Keep Tabs review

Damien McFerran

We review Keep Tabs, an Android application that allows you to keep track of money lent and borrowed

Published on Jan 29, 2010

If you’re the kind of person who happens to have plenty of mates then chances are you have, at some point or another, been asked to lend them a small amount of cash.

The situation may have been that your friend doesn’t have enough money to get the taxi home after a night on the tiles, or maybe they’re stony broke and promise to settle up with you come payday. Whatever the reason, unless you’re a heartless soul you’ll probably end up coming to their aid.

The trouble with such generosity is that once you start lending money you’ll find that it can become something of a habit, especially with your less financially-minded friends. Keeping track of who owes you what can be difficult, but with the Android app Keep Tabs, you’ll find the whole process somewhat easier to stomach.

Keep Tabs is the very definition of streamlined; each time you lend someone some cash you add a new entry with their name and the amount owed. This is then added to your list of shame, which can be consulted whenever you feel like chasing up the debt and getting your pound of flesh.

Once the money has been returned to you, you can remove the entry by holding down your finger until the “delete note” prompt appears.

There’s nothing else to the app aside from these meagre options but then this is the kind of program you’ll probably want to use in a hurry, so its simplicity does work in its favour.

However, it would be nice to have some way of asking for your cash to be returned online; similar programs are available which allow you to request payment via an online service such as Paypal, and such functionality would have been welcome here.

The biggest problem with Keep Tabs is that it’s quite likely to turn it user into a misery old skinflint; a modern-day Scrooge, if you will. The other negative side-effect is that it may make your realise just how much your mates take advantage of your seemingly unending generosity, which could put an end to your lending exploits once and for all.