QuickAdvice: Keep Track Of Where Your Money Is With Tabs
Tabs* ($1.99) by Patrick M is an app to help you keep track of where your money is and where it needs to go.
We've all encountered this situation before - you lend someone some cash for a quick bite to eat or whatever, and you never see that money again, right? Yeah, we've all been there at some point - we may even be that person that owes someone else a few bucks!
Worry about that no more, with Tabs. The interface is minimal, but that's all you need. To add a new tab, just hit the 'new' button. Then choose the contact, choose if they owe you or you owe them, and tap the blue arrow for adding any fine details. If you hit that green 'Add Location' button, you also get to pinpoint the precise coordinates of the transaction via a pin on a map.
Use the keypad to enter in a new amount. Once you're done, just hit the button to finish the transaction input.
On the main screen, you'll see a list of your current debts and lent money. If you tap on a name, you'll you can view the transaction date and the amount in a nice red section. If you are complete with a transaction, just swipe on it (when selected) to delete.
If you need to view the complete transaction, select it and you'll see the contact (with photo and address if applicable) with details and location. There's also options to send a SMS or email message to the person to remind them constantly until you get your money back. There is a call option as well, but I couldn't get it to work (tapping it did nothing).
While this app is great to help you keep track of these things, there's a few little bugs that prevent it from being more usable. In my testing, I had accidentally entered a transaction with a $0.00 amount. Once this appears in the list, I was unable to delete it, so be careful about entering in blank transactions (unless I'm missing something here?).
There is also no way to just enter a name into the app - it must be selected from your address book. So what happens if you want to just input a tab for a company that is supposed to send you a rebate or something like that? I would hope that the developer can allow users to just type in a name along with the address book integration.
Adding a location means just using your iPhone's geolocation data, so you can't add in a specific location manually. Allowing the user this option would be nice. Like I also mentioned previously, the Call option fails to work for me. Not sure if it's a glitch on my device but it would be great if such problems could be eliminated.
If you want to edit the amount of a transaction, too bad. The app won't let you do it. I've tried and I can't delete digits in the amount keypad. There's also a lack of settings and customization, but if you like minimal interfaces, then it shouldn't be too big of a problem. However, the graphics need to be updated to fully support iPhone 4 Retina Display.
I hope all the problems I've addressed get fixed in a future update. It's got a nice interface and has great potential, but just needs to be smoothed out. I would like to continue to see development for this app, and hope an update is on it's way.
If you need something to help you keep track of debts and lent money, then pick it up - it's definitely 'useable' in the current state. The potential to be a great app is here, it's up to the developers to make it happen.
Don't want it now? At least keep an eye out for future updates.
