How to log an expense by text in Chirp.

Chirp is a voice-and-text budgeting iPhone app — say or type what you spent and it's categorized in seconds. Typing is not the fallback for when you can't talk. It is the same feature through a keyboard, and for a lot of people it is the main way they use the app.

Type the sentence, not a form.

1. Open Chirp and tap the plus button to open text entry.
2. Type it the way you would text a friend: "parking nine, lunch fourteen."
3. Chirp separates the sentence into entries: one card per purchase, each with an amount, a name, and a category.
4. With Auto-approve off in Settings, swipe right to approve or left to discard. Auto-approve is on by default and saves entries without waiting for a swipe.

There is no amount field, no category dropdown, no merchant lookup. Plain words in, reviewed entries out. Abbreviations and lowercase are fine; "coffee 4.50" and "coffee four fifty" land the same.

When typing is the better call.

The quiet train, the open office, the dinner table, the meeting that ran long: anywhere saying an amount out loud would be its own small embarrassment. A tracker that only works when you are alone is a tracker you abandon in week 2, which is why both paths get equal billing.

If you are coming from a spreadsheet, typed entry is the piece that replaces the part you actually liked, the deliberate act of writing it down. More on that in track spending without a spreadsheet, and the hands-free version is at how to log a voice expense.

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