Voice logging is the fastest way to track an expense. The whole interaction takes under five seconds — you speak, VoiceSpend parses it, and the transaction appears. No tapping through menus, no selecting categories, no typing amounts.
But the real power is in how much nuance the voice pipeline can handle. You don't need to stick to simple phrases. You can specify accounts, add notes, set dates, and even log income — all in one natural sentence.
Basic expense logging
The simplest form works exactly as you'd expect:
- "Spent twelve dollars on coffee"
- "Forty-five at the grocery store"
- "Bought lunch for twenty bucks"
VoiceSpend figures out the amount and category from context. "Coffee" maps to your café category. "Grocery store" maps to groceries. If a phrase is ambiguous, it picks the closest match and you can correct it with a tap.
You don't need to say "spent" — just the amount and what it was for works fine. The AI understands casual speech.
Adding dates
By default, transactions are dated today. If the expense happened earlier, just say when:
- "Spent fifty dollars on gas yesterday"
- "Forty-two at the pharmacy on Monday"
- "Dinner on Friday, eighty dollars"
- "Last week I spent ninety on office supplies"
Relative dates ("yesterday", "last Tuesday", "three days ago") all work. Specific dates ("May 3rd", "the 15th") work too.
Specifying accounts
If you have multiple accounts, you can tell VoiceSpend which one to use:
- "Spent sixty from my Chase account on groceries"
- "Put thirty on the Amex"
- "Cash, fifteen dollars for parking"
Account names are matched flexibly — you don't need the exact name. "Chase", "my checking", "the credit card" — VoiceSpend will figure out which account you mean based on what you've set up.
Logging income
Income works the same way:
- "Got paid three thousand dollars"
- "Received four hundred from freelance work"
- "Income, two fifty for the consultation"
Income transactions are categorized separately from expenses and appear in your monthly income total.
Transfers between accounts
Moving money between your own accounts:
- "Transferred five hundred to savings"
- "Moved a thousand from checking to my Amex"
- "Paid off credit card, three hundred from Chase"
Transfers don't count as income or expenses — they're recorded as movements between your accounts.
Adding notes
Notes attach extra context to a transaction:
- "Sixty dollars on dinner, note: client meeting"
- "Spent forty on supplies — this is for the Johnson project"
- "Eighty at the mechanic, oil change and inspection"
Anything after "note:" or a dash gets attached as a note to the transaction. You can search and filter by notes later.
Logging for a partner or split
If you're splitting expenses with a partner:
- "Spent two hundred on groceries, split with Alex"
- "Dinner was ninety total, my half is forty-five"
VoiceSpend logs your portion of the split and keeps the full amount in the notes for reference.
Querying your balances
You can ask questions, not just log transactions:
- "How much have I spent on dining this month?"
- "What's my Safe-to-Spend?"
- "Am I over budget on groceries?"
Query results appear as a card rather than a transaction — they're informational, not logged entries.
Tips for best accuracy
Speak the currency naturally. "Twenty bucks", "twenty dollars", "$20" — all work. Don't worry about formatting.
Category names are flexible. You don't need to match your exact category name. "Coffee shop" will find your café category. "Movie tickets" will find entertainment.
You can correct anything after. If VoiceSpend gets the category wrong, tap the transaction and change it. The AI learns from corrections over time.
Quiet environments help, but aren't required. VoiceSpend handles background noise reasonably well, but if you're somewhere very loud, holding the phone closer to your face improves accuracy significantly.
Review the parsed result before confirming. After you speak, VoiceSpend shows what it understood before saving. A quick glance takes one second and prevents bad entries from accumulating.