Overview
After our review of Milebug, the good folks over at App Cubby requested that we look into their take on mileage logging: Trip Cubby. It's a direct competitor to Milebug, and after using it, I can see why they were so eager to have it reviewed. It's very well designed and has some great features.
Functionality
Everything you see on the main screen of the app when you start up is essentially the trip list. As you add trips, this screen will obviously fill up. Then the buttons on the bottom of the screen become sorting buttons - meaning you can sort your trip view by All, Paid, or Unpaid. The Paid/Unpaid buttons reflect whether or not you've already been reimbursed for your trip.
You won't see how full-featured this app is until you click the "+" button to add your first trip. Then it becomes apparent how much thought has been put into Trip Cubby. Where Milebug has "Presets," TB offers you a "Frequent Trips" field. Selecting that option allows you to choose from previous trips or add new trips.
Trip Cubby offers you the same spinning roulette wheel that Milebug does to record your odometer at the start and end of your trip. After recording your purpose and destination, your mileage and type of trip, you're ready to tag your trip, which I highly recommend.
It's this ability to "Tag" your trip which is very helpful for what Trip Cubby does best - sorting and searching your trips. Tapping the magnifying glass on the main screen brings up a search window that is so full featured it will make your head spin. You can search by tag, by driver, by vehicle, date, etc.
You are also able to email your resultant report, much like you can do with Milebug. However, the Trip Detail window that Trip Cubby offers you is like a mini-spreadsheet. At a glance, you can see all the information regarding your trip in nicely formatted stylesheet.
There's also an eyeball icon in the bottom left corner of the main screen which gives you sorting ability over how the main screen lists your mileage reports. You can sort by Date, Distance, A-Z, Ascending or Descending.
There's also a nice demo of the app made available by the developers on Youtube:
Review
Much of Trip Cubby is extremely intuitive. It won't take a degree from NASA to figure out what you're doing - only to decipher why they named this app Trip "Cubby." I kept mistyping Trip "Buddy" which seems to be more descriptive. Maybe I'm missing something, but the app is not furry (although it is brown).
For those needing a full-featured report option, Trip Cubby may just be an ideal solution. It does have more fields and options than Milebug; however, some of them - like the driver field - are a kind of like a third leg. Do you really need a driver field on an iPhone app? Is a company going to have one single iPhone that it allows multiple drivers to record their mileage on? Would you want to use an iPhone app to record all the mileage throughout your company rather than a desktop application? In that instance, I think it goes a little overboard. It's a nice feature that you'll probably rarely use.
With the option to attach a ton of powerful details to your trip, I found that actually adding any of them was a little challenging at first. You tap on the "tag" field, for example and enter a new tag. Then you have to select the newly added tag by tapping on it in the list, and then hit the button at the top left called "New Trip." I looked all over for how to get back to my trip in progress. I thought that hitting the "New Trip" button would create a new trip. How silly of me. I would recommend changing that to simply say, "Back."
Another thought.. and I mentioned it over on the Milebug review... I would really like to see a miles per gallon feature as well as a fill-ups feature. In response to that thought, the folks at Trip Cubby stood up for Milebug's authors, saying, "I still think you did give [Milebug] a bit of an unfair shake. Tracking mileage for taxes or reimbursement is a very different thing, and for those who do it, an app like Trip Cubby is an absolute life saver!"
With the economy in the state it's in these days, however, I want to defend my original feature request and say that a lot of folks - individuals and businesses - should be aware of their MPG. Perhaps consistent tracking will lead to wiser car and fleet purchases. In addition, as long as we're entering odometer starts and finishes, we might as well enter gas fill-ups and have the simple calculation of MPG.
The Advanced Search screen is definitely an attention getter. It's been very well thought out as far as the options. However, it's a little confusing. The magnifying glass icon brings up a search field, but if you press the "More" button, you'll see many more search and filtering options. The email feature is also hidden in this window; you can't access it from the main screen. Not many folks would know to look for email under the magnifying glass, which is normally a search feature.
Another small hiccup I encountered was how to exit the search screen. Once in it, I couldn't figure out how to get back to the main screen. After calling Triple A Towing (just kidding), I saw that the magnifying glass icon was blue, or highlighted. Tapping it again let me exit the screen.
One other thing. I emailed myself a milage report as I was writing this, and I have yet to receive it... I'm anxious to see what format it arrives in - or if it arrives at all.
Summary
Trip Cubby does everything Milebug and other mileage tracking apps does - and then some. Some of its abilities may be overkill for an iPhone app that tracks mileage, but may be good for super-power-users. I also just don't know if it's worth the price - $9.99. While it does give you more than you could possibly want in a mileage tracking app, for that price, I'd like to see MPG.
However, for those requiring a lot of details and who want to use their iPhone as their primary data input source, this app will be worth a trip to the App Store. For the travel-heavy business person, Trip Cubby may save your bacon, though it's not cuddly enough to sleep with.
