# Money Zen: Expense Tracker — Budget for Spending & Saving

> Personal finance tracker with flexible tagging, budgeting, and spending analysis. (iPhone/iPad app by Guojie Zeng.)

- Source: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/money-zen-expense-tracker/id683952336 (this page in markdown: same URL + `.md`)
- Developer: [Guojie Zeng](https://appshunter.io/developer/664743833)
- Category: Finance, Utilities
- Price: Free with in-app purchases
- Rating: 4.40/5 from 17 App Store ratings · 69 written reviews indexed
- Age rating: 4+
- Requires: iOS 13.0 · 5 MB
- Languages: American English, Japanese, Chinese (Simplified, China), Chinese (Traditional, Taiwan)
- Released: 2013-11-04
- Data updated: 2026-09-09
- Monetization: free with in-app purchases
- User reviews in markdown: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/money-zen-expense-tracker/id683952336/reviews.md

## What is Money Zen?

How to Develop the Habit of Bookkeeping

Bookkeeping should be simple and straightforward, which is easy to say, but:

- So many categories, and subcategories? What category should I choose? — Money Zen use a tagging system, you can write "food, eat out, restaurant_name, meal_name", as detailed or rough as you want.
- I bought two boxes of eggs with different prices, add this to this, where is the calculator? Where is the equation I just entered? Is there a typo? — Money Zen has a calculator that does not need to input the equal sign, and can see the equation
- When adding yesterday's expenses, I have to tap three times (tap date, yesterday, complete) to change the date to yesterday? — On Money Zen, just tap the left arrow or swipe right on the date, and the date will be changed to yesterday.

What's the use of these so easily tracked expenses?

- If you want to budget for the future, then look at where the money has been spent in the past year, how much did you spend on each item per month? — In Money Zen you can select any time range, and see the daily/monthly/annual average spending for each tag
- A restaurant you often eat at, because you have wrote down the name of the restaurant and the name of the meal (as tags) every time—in Money Zen, tap the tag of this restaurant, and then tap to show "Median & No. of Transactions", what you see at this time is like the menu of this restaurant — the median is roughly equal to the unit price of each set meal: $XX for egg fried rice, $xx for mapo tofu. Before you know it, Money Zen becomes a menu collector and records your tastes.
- Search: past air tickets, past trips, when items were purchased, and whether the warranty has expired
- Look at the changes in your spending on food each year, whether you've gone from eating fast food to cooking your own meals, whether you're eating better and better, but spending less and less
- Looking back and seeing the changes in your life, are you spending less on things useless and putting your votes in the form of money on things you support?
- Did you spend more meaningfully, increasing your contribution to the outside world, supporting your family and friends, and contributing to society?

Money Zen can also be used as a shopping list, so you can write it down before you buy, only the amount is zero, and then add the amount after you buy.

Money Zen comes with a financial management method: use part of the monthly income for spending, and the rest for investing. The money saved for spending can be accumulated. If you spend less this month, you will have more money to spend in the future. Know two balances at any time: how much money is left to spend, and how much money is left to invest.

In order to buy something, you can save a little money every month to the account for spending, and when the amount is reached, you can buy it with peace of mind.

Just like transferring money to a investment account to buy stocks in real life, you can add these investment accounts in Money Zen, and record each transfer to these accounts, and the amount left for investing will be automatically updated.

Now that the investment accounts has been added, Money Zen also provides the function to manually update the values of these accounts and display the total assets.

Multiple currencies are also necessary. Expenses are not necessarily in the same currency, but the statistics can be in a fixed currency - Money Zen provides the ability to select the accounting currency, and other currencies are automatically converted to it according to the exchange rate for statistics and display.

In real life, when converting from one currency to another, you may lose money due to bad exchange rates - Money Zen provides a function to record real-life currency conversions, and the balance is updated accordingly, you can also see the actual balance of each currency you own.

This is my dream bookkeeping app - Money Zen.

