Connor Wakamo Balance

On August 25, 2008, we reviewed a collection of 15 different personal finance applications for the iPhone and iPod touch in a roundup entitled iPhone Gems: Every Personal Finance Application, Reviewed. This review contains a review of one application from that roundup; additional comparative details can be found in the original full story.
Balance (Free) from Connor Wakamo is a simple one-account finance application, functionally similar to a digital check register. The application’s main screen lists recent transactions, with deposits in black and debits in red, each with its name, date, and amount. Hitting the add button brings up the new transaction screen, where users can enter a name, amount, date, type (deposit or withdrawal), and notes for the transaction; hitting the edit button allows the user to delete transactions. Tapping on a transaction lets the user view and edit the entry’s information.
Balance’s action menu presents the user with two options: export transactions and add password. When the user taps export, he or she is taken to the iPhone’s Mail application, where a new email has been opened containing both the exported data and brief instructions on how to save it into a .csv file. In our testing, we were able to successfully export and save the data supplied by Balance; the file opened in Excel without issue.
The app’s add password command brings up a numeric keypad to set a password; this can be changed to an alphanumeric keyboard in Balance’s section of the iPhone’s main Settings menu. Passwords can be changed and removed from within the app’s action menu. From the app’s section in the Settings menu, users may also choose to sort transactions by most recent first or earliest first. As one of only two free applications in this roundup, we were a little surprised to see Balance outclassing some of its for-pay peers. The addition of an export option, no matter how basic, is appreciated at this price level, as is the ability to protect data with a password. With a simple, straightforward interface, a nice feature set, and its free price tag, we feel Balance is worthy of our high recommendation; a little additional graphical flourish and addition of multiple accounts would make it even stronger.