Until recently, one of the biggest inconveniences of all financial accounting applications was that income and expense data had to be manually entered into them. However, modern technology makes it possible to automate this process at least a little.
The very first financial accounting applications and services simply replaced the old notebooks: they allowed the accounting to be done not on paper, but on a computer. But electronic accounting has more possibilities, so that soon such services began to expand functionality: a hierarchical system of categories of expenses and income, reminders of utility payments or debt repayment appeared. Analytical tools, budget planning, the ability to keep records together with other users and so on have been added. Many applications have become cross-platform. But even in the most advanced of them, accounting required manual work: the user had to specify the amount and category of each purchase or income. Therefore, the next stage of development of applications for accounting of finance was the automation of data entry.
Automation was greatly aided by the development of electronic payment technologies and, oddly enough, the regulatory framework. Any bank can now receive SMS messages about purchases from a card, and financial accounting software has learned to process such messages. Some applications even support direct integration with banks and linking to accounts. As people are paying with more and more cards, the amount of manual purchases data is significantly reduced. In addition, the tax authorities have made it compulsory for shops to send checks – and now there is a QR code on each check, with which you can get an electronic check to your smartphone. This further automates data entry – not only the total amount of purchases, but also the cost of each item is uploaded to the program. And it does not make any difference whether the user has paid in cash or by card.
The present review of applications and services for accounting of finances includes products of the latest generation, which allow to automate data entry about purchases (and incomes) as much as possible. The review does not include bank applications, many of which offer similar functions, but only for their cardholders.
The application is available for mobile platforms (Android and iOS) and PC. The database is shared by all of them, so the service can be used on several devices at the same time. The program supports all world currencies, major cryptocurrencies and precious metals. If necessary, you can add your own currencies. Exchange rates are downloaded from the Internet. User can create an unlimited number of accounts: credit cards, bank accounts, cash, e-money and so on. Accounts can be grouped. Transactions in the program are divided into categories, family members (when shared), counterparties and projects. Each transaction can be assigned multiple labels. The Scheduler in the program allows creating regular transactions automatically. The program also takes into account credits and debts.
It is worth noting separately the possibility of exporting (and importing) data to an xlsx file – this can be used both for creating backups and for exchanging data when several family members are sharing the family budget. A summary table of expenditures by category and period is created in the file at once. The software market offers many applications and services for financial accounting, but there are few products with flexible and multifunctional accounting system and fully automated data input on the market. The optimal solution in this situation will be software from the company precoro.