inclusive nature and cheap ways, will become the greatest and latest calling sensation.

In our technologically-driven times, thumbing through those cheap, recycled paper pamphlets that are discarded immediately as junk mail, with their shabby, un-hip layouts and giant red letters indicating sales and discounts, seems a trying task for most. The sheer idea of cutting coupons and padding your wallet or purse with a thick stack of them is almost too grandparent generation to bear.

However, a certain iPhone app called Cellfire by Cellfire Inc., modernizes the coupon cutting method to one of digital efficiency, giving you up-to-date coupons and discounts and redeemable offers for various amenities – entertainment, services, shopping – local to your zip code, or to your current location by GPS. Instead of old-school cutting, you simply click on the coupon you want and show it at the retailer checkout. It’s easy, fast, and requires no physical concentration. For the zip code of 94952 Cellfire offers me a FREE Portrait for the Class of 2009 at Sears, a 15% off any purchase for 1-800-Flowers.com, and one FREE rental at Hollywood Video. I simply click on any of these offers to view the code, which I show to the retailer, and the retail locations where I may redeem this offer.

The one hitch is you may only view the coupon a select amount of times, usually 2-3, before the coupon is no longer available to use. I’m not sure why this feature is built-in, as it’d be easier to instead save the coupon and use it before its expiration date, but I suppose they figure it would give a sense of urgency and priority to the customer, that if they don’t use this opportunity right away it will slip right through their fingers. Oh Cellfire, don’t tease us so.

With our post-Bush Administration economy still flagging, people are looking to save money in any way they can. Cellfire’s coupons may seem small and trite, too insignificant a saving to some, but when you start racking up the 15% savings every time you go to the market, or to the movies, or when buying that shirt you simply cannot resist, then that’s something to think about.

Having travelled to Mexico more times than I can remember, I can say, without further ado, that had I in my possession a quick currency converter like the Currency app by Jeff Grossman, I would have used it. Sure, there was a time when 10 Mexican pesos were easily calculated into one American dollar, and mental math was no sweat, but with currency rates changing all the time, Currency provides you with a quick and up to date source of information on almost any country you could want. Besides, when tourists flock about a foreign country, many often don’t realize that a baguette sandwich from a quaint Parisian café costs about as much as five tortas con jamon from streetside merchants on Isla de Mujeres along the Yucatan. These kinds of money conversions require effort to think about, and many people, including myself, merely retain a faint memory of how much costs what.

The Currency app by Jeffrey Grossman has a default listing of 7 currencies, but you may edit this however you choose, and add more currencies to expand the list; I added Aruba Florin just to tickle myself. The list of currencies you may add is extensive, including Botswana Pula, Icelandic Krona, and even Gold Ounces. Some, I’m shameful to admit, I’m not even familiar with, like the Moldovan Leu and Omani Rial. It’s easy to see how this app could be of great use to travelling journalists or anthropologists, as it provides current financial information at their fingertips. From an anthropological viewpoint, I was intrigued to see just how many countries list dollars and shillings as their currency names. Aside from obviously listing currency rates, this app managed to shed some light onto past colonization trends.

The exchange rate information is provided by Yahoo! Finance, and other than editing currencies in or out of your listing, this app has no thrills or frills. The information given is exactly what the title assumes, and currency is all what you’ll get from this clean, straightforward app with happy flags symbolizing their homeland.