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 at a good one for android phone and especially made for travelers. I have tried a few and Trabee pocket is the one I am sticky to.

I used Trabee pocket free version for my first trip and decided it was an app worth purchasing. 
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.

Trabee pocket comes with great features such as following up your trip budget and expenses in local currency but checking the main page on your main home currency (the one that makes the most sense to you). This way you have a quick way to know where your spendings are at.

When starting with the app, you will need to set up the defaults:
 

1. 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.
2. The default payment type is what will be selected by default when you enter an expenses in the system. This can be overridden on each expense. This is great if you want to track down from where the expense came from cash or card.
3. This is to chose whether or not you want to have a preparing section in each trip. I would say yes! Because it’s where you add all the expenses that you have made for that trip before it even began.
4. 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 already. In these trouble times of Corona virus let’s add health to the list:

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

1. Select an icon for this category. Since it’s related to health, I will go for a red cross. So I select the cross into the available photos. 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.

Once all is selected click save and voila! Health appears as a new category under which you can input expenses while traveling. This could be good if you have to budget a specific vaccine (yellow fever anyone?) to prepare for a trip. You could also add a visa or immigration category too.

Creating trips and expenses in Trabee pocket.

Let’s create my next personal dream trip so that you can see how easy it is.
I am planning a trip to one of my dream diving paradise Rajah ampat in Indonesia very soon – so let’s get started ! (I had to cancel that trip due to the virus shortly after writing this )
 

1. Select the dates of your trip
2. Select the country in which the trip happens, then you will be prompted to control the exchange rate against your country of reference (more about setting up the country of reference here).
3. Add your budget in the local currency.

What’s left to do is to add an attractive cover picture of your trip.

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

Let’s look at how to add new expenses and get some data into this section.

First select the newly created trip. 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.

Start by selecting the preparing tab, and then click on the “+” sign to add an expense.

We will add the flights to Sorong:

1. Write the name of the expense.
2. By default, I had selected cash expenses ( in the default set up ). But here I paid by card online, so I will select the card icon.
3. Tab on the zero and input the amount of the expense. It will automatically convert into your main currency underneath it.
4. Select the category of the expense, here I chose transport.
5. Finally, you have the option in this app to add a photo (could be of the receipt or of the activity itself to help you remember) but also of a file like an electronic ticket or booking. This way in one tab you could find it back easier instead of navigating through your phone. (pretty good to take a quick pic or upload your agoda booking voucher for hotels ?)
6. So once all is set, here is what it looks like:
7. I got a flight to Sorong, paid by card, for a total amount of 15,000,800 IDR, which is equivalent to 968 euros. The category transport and registered under the preparing tab, so it’s a preparation cost. I didn’t add any notes or photos to it (yet).I added all my other expenses, if you remember by total budget was 154,900,000 IDR for this trip and I have already spend 118,163,283 IDR. Therefore I can see that I can only spend 36,736,717 IDR. You can track day by day what is left of your budget. As long as the Balance is in the blue, it’s OK – when you get in the Red color… 

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 my last one from the Philippines.
 

Let’s look at the Philippines from the home screen.

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. 

1. See I overshot my budget by 41,752.68 PHP on that trip ! That’s about 760 Euros ! Basically we dived a lot more in Malapascua (the diving was just great) than initially planned and we did the cannyonning trip in Molboal. The app enables you to know why you overspend, so you can decide whether it’s worth it or if you just didn’t manage properly.
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 diving.

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. The pie and analysis help you understand how you managing your expenses to decide whether it’s out of control or just a carefully made decision.