iAllowance (Chores Allowances)
reviews and complaints

Set this up 3 days ago. My 5 yr old, got dressed, brushed her teeth, made her bed, read a book and was able to mark her chart...all before the bus came! This from a child with ADHD that I battle with every morning to get dressed!
I love the fact that the chart is always with us, so I can put stars in for good behavior as well as sad faces for bad behavior as it occurs, I don't have to wait until we get home and then remember to mark the chart. The kids see immediately the cause & effect of their actions.

I only use stars toward rewards right now as kids are 5 & 7, but as they get older I'm sure that will change.

Parent controls are great. It lets the kids be responsible for tracking their tasks but I ultimately approve. (7 yr old put in that he brushed teeth, but he didn't.) I also put in a "chore" that deducts 1 star for intentionally putting in stars on tasks that are not done. Obviously if he cleaned his toys up, but maybe not up to my standards he wouldn't get the points deducted.

Like that you can adjust how many points to attach to stars for each chore. (Getting dressed earns more stars for 1 child than it does for the other due their degree of ADHD.)

I'm hoping the excitement of earning their rewards continue!

I was shopping around for a reward chart type app for my family. I looked at almost all of them and went with iAllowance. I tried the lite version and liked it a lot. Before I spent my hard earned cash on the app I e-mailed the developer to ask a few questions and they responded very quickly. That was one of the biggest factors for me to buy their app. I emailed one of the other reward app developers and still have not gotten a response. Customer service for iAllowance is amazing!.

Now for the app review. We have been having a hard time motivating our kids to do some simple chores around the house. They are both a fan of making money, but we needed a way to make what they do recognized. That is where iAllowance comes in. We set up some basic chores for them and installed iAllowance on each of their iPod Touches and on the family iPad. They love opening the app and checking off what they have done. They come running to us to have us approve the stars so they can see the tally going up. Each chore has a specific star payout and when they get enough stars they get $$$. We also put in negative start items, like misbehaving or whining.

All we need to do now is even mention loosing stars and they stop doing whatever the bad behavior was.

Over all this is an AWESOME app and I am glad we went ahead and bought it.

I love this app. Truly, it's one of the best I have and I'm not overstating that. Great interface for kids and it meets all my needs as an adult with keeping track of chores, allowance. I have a severely dyslexic child so this app came highly rated in those circles. It has great functionality and lots of options. Btw, I've never ever seen a support area like this app has. Videos, PDFs, faqs. It's amazing and I used it. This was obviously created by someone who really cares about the product and about making it user friendly. Also,i started with the LT version but quickly upgraded. A huge bonus with the upgraded app is that it syncs among devices and I can link it through Dropbox. And that is how the world should work! I always think long and hard before purchasing an app over $1.99 but this is a no brainer. Also, I emailed the developer with a question on a Friday night and he responded quickly. I was amazed and very appreciative. (Btw, my issue was due to operator error--as seemingly most tech questions are--and not due to anything lacking form the info posted or the app. I take full responsibility!) Last, I rely on reviews from users and read thorough them extensively. Thanks everyone for posting reviewer cause they were so helpful to me and spot on. I'm digging this app. More importantly, my kids are, too.

This app made a huge difference for us in helping our kids manage money. We were hesitant to give up the "cash in jelly jars" approach because we wanted our kids to have a physical understanding of receiving and spending money. But that became impractical and we were always forgetting to give it to them, or didn't have the right cash on us, etc. Now we can just go and open the app, and show the amounts visually to them, in their various Banks (Save, Save or Spend, Charity). No more cash! We give them our own money when they need it, or just use our card if we are shopping, because all we have to do is check the app on our phones or iPad to see what amount they have. We also use it to transfer amounts between banks, for example we have a rule where if they transfer any amount from "Save or Spend" into "Save" we match it with 50% of that amount, to encourage saving. All of this is visually laid out for them in the app and so easy to use. I had a lot of questions about linking my devices, so my wife and I could both have the app on our phones plus our iPad, and it would always be updated automatically on all three devices. I sent an email to the developer and heard back right away, in fact I sent several emails with questions and he answered every one, no problem. Never expected such great customer service. Highly recommend this app!

