Shanghai Fengge Information Technology
reviews and complaints

I love this app! It enables me to organize both my checking accounts, saving account, PayPal, credit card account, and cash (and more, but that's all I use)! I started using it over a year ago and the more I use it the more thankful I am that I'm using it. Something this app does that another good app (called Mint) does NOT do is create your own categories to put transactions into your budget. This is extremely helpful and is the main reason I stopped using mint entirely and came back to pocket Expense 5. One suggestion that I think would be a great addition to the app is some efficient way of keeping track of what checks I've written so I know how much to keep in my checking account. That would be a useful in-app capability. But great work, keep it up and thanks again! 5Stars!

I think the app is a great tool to manage all my expenses. I use it to track everything from investment accounts to checking and savings, auto loans, etc. The only concern I have is when I make a payment from my checking to my auto loan, no issues until I go to reconcile. If I am reconciling my truck loan and mark off the payment from checking, when I go to reconcile my checking account, the transfer is already marked complete. A little confusing when trying to balance. My work around is NOT to mark reconciled on any transactions from checking until I balance my checking book. I also am not a fan of the color scheme and would like options there. The light blue balance within each transaction is very difficult for me to see. Black would be perfect. How about color schemes?

UPDATE ***
It's been over 3 months and still no updates or response from developer. I have deleted all other apps that I had from this developer as I no longer trust or wish to support them in any way. I've found another money app that works for me, but I really want my money back from this one!

I have been a Pro user for some time and have found it very helpful.

However, now I can't get to my data without creating an account. I do not want to create an account and should not have to do so as I have no interest in syncing between devices.

I would have tried to contact the developers to resolve this, but I can't log in to get to the support area, and the website link through the App Store is broken.

Please provide a way for users to access their information without creating an account.

I have been using this app for 4 years..yes 4 years and Ive gone through a number of bugs. Mainly upgrading and restoring data, which is a pain in the a. Recently, I upgraded my phone and felt like "what the heck, I'll update the app too." BIG MISTAKE. After backing up data and trying to restore it the APP JUST CRASHES. For a little while I was still able to view my old data from my old phone but now that crashes too. The app SUPPORT IS HORRIBLE. Ive contacted them at least 3 times about this or any other bugs that I found but no response. Im going to request a refund and ask Apple to remove this app from the store as its defective and doesnt function as advertised.

It is has a lot of potential..but take it from someone who has been religiously using this app for 4 years...STAY AWAY! Youve been warned

I just purchased this app and it has so many problems. I set up a 2 week salary deposit and it only runs it for two months then stops. If you go back to "repeat", it says "never" constantly. If you change it to every two weeks, it duplicates the transaction. Then you go back in and it still says never even though it's every two weeks, but only for 1.5 months. I set my mortgage for monthly and it only repeated for 1 month. Then I would have to reenter that transaction for every other month, lame! This company made an older version of this app and it was far worse and they never fixed it. They just made a new one. That's what they do, right now they are making another that looks pretty, but has so many problems and they will never fix those problems, just make another app that looks attractive. That's quick money over short times repeated. Never buy from this company!

I have written to the developers of this app several times to no avail. I cannot access the backup and restore web server address on my laptop, no matter which browser I'm using. I've made sure to type the server address in exactly as it is stated in the backup and restore screen, but nothing works. I (accidentally) bought and downloaded Expense 5 immediately after upgrading Expense Notes to Expense Pro. Are these not the same app? I couldn't cancel my purchase, the developers never answered my plea for help and pity, and now I cannot backup any of my data, which is why I upgraded in the first place. I've also tried to sync my data with Dropbox, but when I open the Dropbox "app" folder, it shows that it is empty. The Appxy website's FAQ section is totally lacking in troubleshooting, and the developers do not value their customers' time or concerns. Terribly disappointed in this company and app.

Categories are customizable, user interface is beautiful, and the app is very easy to use. I would like to see some customization of views and the checking account view to look a little bit more like a register. The default view displays transactions by either day week or month, depending on what you choose. You have to take a little bit deeper if you want to see an account to view. The checking account view does allow you to see a list of transactions, and you can mark them as cleared, but the checking account balance doesn't show on that screen nor does it show a balance after each transaction.
The developer's details didn't indicate this, but this app does handle split transactions, which is a definite plus. While not important to all users, the icons are very nice—clean simple, and colorful. Dare I say they're cute :-)

Overall, I think it's a great app, and I hope that the developers will continue to bring updates.

