In this modern-day smartphone era, it’s become far easier to manage your finances. DailyCost is an app that instead of trying to help you organise your bills, expenses, mortgages and loans, focuses on helping you keep track of the expenses you rack up each and every day — the coffees, the nights out and so on. You do so by entering an entry in the app every time you spend, and in doing so can help you better understand how all those little things can add up. In turn, it can help you become smarter with your money.
However, many apps with near the exact same purpose as DailyCost already exist, and many do a great job — so how does it stand up to the competition? Let’s find out!
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Getting Started
DailyCost is a beautifully simple app, and upon launching it, you can begin adding entries right away. There isn’t a complicated or long-winded setup wizard — just a settings screen where you can customise the essentials like currency, and your most frequently used categories (which speeds up entering an entry).
Logging a new cost is simple, quick and elegant.
The app utilises the “Pull down to…” gesture as the method to add a new entry, which works incredibly well. All you need to then do is tap a category, key in the amount and hit the tick. All of that is down on the same screen, so there’s no need for “next” buttons or anything else that could slow you down. This is great, because when you’re paying for your goods at the counter, the last thing you need is to be fumbling about with a clunky UI, trying to log your purchase. A quick, easy method for adding an entry in a few seconds at most is what’s required, and DailyCost nails it. In fact, out of all the apps available that serve a similar purpose (and that I have used myself, which is many), I was able to log entries whilst at the counter with this app the quickest.
Design & Interface
Solely from a visual point of view, DailyCost is an absolute pleasure to look at. I’m a real critic when it comes to UI and design, and I honestly am struggling to think of anything negative here. The app is clean, animations are charming, UI elements are simple, fonts are chosen well — everything is spot on. You can even choose a background for the app from a selection of included photos, that all work very well and don’t interrupt. This is without a doubt one of the best looking apps I’ve used.
You can select different backgrounds for the app, and they look great,
Using the app is equally engaging and simple; swiping left and right cycles between days so you can see what you spent previously, and rotating your device to landscape presents you with a weekly or monthly summary of your spending, organised by category, complete with great looking pie charts and line graphs. The app overall is presented beautifully and is an absolute joy to use, to the point where I almost want to put in fake entries just so I can use it more often.
Functionality
DailyCost has one clear purpose, and that is to help you become smarter with your daily spending habits. You log your purchases and let the app congregate the data and present it back to you. It isn’t an app for tracking bills or debts — there are many other options for that. It’s refreshing to see an app like DailyCost that just focuses on doing one thing really well.
The landscape view provides you with graphs and more data.
One may argue that DailyCost could have more options, such as recurring finances, but I would say that’d ruin this app. DailyCost is purely for helping you to better understand where your money is going on a day-to-day basis, and it does it particularly well. I think the dev understands it’s better to do one thing really well, rather than lots of things not so well. The way I see it is the app already does quite a lot considering its intended use — the graphs, the stats, the ease of use — it’s easy to see a lot of effort has been made in every area of the app.
Pricing
DailyCost is priced at $1.99, which I consider to be a very fair asking price. The app isn’t littered with any in-app purchases, so you get the full experience right out of the box. I find myself spending a lot of my time trying to convince my cheapskate friends that some apps are totally worth buying, and this one is the ultimate example. One tiny investment can help you save a lot of money in the long run, and hey, it gives you an entry to log in the app right away!
The settings menu allows you to set currency, and your favourite categories.
Other apps that serve similar purposes are certainly available at $0.99 or free, but believe me, they’re nowhere near as good. You really do get what you pay for.
Conclusion
DailyCost is one of the best apps I’ve used. It succeeds in function, excels in design and usability, and is one of those apps you just want to use. Not only that, but using it can actually help you with your finances. This app lives in my dock not only for quick access, but because I just plain love it. I urge everyone to give it a go — it really is fantastic.
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