Filed under: Software, iPhone, App Store, iPod touch, First Look
First Look: Pocket Money 2.0 for iPhone
It always makes me happy to see a familiar name on a press release, so when I received a note this morning about PocketMoney 2.0 for iPhone (click opens iTunes) now being available in the App Store, I took more interest than usual in the news.Hardy Macia and his company, Catamount Software, have been developing software for mobile devices and Macs since the Newton MessagePad reigned supreme in the PDA world. In fact, that's when I first became familiar with PocketMoney. Fifteen years later, PocketMoney is still an excellent mobile app for keeping track of expenses, incomes and budgets.
There are so many new changes and features in the 2.0 version of PocketMoney that Catamount has released a 13-page document (click to download) describing them in detail. I like the new budget features, which show you at a glance how you're doing with meeting or missing a categorized budget. Catamount has added a library of video tutorials that take users step-by-step through almost every function of the app.
If you'd like to give PocketMoney 2.0 a try, there's a free Lite version (click opens iTunes) that has all of the capabilities of the full version, but is limited to 2 accounts and 2 repeating transactions. The full version is currently on sale for US$4.99.
To learn more about PocketMoney 2.0, check out the gallery below.
Gallery: PocketMoney 2 First Look
![TUAW [Cafepress]](http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.tuaw.com/media/tuaw-cafepress-promo.png)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Craig said 12:17PM on 3-25-2009
I"m sure it's a nice app but they really need to take a few design cues from the gang over at Mint.
Reply
brett said 12:18PM on 3-25-2009
Um.. I think they did. I was going to say it looks uncomfortably Minty.
Reply
Nick said 12:23PM on 3-25-2009
after my mini rant asking why you hadn't covered pocket money but were seeming to favour cha-ching, can I thank you for posting this :-)
It's a great app, and I hope hardy keeps on developing it (and rolling out the betas!)
Reply
Jay said 12:37PM on 3-25-2009
I think they need to take design cues from Cha-Ching!
Reply
matthew said 12:45PM on 3-25-2009
I increasingly don't see the point of apps like Cha Ching and PocketMoney. While Mint has shortcomings, auto-importing your transactions is the killer feature. I feel like without that you have to spend too much time entering transactions to fully-utilize things like budgeting. However, if these apps could sync with Mint (seems unlikely that Mint would be into that, except maybe with some licensing fees or something) or Yodlee (probably also unlikely) or get your data automatically through some other means I'd use them in a heartbeat.
Reply
antiorario said 1:15PM on 3-25-2009
If you consider that Mint works only with U.S. accounts, you will see that applications like Cha-Ching and PocketMoney are indeed useful. Because there are other countries beside the United States.
matthew said 1:23PM on 3-25-2009
While Mint may be US-only, Yodlee MoneyCenter supports international accounts. Certainly it's not every bank in every country, but it might include your country.
mr. Obsession said 1:31PM on 3-25-2009
ASSUMING YOU LIVE IN THE US: Mint kicks the hell out of any $$$ app that requires manual input.
Consolidated account info that's updated automatically for me? Yes, please.
...and Pocket Money's design does look veeeery familiar.
TC said 1:47PM on 3-25-2009
The reason why we dont all use Mint is that Mint only works for people in the USA, where is the iPhone has a global market. Plus, some people may not want to hand over all their finance details to a third party web server.
matthew said 2:41PM on 3-25-2009
Again, Yodlee is international, and if your bank has online banking there's a good chance they're using Yodlee to run it as they have a lot of the major banks as clients. I'm not saying I can't see the argument at all if you can't import your data or are unwilling to have it aggregated by a third party, it just seems like a huge hurdle to jump through. Unless you really stick with entering every transaction, budgeting becomes impossible.
mr. Obsession said 3:26PM on 3-25-2009
@ Brian: Exactly. Anything other than an aggregator like Mint requires manually entering transactions...which is where I always trip up. I'll have it all automated, please.
Again, IF YOU LIVE IN THE US, Mint kills all the competition.
But it has been made very very very very clear by outside-US commenters that they can't use it.
We. Get. It.
No need to become redundant with the same post over and over again.
rikbcn said 2:51PM on 3-25-2009
ICompta works very well with any bank
A little bit expensive but nice
Reply
badweasel said 2:55PM on 3-25-2009
who's got 43,000 in their checking account?
Reply
brian said 3:00PM on 3-25-2009
Um, since this company is so old, isn't it possible that other companies copied these guys?
Reply
mr. Obsession said 3:27PM on 3-25-2009
Um, their IPHONE APP is brand new - and the other apps being mentioned have been around for a while.
That this is a new application on the iPhone is sort of the whole point of the post you're commenting under...
ulfoaf said 11:38PM on 3-25-2009
Isn't Mint only for tracking cleared transactions?
The real power of financial software is to look ahead. You can plan for the month, see what you have to pay, and what you have left.
PocketMoney seems very good. I use SplashMoney, which is very powerful. I am really waiting for Pocket Quicken.
Reply
WhatWhat said 4:05PM on 3-26-2009
Yeah, I use SplashMoney too. Mint looks cool, but I like keeping my data off of some corporate server somewhere.
Pocket Money looks pretty nice and I'm sure it is useful, but I don't like entering transactions. It takes too long. SplashMoney downloads them from the bank like Quicken does. Again, there is the issue of it being US customers only, but that's me.
And where is the desktop application?
Reply
sassy1 said 2:04PM on 3-29-2009
I use pocketmoney and love it. I actually didn't know about the mint app. So I gave it try. It doesn't recognize my credit union so therefore the app is worthless for those who may not bank with nationally familiar banks. It's a great idea but it doesn't kill the competition.
Reply