Smart Budget app review: keep track of your budget

Introduction

Smart Budget by Game Pizza is a simple app meant to help you keep track of your income and expenses. It has a simple user interface and cute category icons. If you are tired of all the overly serious budget apps then give this one a shot.

What You Get

When you’ve tried out five, 10, or 15 budgeting apps, they kind of all start to feel the same. This one does pretty much everything most other budget apps do, but it does it with a bit of a twist: fun little category icons.

There’s pretty much no setup required. Just launch the app and input your bank balance. It starts out with a zero balance. After that, you will track your income and expenses as they occur.

I really like that you can add in details of your income, unlike a lot of other apps. You can click “Pay” and then go one step further and say who it’s from. In my case, I label my clients #1, #2, and so on. This is a good way to keep track of who has paid me.

One problem I found was that I clicked on Sheets in the top left corner and wasn’t able to navigate back to the main part of the app from there. I had to close out the app entirely and go back in.

How It Works

Transactions are shown on the main page of the app, with most recent transactions showing at the top. Income is shown in green, and expenses are shown in a brick red color and in brackets. The only thing it doesn’t show is your balance, which is kind of strange. You have to go to the Accounts tab to see your balance.

If you want, you can create a custom category icon; just draw it with your finger. This is an unexpected feature that most apps don’t offer. The drawing tool is kind of big for getting any fine detail but it works well enough.

The app also features cloud sync, chart view, planned transactions, and an accounts page.

This is a free version and only allows for 30 transactions; the full version is $2.99 and can be obtained through an in-app purchase. 

Pros and Cons

Pros

• Easy to use
• No setup required
• Unique hand-drawn category icons
• Simple account balance page that lets you know at a glance what you’ve spent

Cons

• Can’t navigate out of the Charts page
• The main page that shows your transactions doesn’t show your balance
• Only allows 30 transactions before you have to upgrade to the full version

Final Verdict

I like this app. I try out a new budget app every few days and usually end up disappointed or just don’t use it because it takes too long to input information. This one has a couple good features I really like and it doesn’t look like all the other ones. I’m not too sure about the cost; a lot of budget apps are free and this one seems like a lot of money. I hope the developer fixes the Charts page or makes it more clear on how to get out of it. At this point I wouldn't pay the money for the full version.