If you’re a freelancer, it’s very likely that you need to keep track of your finances. You have to track expenses, choose a budget every month, check where does your income come from or where and how you spend more money.
Today I’d like to talk about MoneyBook, an iPhone application by NoIdentity which does all of this with a stunning user interface.
MoneyBook is a complete finance manager which brings all your expenses, recurring payments and monthly budget to the iPhone. The application provides a standard “bottom toolbar powered interface”: there are four main tabs: Overview, Expenses, Recurring and History.
The first screen, Overview, gives you a quick glimpse of your financial situation: there’s the monthly budget, categories, statistics and a button to quickly add a new expense. Here’s where the strength of MoneyBook lies: you can organize every expense in a specific category, so you won’t miss anything. When adding a new expense you’ll be presented a very informative screen which contains a calculator in the bottom part, the category menu in the middle and the total on top. With a single horizontal swipe you can switch between categories and trust me, there are plenty of them: from Clothes and Fun to Car, Household and Sport.
Well done.
From the same screen you can tap on the post-it icon which brings up another screen where you can attach some notes to an expense, useful. Once you’ve added an expense you can review it in the Expenses tab, which divides them by date in a uber-cool scotch-tape and papers UI. Obviously, you can edit expenses anytime with the Edit button in the top left.
Speaking of expenses, you can also check your History with the last tab, which displays all your expenses by month.
MoneyBook is simple and powerful: it has the right features (like Categories and History) but packs them in a gorgeous and well structured user interface that makes everything straightforward and usable. The animations, for instance, are absolutely beautiful, but you should see them by yourself.
Now, should you purchase MoneyBook? Well, if you really need to manage your financial life and you can’t stand the other similar applications available in the AppStore, you should seriously think about this MoneyBook thing. I never used a financial application for more than 2 days before, and MoneyBook is here in my homescreen since 1 week now, and I think it won’t be deleted anytime soon. It’s elegant, sexy and does it job perfectly.
Just one thing: be sure to add those 3 bucks in your expenses.
#1
That's what Filipe Storarri said 8 months ago:
Hey this one looks like a pennies copy o.O
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#2
That's what sandro said 8 months ago:
I’m one of the developers of MoneyBook and just to be clear, we were big big fans of pennies. Used it every day. But then we missed more and more features, there were bugs and no more updates of the developers.
don’t think so hm 
So we took the best of it, added our style and our ideas.
I wouldn’t call it a copy. We have already many things that pennies doesn’t have. Like recurring expenses, the beautiful statistics, the extended notes feature. And with 1.2 there will be full editing possibility for amount, category and date. And we have many other things to come
so I don’t like it when I hear it’s a copy of pennies. We invested 4 months in development and design.
And if you think about it, almost every browser for example has almost the same UI etc… are these all copies?
Just wanted to be clear on this. As I said, in our opinion, pennies was maybe the only finance app which really was made for the iPhone. But too many bugs and features were left open. So I would call this evolution. Take something that’s good and make it even better.
cheers
sandro
[Reply]
storiesofmac Reply:
December 9th, 2009
@sandro, Thanks for your comment Sandro, much appreciated!
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#3
That's what sebax said 8 months ago:
something i miss on those financial apps, and big deal for me and many more, i’m sure, is the currency, you can’t put the dmn thing to work with pesos ^^. USD is not the only thing ya’know.
[Reply]
sandro Reply:
December 9th, 2009
@storiesofmac, @sebax
not only USD…
yes it’s based on the iPhone international settings, so it works with every currency!
[Reply]
sebax Reply:
December 9th, 2009
@sandro, jmmm, it sounds nice, you mean location but no language of the phone right? cuz i still like to keep my iphone in english. i miht buy it when i get my new phone in a few days.
[Reply]
sebax Reply:
December 9th, 2009
@storiesofmac, mmm, i don’t know about this one, but i tried others and it didn’t work, i guess i’ll pay the 3 bucks if i could do that, or give it a try with a free version at least.
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#4
That's what sandro said 8 months ago:
believe me, it works with every currency
we are swiss based and use it therefore with CHF 
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#5
That's what Sulcalibur said 8 months ago:
I look beautiful, but the only downside is it needs to sync with a desktop app or there’s just no point. I was using Cha-Ching recently (the beta app and I bought the iPhone app) but then saw an offer on Money 3 and got that.
If this worked with a desktop app, I’d most surely give it a go.
[Reply]
storiesofmac Reply:
December 9th, 2009
@Sulcalibur, Well, that’s an idea. A desktop version would be totally awesome.
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#6
That's what Mischa said 8 months ago:
I’m the second man behind MoneyBook… Just want say, thx for this great review!! Very nice site!!
Mischa
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