Trabee pocket review, a travel budget app

There are many apps out there for budget management, some are great for your daily expenses but I was looking for one that was easier to manage while travelling. I have tried a few and Trabee pocket is the one that works best for me.

I used Trabee pocket free version for my first trip and then decided it was an app worth purchasing. I am now using the paid version for the past 3 years.
Find below a review of the premium version & its features and why it makes a great app to travel with. 

In a nutshell what I like about it is:

• It’s simple to use. It’s book keeping at its easiest against a budget.
• It can manage multiple currencies. 
• You can go into the details of the means of spending & budgets ( cash budget, card budget or even preparation budgets ). While no being overly complicated to set up.
• It can link existing pictures in your phone to an expense, if you like to track the receipts. Or has the possibility to add notes to each expense if you wanted to save key info. ( your flight booking number for example ? )
• It works offline

Find below a review of the premium version & its features and why it makes a great app to travel with. 

Setting up the defaults & the categories in Trabee pocket.

When starting with the app, you will need to set up the defaults and add ( if relevant ) any new categories.

1. You can now register, so that you can save your profiles and travel information. This way if you lose your phone, you can back up your history.
2. Your home currency is what will show in the home screen. It’s the currency that makes sense to you, the one that you understand the value of. Mine is Euro.
3. Category setting helps you create your custom categories. By default, the app comes with Lodge, meals, transport, shopping, Activities and etc. But in the premium version, you can add additional categories with their own icons and colors. I have added diving, sightseeing, visa & Entry permits, Health.

How to create a new category of expenses in Trabee pocket

I want to add a new category called supplies. It’s where I would put expenses such as laundry, various detergents or small gadgets related to daily life that you have to purchase on a trip. I would also record in supplies, equipment purchases for a special activity, like warm clothing or hiking boots. As opposed to Shopping, which for me is where I record souvenir and gift purchases.

Start by going into the Category setting menu and then click on add a category. After writing down the name of the category, here Supplies:

1. Select an icon for this category. Since it’s related to shopping, I will go for a the shopping bag. Unfortunately, at this point, you can’t upload your own icons, so you have to stick to the choices available here. I think they are enough.
2. Then you can select the color in which the icon will be displayed. I chose Blue.

Once all is selected click save and voila! Supplies appears as a new category under which you can input expenses while traveling. 

Creating trips and expenses in Trabee pocket.

For the purpose of this example, I am creating a trip to Bolivia for next year. I don’t know when exactly I will be there, but I should be passing through at some point.

On the home page, you just have to select Create a new travel button at the bottom.

You then are presented with a scroll down list of countries, but you can also just type in the name at the top, like I did – to find Bolivia faster. 

The rest, is quite self-explanatory. You can upload a beautiful cover picture, I looked for one of Salar De Uyuni and then selected the potential dates of my travels (2). All information can be changed an anytime by editing the travel later on. Once it’s done, the last step is to create one or more budgets for this trip. (3)
Let’s start by creating ONE Budget.
 

How to create a budget in Trabee pocket

You will have to select the blue button there and will be prompted to a new screen. Again to this point, it’s quite self-explanatory.

Note 1. that if you tap the Budget type, you will be offered 3 options: All types, cash or card – which help fine tune your expense tracking.

As I eluded before, it’s possible for you to add more budgets to a trip, or even to track down when you need to top up a budget ( if you have overshot it or simply are able to spend more than initially planned on a trip ).

To do so, you just have to go into the trip you just created, and then click on the three dots on the top right corner next to the pie chart icon. You will see the below dropdown menu.

Here, let’s say, I have an initial budget of BOB 4,940 and I don’t really care tracking how I spend it. ( so the type is ALL ). But I know that I will book proper hotels and not guesthouse, which I will most likely pay by card. So I have decided to set up an extra budget for it. Called BOB Card.

I now have 2 budgets available that are like “buckets” to fine tune my tracking.

Then let’s say that later on, I found a stunning hotel in La Paz, and it was not planned in the budget, but my parents are gifting me some money I can use. I will then add into BOB Card budget an extra BOB 500.

What I like is that when you add budget, it’s dated. So you can track back when you took budgeting decisions. 
Now that we have created a trip and a budget, let’s log in some expenses to this trip in Bolivia.
 

How to create expenses in Trabee pocket

The trip has not started yet, however I may have already made bookings and arrangement ahead of it and it must be accounted within the budget . Trabee pocket has a nifty “preparing” tab that enables you to input any expenses paid before the trip.

First select the newly created trip to Bolivia. Since there is no expense yet, you will see that at the bottom everything is at 0. You have not spent a penny and therefore you still have all your budget.

Click on the pen round button at the bottom to add an expense or pull down with your finger. Then:

1. If you have multiple budgets, it’s where this dropdown is useful, you would want to select here under which budget this expense falls. I will come back to this in more details later.
2. Select if the expense is cash or card. ( if you are tracking that sort of thing ).
3. Of course, write the amount in local currency.
4. Select the category for the expense. Here it’s an activity.
5. Don’t forget to name it. 
6. You can change the date of this expense; it will automatically select the day your input it. But maybe you are a little late on your expense keeping and need to record some expenses in the previous days. It’s possible by changing the date here.  You also can upload a picture ( from your phone or taking a picture ), as well as add a note. I just uploaded a random picture from my phone to show you how it looks like. The pictures are from your phone. Therefore, if you erase the picture, it will also disappear from Trabee pocket. It “picks” an existing picture.

Let’s quickly backtrack to multiple budgets and how they become handy in your expense tracking. This is what a multiple budget trip set up looks like. 

On the trip main page, you will see the various budget at the top. You can click on each of them to filter the expenses that have been registered for it.

When you want to allocate an expense to a specific budget, you have to use the dropdown at the top and then select the budget that you want in the list that appears.

So, we have created expenses, it’s time to get some analysis done.
 

Summary & expense analysis in Trabee pocket

Trabee pocket proposes a nice pie style report followed by a per category detail. If you want to know more, you can also view the detailed expenses of each category if you click on them.

This is accessible even during the trip so you can analyze your budget or spending at any time.

Let’s look at what a completed trip looks like. Here it’s one for Malaysia Sabah.
 

Let’s look at this Sabah trip.

1. I spent less more than I anticipated on this trip by RM 2,287.06 ( we did more diving than initially planned )

Click on the top right corner, where you can see the pie. You will land on the pie chart. The total spend in your home current and local currency is at the top. Below the pie are all the detailed expenses per category. 

2.  If you want to know more about a particular expense category, just click on it and you will have a new page open with all the details. For example, here I clicked on Transport.

Visual features and keeping Trabee pocket organized

There are multiple views available for the front page, so that you can navigate and chose the one you like best. You can alternate by selecting them on the top left of the screen.

Now I have a lot of travels for the past 3 years and I might want to keep things organized. You have the opportunity to create folders too. Each folder can contain multiple trip. I cleaned up my Trabee pocket per year as per below:

To create a folder, it’s the button on the top right. Then it’s quite straightforward. You can change the cover of each folder if you wish by clicking on the 3 dots on the top right of the folder.

That concludes this review of Trabee pocket app, I find it to be a very easy app to use, that works offline and that enables you to track down how much is left of your budget on-the-go. I would just put down the expenses in there at the end of the day or when I have a minute ( especially for the cash ones when no receipts are available ).