I am so excited to start using this app. I have set up accounts and daily chores for my 4 boys. Very flexible in being able to assign stars, money or time for allowance or payment for each chore. Kids can check off when they complete a chore (check mark is yellow), then I can verify that chores were done properly and change check marks to green. Make sure to use a parental lock so kids don't accidentally change things or check off chores. Easy to set up repeating events or one time transactions.

Customer support was great - got back to me right away when I couldn't figure out how to print a chore list.

My next step is to set up weekly/monthly chores, maybe will even use it for my own personal chores! Takes a little while to set up everything, but easy to copy from one child to another (accounts, chores and rewards can all be copied).

Allowances can be divided any way you want, and set up to recur at any interval. I have a weekly allowance for each child divided in to spending, saving, church, clothing and originally had one for "screen time" (TV, computer, video game, etc.). Great for keeping track or money like when we are at the store and someone wants to get something. I can look up to see if they have enough. Also, good way for the older kids to budget their clothing money.

I have used Dropbox to backup, but not to sync since I am the only one with an iPad in our home.

I definitely recommend this app!

This app is good, but could use some easy modifications.

Pros - allows a check off system for chores with monetary or other rewards.
If my kids do their chore, they get that portion of their allowance that day. And it can be divided into financial categories virtually - so portions are automatically divided into savings, charity, spend, etc. No more keeping track of all this for mom and dad. Then I can transfer the correct amounts into bank accounts or payout whenever I am ready. Another pro - each kid has their check list on their phone or iPod and can check it and their balances whenever they want.

Cons - We use this app for our middle school age kids. But it has a really “babyish” look. The toy rocket and cartoon pig are embarrassing for them. The technical side is good, but they don’t want their friends to see it. Another con, The kids can access their siblings accounts and all the settings on their own devices. So if you have kids pushing the edge of trust, this wouldn’t work. They could theoretically uncheck siblings work or change settings/ amounts, etc. There are parental controls, but they go too far in the other direction - making each check-off of chore be parent approved prior to the $$ being accounted for.

It would be great if this could have a older modification for tweens & teens (style wise) and also if it could have a parent version and kid versions (parents can access settings and all kids - kids cannot access).

I LOVE this app! I am a busy mom of five kids and they all help a lot around the house. I would always feel badly when I could't remember who did what or would forget to pay them or forget to get cash at the bank. And I was forever making spreadsheets to organize chores etc. This solved all of my problems. Now everyone knows exactly what to do when and it is much more fun to do it when you get to mark it off on a new iPad! The money they earn for chores is automatically divided between tithe, spending, savings etc. so we don't have all those little envelopes to keep track of. And we made some of their chores, music practice etc go toward earning stars which they can spend on screen time (iPad, computer games or watching a movie) which keeps that from getting out of control.

I can't say thank you enough. And the only request I had came out in the latest update before I even got around to requesting it! I have purchased hundreds of apps in the month or so since we got our iPad and this is by far one of the most helpful and easy to use and least frustrating because it does everything that I need it to do exactly the way I would have designed it. Worth every penny!

Note regarding the comments about crashes. It does sometimes crash on opening but not very often in the middle of using it and it never lost any of my info. And I noticed that was one of the things they worked on in the last update. Didn't seem like a big deal to me since I was so thrilled with all the rest of it.

No doubt about it, this app has literally changed my life. There is no more screaming in my house. I have set up a complex (in the setup) but simple (as in how it works for the kids) way of managing allowance, paychecks (what they earn), and stars (which get cashed in for rewards, mostly electronic privileges).
It's simple. This app works.
In addition, the developer of the app works his butt off in his spare time, to fix bugs, improve operation, and make new developments, often from the suggestions, of parents. I know this for a fact, as I have made a few suggestions myself.
This app is being used in my household for a four year old girl who is learning how to effectively do her chores and earn rewards, an 11 year old boy (with autism), and a 12 year old boy with a big attitude and a low effort rate.
It even got used at one point to show my husband how valuable the "mom and wife" work I do around his is, in monetary terms. Lol. I got some desired results from that ladies!
In closing, take some time with this app, go through the tutorials, the more familiar you become with it, the better it works. It's a snap to setup in the first place, but more use lends itself to a finer application of this product. I have been using it for several months now. Even the kids love it, as they get reports in their email with details of thier earnings, and there is no more forgetting or arbitrary assignments of money and rewards from me.
When there is an issue in the home, we just say "that's a demerit!" and move on.

