u/adineag

I used a lot of expense manager apps in the past, but the main issue with them was that almost all forced your transaction into a category (or subcategory at best). Let's say you want to log your dinner from vacation. You either choose Food category or Vacation, but what if you want to put it in both?

This is where my app differs from the rest. Instead of forcing the transaction into one category, I label it instead. I can add as many labels as I want and labels can have sublabels and so on.

So if I had dinner on vacation I add these labels:

• 🍕Pizza (sublabel of Food)
• 🏝️Rome trip (sublabel of Vacation)

This label system now gives me flexibility to see insights I never could with other apps:

• How much I spent on food on my Rome trip
• How much I spent on my Rome trip
• How much I spent on pizzas in Rome
• How much I spent on pizzas this year
• How much I spent on vacations

The app is called SpendTree. If you wanna give it a try, so far, only android version available https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.spendtree.app

Yes, I'm promoting my own android app. Yet another expense tracker app among thousands, but I believe it's unique since I could not find a similar one.

I used a lot of expense manager apps in the past, but the main issue with them was that almost all forced your transaction into a category (or subcategory at best). Let's say you want to log your dinner from vacation. You either choose Food category or Vacation, but what if you want to put it in both?

This is where my app differs from the rest. Instead of forcing the transaction into one category, I label it instead. I can add as many labels as I want and labels can have sublabels and so on.

So if I had dinner on vacation I add these labels:

• Pizza (sublabel of Food)
• Rome trip (sublabel of Vacation)

This label system now gives me flexibility to see insights I never could with other apps:

• How much I spent on food on my Rome trip
• How much I spent on my Rome trip
• How much I spent on pizzas in Rome
• How much I spent on pizzas this year
• How much I spent on vacations
• ... and so on...

My app is called SpendTree, available here: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.spendtree.app

Besides the labels system the following features are also available:

• Multiple accounts
• All currencies
• Dark/Light theme
• Budgets (tracking a label)
• Subscriptions (automated regular transactions)
• Labels customization (icon/ color)
• Smart label suggestions (based on existing data)
• Multi label filtering
• Data backup (csv files, google drive)

I'm curious what you think about it and the idea of labels instead of categories. Honest feedback is appreciated!

I launched a budgeting app recently and I was wondering why do expense manager apps force every expense into a single category?

Real life expenses usually belong to multiple contexts at once.

Example:

🍕 Pizza during a vacation paid with a credit card

Instead of forcing it into "Food" or "Vacation" category, I use labels:

• 🍕 Pizza (sublabel of Food)
• 🏝️ Vacation
• 💳 Credit Card

Which means later I can answer questions like:

• How much did I spend on food during my trip?
• How much do I spend while traveling overall?
• How much do I spend on pizzas this year?

It feels more natural than categories and gives you more flexibility and insight into your spending habits.

I'm curious what you think:

• Does it feel more complicated than traditional categories?
• How do you personally organize expenses mentally?

Would love honest feedback about the idea of using labels instead of categories and how intuitive the app is/feels. Thanks!

Only android so far: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.adineag.expensemanager

Hi everyone 👋

I launched SpendTree on Product Hunt today.

It’s an Android expense tracker I started building after getting frustrated with rigid budgeting categories in most finance apps.

Instead of forcing every expense into a single category, SpendTree uses flexible labels, so you can do things like:

🍕 Food + 🏝 Vacation
☕ Coffee + 💼 Work

and later filter combinations to get much more useful insights.

Would genuinely appreciate any feedback, support, or thoughts from fellow builders 🙏

Product Hunt launch:
https://www.producthunt.com/products/spendtree