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App Review: Goodbudget
(Author Rating)
7.25/10
7.25/10
Goodbudget (formerly EEBA, the Easy Envelope Budget Aid) is a money manager and expense tracker. The app is great for householdbudgets or personal budgets.
Basic App Info:
Name of the app: Goodbudget (formerly EEBA)
Cost: Free Version, and a paid version that is $7 a month.
Availability: Android & Apple
App Intro
A personal budgeting app based on the envelope budget system. The app allows users to go from physical envelopes to virtual envelopes, as well as track a few extra things.
What is the envelope budget system? (Click to scroll to the bottom and find out)
The App
Pricing
Free Version
$0
- 10 regular envelopes
- 10 more envelopes
- 1 account
- 2 devices
- 1 year of history
- Debt tracking
- Community support
Plus
$7 per month
- Unlimited regular envelopes
- Unlimited more envelopes
- Unlimited accounts
- 5 devices
- 7 years of history
- Debt tracking
- Email suport
Features
Easy to see envelopes (categories) with green vs red graph stripes.
You can view a list of all your transactions, and each transaction has a date, name, and which envelope it came from.
There’s a reports tab with spending by envelope and income vs spending reports.
From any screen you can add a transaction with the push of the + button on the bottom right corner.
When making a transaction you choose: who you paid, the amount, the envelope it should be pulled from, the date, the check number (optional), and a note (optional).
You can also check the boxes “add to quick transactions widget,” or “save location to transaction” if this is a transaction you frequently make.
Quick Transaction Widget
With the widget you can see location based transaction suggestions, or you can add your regular transactions to the widget. This way you don’t even have to open the app to make a transaction.
Click on the widget to choose the transaction, and from there you can choose to save it exactly as it is, or to change it before saving.
Likes/Dislikes
Likes
-
You get 10 envelopes with the free version which I feel like is a decent enough number of categories.
-
The app has built in automations like; auto-fill envelopes at specific times and auto transaction suggestions based on location.
-
It’s got nice reports that allow you to see your spending by “envelope” or category. As well as income vs spending reports.
Disikes
-
Very manual, you must remember to put in all your transactions
-
There’s no way to tell it where to take the overages from - so when you go over budget on an envelope you can’t tell it to take it from your savings or an “extra money” section.
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You only get 1 account with the free version, so you can’t separate transactions by credit card, checking, cash, etc.
Additional Thoughts
There are some great features that you may not be able to find with other budgeting apps, but I think it’s also missing some of the more basic things that would make it a well rounded app.
The app itself is not aesthetically beautiful; in this day and age we love apps that are pretty.
App Ratings, Size, & Category
RATINGS
-
4.7 / 5
-
4.4 / 5
SIZE
-
28.9MB
-
5.9M
CATEGORY
-
Finance
-
Finance
Similar Apps
- Fudget
- Every dollar
- YNAB
- Easy Budget
The Goodbudget Backstory
Goodbudget started in 2009 as an experiment by Dayspring Technologies, a San Francisco web and mobile development firm.
They had one goal when they started and that was simply to create virtual envelopes so that users could practice the envelope budgeting system without needing physical envelopes.
More and more features were added to goodbudget as they gained feedback from users. They changed their name from EEBA to Goodbudget
What is the Envelope Budget System?
The envelope budgeting system is all about portioning out your income to specific spending categories. For the physical version of this system, people use actual envelopes labeled by category. Their income is then rationed out and cash is placed in each envelope.
Typically people divide up their money with the 50/30/20 budget; 50% of your after-tax income towards needs, 30% towards wants, and 20% towards savings or debt repayment.
When you make a payment on the Envelope budget system, you only use the money from the corresponding envelope.
Goodbudget provides users with a more virtual way to use the envelope budget system, which not only keeps you from having to keep track of all your physical envelopes, but also allows for the use of credit cards and online payments.
Awards & Accolades
And many more, including The New York Times, USA Today, HuffPost, The Boston Globe, The Guardian, Verizon Wireless, CNET, Buzzfeed, The Balancing Act on Lifetime Television, NerdWallet, Bankrate, About.com, Get Rich Slowly…
The Bottom Line
The Goodbudget app is a great update for those that already use the envelope budgeting system. As far as a budgeting app in general, it could use a few feature updates and aesthetic enhancements.
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