App Review: Bills ~ on your table
Category: Finance
Price: $3.99
TiP Rating: 4/5 stars
Release Date: 6/21/2010
Version: 1.3
Seller: Pavel Serbajlo
Rated: 4+
Requirements: Compatible with iPhone with iPod Touch, requires iOS 4.0 or later.
App Store Description: Bills ~ on your table is a simple app to store and track various types of bills and expenses with a specific due date, usually repeating
Link to app.
Summary: Bills ~ on your table does exactly what it says it’ll do, without fuss or annoyance. With notifications, a neatly designed UI and simple layout it’s a must for anyone who wants a more portable budget management system.
Review: Gone are the days where you have to keep track of your expenses and budget in a notepad, or Filofax. Now that pretty much all your financial commitments can be met online, that old filing cabinet in your study no longer has a purpose. Back in the old days of pen and paper, I would often lose vital pieces of paper resulting in missed bills and all sorts. Needless to say, it was a stressful time. So, I’m all for the digital revolution of organizers and finances all being virtual, online, and portable. It’s a much easier option.
When you first open the app there’s 4 category boxes set above a wooden looking background. ‘Overdue’, ‘Today’, ‘With today’s pre-alert’, and ‘within 30 days’. Adding a bill couldn’t be easier; you just tap the little ‘+’ icon the top right hand corner, and you have a page to fill in. You can add a name, the amount, how much you’ve paid, due date, whether it repeats, a pre-alert, autopay (for bills that automatically go out from your bank/credit card), notes, and payment log. All this shows it’s a very well thought out design.
The app really comes in to its own once all your monthly bills are added. If there are any overdue bills, a little pop-up notification comes on screen along with an incredibly life-like sound. When I first heard it I genuinely thought I’d dropped some coins on the table somehow, without knowing it. You can view your bills in the home-screen list format, or in a calendar, or by category. Not only that, but there’s a stats screen that tells you how much you’ve paid so far this month, and what is left to go out.
There are only a two negative points I can think of. A lot of the images in the app have still not been updated for the high resolution Retina display, so the image quality is quite poor on the different category icons. Saying this, there’s still a lot of the app that has been improved for the higher resolution screen, resulting in a half clear/half fuzzy paradox within the software. The second grumble I have is that it is only compatible with iOS 4.0 or later. This means anyone with a phone older than the 3GS won’t be able to use it to its full capacity. Even with the 3GS, people have complained about the lack of performance since the 4.o upgrade. So the developers are basically saying, don’t use it unless you have an iPhone 4, and even then our images aren’t of good enough quality to flatter the handset’s display. Slightly counter-productive in my view.
Overall, the app does precisely what it should do, and has certainly improved the organization of my finances. The design is stylish, but incredibly user-friendly so it won’t intimidate any money-phobics among you. Four dollars may seem a little steep, but in my opinion it’s definitely worth it. It’s a brilliant piece of software.