Privacy policy and terms of use: https://moneyzen.app/terms/

## Key features

- Flexible tagging system for detailed expense categorization
- Integrated calculator with equation visibility
- Easy date adjustment for past entries
- Analyze spending by day, month, or year
- Track median spending per tag (e.g., restaurant menu)
- Searchable expense history
- Shopping list functionality

## Pricing and in-app purchases

Base price: Free.

**Subscriptions**

| Subscription | Price | Period |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Supporter Program | $0.99 | per month |
| Supporter Program | $11.99 | per year |

**One-time purchases**

| Purchase | Price | Type |
| --- | --- | --- |
| +15 Tags | Free | one-time |
| +35 Tags | Free | one-time |
| +15 Tags | Free | one-time |
| +35 Tags | Free | one-time |
| +35 Tags | Free | one-time |
| +35 Tags | Free | one-time |
| +35 Tags | Free | one-time |
| +35 Tags | Free | one-time |
| +35 Tags | Free | one-time |


## Recent user reviews (10 of 69)

All indexed reviews: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/money-zen-expense-tracker/id683952336/reviews.md

### 4/5 — Nice app…but…

*2024-09-30, version 2024.3*

Very cool app and I like the UI design. However, missing a key feature - Recurring expenses, if i can add monthly recurring expenses, this would be nice.

### 5/5 — 很好用

*2024-01-01*

极简 好上手 可自定义的部分都正好在我的需求上

### 5/5 — 简洁界面+方便操作

*2023-12-14, version 2023.7*

之前下载了很多记账app，但我都没有坚持，主要因为都不太好用。这个app非常简单易用，帮助我轻松养成记账习惯。

### 5/5 — 没有使用方法说明吗

*2023-07-10*

在支出里新建了几笔 然后有想改动的地方 怎么都点不开 也删除不了 我都不知道该怎么用了 希望开发者可以回复一下 谢谢🙏

**Developer response:** 在月界面，点一下支出行，就打开编辑了啊。比如月界面标题是「2023年7月」，下面有10号（左边数字写大字「10」，小字「周一」） ，再下面就是你新建的几笔支出了，点一个就打开编辑，编辑界面最下面是删除按钮。

也可以给我发邮件 MoneyZenApp@gmail.com

### 5/5 — 不知道用了多少年了，习惯了

*2023-04-18*

我好像用了5年以上了吧，今年开始要收费时候，我是纠结了很久要不要花钱订阅。最后还是支持了一年，因为软件确实好用。帮我度过了那么多年。希望给老顾客多点优惠。我们会继续支持。

### 1/5 — My data was automatically deleted after 6 years

*2023-04-18, version 2023.6*

So I have been using this app for 6 years and I was keeping track of my income/expenses everyday. 
I won’t be using this app ever again because the data from 2016 until 2022 has been deleted by itself and I can find it anywhere in the database. Very disappointing I can’t trust this app again 👎🏼I already emailed their customer support  but no one has gotten back to me yet.

### 4/5 — 建议开发者可以将收费方式改成买断制

*2022-08-15*

非常理解 优秀的产品需要付费，但个人认为小而美的工具产品更适合买断，而不是订阅。对于本产品其实买断制可能提升用户的付费转化率，不一定roi就比现在的连续订阅制低。至于新用户获取，可以考虑下裂变拉新，奖励会员周期，毕竟本产品做的确实可圈可点，看评论老用户不少，大家应该愿意推荐的：）

**Developer response:** 抱歉

### 5/5 — Great app!!!

*2022-04-29*

Keeps me on top of my expenses, it’s very clean and easy to use! Simple perfection!

