Category: Tips & Tricks

Track What You Lend and Borrow

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We all know friends and money don’t mix, but sometimes there’s simply no other way. When that happens, it’s important you keep good track of everything you lend or borrow so you can settle all the debts as soon as possible and keep the trust strong. Here’s how Toshl can help you with that.

Let’s say you go for a drink with your best buddy Joe. As always, you have a lot to talk about and the drinks keep coming. Everything’s just great until the gigantic bill arrives and Joe tells you he forgot his wallet – again. C’mon, Joe, seriously? You’re not getting away with it this time!

Fire up Toshl and add another expense for the amount you lent. Tag it with your friend’s name and a separate tag you name something like “lent”. Do this every time you lend money or pay for somebody. You can then see exactly who and how much they owe you if you go to Expenses, swipe left to see the tag view and check under “lent” tag. To see the list for a specific person check under tag with his or her name. Since Toshl also saves the date and location for each expense, you can easily refresh your friend’s memory when you remind him to pay you back. When he does, simply delete the expense.

Enter lent sumNoted everything you lent to Joe

Now how about if you’re the Joe in this scenario. Best advice: don’t be. But if you can’t help yourself Toshl can at least help you to remember what you owe so you don’t forget to pay it back.

The idea here is similar only this time you add another income. Tag it with your friend’s name and “borrowed”. To see everything you owe check under “borrowed” in the tag view of your incomes or look under a particular name for a more specific list. When you pay someone back simply delete the income.

Borrowing money from PeterPromise to pay him back soon

In future versions of Toshl, we plan to make this interaction even more elegant, but don’t use this as an excuse for not paying back what you owe right away. Money’s good to have, but friends are even better.

Written by Miha Mlakar

Posted in Debt, Tips & Tricks, Tutorials

Quick tip: Don’t squeeze that belt too hard, budget with ease

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Knowing where your money is going and keeping your finances in shape is what we want to help you with at Toshl. But that doesn’t mean you should tighten your belt so tight you can hardly breathe. If you’re in a financial crisis mode, sure, set that budget the lowest you can go and try to curb your spending. Most of the time though, we only want to leisurely monitor how much we spend and save a bit for the rainy days.

The best way to save then is to set up a general monthly budget by subtracting how much you want to save from your monthly incomes. Let me give you an example:

Monthly income 1500 €
I’d like to save 300 € each month
Monthly general budget 1200 €

Setting up the budget is easy

Visualizing your spending

This way you can monitor your spending, but you won’t feel under pressure with each purchase you make. Sum up your spending and if you’re near the end of your financial month, you can relax your spending habits a bit more.
We’ll be making this kind of budgeting and saving even easier to use soon, new version of Toshl is right around the corner.

Save only in areas that need saving

Naturally there can be some areas of your spending where you need to be more careful. While generally spending 1200 € can be fine, there’s one type of expenses that you need to be more careful with. Let’s say you overindulge by hiring waaay too many prostitutes. :P In that case, you might want to set up a budget for specific tags, namely for the tag prostitutes. Just set up a budget for specific tags (Toshl Pro only) and add the tag “prostitutes”, “horizontal entertainment” or whichever euphemism you use. Toshl will then guilt you into spending less for that exact purpose. You need to use some common sense though and not limit your budgets for safe sex and contraceptives. Ever.

Save for the specific tags you need to curb your spending on

*Toshl does not specifically oppose nor endorse prostitution. In case you don’t use or support prostitution, set up a budget of 1 cent. That way you can rest assured you won’t be using their services. ;)

Posted in Budgeting, Tips & Tricks, Tutorials

Travel with Toshl Finance – keep on top of your expenses in different currencies

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Traveling abroad is awesome. Broadens your horizons, gets you out if your normal routine and into new experiences. While a small nuisance in comparison to the benefits, tracking your money-flow can be much more difficult. The currency is different, so keeping track of how much you spend is more difficult because you have to do all these extra calculations in your mind. Here’s where Toshl Finance really shines.

Foreign currencies in Toshl Finance

When you’re adding an expense, simply tap the currency button next to the numeric keyboard. You’ll get a list of currencies you can switch to. For those that are on the list we’ll also suggest the daily exchange rate for that currency. If you want to add your own exchange rate, you’re welcome to do so.

Select the foreign currency on the numeric keyboardSelect the foreign currency on the numeric keyboard

Get an exchange rate automaticallyGet an exchange rate automatically

Toshl will remember the currency you chose until the next time you change it. That way you can easily enter all your expenses as you spend them in the foreign currency. Tap the added expense to see the details and you’ll see it in calculated in your home currency too.

Quick tip: with this you can also use Toshl as a quick currency calculator if you like.

