One of the many little projects and tasks I worked on during my holiday today was finding a new application for tracking my expenses. This is an area in which I have long been in need of significant improvement, and now that I carry a BlackBerry my first thought (naturally) was to find an application that could run on it and sync data to my PCs.

I was underwhelmed by the offerings in both freeware and paid applications available for this task. Then I stumbled across the article 5 Must Have Email Addresses in your Blackberry on blackberryfreeware.com. First on the list was Xpen$er, billed as “an online expense and report application.” Curious, I read the TOS and then signed up for an account.

Wow, what an awesome solution to this nagging but important problem! The opening paragraphs of Xpen$or's FAQ page says it best in language I could really identify with:

We were fed up with how painful expense reports and tracking were. After many experiments we found a workable solution: record expenses as soon as they happen and forget about them.

Xpenser lets you do just that - record expenses via whatever means are available to you quickly and painlessly. Send them in via Email, SMS, Twitter, IM, or voice (call a number and say your expense). From your Blackberry, email "Lunch 78.50 with BigClient" and it's recorded. From your phone, SMS "exp groceries 27.13". From your computer, IM "Equipment 889.19 backup server". From your phone, call and say "taxi 39 office to airport". Use the Web interface to edit and finalize them or export them to your favorite financial management software. No more forgetting your cash expenses, no more half-day expense entry sessions.

If you track expenses or do expense reports, give it a try. We're pretty sure you'll like it. It's free and we'll never spam you.

In just a few minutes I was connected via two email accounts, Google Talk (two accounts there, too), Twitter, SMS and (as a bonus) a new Dial2Do account, plus had created three report categories for personal, household and work expenses… all of that, plus writing this review, required less time than it took to roast the Butternut Squash for tonight's dinner!

Xpen$er is integrated with OutRight, the free online bookkeeping system for small business. This combination appears to be a perfect fit, solving the perennial problem set of freelancers and entrepreneurs: how to manage the financial side of your small business on a shoestring (or non-existent!) budget. While I haven't setup an OutRight account and tried it out yet, I am interested to know if others have used this combo to power their own successful ventures. Leave me a comment below for public review, or if you prefer staying out of the limelight contact me directly.