I use the original Pocket Expense app and thought maybe the 5 was an improvement on the old one or that they fixed they at least fixed some of the bugs from the original, but it seems like all they did was make it prettier and simplified it. They did add the ability to export into a csv file, but they took some of the features on the original app away. For example, you can no longer enable rollover and you don't see the total remaining for the bills for month. Also, I feel it became more difficult to navigate between months. There were some minor improvements, but many of the original features were better. At this point, I'd buy the old app over the new app even though the old app had bugs. The new app also has bugs with repeating bills. I'd like to see an improvement on this app because the old app has not been updated since November . In the meantime, I would still use the old app unless you like something very simple. Also, Home Budget used to be somewhat simple but they added more customization and it is much better than Pocket Expense 5 as it is now.

Update:
I found unfinished features as I used this program, so I kept looking for a better app. Search "account tracker" to see why I switched.

Original Review:
I have tried many budgeting apps. I think this is the best of them all. I have 10 accounts including credit cards, checking accounts, home mortgage, savings accounts, investment accounts, and others. The best feature of all is that it is easy to make entries. The program automatically fills in categories when you select the payee. All you have to do is enter the new amount. Recurring entries are simple - you don't have to decide ahead of time if they are recurring or not. If the amount changes just enter the new amount. I see no reason to use a billing screen since I just want to make entries as payments are made or income is received. You can sync the program and get all the updated values on a different device. I hope the developers continue to improve this program but as it is I am happy. One thing missing is a manual of any kind. But the app is quite easy to use so a manual is not totally necessary.

This app just doesn't improve and the developer has missed on so many crucial details.

1) you can't accurately track your account balances by cleared/uncleared amounts. It shows you uncleared amounts, but gets it all wrong. For instance, you have two uncleared transactions - a debit for $200 and a credit for $200. Anyone can plainly see that your uncleared balance is $0. This app tells you your uncleared balance is $400. It adds the two $200 line items even though they counter balance one another.

2) how are you supposed to know how much you've spent in a certain category if there's no way to credit a category upon making a return? You can't simply offer a category called, "Refunds." You need to allow the user the ability to apply refunds towards the original category or you don't get a true sense of what you've actually spent in your categories.

3) no designated field for check numbers. Sure you can type the check number in the memo field, but this isn't the ideal spot for that. For starters, it gets mixed in with true memo field data. Second, most finance apps that offer a check number field offer the ability to apply the "next check" number automatically.

4) lack of support big time.

I could go on and on, but why bother. I sound like a broken record.

1. The backup does not work AT ALL. The link fails.

2. It uses a ton of space because it stores image full size and there is no way around it. No iCloud backup option.

3. There is ABSOLUTELY NO TECH SUPPORT.

4. Your version can become incompatible and you lose all your data.

I've been using pocket expense for years. I bought a new iPhone specifically so that I could continue using my financial app seamlessly. It turns out I cannot. The old version no longer exist, so it did not load automatically. I ended up paying for the new version (even though it said I would not have to pay for it), but it isn't letting me backup the data from the old version. It also says to not load backup from older versions into the new version. To make matters worse over the course of 11 months it has used 25 GB of data and there is no way around it. The backup is totally broken. I cannot use iCloud as a storage solution for this app. And the APP DEVELOPER NEVER RESPONDS to issues. If you have the option, don't get yourself stuck in the muck with using this app. YOU WILL LOSE MUCH MORE THAN YOUR PURCHASE PRICE. I have to hire someone to extract the data manually and enter it into another app or buy a new iPhone, which I totally was going to do except I really don't want the new iPhone.

I've used it for two years and I'm planning to ditch this app this week. The app is good, easy to use, very intuitive, but looks aren't everything... Here is a short list of problems with the app:
1. If you have a recurring debt that you want to delete (let's say you used to have Netflix but you canceled it, or if you just finished paying your car loan), the same ghost transaction will still appear every month. You can delete it, you can say that you want to delete future transactions, it will still show up every freakin' month.
2. Your account total will sometimes appear negative. No reason, it just shows up as negative. Once, I got so paranoid that I downloaded all transactions, from the beginning, and calculated them on a spreadsheet, just to make sure that I wasn't going crazy... So, even if you religiously add every single transaction you make, you might have the wrong total.
3. If you have more than one device, syncing will happen, bit it takes patience. It is not as reliable as I expected. My wife adds a purchase, I sometimes see it right away, and sometimes, it take a day. Just be aware of that.
4. They need to make a better way to add a Credit Card, but this is not an issue, it is just my pickiness.
So, the app is good. I didn't like the fact that they stopped supporting DropBox and changed it to their Appxy. They see and know everything you do...

