Why spending abroad is hard to follow
At home you know roughly what things cost. Abroad, a coffee at 4.50 in a currency you do not use every day tells you little, and the totals add up quietly. Several things make it harder than usual:
- Several currencies. A trip across borders, or a booking paid in one currency and meals paid in another, mixes amounts that cannot simply be added together.
- The receipt is not what you pay. Your card is charged in your own currency at the rate your bank applies on the day it processes the payment, sometimes with a fee on top. The figure on your statement rarely matches a quick conversion of the receipt.
- Cash. Money you withdraw shows up on your statement as one lump sum, while you spend it in many small amounts that leave no record unless you keep one.
- The statement comes late. Card payments can take days to appear, so by the time you see them you have forgotten what half of them were.
A method that works
- Pick your home currency and use it for every total. You want to know what the trip costs in the money you earn, not in the local one.
- Log as you go. Record each expense the same day, or keep the receipts in one place and log them every evening. A few seconds per receipt is much easier than reconstructing a week from memory.
- Keep the original amount. Note the amount and currency printed on the receipt next to the converted figure. When something looks wrong later, the original is what you check against.
- Set a trip budget before you leave, in your home currency, and compare against it every few days rather than only at the end.
- Decide whether the trip counts in your monthly budget. A holiday can make an ordinary month look out of control. Many people prefer to keep trip spending apart, so their usual budgets still show their usual life.
- Reconcile with your card statement when you are back. Match the larger payments and look for any you do not recognise.
Expect small differences
Even with careful records, your converted amounts and your bank statement will rarely agree to the cent. The rate you used and the rate your bank used are taken at different times, and your bank may add a foreign transaction fee or a margin on the rate. Small gaps are normal. A large gap on one payment is worth a closer look: it may be a fee, a double charge, or a payment you did not make.
For cash, log the spending, not the withdrawal, or log the withdrawal once and treat the cash as spent. Either works; doing both counts the money twice.
Travelling with someone else
When you travel with a partner or friends, one person often pays for the hotel and another for the meals. Write down who paid each expense as you go. At the end, a short list of who owes whom is far easier than searching through receipts together. Our guide to splitting expenses with a partner covers the methods.
How SpendWe does it
The receipt scanner detects the currency printed on a receipt, such as $ or £, and converts the total into your app currency at today's rate. The original amount and currency stay on the expense, so the row reads, for example, "Paid 20.29 USD" next to the converted figure. Rates come from a free source that needs no account, are kept for 12 hours, and when you are offline SpendWe uses the last rates it saved. It is today's rate, not your bank's, so expect the small differences described above. The free plan includes one receipt scan a week; typing an expense by hand is always free.
For a whole trip, a plan has its own currency and conversion. You can switch on Exclude from monthly budget so its spending does not count in your monthly totals. If you travel with others, the plan has its own settle-up, and you can share a summary of the trip. Plans are part of SpendWe Pro, which is planned and not on sale yet; see pricing.
SpendWe supports 11 app currencies: euro, US dollar, pound sterling, Swiss franc, Canadian, Australian and New Zealand dollar, Moroccan dirham, UAE dirham, Japanese yen and Swedish krona.