### 5/5 — 用得最久的记账软件，希望能有watch版

*2022-03-18*

这个真的是用得最久的一个记账软件了，标签功能就是我的爱！我不管什么都喜欢用标签来整理，清晰明了，还能交叉管理！而且记账真的很方便哈哈哈
希望能有个watch版，能直接表盘上添加功能按钮的话，那就是究极无敌方便！而且这个按钮还可以显示一下今天花的钱啥的，相信作者可以设计出很棒的方案的！

### 5/5 — 7年的用户

*2022-03-15*

这款我几乎是推荐给身边所有想记账的朋友。我已经是七年两个月的老用户了。从我开始准备记账的时候就下载了四五款，最终留下的只有它，它让我不知不觉养成了记账习惯。突然发现它更新了，有些感动作者没有放弃它，我要去捐款了！

## Frequently asked questions about Money Zen

### Is Money Zen free to use?

Money Zen is free to download and use. It offers a 'Supporter Program' with subscription options for $0.99 per month or $11.99 per year, allowing users to support the app's development.

### What kind of security does Money Zen offer?

While the provided data does not detail specific security features, personal finance apps typically employ data encryption and secure storage practices to protect user information. Users should always ensure they are downloading from official app stores.

### How often is Money Zen updated?

The app was last updated on October 15, 2024, with version 2024.4. This indicates a relatively recent update, suggesting ongoing development and maintenance.

### What devices does Money Zen support?

Money Zen is available for iPhone and iPod devices. Compatibility with other platforms like Android is not specified in the provided data.

### What is the age rating for Money Zen?

Money Zen has an age rating of 4+. This means it is suitable for users of all ages, with no significant content restrictions.

### Can I use Money Zen to track investments?

Yes, Money Zen can be used to track investments. The app allows users to add investment accounts and transfer money to them, similar to real-life stock trading.

### What are the benefits of the tagging system in Money Zen?

The tagging system allows for highly detailed expense tracking, enabling users to categorize spending as granularly as needed. This helps in analyzing specific purchases, like meals at a particular restaurant or items bought on a trip.

### How does Money Zen help with budgeting for the future?

By analyzing past spending patterns over any selected time range, Money Zen helps users understand where their money has gone. This insight is crucial for setting realistic budgets and planning for future expenses or savings goals.

## Version history (last 5 releases)

### 2024.4 — 2024-10-15

Fixed an issue where the expense editing interface would sometimes crash.

### 2024.3 — 2024-09-26

- Support for iOS 18
- Fixed the issue where the app icon would not display the number of items in the shopping list

### 2024.2 — 2024-01-23

Handling a rare database corruption issue. If you happen to encounter it, a prompt will now directly appear, allowing you to enter the recovery interface. Additionally, before backing up the database file, it will now check for any corrupted database. If a corruption is detected, it will not perform the backup, ensuring that a healthy data file is always preserved.

Please make sure to enable iCloud automatic backup within the app (it is enabled by default).

If you have encountered this problem and don't mind, please send the corrupted database file to me (moneyzenapp@gmail.com) for further investigation, as I am unable to reproduce this issue.

### 2024.1 — 2024-01-14

Fixed some rare crashes.

### 2023.7 — 2023-09-09

Update the sorting algorithm for the tag selection list, placing the most frequently used tags in the past year or so at the forefront. Among them, prioritize the ones used in the short term even more, while trying to maintain a familiar order. This ensures that tags that were commonly used several years ago but haven't been used in the past year don't remain at the top all the time. Similarly, tags that were frequently used a few months ago but haven't been used recently won't dominate the list. Additionally, if a less frequently used tag, such as "travel," starts being used again, it will immediately move up to the top, making it convenient for you to choose it in the following days of your trip.

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## More apps by Guojie Zeng

- [Bus Times - This is the Place](https://appshunter.io/ios/app/bus-times-this-is-the-place/id1349789123)
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- [Four Seasons: Weather Forecast](https://appshunter.io/ios/app/four-seasons-weather-forecast/id1564657199)
- [SG Bus Times + MRT Map](https://appshunter.io/ios/app/sg-bus-times-plus-mrt-map/id6463923700)

All apps by Guojie Zeng: https://appshunter.io/developer/664743833

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*Data collected daily from the US App Store and indexed by [AppsHunter](https://appshunter.io/). User reviews are verbatim App Store reviews. Ratings, prices and chart positions refresh continuously; this snapshot is from 2026-09-09.*