Dollarbird Reviews - What Is It?
DO NOT USE Dollarbird!!! You Must Read This Review!
Fully Researched: Price, User Feedback and More!
Dollarbird is a special budgeting app used to keep track of your daily spending with the help of a unique calendar system. While most budgeting applications either use charts or category-by-category balances to indicate what you have spent and earned, this tool has the form of a calendar showing how much you have spent every day. According to its home page, the company was founded in 2011 and is currently based in Paris, France. How does Dollarbird work? What differentiates it from many other budget apps out there? To answer these questions, you will need to download the app and start using it or just read this review. What we learned during our research we are going to share with you in this review. First of all, let's take a look at the app's features. It is said to be one of the simplest budgeting apps with two main features: the calendar and adding transactions.
The first thing you see upon opening the application is a calendar with your name and the current month. Every day shows two numbers. The upper one shows the day's balance for income and expenses, while the bottom one indicates your running total for expenses. Remember that this number includes all income and spending up through that day. Whenever you add an expense or income, the bottom number changes instantly. The application also shows your balance on the last day of the month. It means that it automatically counts future credits and debits and today' running total. In this way, it provides you with a final number. That number changes based on your transactions each day. The running balance at the end of the month is a finish line for your budget race. The drawback of this method is that it seems deceptively simple if you have used such apps as YNAB and Mint. Their formats focus on other spending metrics that are not shown in a calendar.
Customer Reviews - Does Dollarbird Really Work?
It is very important to use Dollarbird's calendar to your advantage. Thus, there are some tips. The app's monthly layout means that you can enter in bills you have to pay on the same day on a monthly basis. So, you will see when these bills happen and how they influence your end-of-the-month running total. If your income alters each week, it will be helpful for you to see these upcoming bills on a calendar, especially when you need to have more money in the bank. You will realize when during the month you will need more income than normal. If you are disciplined to spend similar amounts of money each week on your products and other items, you can enter these amounts beforehand. Thus, the more expenses you enter into your calendar, the better understanding you will have of how they influence your monthly balance.
The second feature this app will provide you with is the ability to add transactions. This feature is not unique about this budgeting app. What makes Dollarbird unique is only its simplicity. When doing transaction tap a button to designate an expense (minus sign) or income (plus sign). You will see two fields: the first one is meant for entering the transaction amount and the second one is designed to label the transaction. Use the latter one to denote the website or store where you have bought anything. After entering this information, you can choose the category of the transaction such as: clothing, car and transportation, eating out, fitness, entertainment, groceries, household, health, income, subscriptions, personal care, uncategorized. Each category has its color. You can add your own categories like loan payments or car insurance. The two other customizations you can do involve adding a description to the transaction and naming the transaction a recurring payment. The last feature is the "Confirmed" check-box, a place where you can check a transaction after making transaction. Then Dollarbird will add the transaction to your daily total and your running total. You can update your balance but there is no explanation on the app's support pages what this feature is for. Before using the app, you are recommended to write out your monthly budget on paper with all of your spending categories. Add those categories to the app and mark the recurring payments correspondingly. Try to be as precise as possible with your categories and recurring payments and income. By the way, you can access your calendar from the desktop and mobile versions of Dollarbird.
It is high time to discuss actual users' reviews about the application. As a matter of fact, the app received an average rating of 4.6 stars from over 800 reviews in the iTunes store and 3.8 stars in the Google Play store. What is interesting to note is that there were no recurring complaints but most of them were unique. Customers complained that it was difficult to read the calendar, as the transaction fonts were not bold enough. Many people said that the previous version of the app (Classic DB) was much better and that the current app was buggy. Almost all positive reviews referred to the simplicity of the app. Let's take a look at some of these reviews.
"DollarBird app is not connected to the cloud, so you will lose all of your recorded financial information on your phone if you have to restore it. I lost a lot of vital financial records, and have met a few blocks when migrating to Dollarbird 3. The customer service rep I have talked to lacked the necessary knowledge and did not respond promptly. The solutions he offered did not help me at all. It has been ten days since the phone restoration, but they did not offer any worthy solution to me. I do not recommend this app to anyone."
"Before their $2.99 fee, the dollarbird app worked properly despite its free character. But now I have to uninstall and reinstall it frequently. I wrote to the customer service telling them that I wanted to cancel my account. They answered to me that they would and even refunded me the $2.99 for the two months. However, I am still being charged the $2.99 after I cancelled my account!"
"I get very frustrated with the Dollarbird app lately. I keep to a strict budget and I use it more as a guide. Sometimes I adjust my budget and some numbers but the app does not update the totals very frequently. Due to this it has put me in a bind because I rely on this app to stay oriented with my bills. It is not a good app for keeping track of your finances. Avoid it."
My Final Summary
Dollarbird is one of the simplest budgeting apps over there, with Fudget being the best, though. When you open the application, you are going to like its simplicity; however, some people report having found the app difficult to operate. So, one of the drawbacks of tis app is that navigation and data entry are not always intuitive. Another disadvantage is that recurring transaction intervals are minimal. There is no integration with other financial solutions. There are complaints that the program often fails to track income and expenses properly. However, you are promised to be able to customize categories. Dollarbird may be suitable for people who wish to manually enter their income and expenses to chart for up to five years, but the app has been improving too slowly, so don't hope for better functions or anything. With all these pros and cons, Dollarbird cannot be recommended to usage. There are better budgeting apps such as Goodbudget and Fudgeta.
Dollarbird Pricing and Rates
This budgeting application has two levels. The free level gets you one "team," while the second one involves the calendar. The paid version costs $25.99 per year or $4.99 per month. Having the paid version you will be able to add people to your team, which means that you can share your calendar with others and these people can add transactions via their own tablet, phone, or computer. This version is suitable for couples who want to deal with their finances together.