Paula has been a fantastic user, providing us with lots of feedback. We asked her to tell us more about she’s been using Xpenser, and she was kind enough to send us the following description. If you have interesting stories please send them our way at feedback@xpenser.com so we can share them.

We love feedback, by the way, and actually implement changes you suggest – we have a slice of time set aside in every release cycle for user feedback. So don’t be shy, tell us what you want to see fixed/improved/added at feedback@xpenser.com .

After my separation I had been trying to get my budget in order for months. This was the first time in my life I needed to have a budget.

I knew I was falling in the red each month but didn’t really know by how much, where my money was going; let alone how to improve my situation.

I consider myself a fairly intelligent person but for some reason I wasn’t able to get a hold at tracking my expenses.

I tried free services like quicken which give me some idea, but I was limited on how was expenses entered and organized.

I evaluated paid services like mvelopes, but it was still more work than what I was willing to put in, the interface was too dry. I tried my own excel formats…

Each method would help a little but I was still in the dark when it came to the details and I felt overwhelmed by the actual task of tracking.

I read budgeting for dummies type books, talked to a financial advisor and participated in personal finances classes in church. What was missing?

In my frustration I continued pounding Google for personal expense tracking solutions. A sponsored link led me to Xpenser.

I was too easy and fun! Soon I was registering my expenses via text and email, every day. It was so exciting to see the entries on my Expenses page!  Before I knew it I had been fully and accurately tracking for 15 days (a first for me). Just two weeks gave me enough information to start making changes for the better!

Then I took it a step further, I assigned budget amounts to each category. Xpenser allows me to have a separate Report for each category. Gas, with a starting balance of $100, Tolls, with a starting balance of $35, etc.

In one shot, I can see how much money is in the bank and how much do I have in each allocated budget category.

In top of that I created a Report for each one of my debt accounts, I can happily see those numbers decrease their way to the so desired “Zero Balance”.

In top of all these, Xpenser has a superb customer service, they have replied to each one of my inquiries (which have been many) in less, actually quite less than 24 hours and the answers are always right on the money.

This is how I do it:

At the beginning of my pay period I enter my salary. Then I subtract the allocated money for each category.

Let’s say I bring $500 home on a given week.

I create a expense for each category for the week.

• Groceries 50
• Gas 25
• Car Payment 300
• Phone Bill 50

That leaves me a balance of $75 in the bank (50+25+300+50=425).

Gas and groceries might not be exact, but I allocate the money already, my working balance is $75

Then, as the actual expenses happen, I start recording on its own category

Let’s say:

• I buy $42 in groceries
• Put $14 of gas
• Pay my phone bill
• Make my car payment

My Xpenser will show what I have available until my next pay check:

• Checking account $75
• Grocery budget $8
• Gas Budget $11

Beautiful!

Regards,

Paula, Miramar, FL

We get lots of interesting email about unusual uses for Xpenser. We’ll be publishing some of them on the blog here for your enjoyment. If you have a story you’d like to share send it our way (feedback@xpenser.com), along with your name, URL, etc, if you’d like those published.

Cheryl writes:

You’d asked about unusual uses for Xpenser, here’s mine.

Keeping track of my auto maintenance records had always been a pain. I wanted to know how much I was spending on the cars, as well as when and where I’d performed maintenance on them, but my system of throwing the receipts in the glove box wasn’t working very well.

Xpenser to the rescue: I created a report for each of our cars, “Lexus” and “Honda”, and set up a keyword for each, “lexus” and “honda”. Now each time I get service done I record it with the following format:

Oil change 24.83 EZ Lube 54,881 lexus

Major Service 508.31 Plainlands Honda 63,221 all fluids

The type of service is the first item, followed by the cost, the place it was serviced, and the mileage at the time of service.

Note: Cheryl is using the file-to-report feature to send each entry to its designated report; see this screencast for how you can do the same.

This way I not only know how much I’m spending, I also know exactly what service was performed where and when.

I’ve also experimented with keeping track of my gasoline costs in the same reports, but ended up creating separate reports since the gas entries were much more frequent than the service entries, making them harder to find.

Photo by VirtualErn