On August 25, 2008, we reviewed a collection of 15 different personal finance applications for the iPhone and iPod touch in a roundup entitled iPhone Gems: Every Personal Finance Application, Reviewed. This review contains a review of one application from that roundup; additional comparative details can be found in the original full story.
Finance ($3) from Simpsonics is a fairly straightforward multi-account finance tracker that is unfortunately hampered by a less-than-ideal interface. Users are initially brought to the main screen that lists current accounts, enables the addition of a new account including name and balance, and allows setting of a password.
Tapping on an account brings the user to the individual account screen, where he or she can view their recent transactions, and create new scheduled or standard transactions. Recent transactions are shown enclosed in a capsule-style view, and are listed with their description, date, and amount in a font that we felt was a bit too small and cramped.
Tapping the new button allows the user to enter new transaction details, amount, select whether it’s a spend or deposit, and enter the date; the same options are given when tapping on a prior transaction.
The new scheduled transaction screen offers the same fields again, but with the addition of buttons to choose whether it repeats on a daily, weekly, fortnight, monthly, or yearly basis, and how many times it should repeat. Finally, a menu inside the iPhone’s Settings app allows the user to toggle a view month ahead feature on and off, set to off by default.
Finance’s inclusion of scheduled transactions is welcome, but it can’t make up for the app’s interface, which strikes us as somewhat unpleasant. In testing, the interface also seemed to get confused on several occasions, displaying the top navigation bar for the main screen when we were several menus deep, forcing us to quit and restart the app simply to return to the previous screen.
