How to log a voice expense in Chirp.

Chirp is a voice-and-text budgeting iPhone app — say or type what you spent and it's categorized in seconds. This page is the voice half: what to say, what comes back, and what your swipe does.

Say it like a person, not a form.

For the review flow below, first turn Auto-approve off in Settings. It is on by default.

1. Open Chirp and tap the mic.
2. Say what you spent, the way you would tell a friend: "burrito twelve."
3. Chirp separates the sentence into an entry with an amount, a name, and a category, and shows it as a card.
4. Swipe right to keep it, left to toss it. Done.

You did not say "dollars" and you did not pick a category. You do not need to. "Twelve" reads as $12 because you are talking about a burrito; the category is chosen for you and takes one tap to change on the card before it lands.

The card waits for you.

With auto-approve off, each parsed entry waits for your swipe. If the amount came back wrong, fix it on the card, or toss it and say the sentence again, which is usually faster. The full capture-and-check flow is laid out on the features page.

Where this goes next.

• Hands free but more than one purchase to log? See how to log five expenses at once.
• On a train, in a meeting, not saying "Target sixty-two" out loud? Type it instead (same parser, same cards): how to log an expense by text.

Get Chirp for iPhone. 7 days free, then $9.99/month or $89.99/year. It renews through Apple unless you cancel.