Editor’s Rating:

Price: $1.99
Category: Finance
Version: 3.5.2

• Sync
  Lets everyone in your household know which bills are due. Sync between all of your iOS devices (iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad).
• Automatic Backup
  Your data will be seamlessly backed up to our secure cloud so it can be recovered even if your device lost or stolen!
• Upcoming Tab
  Instantly see what bills are quickly approaching or past due.
• Charts and Reports
  Visually see where your money is going and where you can save. You can email a PDF of each chart or even print them using AirPrint!
• Local Notifications
  Be reminded when your bills are due without having to open the app. No internet connection needed!

Have you ever been late making a payment on a bill, only to be penalized financially with late fees? Perhaps you’ve forgotten about a credit card payment that was due and as a result the credit card company raised your interest rate? Or maybe you have never missed a bill but would really like to know what percentage of your finances are being delegated for a particular category of life,like credit cards or internet subscriptions. If any of the aforementioned scenarios depict you in some way, and you have $1.99 to spare, I’ve got the solution to your problem: BillMinder for iPhone.

BillMinder is an application for your iOS devices aimed at simplifying life by tracking your bills and reminding you of when they need your attention. With BillMinder you never have to worry about missing a payment again! As if the potential to eliminate late fees from your life wasn’t enough, BillMinder will also track your expenses in an effort to build and deliver beautiful, categorized charts to help you visualize your finances. Featured by Apple as a Staff Favorite and Featured in the What’s Hot section of the App Store, let’s take a look at what makes BillMinder the perfect financial companion.

Creating an Entry

Tapping the plus sign from the Upcoming or Calendar view will open the “Add Bill” input form. From here you can give your bill a title, select a category, specify an amount (can be marked as unknown) and select a due date. If the bill is one that is automatically withdrawn, toggle the “Auto-Pay” switch to the on position. This way you will not have to manually record the payment of auto-paid bills. Once you have the main information set, choose how often this bill should repeat and when that repeating alert should end, if ever. Lastly, you want to choose when to be alerted that your bill is due. Choose anywhere from 7 days before to 1 day before.

If you are a DebtMinder user, which helps you keep track of and manage your debt, you can link bills to DebtMinder during the creation process. Optionally, you can add the contact information and notes for the bill you are creating. This comes in handy, especially if you ever need quick access to a credit card company’s customer service department.

Notes are not restricted to the creation process. BillMinder allows you to add confirmation numbers and notes to each bill that you mark paid. Again, this serves as a very nice way to keep track of each individual payment made to a merchant while providing yourself quick access to the details of that transaction if a question of payment should ever arise. Any way you look at it, BillMinder has you covered.

Upcoming Bills

The hub of the BillMinder information center is your “Upcoming” section. From this section you can get a quick glance/overview of all bills due within the next 7 days as well as any additional bills that are due within the next 30 days. If for some reason you happened to miss a due date for any particular bill, it will appear at the top of your screen, in the most prominent of sections, so that you will notice it and tend to it as appropriate. 9 times out of 10 this is where I spend most of my time when inside BillMinder. From this screen you can also swipe across a bill to reveal a quick actions menu where you can choose “Quick Pay” or “Delete” for the corresponding bill.

Calendar

One of my favorite features of BillMinder is it’s calendar function. This view enables you to see not only how many bills are due this month but also the total amount of money this months bills will cost you. Cool enough if it stopped right there. However, BillMinder allows you to take it a step further and drill down payments and bills due, for the month, by category. This feature comes in very handy when I am looking to sort out my finances based on when I get paid and what bills fall closest to that paycheck. It also provides me an extremely quick point of reference for how much of my finances will go where this month. This is particularly helpful as it allows me to track trending expenses and cut unnecessary items and subscriptions from my budget. If you are not a fan of the calendar view, BillMinder provides a list view as well. It is accessible by tapping the “Box of Bills” icon from the calendar screen.

Categories

Categories for your bills is kind of self explanatory. As you create and input bills, you place them into categories for easier tracking. If a category is not already listed that is suitable for a new bill, just create a new category. The only trouble I have run into in this process is a lack of icons to choose from. Already, with less than 10 categories assigned, I have duplicate icons representing a few of my categories. At a glance, this can be confusing. I would really love to see more icons. With that said, if you are effective at labeling and categorizing your bills and payments, the categories screen could be a real eye opener for you financially. BillMinder will show you how many of your bills fall into each category and the average cost for the bills within that category. This may not seem like a big deal… until you launch the categories section to find out you have 11 recurring payments for web subscriptions averaging $15.00 each. Whoa! $165.00 a month for online data consumption and delivery? Yeah, exactly. Like I said; a real eye opener.

Reports

Full disclosure: My experience with the Reports feature of Billminder has a very limited scope given that I have only used the application for 7 days at the time of this post. BillMinder doesn’t seem to care though. It is still working feverishly to break down and analyze my spending. I can see immediately that the two financial hogs in my life right now are Rent and Child Care. No surprises there. The cool thing about the Reports feature is the ability to fully customize your results. By default, BillMinder will show you data for “All-Time” and “The Last 6 Months.” My guess would be that is not going to be a one-size-fits-all setup. You may want to see only 1 month, 3 months or even 3 years! BillMinder will let you do that. Want to get even more specific? You can generate reports based on single categories as well. For example, you could generate a report for the category “Utilities” and assign a date range of 24 months. BillMinder will now create a pie graph (or line graph) to visually represent what percentage of that category is spent on things like Gas & Electric, Cable etc. (based on the bills you file as utilities). From there you can drill down each individual bill to show all payments made within the specified date range and the total amount paid over that period of time. When finished, send your reports as a PDF via email or print them out using Air Print.

Settings

Customize your experience by choosing whether or not to display badges and/or receive alerts for upcoming bills. Choose your default alert settings, set up a passcode to protect your information and choose the default currency. You are also able to manage your account, export as a CSV for inputing to Excel, email a backup to yourself or import from a previous backup.Tapping the ‘help” button will allow you to view FAQ’s for BillMinder or email Return7 for support. With so many options for custom displays, reports, alerts, categories, bills and payments, the way you experience BillMinder is entirely up to you.

Notifications

Just like most other apps on the App Store, BillMinder has the ability to send you localized push notifications that do not require internet access. The app can be set to alert you anywhere from 1 day before to 7 days before a bill is due. Additionally you can select from presets that trigger two alerts. For example: alert me 1 & 7 days before. If you have enough notifications already, and feel that notifications from BillMinder are unnecessary, you can simply turn them off. with badges enabled, you will still be able to see how many bills are due in the next 7 days. Personally, I find push notifications for bills that are due to be a life-saver and therefor have one or two set for each bill. It is truly helpful in never missing a payment.

Conclusion

I have tried many ways to track bills & expenses. I have added due dates to my calendar, I have purchased several applications, I have written due dates on index cards and post-it notes. All of which have fallen short in one way or another. With BillMinder, I have found my solution. I can be notified of payments that are due on a consistent, reliable, basis as well as track spending and create expense reports. Had I experienced BillMinder 2 years ago, it may have replaced 4 or more of the financial apps I have purchased within that time frame. BillMinder does the job of all 4 apps with the ease and convenience of just one. I would highly recommend BillMinder as a solution for anyone looking to get a good grasp on their bills. Set it, forget it, be reminded and pay it. Never pay a late fee again!

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