Smart Budget's reports, rebuilt in glass you can turn
Every report in Smart Budget is new, and the useful part isn't the 3D. It's that a month on a chart now opens into the transactions behind it.
A report in a budgeting app has one job. It should answer a question you already have. Where did the money go? Did I save anything? Was this month worse than it felt?
The old reports in The Smart Budget gave you a picture and left you there. You could see that one month's bar was taller than the rest. You could not ask that bar why.
Version 2.1 replaces all of them. The release notes put it in one line: every report is new. That covers income against spending, savings, cash flow, and every category.
What actually changed
The reports are now drawn in 3D, in glass you can turn. That is the part that shows up in screenshots, and I'll come back to whether it earns its place.
Two other changes matter more if you use the app every day.
The first is that you can tap any month on a report and see the transactions behind it. The chart is no longer the end of the trail. If March's spending looks high, you tap March and you're looking at the purchases that made it high.
The second is Compare. It puts last year next to the current view. A single month is hard to judge alone. Next to the same month a year earlier, you can tell straight away whether a number is unusual or just December being December.
Why the tap matters more than the depth
A chart summarises things. Summaries are fine until one looks wrong, and then you want what's underneath.
Most of the rest of the app is built to get transactions in without you typing: bank texts and notifications captured through a Shortcuts automation, Apple Wallet transactions, receipt photos, statement imports. That means a lot of your spending arrives without you watching it arrive. A report that can't take you back to those entries asks you to trust totals you never looked at.
Tapping a month fixes that. A total you can open is easier to trust than one you can't.
It also changes how you use the reports. Before, you'd look at a report and then go hunting in the transaction list with the month and category in your head. Now the report does that step for you.
The 3D question
I'll be straight about the risk. A chart in glass that you can rotate could easily be decoration. A flat bar chart is easier to read than a tilted one. If the 3D got in the way of reading the numbers, it would be a step backwards.
The test I hold it to is simple: does it help you answer the question faster, or does it only look good? Turning a chart to look at income against spending from a different angle is useful when two series overlap. Spinning it for the sake of it isn't. You'll make up your own mind, and I'd like to hear about it if you think it gets in the way.
What I can say is that the depth isn't the whole release. If you never turn a single chart, you still get every report rebuilt, months you can tap open, and last year beside this one.
Where this sits in the last few releases
The 2.0 updates leading up to this one were quieter.
Version 2.0.1 added a Privacy section in Settings with two switches for the anonymous analytics that help me improve the app. Those analytics never include your transactions, amounts or merchants, and you can turn them off at any time. I wanted that written down where you can see it, not only in a policy.
Version 2.0.2 made the app ready for iPhone Duo. Open it and your budget fills the big screen, on the page you were on. Close it and carry on from the cover. The tabs move to the side, and long merchant and account names wrap onto two lines instead of being cut off.
Those were the fixes and groundwork. 2.1 is the first release in a while where the change is right there when you open the app.
What it means if you budget with the app
If you mostly live on the dashboard, with the Available to Spend card, the pace gauge and the category rings, nothing about your daily routine changes. Those stay where they were.
The change shows up when you step back and look at a stretch of time. That's when the reports come in, and that's where the app used to stop short. Now a report is somewhere you can start: see the shape of a year, notice the month that stands out, tap it, and find the transactions that made it.
That's the habit I'd suggest trying. Once a month, open the income against spending report, turn on Compare, and tap the one month that doesn't look like the others. You'll learn more from those few transactions than from the totals.
The update is on the App Store now.