Cost to develop expense tracking app for Fintech industry

You must have already heard about expense tracking apps. They bring the latest trend of managing personal finances through mobile apps. It is becoming increasingly popular as an app category now. So ready to jump on the expense tracking app bandwagon?

Are you worried about the development costs of such apps? Well, expense tracking apps, in terms of features and capabilities, have evolved a lot. Therefore, while budgeting, keep in mind that balancing basic and advanced expense tracking app features is an obvious consideration. So don’t expect to be too frugal with your expense tracking app development costs.

Hold your breath as we explain the most important cost factors for expense tracking apps.

App UI/UX

The app’s user interface/UX, regardless of app category, will always be at the top of the success factors; therefore, you should not set it aside as a regular task. Since the competition among personal finance apps is too great, mobile billing apps should have a visually engaging interface with a no-nonsense focus on ease of use and quick results.

Keep the tracking app as a simple, effective tool with a simple design that allows people to quickly check their expenses, get precise numbers, do some spending planning based on intuitive suggestions and stay informed all the time. Be sure to design attributes that are manageable for users.

Consider cross-platform development

Want to target a wider audience with your expense tracking app? Well, you can only do that by having a cross-platform development approach. Why build separate native apps for iOS and Android platforms when you can create one app for both without sacrificing native performance and user experience? Yes, that is exactly what the cross-platform development approach suggests.

Why not reduce costs by using a framework that takes care of the web and desktop platforms? Yes, you can now build a native app with native performance by reusing up to 80% of your core code base across iOS, Android, web and desktop platforms. Yes, you probably guessed it already. It’s the Flutter framework that does it in perfect style. Also, Flutter reduces development costs for frontend apps, and Google Firebase also takes care of backend development.

Don’t mess around with must-have features

Let’s not try to shy away from the obvious. Yes, building app features takes the most out of an app budget, and there’s nothing you can do about it, especially when it comes to must-haves. Here, let us provide a short list of must-have features in expense tracking apps.

Keeping track of bills and transactions is a basic requirement for any expense tracker. The app will allow people to scan their bills and receipts through the phone’s camera and place them in their respective categories. The same feature can also have cloud support to keep the data in the cloud for access anywhere and anytime.

Expense tracking apps also give the nod to under-processed invoices and payments. They should have transaction functions and payment gateways to ensure faster transactions and invoice processing.

Simply because expense tracking apps need to handle and store sensitive and vulnerable financial information, maintaining robust data security is a major concern for such apps. Apart from state-of-the-art multi-factor authentication measures using advanced encryption is also extremely important.

The expense tracking app should also offer comprehensive and tailored reports on financial expenses and costs.

Most expense tracking apps also offer tax calculator features and provide accurate estimates of tax deductions.

This is a valuable feature for any expense tracking app. It allows you to pay recurring bills through the same app and create a separate category for recurring transactions so that the rest of your spending can focus on identifying cross-border opportunities.

Finally, any expense tracking app should offer you in-depth analytical reports on your cost components and expenses and help you compare budget versus expenses for different categories.

Choose advanced features according to your budget

Now, for advanced features, you can have an incremental approach. Since you need to plan a release within a tight budget, choose one or two advanced features and keep others for future updates.

• AI-based digital advisor: Using artificial intelligence, you can build an intelligent advisor bot to help users track and curb expenses with timely suggestions and advice.
• Support Chatbot: The expense tracking app can also be improved in terms of user experience by using Chatbot support that can answer quick questions about expenses and personal finances.
• Predictive intelligence: The app can also offer predictive insights on all expenses and cost measures and send alerts accordingly.
• Real-time market updates: Expense tracker apps offer real-time stock market updates to help users decide their investment and trading portfolio.

Support and updates after development

Since the app development cost factors we just mentioned only cover the initial design, development, testing, and deployment costs, you’ll also need to set aside some funds for post-development support and updates in the near future.

To mitigate initial development costs, you can always opt for incremental development and rely more on subsequent updates to add new features and user experience attributes. But this also requires some budget adjustment for the subsequent updates.

Developer experience and placement

Expense tracking of app development costs ultimately depends on the hourly rates charged by the app developers. The actual cost also depends on the hiring and engagement model. Here you have to remember that the seniority and experience of the developers always means higher prices, but in the long run this pays off in a better way.

The location of the app developers, in the case of external app projects, also affects the overall budget and development costs. North America and Europe remain at the top in terms of higher prices for external developers, and hiring external software developers from Eastern Europe and Asian countries offer relatively the most competitive prices.

Packaging

So we couldn’t sum it up by giving real money estimates just because variable factors and choice of features and engagement models don’t allow us to put forward anything very specific. But with these variable factors revealed, you can get some great budget planning help here.