Accountr review

Mark Mackay

We review Accountr, a finance app that's designed to help, but may leave you feeling like your stuck in a finance labyrinth

Published on Oct 15, 2009

We’ve seen a lot of budgeting apps here at KYM and overall they’re a pretty disappointing category in the app store.

The main challenge seems to be creating an interface that isn’t needlessly complicated. This is unusual as it seems to us that all that’s need is one button to add money and one to take it away with features to label what and how much the transaction was for. We downloaded Accountr to find out if it was like having a handy pocket accountant or another mishmash of a financial app.

The developers have opted to create the app with the standard iPhone interface fonts and buttons. A lot of budgeting apps have designed their own from the ground up which are fiddly and generally lack clarity.

From this standpoint, Accountr is great. It’s easy to read and looks good. You can add as many different accounts to the app as you like and then transfer money between them. A blatant green and red button at the bottom of the account main page lets you add and subtract funds respectively.

The info page allows you to label the transactions, providing an option to add in a note to remind you what they were for. All the important stuff is shown, such as the date of the transaction and how much it was for.

There are enough options to set info to a transaction without being too complicated. Despite the initial simplicity of the app, things start to get complicated when you start to use it, especially when you turn on the subcategory menu.

It almost feels like too much thought has gone into the interface and you can end up going back and forth trying to find the page or field you’re looking for, making things counter-intuitive. Also, because all the pages look very similar it takes a while to become accustom to maze of pages and learn where everything is.

The app provides the option to export your data in .CSV, .QIF or Google spreadsheet formats and you can set up a password to keep your expenses private. While the information that is displayed in Accountr is clear enough, filling out the details can feel a bit labyrinthine. If you’re in a hurry to fill in a transaction before you forget, getting lost in the interface can become a major annoyance. This is another budgeting app that we don’t recommend.