The daily sums add up in your main currencyThe daily sums add up in your main currency

See the valute in your main currency on expense detailSee the value in your main currency on expense detail

All the daily sums and graphs use the numbers in your home currency so your figures always add up properly, no matter where you’ve been.

All your foreign expenses are converted and fit right in the graphsAll your foreign expenses are converted and fit right in the graphs

How are the currency exchange rates updated?

The currency list is refreshed with the new exchange rates for the day each time you sync. Of course you can also add any of the currencies which isn’t on the list, by choosing “Custom currency” from the list. In that case you’ll need to know the exchange rate yourself.

Here’s the list of 34 currencies that Toshl knows the daily exchange rates for. We’d like to support the rest too, but the European Central Banks provides the rates for those currencies, the rest have to be added manually. Getting the rates from different sources would be a bit too complicated for the time being.

  • Euro
  • US dollar
  • Japanese yen
  • Bulgarian lev
  • Czech koruna
  • Danish krone
  • Pound sterling
  • Hungarian forint
  • Lithuanian litas
  • Latvian lats
  • Polish zloty
  • New Romanian leu
  • Swedish krona
  • Swiss franc
  • Norwegian krone
  • Croatian kuna
  • Russian rouble
  • Turkish lira
  • Australian dollar
  • Brasilian real
  • Canadian dollar
  • Chinese yuan renminbi
  • Hong Kong dollar
  • Indonesian rupiah
  • Israeli shekel
  • Indian rupee
  • South Korean won
  • Mexican peso
  • Malaysian ringgit
  • New Zealand dollar
  • Philippine peso
  • Singapore dollar
  • Thai baht
  • South African rand

We hope Toshl will come handy wherever you travel to. Since it’s already being used in all kinds of places we have no doubt that the support for different currencies comes in handy many times. If you have some questions or ideas about currencies, we’d love to hear from you, international men and women of mystery. ;)

Posted in Tips & Tricks, Travel, Tutorials

Analyze your expenses with Toshl and relieve yourself of stress

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Not only is Toshl good for tracking expenses it’s also good for relieving stress. How? For example you can really take it out on your expenses and kick them around like an old bean bag.

If you’re a Toshl Pro you get this really nice visualization with balls. Representing expenses. Get your mind out of the gutter! The bigger the ball, the more you’ve spent on the tag written inside the ball. For more details on the size of your spending you can click on it and get some proper numbers.

But if you don’t feel like calculating too much and just want to release some of your righteous fury at the size of your expenses you can go ahead and do that.

Just follow this 3 step procedure:

  1. 1. Cry out that epic battle cry that you have been saving up all these years! ROOAAAAAR.
  2. 2. Drag and release the expense balls and watch them crash amongst each other just as your spending priorities crash inside you.
  3. 3. Now think of fluffy bunnies. Mmmmm.

Kick around those expenses, they're waiting for it!

With the frustration and anger out of the way go and rationally organize your expenses. Set up a budget and stick to it. With the calmness and inner peace of being finally organised: live a little!

Written by Matic Bitenc

Posted in Budgeting, Family finance, Tips & Tricks, Tutorials

How to make expense reports for specific tags you’re spending on

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You probably already know that you can export your expenses in Toshl. Users with free Toshl accounts can export to CSV (comma separated values) and Toshl Pro users get a lot more flexibility with export to CSV, Excel spreadsheets, Google Docs and PDF expenses reports. But did you know you can also export your expenses for a specific month or tag?

Expenses by month

  1. 1. Log in on toshl.com
  2. 2. Click export in the top bar
  3. 3. Select whether you want to export all your expenses or a specific month

    The month you can select in the export drop down depends on which month you currently have open in your expenses view. Just navigate to a different month and you can export expenses for that month in the export drop down.

  4. 4. Click on the desired format of export
  5. 5. You’re done. Much rejoicing!

Toshl Finance monthly expense report

Expenses by tag

  1. 1. Log in on toshl.com
  2. 2. Go to the Tags tab, click on the tag you want to export
  3. 3. Click export in the top bar
  4. 4. Select export expenses for the tag you chose before and click the desired export format
  5. 5. You’re done. Much rejoicing!

Toshl Finance specific tag report

Export expenses on your phone
You want to quickly export your expenses data while on the go? No problem, you can export them on your phone as well. The only difference is you don’t have the fine grained options for tags and months on your phone. You can only export the data for all tags and all time.
Go to the export section in the More tab (on iPhone) or export in the menu (pretty much all other platforms). Enter the e-mail you want to send the report to and the file formats you want to attach. Send, and you’re done.

Toshl Finance iPhone report

You own your data
We firmly believe that the data you gather and enter is your own. While the Toshl Pro users get a few more options in exporting, we will always support a way to get your data out for free so you can use it whichever way you want.

Posted in Tips & Tricks, Tutorials
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