Filed under: iPhone, App Store, iPod touch
Sneak peek look at Cha-Ching for iPhone
Many Mac users have been using Cha-Ching to manage their bank accounts for some time. The guys at Midnight Apps are at it again, and this time their money management software is on the iPhone. Just like the Mac version, Cha-Ching mobile allows you to create multiple account and manage your budget, schedule payments, and add payees. Probably the most amazing feature is the ability to sync all of the data from the Mac version of Cha-Ching wirelessly to your iPhone/iPod touch.
When you tap on the Budget icon in the toolbar, you have the ability to see at a glance your current budget. At the top is your overall budget showing how much money you have left on a scale. If you tap on the Budget icon a second time, a history of your budgets for each month will come up. When you're ready to set your budget, tap on "Edit" at the top. You can add or remove categories in the app settings.
New to Cha-Ching is the scheduler section of the app. In this area, you can easily track upcoming bills. You can set the frequency, amount, category, account to subtract it from, and any notes that you might want to include.
Cha-Ching mobile is also location-aware. When you add a payee you can have the app remember the location. When you sort by locations, the nearest payees will show up near the top. This is a great way to track your payees based on where you are. The app will also remember the category, location, and other details about the payee; this makes creating new payments simple because most of the details will be automatically filled in for you.
In the settings section, you can easily see all of your accounts, set user-created categories, secure your Cha-Ching app with a 4-digit passcode, sync with Cha-Ching 2.0 on your Mac, and set scheduler options.
Cha-Ching mobile should be on the App Store soon. It has a sale price of $2.99US. You can visit their teaser page for a quick movie demo of the app.
Gallery: Cha-Ching Touch
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
drewb said 9:15AM on 2-24-2009
Looks like a great app to possibly replace the (seemingly) dead app "Pennies", and possibly even Mint? Can't wait to test it out...
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XIV said 9:22AM on 2-24-2009
I was really waiting for this one !
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Elijah Nicolas said 10:08AM on 2-24-2009
Is Cha-ching really worth it when Mint seems to have done it right and is continually offering constant updates?
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JoeAD said 10:13AM on 2-24-2009
Is there an iPhone app for Mint?
Martin said 11:19AM on 2-24-2009
Yes, there is.
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=mint.com+iphone+application
Caitlin said 3:39PM on 2-25-2009
You are still forgetting those who use banks that aren't yet supported by Mint.
Also, I like to manually enter my transactions. It gives me a form of reconciling the balances rather than just seeing updates to my balance (if they've even gone through.)
stainboy said 9:56AM on 2-24-2009
one of my big pet peeves of iPhone app developers is when their app is released on the iTunes store, their website isn't updated with the information. sometimes it takes a long time before the additional details of their app are available on their site.
Midnight Apps has gone the other direction. if you want to learn about the desktop version of Cha-Ching, forget it--the site now only features a promo page for the upcoming iPhone version and there's no link to any other content. i wanted to learn about the desktop app but i can't. nice thinking, Midnight Apps. bullet, meet foot.
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Jim C said 10:38AM on 2-24-2009
The link at the bottom of the page will take you to the desktop version.
http://www.midnightapps.com/get
-Jim
sterling said 10:12AM on 2-24-2009
So, did they drop the Mac version for an iPhone only version? I read about the impending release of an iPhone version and think "hey, maybe I should check out their Mac app." Except all I see is a teaser for the iPhone app.
Pretty lame.
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Stephen said 10:17AM on 2-24-2009
@JoeAD yes there is an iphone app for mint.
I agree, taking down the content for the desktop app is lame. Having used cha-ching for a bit it always left me wanting more.
Stick with mint
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Midnight_Apps said 10:43AM on 2-24-2009
Hey Guys... we are currently working on the new site for Cha-Ching 2. It just isn't ready quite yet. The original site is still up here:
http://www.midnightapps.com/get
Sorry for the confusion!
-The Midnight Apps Team
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Kevin said 10:50AM on 2-24-2009
I tried using Cha-Ching for a while and found that while the UI was pretty, it still wasn't as usable or as customizable as just using a spreadsheet. I switched from NeoOffice to Numbers about a year ago and haven't looked back since. But I do think having an iPhone app to sync up with the desktop client is quite useful!
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FoundInTheFlood said 12:53PM on 2-24-2009
Is there an app like cha ching that gets your money-data from your bank account? I always thought it sucks to type everything in when apps could get the information by themselves?
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Midnight_Apps said 11:08AM on 2-24-2009
Not to advertise for our competition but there is an app that does something like this. It is called "moneywell"
If there was a universal, secure standard (not quicken direct connect) for getting financial data out of your bank and into Cha-Ching we would adopt it in a second.
That being said, there isn't and the services that are available are only useful to some portion of our customer base and require a costly monthly fee just to enable.
We have decided to take the route of making it as simple as possible to get your data entered into Cha-Ching to allow you to always have an exact picture of your finances. That is where the iPhone app comes into play.
Solar said 9:21PM on 2-24-2009
Maybe while we're nationalizing our financial institutions we could force a correction of this problem and also mandate a secure, open standard for communications between institutions and their customer's client systems.
Joey said 12:20AM on 2-28-2009
Moneywell is an amazingly good app. In fact it actually allowed me to stop using Quicken for Window through VMWare. I highly recommend giving it a try.
Martin said 11:26AM on 2-24-2009
This looks like exactly what I'm looking for. Something that is simple with FAST data entry. Can the desktop version export to different file formats for deeper analysis purposes?
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Unknown said 12:55PM on 2-24-2009
What does SplashMoney use for downloading transactions for banks? They have been able to do it for years.
I'll check out MoneyWell, too. Thanks!
And here's to hoping the iPhone version of Cha-Ching is more ready for prime time than your desktop app (which still doesn't launch on my MacBook).
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Eric C said 1:39PM on 2-24-2009
While this app might be nice, I am VERY suspect of any product from this company. They included ChaChing in the last MacHeist bundle promising an update to the latest version in short order and have totally failed to deliver for over a year.
They even stopped talking to the users saying that the features they told us about were being 'stolen' by their competitors. They fail to realize it is customer service and trustworthiness that will keep there customers more so than having some bell and whistle that will be duplicated anyway (and really I am sure lots of their features have been in other programs)
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jiji said 2:17PM on 2-24-2009
I would not personally recommend this based upon my experience with the desktop version. It is very simple to use, but it is not convenient at entering information and they do not seem to work as hard as some other developers at updating it. Also, they are taking forever to release v2 when they said it was nearly complete more than a year ago. Other applications (iBank and soon MoneyWell) also have iPhone apps that synchronize (typically by MobileMe) with the desktop versions, plus have better desktop clients. The MoneyWell app in particular seems to have a very responsive and helpful developer. This is important in a class of applications that is sure to cause you headaches at some point in the future.
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