Open-source personal finance manager

Financisto is an excellent free, open-source personal finance manager for Android.

Since you always have your phone with you, it’s an excellent idea to use it if you’re interesting in keeping an eye on your finances. The fact that it’s always available means it’s perfect for tracking spending, budgeting and generally keeping an eye on the numbers. If you’re serious about the task, then Financisto is the perfect app.

Financisto’s very easy to use, and even if you’ve never used a personal finance app before, you shouldn’t have any problem. The first thing to do what you have the app installed is to set up all of your accounts, sources of income and regular expenditure. Sure, this will take a little while, but the better prepared Financisto is, the easier it will be for you to use on the go.

Adding transactions is easily done by entering the account/credit card in questions and using the icons at the bottom of the Financisto interface to withdraw cash, lodge money or make transfers and other transactions. You’ll also be able to filter transactions, so you can see patterns and habits, and create templates, so that you won’t have to manually create regular transactions every time.

By going into Financisto’s home page (Accounts), you’ll be able to schedule predictable payments and perform mass operations. This is also where you’ll have access to Financisto’s configuration options, which are quite complex and deserve a few minutes of your time. Here in the home screen is also where you can access the other tabs – Blotter, Budgets and Reports – which allow you to track your finances across time or in reference to your budget, if you choose to create one.

In all, Financisto is an excellent app. There are a few small quibbles – some operations are buggy on Android 2.2 and although you can save Financisto to the SD card, the developer doesn’t recommend it as it can cause problems with widgets and other options, which are one of the app’s major pluses. Even so, Financisto is well worth a try and could even become one of your must-have apps.

Free and highly effective, Financisto is almost perfect!

[+] Integration with Dropbox to send backup/auto-backup files to the cloud[+] Add an option to enable/disable quick menus[+] Daily auto-backup[+] Backup folder is now configurable in the preferences[+] Send backup file using the standard intent[*] Database backup is now gzipped by default[*] Note field added to account[-] Restore the option to auto-select the last category for account if Payee is not used[-] Fix for incorrect Report by Period with split transfers

Changes

• [+] Integration with Dropbox to send backup/auto-backup files to the cloud[+] Add an option to enable/disable quick menus[+] Daily auto-backup[+] Backup folder is now configurable in the preferences[+] Send backup file using the standard intent[*] Database backup is now gzipped by default[*] Note field added to account[-] Restore the option to auto-select the last category for account if Payee is not used[-] Fix for incorrect Report by Period with split transfers