I have used this app to track my expenses for the last three years and was very satisfied. However, in mid-December I was suddenly forced to log in, even though I never log out of this app. I noticed when I viewed an expense report (my favorite feature), that the numbers were off. I soon realized that the app had been updated, with two categories altered. The "Dining" category had been changed to "Eating out," however, none of my previous entries had been carried over! The IRA Contribution category had been eliminated completely. This meant that all of the numbers on my reports were inaccurate! In looking more carefully I noticed that the entries themselves were still there, but had been categorized as "null." I wrote to support, but never received a reply. I therefore decided to painstakingly go through the calendar day by day to reclassify these entries. This was extremely labor intensive. Finally, I finished going back through 2014. When I viewed an annual report for that year I noticed that now ALL of my date from the first half of 2014 was completely gone! Fortunately, I have hard copies of those reports, but the great convenience was that I had all of that information at my fingertips and could very quickly look back and make monthly or even yearly comparisons. This was a great disappointment, but when I started reading reviews, I realized that I didn't have it nearly as bad as others who had lost ALL of their information! Why isn't tech support responding or working to correct this problem?! Have they abandoned this app? If so, then why the recent update that caused all the problems to begin with?! Very FRUSTATING!

I had the old version of pocket expense and just upgraded to the paid version today. Why? This new version is horrible and I'm wondering why there are so many raves about this app. Okay, let's get into it...

1. When you add a transaction, the account balance does NOT refresh. You have to back out of the screen then back into the screen for the refresh to occur. This is outright BAD!

2. When you view bills, you can no longer see your entire bill totals that are due for a particular month. Huh!? It only shows you 5 and 25 days out. This is BAD!

3. When you click the description area at the bottom of a bill for instance, the keyboard appears and completely covers up the display area. You have to type blindly and hope you got it right.

4. If you have a recurring paycheck like most W2 employees have, there's no where that shows you the upcoming date of your next paycheck despite having repeat on the previous check entry. The old version - which is a million times better than this new btw - had this feature viewable in the bills section. You could quickly differentiate between bills and income by color.

5. If you select thumbprint as the security mechanism and click "cancel" when prompted for thumbprint, it does NOT give you the option to use your numeric code to use like OTHER APPS DO BY DEFAULT. This app just sits there after you click cancel. You can't use your print nor enter the security code in manually. You have to close the app and try again. Forbid you injure your thumb and can't use it to authenticate. You're pretty much SCREWED from gaining access.

6. The bills section does not show you recurring information nor does it allow you to change it. You just see the bill but have no idea if it's monthly, quarterly, etc.

These are just a few problems I spotted and I JUST installed it minutes ago. Buyer beware! The old version is better than this garbage. They've devolved this into a piece of .

*** BUYER BEWARE

UPDATE 3/12:
After having deleted the app due to the issues noted below, I decided to give it a shot again. The app still has some kind of major bug in the way it performs the math. I just now recorded adding double the amounts of four separate transactions after marking them as cleared. Additionally, after double verifying that all transactions had been accounted for since I'd started using the app again, the app was short on the balance by almost 76 bucks. I've emailed the developer once again, and hopefully will get a response this time. If not I am submitting the evidence I've gathered to Apple and requesting a refund. What good is a finance app that can't even add correctly?

ORIGINAL REVIEW:
I have been using this app for a couple of weeks now, and a couple of issues have caught my attention:

1) The app is incapable of keeping an accurate running balance.
I balance my register on nearly a daily basis, and I've noticed two specific problems out of what appears to be a handful. One, I have had to duplicate transactions on several occasions (in only two weeks) to ensure that the running balance was accurate. Even after balancing and ensuring that all transactions were already entered, it isn't uncommon for the app to display a running balance that is higher or lower than what it should be by exact transaction amounts as if it ignored or duplicated that/those transaction(s) on its own.

2) The budget tracker doesn't work correctly
This is a bit of a weird one: The budget tracker has an odd bug where tapping the back button to view the previous month's budget, it will display one set of amounts for spent and remaining for that month. Upon returning to the current month, then tapping the back button again, the tracker will skip the previous month. I have to press the forward button to get to the previous month. This is compounded by the fact that the amounts spent and remaining also change after the initial viewing. Leaving the tracker and then going back to it resets the amounts to the originals but the performing the same steps reproduces the behavior every time.

3) I often receive an error stating that I must enter an amount when saving transactions while there is already an amount entered.

These are only three of the things that stick out in my mind. I do not believe I can trust this app to keep accurate records, specifically with doing the math which kind of defeats the purpose. I have already emailed the developer at least twice using the feedback system in the app and have received no response.

This app has a wonderful visual design, but it can not accurately perform the functions it is supposed to. Don't waste your money.

I've used this app for the past year to sync through Dropbox between my phone and my wife's. With the latest update they took away Dropbox sync and FORCED me to create an account with their chosen syncing service. I HAD to do this before I could access any of my data! Not only that, but the syncing service isn't reliable! It is set up correctly on both phones, but half the time my wife's entries to NOT sync to my phone. Not cool. I guess I'll have to look for another app. So frustrating.

