While it’s obviously not wise to spend without documenting your purchases, there are easier ways of staying on top of your finances other than relying on an Excel spreadsheet. Here is a breakdown of the top three ways to manage your spending to help you decide on the best spending tracker for you.

1. Budgeting Options through Your Bank and Credit Card Company

One of the best and most obvious ways to keep track of your spending is through the very outlets where you keep your money. Almost all banks and credit card companies now offer budgeting graphs and charts, savings advice, spending reports (sorted by date, amount and venue) as well as overdraft alerts.

Simply create an online account with your bank or credit card company and check out what they offer in regards to spending tracker options. You’ll probably be surprised with how many useful tools they offer completely free of charge.

I would not suggest solely relying on these services though as they don’t go quite as in-depth as some of the other options out there. Use these budgeting options as your basic tracking method and then build on them with mobile apps.

2. Mobile Apps

Mobile apps like Mint and Jumsoft Money are great options for integrating your bank and credit card accounts into a central location. These apps are very simple to set up, extremely secure and offer real-time glimpses into your current financial standing.

The best part about using these apps is that they require very little effort on your part to keep them updated. Because they are integrated with your accounts, they know every time you make a purchase with one of your cards. They also have budgeting features that let you break down your budget exactly how you want it so you can get quick, graphical overviews of your spending over a certain period of time.

The only downside of these apps is that they don’t track your cash purchases. When you do make a cash purchase, it is up to you to data enter that purchase into the app. If you’re not the best at holding on to receipts when you make cash purchases though, then you might also want to implement a form of receipt management.

3. Receipt Scanning Apps

The best and most accurate spending tracker is one which allows you to sort and categorize based off of receipts.

Online banking features and mobile apps are really only good for broad categorization. Tracking your spending based off of receipts is a much more accurate and all-encompassing way of ensuring proper money management.

Receipt scanners and services like Shoeboxed.com make it extremely simple to digitize your receipts and save them in the cloud. The best part is that you can create expense reports and budgets that can be filtered all the way down to the itemized products you bought.

For example, let’s say that you bought a crib and baby clothes on your last trip to Wal-Mart. Your bank might classify the purchase as “Wal-Mart” while Mint and Jumsoft Money would classify it as “Retail” or “Shopping.” Receipt Scanners and services can actually classify the purchases as “Baby Supplies” or other specific designations due to their ability to create custom filters.

Do you have a method for tracking your spending that you would like to share with us? We’d love to hear about it in the comments section below!

After looking at many document scanning software reviews, we’ve repeatedly come across two main options that sound worth your while to check out.

Shoeboxed

Shoeboxed is an offsite service that will make digitizing your financial data easier than ever. The way it works is this:

• First, your documents must be scanned. You can scan them yourself in any way you choose. But the great thing about Shoeboxed is that, if you don’t want to bother with buying a scanner or doing the work of scanning, you can actually mail them your receipts and they will use their own document scan software to image them for you and then either dispose of them or return them to you, as you wish. They will even provide special tracked envelopes to help you with this mailing process.
• Second, if you scanned the documents yourself, rather than mailing them in, then you need to get the electronic versions to Shoeboxed. You can do that by emailing them the images or by using their web-based uploader. (Obviously, if you have Shoeboxed do the scanning for you, then this step is unnecessary).
• Third, once Shoeboxed has your images, they, along with their information, will be organized in an online account that you can then access and work with securely from anywhere.

TRY SHOEBOXED FOR FREE: Shoebox offers a FREE 30 day trial of its receipt scan software services. Take advantage of it right now by just clicking here.

Neat

If you’re looking for a more complete, integrated receipt scanning software solution, consider using Neat’s products and services.

(Note: Links in this section will show you the products discussed on Amazon)

Neat makes their own scanners, including both desktop and mobile models.

These scanners work seamlessly with Neat’s special “digital filing cabinet” software. When you scan your receipt into this software, it will not only store a digital image of it, but it will automatically recognize the various types of information on the document and input them into the proper fields in its database. This is highly tuned receipt scan software that will save you a tremendous amount of time entering and modifying your electronic financial information.

A nice bonus is that this “digital filing cabinet” also has a special module that allows it to act as business card scanning software. So you can not only store and digitize your financial records, but also your business contacts.

Versions of Neat’s products and services are available for both Windows and Mac users.

Which Option is for You?

If you want to truly outsource this receipt scanning software process and get it out of your hands, Shoeboxed is an excellent choice. They can simplify the process to the point that all you have to do is toss your receipts into an envelope and then periodically drop them in the mailbox. And with a free month-long trial, you have nothing to lose giving them a shot.

On the other hand, if you want more substantial control over all aspects of the digitization process, then you may find it worthwhile to invest in Neat. If you purchase a Neat scanner, as an additional benefit, you can use that scanner to do plenty of other tasks, as well. And their desktop scanner, in particular, can do bulk scanning.

In the end, you can’t really go wrong with either of these receipt scan software solutions. Both will greatly ease the process of documenting and tracking your finances.