Do It Yourself: Bill and expense tracking

We’re all looking for a fresh start in the new year. Yesterday we went over some ways you can use your BlackBerry to help with 2012 resolutions. But that just gets at things you’re striving for. Today we’ll take a step back and look at things you really need to be doing, but sometimes slip your mind. Like, say, recurring bills. These are easy. They are mostly fixed in amount, and they come at the same time every month. Yet it’s easy to miss payments and incur late fees that not only increase what you owe, but can damage your credit rating. Thankfully, you can use your BlackBerry to help you out here. If you go into App World’s featured section, you might noticed a highly rated app called Bill Tracker. It’s a noble app, providing you not only with a way to record your bill payments, but also with a reminder to actually pay them. That sounds like an ideal solution. You not only get the reminder to pay the bill, but then you can actually record the payment. That way if you’re not sure, you can always go back and verify later. It sounds handy, and for those who want a quick, easy solution, it certainly is. But there’s a free way to do the same. If you don’t already have bill reminders set up on your BlackBerry calendar, I’m not sure what’s stopping you. You get the all-important pop-up, plus options to get an email about the bills. You can set up multiple alerts, too, so that you don’t forget to pay. Even those on auto-pay programs will benefit from this, since they’ll know when their accounts get hit with a charge. It’s all very basic, and it’s something that all BlackBerry users should do to avoid late fees and overdraft charges. Recording your bill payments is easy, too. BlackBerry smartphones have the free version of Documents To Go, which will suffice. Just create a new spreadsheet on your computer and then email it to yourself. You can then download and edit it, adding in bill dates and amounts as you pay them. Spreadsheets are organized enough as is, and you can sort by various columns if need be. In any case, recording your bill payments is just as easy natively as it is with an app. This isn’t to disparage Bill Tracker. Many people will find such an app useful, and will gladly pay the $1.99 for it. But it’s not necessary. You can do all of this, for free, on your BlackBerry. No modifications necessary.

About the Author

Joe Pawlikowski is the Senior Editor at MobileMoo.com and has been covering the mobile industry full time since 2007. When he's not writing about the tech scene, he can be found discussing his personal love - baseball (and more specifically the New York Yankees) as well as writing on his personal blog.