Expense Tracker

Expense Tracker brings recording and reviewing into one short mobile journey. You note what came in and what went out; the app keeps the history, totals it, and shows it back to you by day, week, month and category.

The whole product rests on one loop: capture, then review. Every feature either makes capture faster or makes review clearer. Anything that did neither stayed out.

A coffee, a taxi, a phone top-up. None of them feels worth writing down, and by the time you sit down to review the month, the detail has gone. Card and phone payments make it worse: when paying is effortless, the cost barely registers.⁵

Every screen in the app answers one of these. Each card links to the chapter that shows how.

How might we help people record everyday money activity quickly, then understand their spending, without adding complexity?The design question

That question split into four focus areas. Each one became a test the design had to pass.

Finance apps tend to fall into four approaches. Each does something well. We took the useful part of each and left the weight behind.

A framework of approaches, not a feature-by-feature comparison of named products.

A short build only works if the hard decisions are made early and then left alone. These are the ones that shaped the app.

1. 2026 · The idea

   A product to grow, not a one-off demo

   We built Expense Tracker as a product of its own. The aim was to start with the core habit, logging money in and out, and do that one thing well before adding anything else.

2. The hard call

   Manual entry, by choice

   Bank sync or manual entry? This was the decision we argued about most. We chose manual on purpose: typing an amount takes seconds, it asks for no bank permissions, and the act of logging is part of what makes tracking work.¹

3. The build

   One codebase, records that follow you

   React Native gives one codebase for Android and iOS. People sign in with Google and their records are stored in Firestore, so a new phone doesn't mean starting again.

   React NativeFirestoreGoogle sign-in
4. Version one

   Shipped complete

   The first release had the full feature set: entry, dashboard, analytics and Borrow / Lend. The scope was fixed early and it held, with no features cut or bolted on at the end.

5. October 2026 · Live

   On both stores

   Design to store launch took under a month. Expense Tracker went live on the App Store and Google Play in October 2026.

The home screen answers the question people open a finance app with: how am I doing this month? Everything else is one tap away.

Totals tell you how much. They don't tell you where or when. Analytics adds both, so a pattern shows up before it becomes a habit.

Money is a subject people avoid looking at when the news might be bad.² So the interface is quiet on purpose. Colour carries meaning, never decoration.

1. 1
   Tracking only helps if you keep doing it.

   Recording progress is what makes monitoring effective, so the record has to be cheap to make.¹ That's the one-screen form.

2. 2
   Feedback has to arrive while it can still change something.

   Real-time totals change behaviour most for the people who find self-control hardest.³ That's the dashboard updating on save.

3. 3
   People avoid information that feels like bad news.

   A calm, neutral screen is one people keep opening.² Sorting money into categories matches how people already think about it.⁴ That's the visual system and the category view.

Low-friction capture, immediate feedback and a screen you don't dread. Take away any one and people stop tracking.

Expense Tracker has only just launched, so there are no results to report yet, and we won't invent any. These are the signals we track from day one. We'll publish the numbers once they mean something.

Next: 8 to 12 discovery interviews, then 5 to 8 usability sessions, focused on entry speed, budget clarity and how easily people find Borrow / Lend.