Many entrepreneurs need to find ways to more easily manage their expenses, especially when balancing a new startup with daily life. This is particularly important for those who rely on their own money to fund a company and may be supporting family members or other responsibilities.

Here we’ve gathered four apps that specialize in managing and organizing expenses right from your smartphone, each are among the top 10 rated apps in the "personal finance" category in the App Store. They can be used anywhere in the world, and are not restricted for use with certain bank accounts.

Although the four below weren’t developed in the Arab world, smartphone developers in the region have made recent contributions to the personal finance category. Expense tracking app Wally, which we previously reviewed on Wamda, has a very smooth user experience and was developed in Dubai. I had the chance to test out several personal finance apps and these are my personal favorites:

MoneyBook

MoneyBook, created by noidentity, specializes in personal expense management. MoneyBook allows users to record inbound and outbound financial transactions, organize expenses, and add notifications to every submitted financial transaction that lets users monitor their total expenditures. 

The app also provides graph of expenses allowing users to synchronize their financial records with a cloud service especially made for the app, called MyMoneyBook - which can also be accessed online. MoneyBook recognizes repeated expenses and income and allows users to set the app to automatically add monthly salary to a user's balance.

The app is available in a separate version for iPad under the name BudgetBook. MoneyBook is available on the App Store for USD $3.00. 

Quicken 

Developed by Intuit, Quicken is one of the most popular expense management apps on the App Store, and was designed for a range of users: personal use, small business, or managing large investments.

Quicken allows users to manage expenses and invoices, as well as a company’s client records. It’s available for free on iOS and Android, and the desktop version comes costs between USD $70 and $160 depending a business's needs. 

Back in Black  

In addition to the traditional expense management features, this app helps users determine challenges they are facing in reducing expenses, by monitoring recurring bills and how much users take out of their salary to spend, designed to help you boost your savings over time. The app send alerts to help users remember to pay on time, contribute to their savings account and set other goals.  

Back in Black displays expenses in a pie graph, lets users put a cap on the amount of expenses they have in certain areas, and allows users to share expense records with more than one phone or person. Back in Black is available for iPhone for USD $5.00.  

Expensify

Expensify's mobile app, which accompanies their online service, is available on iOS and Android. Their tag line is “Expense reports that don’t suck.” To build that claim, the app’s main feature allows users to scan paper invoices using their phone’s camera and add the value of these receipts to their expense record. 

Expensify can also synchronize with many U.S. banks, as well as read MS Excel and CSV (comma-separated values) format bank transactions and allows users to search through their purchase or withdrawal history by syncing with their bank account. The app doesn’t allow users to track  income, but instead focuses on tracking expenses. The app and desktop version are available for free download.