Emma - Budget Planner Tracker 4+

Love it!

I am really enjoying this app. I am someone who spends too much time thinking and planning my budget on paper, across excel sheets and monitoring multiple accounts. My method was so complicated only I understood it and trying to explain it to my spouse was impossible. This app puts a large portion on that information in one place in a user friendly format that my spouse doesn't need a codex to decipher. I do have some suggestions that would improve this amazing app even more. Planning ahead is a big part of my budget task. It would be great if you could plan your weekly/monthly budgets ahead of time in the analytics section. Being able to input my planned budget for each category 8 weeks/2months ahead would be a game changer as i currently still have to write these plans out on paper and then input these into the app when the cycle refreshes. Paying of debt is my first motivation behind my financial planning. It would be incredible to see some kind of debt tracker in the app. Having something that can show my debt decreasing (hopefully) over time would be really motivating and if its increasing, helping to understand where im going wrong.

Also, i use Monese bank as my primary spending account. Would be great to be able to live sync that account. Monese is currently not an option

Success Story! Emma got me there!

Emma has helped me be smarter with money and ultimately help me with achieving goals which before seemed really daunting and in some instances unachievable. The app is so well presented and intuitive it really helped me dial down into my finances and get a better understanding of my spending habits, and allow me to keep on track with budgets and spending habits, all of which is controlled inside the app.

Through doing this, i was able to monitor my spending, get notifications when i was doing well or spending too much, and this all led to me be able to make a massive step forward in my life and me and my partner were able to save enough for a deposit and we’re able to buy our first house. This is all down the the functionality and features that emma has inside the app, and without this i think it would have taken so much longer that what it did when using emma

Thank you emma team, you really helped me better my life through using this app! 😊

Developer Response ,

Thanks for the review! We're really happy to hear that Emma has helped you get your financial life back under control! 💪

Bad after update

This app was so good. I used to use it daily and I felt in control of my money. The recent update to v3 has been terrible. A lot of the basic functionality has been lost. It’s just a basic budgeting tool now, you set up categories and it adds transactions at random to them (and doesn’t take into account pending transactions). Best feature was pulling all your accounts/transactions together and giving you a “global” view but it doesn’t do this properly anymore. I wouldn’t recommend.

In response to the unhelpful reply from the developer. I am not saying features have been removed but functionality has. Pending transactions used to appear in category totals on an analysis tab before the update. This tab now doesn’t exist (this is even clear from the new screenshots) and pending transactions aren’t included in the budget totals anymore. This isn’t helpful for giving an accurate total as sometimes it takes a few days for these to finalise. You used to be able to see account balances on the main page of the app, these are now hidden a few clicks away. Most useless feature of being able to set up transfers within the app now has its own tab though. Please look at the other reviews I’m not alone in thinking this. Going in the chat isn’t going to being this stuff back.

I wouldn’t recommend anyone download this app in its current form.

Developer Response ,

Hi benlhope, we're sorry to hear you're not enjoying the latest design of Emma. In regards to pending transactions, the way these interact with your budget have not changed - in both designs of Emma, pending transactions were not counted towards your spending until they became non-pending. If you're instead referencing the Committed Spending feature that shows you upcoming subscriptions and counts them towards your budget before they're charged, this feature remains - you can find this under 'This Month' or 'This Period' on your Feed tab.