LOVE THIS APP! Simple enough to use with my 5 year old (chores = iPad time) and yet will deal with my teen daughter's jobs and spending habits (chores = money). I hate the " I want..." every time I go to the store. Now I show them their bank balances and rewards screen right in the store so they can make their own decisions.

The kids can also earn stars to accumulate for a treat or toy. I also like that the app will work with deductions for bad attitudes, being asked twice, sloppiness, etc.

I love that you can add special deposits - such as babysitting birthday money. You can assign it to one bank or have it divided by percentages to any number of banks. Spontaneous purchases (withdrawals) can be input as needed, and also divided between banks.

My older ones like that you can see a visual of the money the have saved for bigger items in the rewards screen. It lets them know just how much they have left to go - awesome motivation for them and I get a cleaner house! WIN - WIN!

I use the chores for my little guy. But the three older ones are on a first come first serve basis for chores. Whoever wants the money the most does the work. Suggested it to the developer, who replied within 12 hours!

It took me about one hour to set up 4 kids with their starting bank balances, a few rewards, and a few chores. READ THE TUTORIALS! WATCH THE VIDEOS! It will go smoother!

I look forward to seeing what he comes up with next! I will be sharing this with my friends and family!

Sorry for the length, but it really is an AWESOME app!

My wife and I are house parents at a children's home to five to ten boys at a time in a residential style setting. Our boys' area consists of 6 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms, living room, dining room, kitchen, laundry room, entry area and halls. With all the house chores, outside common chores, and domestic animals and farm animals to take care of there are plenty of chores to go around and keep up with. Many opportunities to teach responsibility, accountability, team work, and individual excellence and a great work ethic are afforded. Someone once said, "The way to get children to achieve is to set expectations high and inspect what you expect." iAllowance is a great instrument in one's toolbox to accomplish this. Its flexibility regarding incentives, rewards, penalties, ability to keep track of allowances, and adapt to different monetary systems shows a well thought out program by those who must have had experience with children. In the hands of a creative parent there are no limits to the positive values and character traits I believe can be taught and practiced through the use of iAllowance. I have been a teacher for 25 years prior to this position. This would have been a great help in motivating my students. Though I have not had this app long I see many ways for it to help in what we do. Can I invest in this company? They're going places, if this is typical of their other software. 5 stars and more if I could give it. I don't often write reviews, but this app excites me! Can you tell? Get it now before the price goes up, because its worth every cent and far more.

Overall, this app is motivating for the kids and a gift for parents. No more nagging...now my kids truly understand that they alone have the power to earn an allowance and extra money. I've shared this app with everyone in my path...including the receptionist at a dentist's office. :-)

The developer is very responsive and receptive to suggestions, so don't be passive: send an email!

How I use it:
I don't pay allowances; my kids have to earn everything. But I also haven't been good about enforcing chores on a consistent basis. When the kids do earn money, I often don't have the cash on hand to pay them. iAllowance solves all of these problems. (OK, it doesn't create cash, but it tracks it!)

In iAllowance, I've set up monetary chores that splits earnings between spending, saving and tithing. To encourage savings, interest earnings are deposited to their short-term savings bank on a monthly basis. A very generous interest rate is set up to pay into long-term savings once a year.

I've set up a points (stars) bank for the majority of chores, and those points can go toward a reward or they can be cashed out by transferring them to their bank as a monetary value. The rewards are visual; the kids can see how close they are to earning a reward.

I also wanted to limit screen time (tv, computer, iPods, etc.) for my kids and encourage non-screen activities. With this app, I set up a time bank to provide a daily allowance of screen time, and the kids can earn additional screen time by doing other activities, such as reading, studying, or playing outside.

This app is very flexible, and my kids love the Ka-Ching! sound when they check off a chore.

I was a bit skeptical at first that one app could do everything I wanted. It's fantastic! My kids (son 15 and daughter 11) love it and I've already seen more focus from them regarding their chores. I have the "master" on my phone - My account has a password which puts me in control. The kids both have the app on their phone. The kids can mark things off but I have to approve that they are truly complete (I like that).

I have been very absent minded with paying allowance. My kids love that the app keeps a running total of what I owe them and don't have to hand them cash each week. I also love that I can make an entry to deduct money when I give them cash or buy them something. It's like their checking account or debit card.