I have a free version from long time ago. It worked perfectly fine. Just bought the new version several days ago. The new version looks way better and has more helpful functions. But after I transferred anything to the new version I can not add new transactions. I shows fine after I click the save button. Back if I close the app and open again it is gone. I can not do any thing with it now... And the real amount under the last transaction is correct but the account amount does not show it right...

I try to keep track of my credit card activity through this app by listing down my purchases/expenses, which I loved because I didn't have to add my credit card or account number (which I found shady in other apps). So I had hope, until I realized that some transactions I listed would mysteriously disappear or the total amount wouldn't add up to my credit card. It's really embarrassing to complain to my professional bank that they must be mistaken, when in proof they are not wrong... This APP is always wrong.

I haven't lost any data like other reviews I've read, but when editing a bill it won't let me change the due date ( which yes, sometimes changes) I have to delete the bill and add it back. of the register. And why can't I look at future months bills, and what I already paid this month? I also miss the full page view, don't like that I can only see what is 30 days out. Making the left column smaller shouldn't be too difficult.i've used this app for over a year now and love it, at least the old version of it.

The app has good features ... we’ve been tracking our expenses in it for 7 months now.

HOWEVER, after experiencing a technical issue that prevented me from getting to all my data, I contacted support with an URGENT request for help. And after repeated requests for help I have received no response!

So I paid for an app that is holding my important data hostage and I can’t get anyone from the developer to provide any assistance.

Advise you to choose an app that has some kind of support. We are really in a bind now!

Used on iPad mini and iPhone 6. Pretty and useful design, but has produced significant glitches. Altered a recent check entry from one time only to twice monthly and back dated the entries five years before the program was purchased. Spontaneously doubled entries for an entire month. Does not allow block deletions which makes cleaning this stuff up very time consuming, especially since the entry delete button is so tiny and very close to other functions.
Sync between devices is intermittent. No response from feedback people after two tries.

I have had this app since 2013, first free then the paid version. It performed very well until a recent update. Since then I am not able to delete duplicate or mistake transactions or bills, making the totals inaccurate. In an earlier version I could see ALL recent transactions, regardless of account; now I can only see transactions from one account at a time. I have emailed the support team several times with these concerns and have had no response. If they would correct these changes, I would stay - but I'm ready to look for a new finance tracking app.

I purchased this app to keep track of when bills are due. First let me say I do like the look and feel of the app. However, when adding repeating bills (mostly biweekly, weekly, etc.) though it saves and shows for the current month, it does not appear in subsequent months. For example, adding a biweekly bill in October only shows on the calendar in October and no months after that. It does appear to show up on the list view - but I can't see beyond Octobers bills. As I prefer the calendar view this is kind of disappointing. Perhaps an update for iOS 8 would fix this then I could give it more stars!

I've been using this app religiously for about year and a half. I love so many features about it. Once you learn to use it there's a lot of control and customizing that can be done. However this last update 5.7 has erased all my data I've been collecting. I created a backup before the lost and guess what? The back up method doesn't work it says it completed but the app will not open unless uninstalled and reinstalled which then just dumps all the data into a half baked mess from several accounts into one. I've tried to use Mint but I just don't like it. This has been good but it has totally betrayed me and lost my trust now.

I just updated this app. I have had it for well over two years and it served me well. However today after doing the recent update I was told I would have to sign in again. Since the last time I signed in was over two years ago and I refuse to use Facebook I would have to go through the whole process of signing in again and choosing to add one more to my over 100 passwords for all the places I go to on the web. This app is not worth it. There are other apps in the App Store. I would strongly urge you to find one that every time it updates does not demand that you try to find out what you did over two years ago.highly disappointed with this app.

I was very happy with the layout of the app when I downloaded the free version, but since there are so many ads (and also because I liked the app), I decided to get the paid version.
The first time I bought it, the app wouldn't download and I had to ask apple for my money back. Eventually the ads got to me and I decided to try again. This time the app downloaded, but when I tried to carry over my history from the free app, it was like hitting a brick wall. The developer site is so out of date that it is completely useless, if it was ever helpful in the first place. Support is equally useless. Since I can't access my history, I'm just hoping to get my money back so that I can spend my money on an app from a developer that actually supports its product.

Nice app with crispy graphics but missing some key features like backup and restore.
After upgrading to v6.0 there were some problems with the data but some how I fixed it as I used to keep all the account in excel (Laptop). Also chart view was much more understandable in previous version than this. If you have not updated it’s good stick to the old version as in functionality older version is much better than this v6.0
Suggestions to developers:
1. Add backup and restore option.
2. Understandable Char views.
*After updating to v6.0.1
Finally backup & restore option added but still useless as app crashes out immediately as soon as you restore the data. I have a backup file but can’t restore as I said it crashes out immediately.
Waiting for update to fix a CrAsH!

New update crashes. App closes by itself. Fix it !

I’ve been using this app for years. I logged out because of the new update and designed. All my accounts disappeared.