TextHog

Texthog is an online application which makes tracking expenses and budgets much easier than normal. It’s designed to be one of the easiest solutions to track what you spend and make sure that you are able to record it all before you have chance to forget. It works in quite a simple way, every user is issued an email address, you simply need to send the transactions in a certain format to this address and they will be updated automatically. The software automatically adds the transactions into your texthog account. You should also be able to send email from a text message on your mobile phone; most carriers support this even if your phone does not have the specific function, test it out by sending a message to an email address instead of a number and finding out what happens. You have a number of different options to add transactions onto your account; you can either send a text message, email them or log into your account on the internet and add the transactions manually. The format to send through email or text message is very easy, separate the name from the cost with a comma and use a new line to separate different transactions (this only works with email clients), for example: Staples, $29.99 you then simply fire of the email and it gets added in seconds. TextHog is developed by Doejo Interactive Media and started beta testing in January 2009. Unlike many other applications this one is not a full blown accounting suite, this means that you don’t need to enter sensitive information into the system and it is kept as simple as possible. It’s only designed to keep track of your expenses rather than budget your accounts. The application is as simple to use as possible, you don’t even need to log into your account to add transactions. Simply texting them is enough to get them to appear on your account. You can also log in if you wish to manually enter information. The whole system is very impressive and a real joy to use. Registering for a TextHog account is very easy, it just requires filling out a fairly standard form. You first need to enter your email address and choose a password. That’s then the end of the signup process; you just need to check your email for an activation code. You just need to click on the link in the email to finish the registration process. You will also find your unique email address in this email which is where you need to send your costs too. One annoying thing is that the email is given in plain text format so anyone that has access to your email could read the password so it’s a good idea not to use your normal password or work email address. At the moment while the service is in beta all of the features are free, however they have suggested that in the future they will start charging and offering some form of paid service. Whether or not they will continue to offer a free service will remain to be seen. TextHog is useful for anyone that is always on the go and forgets to write down their business expenses. Emailing them to your texthog account takes a matter of seconds and will always ensure that your records are up to date. It might take a little bit of patience to always remember to record your transactions, however it will be well worth it as you will be able to claim back all the money that you are owed.