It's great that I can create chores and they earn money or points, depending on my preference. I decided to set up my kids accounts to automatically pay them $10 each week for allowance. Then if they complete the chores, they get extra stars (I call them points) towards going out for ice cream. They LOVE it. Not only are the chores done, they are now wanting to add more things to their list and are negotiating they number of points I've assigned for various tasks.

Two things on my wish list. 1) Reminders. My son is responsible for taking the trash to the street on Thursday nights. I'd love to be able to set a reminder and him get an alert on his phone. 2) Icons. My kids are older and would like to see more "mature" looking icons and an option for Points (along with $, stars, and time).

Customer service is AMAZING. Very responsive. I've had two questions. One was because I didn't understand something and the other was a how two. Both were solved in short order!

After several years of losing track of what I owe my kids, and them losing track of what they have, I was so relieved to find this app. We used to give cash allowance every Sunday. By Monday I would forget who had been paid what and the kids would be hitting me up for their allowance. I'm pretty sure they ended up on the winning end of that era.

A friend of mine also advised me against letting kids have cash as they enter their teen years, lest they use it for illicit or undesired purchases like cookies or cocaine, and I have found that this app really helps meet that future need as well.

Another great use is to buy their gift cards off of them if they're for a place I usually shop at or where I buy birthday gifts for their friends (or re-gift). Then I don't have to keep their gift cards in a special place and worry about having them on my person when they want something at the store.

I haven't used the new feature of accumulating rewards because I think I need an iPhone 5, which my husband has but I don't. I am looking forward to upgrading my phone to add this very useful behavior management tool. Things like adding 10 minutes of screen time for not arguing with your siblings in the morning before school...blissful morning silence might just be on its way! I like that we could log in before we start the car and do a "group assessment" of how things went every morning and provide instant reward updates and feedback.

I had a technical issue connecting an iPhone 3S, 5, and and iPad 2 through DropBox and received an immediate and very helpful response from the developer on Christmas Eve.

It's apps like these that make me glad to be a Mom in this day and age! Well worth the small investment to teach your children money management skills without having to worry about lost or misused cash.

We've used this app for about two years now with two kids (now 10 and 13) and after being diligent with setting it up, it does ALL THE WORK for keeping up with what I need to pay for who did what chore and on what day, minus the $ for punishments, etc. We use it for everything - keeping track of screen time (some chores earn $ while others earn screen time), chores that are daily and others that are weekly, chores that can be done once a day (make the bed) and those that can be done more than once (unload the dishwasher). We have different lists for each child because the older is taller and can reach more things. What is great for me is that this puts the burden on the kids for checking things off (and they LIKE doing it in the app instead of on paper) - no check off, no get paid. What even greater for me is the ability to set it up so each item, when it's marked off, gets automatically split off into their giving, spending, and saving buckets without any extra effort from me! And, double-bonus for the parental controls because when I travel for work I can still go into the app and approve the chores they did that day and see what DIDN'T get done and it can be addressed before they go to bed. For 2014 my husband just added the concept of a 'special housework project time bank' - whenever the kids disobey, get into an argument, etc, they 'earn' 15 minutes deposited into that bank. Then come Saturday morning, they spend that much time on the things that never seem to get done (like weeding the flower beds). We knew we had hit a home run and finally landed on the right 'currency' for them when they groaned mightily :-) I would definitely recommend this app! (And, support is great - I had a question today - New Years - and he responded within 10 minutes and all was resolved) GREAT app and support!

This app has been frustrating to set up. Was looking for an app that could help quantify the chores for the house. Having a 16yr and 13yr, we want to ensure they both contribute but also recognize that each task carries a different work effort so it needs a different point value.

Setting up children in the app is harder than it needs to be. Creating custom chores is tedious and the chores cannot be created at the global level. Rather they are created uniquely by child and then need to be copied to the other child. This results in creating a separate default child that has all of our chores. Again we dont have little kids so brushing hair is not really relevant. Nor is the allowance piece to our kids. They either get allowance or not. I dont want to link a pay for task mentality rather, a meet the expectation of a certain amount of points and get your allowance mentality.

I sat with the kids and created a list of chores with point values. The family is on board.

The app would benefit from having a multiple user environment with a master account user who can set the points at a global level. Allow pionts to accumulate into base allowance and then bonus allowance if other performance measures are hit. Target performance and bonuse performance.

