The simplest method for tracking income and expenses: record each transaction with a date, amount, and category; the monthly difference appears as savings or a deficit. A notebook, spreadsheet, or budget app all work. If you have multiple accounts, installments, or credit payments, an app that calculates automatically saves significant time while keeping the data accurate.
Why Tracking Starts and Stops
You don't need a strong motivation to begin: "where did my money go this month?" is enough. But starting is easy — keeping it going is the hard part.
The most common reasons people quit:
- Entering every transaction manually takes time and feels tedious
- Skip one week and the whole table becomes unreliable
- Add installments or loans and the formulas fall apart
- Using it on mobile is nowhere near as convenient as on desktop
When Is Excel Enough?
If you have a single account, no installment purchases, and you only want to see your monthly income-expense balance, Excel can work. A simple table with date, description, category, and amount columns will cover your needs.
But if any of these apply to you, Excel starts to fall short: multiple bank accounts, installment purchases, loan payments, recurring subscriptions, or more than one currency.
What Makes a Budget App Different?
The concrete difference between a budget app and Excel: when you add a transaction, your balance updates automatically. When you open an installment plan, future months are populated automatically. Reports come ready-made. You don't need to do any separate calculations.
In butce.app specifically: Turkish Lira and live TCMB exchange rates, credit card installment tracking (number of installments, remaining, monthly amount), a financial calendar, and budget limits all work from a single dashboard.
Tip
If you have installment purchases or loan payments, a budget app saves significant time. If simple income-expense tracking is enough, free Excel or Google Sheets works fine.
Most people who start a tracking system find that after the first few weeks, manually maintaining it becomes a draining chore. Once multiple accounts or installments enter the picture, switching to a tool that calculates automatically becomes the obvious next step.
Start Tracking Income and Expenses
Set up your accounts in butce.app, enter your transactions — balances, reports and the installment calendar generate automatically. All features free for 14 days.
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