“25,000…but what’s that in dollars?”

“How much did that taxi ride on Tuesday cost?”

“How is our team’s food budget? Can I afford to take them to that fancy restaurant?”

If you have led mission trips, then there’s a good chance you have asked questions like these while traveling. From an administrative standpoint, keeping track of finances during a trip is one the most difficult challenges leaders face.

Many missions organizations require their team leaders keep receipts for all financial transactions, or at least have some kind of contemporaneous record keeping. That’s easier said than done when dealing with multiple exchange rates and a team that seems to always be on the move.

As we continue our series on mobile phone apps for mission trips, we look today at apps for handling finances.

When it comes to tracking finances during a trip, iXpenselt is one of the best reviewed.  It tries to simplify daily expense tracking and budgeting. The app is designed for tracking a household’s monthly budget and expenses, but you could easily use it for tracking your next trip budget.

iXpenselt instantly indicates your budget vs. expenses. One nice feature is that it lets you take photos of your receipts, which can be exported along with various records. If you have ever tried to keep receipts organized while on a mission trip, then this feature alone is worth getting the app!

It includes a world currency list and a currency conversion utility. There is both a “light” version, that is free, and a full version which sells for $4.99 at the Apple app store.

Mobile Receipt, also $4.99, is another app that allows you to photograph and organize your receipts then turn them into expense reports. It supports more than 70 currencies.

One final expense tracking app to consider is TapExpense. Users will probably appreciate its simple, straightforward approach to tracking expenses. It also allows you to work with multiple currencies.

Two other financial apps to look at are Currency Exchange Rates Pro and Measures-Unit and Currency Converter. Currency Exchange Rates features 227 different currencies and the ability to automatically update exchange rates if you have Internet connection.

Measures-Unit and Currency Converter not only converts money but also speed, weight, area, length and more. It features a database of 1,000 units in 38 categories. It also has some neat design features, like the ability to change appearances.

Both of these apps are currently $.99 and are available for the iPhone and iPod touch.

Keeping track of finances on mission trips may always be a challenge, but hopefully with apps like these you will be able to spend less time on administration and more time on ministry.

We’ll continue our look at apps for mission trips in our next blog as we focus on journaling tools.

Stay tuned…there’s an app for that!

This entry was posted on Friday, February 12th, 2010 at 1:00 pm and is filed under Missions, Travel Tools. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.