The biggest rub is setting up all the manual chores and copying them to each child and then having to change the point value for each child if we agree to change point values.

I researched these apps a lot before purchasing and recognize the market for tracking teens is smaller than for younger kids.

I hope this apps works better and meets our needs better than it has so far. It just isnt as flexible as I would like. And, having to back up to Dropbox is kinda lame. We all have iphones so we should all be able to update via our mobile devices vs just a parent controlled device.

I use this for my three boys and myself! For my boys, I like the ability to set up multiple piggy banks so each child can visually see how he wants to divvy up his allowance that he earned (I pre-determined that 10% goes to his savings account at the bank, and then he determines how to use the remaining money...part goes to the iTouch he wants, part goes to a miscellaneous "toy" fund that he can spend when he wants some random toy, etc). I also like the flexibility to customize each chore...some earn more money than others, some occur more frequently than others. I, personally, think it's helping my boys understand how finances work and how to save for the things they want.

For myself, I use it to keep up with my own household chores (I don't assign a monetary value since I, unfortunately, won't be getting paid for my chores!). I love the visual, where I can see all of the things I need to accomplish around the house on any given day and check them off as I go. But I especially love that it's all right there on my iPad...take the time to set up the tasks and then I don't have to think about it anymore. I hated spending a good portion of each morning thinking about what I wanted to get done that day, usually keeping it in my mental list and, admittedly, forgetting to put things on the list or getting sidetracked. I finally feel like I can keep my entire household clean & tidy EVERY day of the week (something I used to think was impossible with 3 boys!). This app allows me to be more productive with my time so I can also keep up with the various things that pop onto my calendar during the day.

The app is not perfect though. There are some little bugs I have come across, but nothing that would keep me from using the app...I just need to take the time to write to the developer to make some suggestions. The reason I gave it four stars is that I feel like it's a bit slow to load, and when I scroll down the screen, it's slow to respond...the screen gets "jerky" which is just visually annoying. I also wish there was a way to sort the tasks when viewing the "week at a glance"...I would like to see all of Monday's tasks grouped, and then all of Tuesday's, etc rather than having to scroll through the whole list to see if there is some straggler at the bottom that I forgot about. Sorting options seem like a pretty basic function in these types of apps, so I down-rated this app for the oversight. But, again, I still use this app EVERY day so I am, overall, very happy.

I actually loved using iAllowance to track my kids’ allowance. But they suddenly deleted my account and now I have no idea what my kids’ balances were.

When the “upgrade” happened and we created an account, we lost all of our transactions for about the last 4 months, except the recurring allowance. Very disappointing!

When iAllowance crashed it forgot our account. So then we had to get our kids debit cards with no idea how much money they had previously. If you use this app still keep track of the money on paper!

Don't do it. I have two kids. No way to set chores for each kid. Or different chores on different days. I put in all kids information and the program reset itself after I put everything. I want my money back.

I’ve been using this app for years but when I upgraded to the version that requires the new account my balances were wrong and some deposits were duplicated but on the next day. Anyone have a suggestion for an app that will work?

This has been a wonderful app this past year but all my daughter’s hard work and allowance tracking are fine as your app won’t work after the latest update. It tells me I need to go into the parent portal but then immediately crashes.

I haven’t used the app in a while but have it to keep track of how much money my kids have.

I just tried to log on and it tells me it doesn’t recognize my identifier and my account was deleted.

I searched my email looking for notifications from them, but nothing.

Just tried to log in. Says it’s all new but I can log into existing account. When I put my email it it says they have no record and all my data may have been deleted. I’ve been using this app for about 4 years! I keep my kids money tracking in it and don’t seem to have access at all now! So upset!

I have my kids accounts and have used this app for a few years with no issues. Suddenly, it erased all the data and says my account has been deleted. I didn’t have a record of how much my kids had earned so obviously this led to a lot of arguing. Very unhappy with the deletion of my data without asking me.

I bought this hoping it was an upgrade from the chore app we were already using that had minor glitches but I’m already disappointed that I can’t have the chores rotate between kids.

Updated to add: I appreciate the response. I will think about changing the way my house hold does things but right now my children rotate chores DAILY and with 7 days in a week that doesn’t mean equal number of days each week. This applies to a number of chores around our house including feeding the dogs, cleaning up poop, taking out recycling.