The usage of finance applications always sounded dull and boring to me, never mind how much I liked the idea. The major reason for it was the inability to easily create a transaction on the go. This is mostly due to the phones I owned before, that didn’t provide easy to use apps or actually non at all. Alternatively, I could have just collected receipts and typed the content into a program on the computer. That seemed too much an effort. As a result, I never really used finance apps.
An alternative title for this post could have been: How spending money can actually save you money. Why? Because spending $… for an application that enables you to track your expenses makes you think twice about purchasing something. While reading this, keep in my mind that I only make use of a finance app to keep track of my expenses and income. But let’s not beat about the bush and get down to business of comparing Cha-Ching and Money.
After entering a security pin to access the iPhone app, you will be presented with a clean and stylish interface. It has a brown finish, like papyrus. Tabs provided are: Accounts, Budgets, Bills, Reports and Settings.
Accounts can be set up for your banks, cash, credit cards and even investments. As I mentioned earlier, I’m not using this to run a business, so I stick with the first three. Once entered, the accounts current balances will show up every time the app is started. Tapping on an account shows the last transactions, sorted by date. A new transaction can easily be created with the help of a + button. This is vital to me. Standing in a shop for 3 minutes in order to add $15 for a new book really isn’t efficient. Once you got used to the system, it’s easy and quick. Even if not quite as quick as Cha-Ching (read on to find out why). The app comes with many categories preset. I mainly use these, as they are quite handy, although it’s really easy to add further categories to your liking. Payees are sorted by name and also very easy to add. A flaw, that I find midly annoying: adding a new payee doesn’t automatically add it to the transaction you’re just creating. Instead, you will have to select the just created payee out of the payee-list.
Budgets can be helpful for, let’s say iTunes’ App Store expenses. (For everyone who used the App Store Expense Monitor, I’m sure you know what I’m talking about. 
) Budgets basically help to keep track of your expenses before they actually happen. A bar highlights the overall status, while the sum you spent and the remaining amount are shown.
Bills are very easy to create as well. I use them to keep track of bills that don’t change, such as my gym membership. Being able to choose between a frequency of every day until annually and having the option for numbered recurrences will give you a lot of freedom. Once a bill is created, a simple touch with your finger will mark it as paid.
The Reports function is a major plus over Cha-Ching. On the iPhone it will show you the Top 5 Expenses/Income and put them side by side in comparison to the last month. Not much to say about this feature, but I like to make numbers meaningful (just like C. Gallo suggests in his book ‘The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs’). Choose between a summary (as mentioned) and bar/pie charts for a report you can create yourself.
Last but not least Settings. Create payees, categories and your currency of choice. To be honest with you, I don’t even know half the currencies available.
Once the passcode is entered, Cha-Ching also offers a clean interface. In comparison, this one feels more Mac-like, as the colors used are blue, white as well as grey and black. While this sure is nice, I prefer Money’s interface – even if it took me a while to get used to. Tabs provided are: Accounts, Budgets, Scheduled, Payees and More. If you might have realized, there isn’t a reports feature.
Accounts include Checking, Savings, Credit, Online, Loan and Cash. This is a different approach compared to Money. One I don’t really like I have to add. If you wish to create many different accounts, this may be very useful to you though, especially as you can enter the account number and more information. Even a default account can be selected. To me this is just clutter. I’m not really able to explain it, but it doesn’t feel as clean as Money. For example, your cash account requires a bank name or it will show ‘Bank Name Not Set’ in the accounts list. This sure isn’t a major flaw, and most likely some may not even have noticed or cared about it, but it destroys the clean look and feel for me. Once created, accounts can be sorted to your liking which is really nice and doesn’t limit the list to the alphabetical order.
To add a transaction, choose an account, tap it and an information screen for the account will open. (This contains submenus that show recent transactions and a history.) Tapping the + will open the payees list and the feature that made me pay for this app: nearby payees. Once a payee was created, you can set a location for it. Say, you go shopping at the grocery store around the corner. Once there, open your app, allow it to use the location service and a location for that shop will be created. This (and the fact that payees will have to be sorted into one category each) allows really quick entries of new transactions. If the speed for new transactions is crucial to you, Cha-Ching is way faster than Money. How much faster you wonder? Weirdly enough there isn’t a big difference in terms of steps, but choosing the category and the payee will take more time with Money, as Cha-Ching will search for nearby payees (that have a set category).
The Budget function pretty much equals Money’s.
The Scheduled tab, in comparison to Money, isn’t as rich in options. A weekly frequency is the shortest available and a limitation to a set number of recurrences also doesn’t exist.
Payees are sorted alphabetically but can also be favored. Let’s not forget about the ability to set locations to payees. This really is a neat feature.
The last tab called More includes the settings to set the passcode and lets you choose what due soon means to you. Searching for and creating flagged transactions are also features ‘hidden’ in this tab.
Conclusion:
While trying to stay as neutral as possible during the writing of this post, I have a clear winner – and I’m happy with it. 
I decided to use Money for iPhone and recently purchased the Mac version of the software ($39; review following soon) although I already paid for Cha-Ching for iPhone ($2.99). As many things as I may have forgotten since my studies, knowing that a decision made in the past (never mind if it resulted in a win or loss) shouldn’t influence a future decision, saved me much annoyance. If you wonder why, I’d suggest you read what the community writes on Cha-Ching’s website. It gives me the impression that they don’t really care about their customers. And honestly, paying $40 for the Mac software – which is still beta! – doesn’t seem reasonable to me.
Numbers and facts in short:
Money is a finished piece of software both for iPhone and Mac. The iPhone version is free of charge, the software for Mac costs $39. Cha-Ching for Mac is still beta at the time of this writing. The iPhone version is $2.99 and the Mac version sets you back $40.
If that isn’t enough a foundation to build your decision upon, Money offers graphs while Cha-Ching has location services for payees.
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