So, I needed an application that I could track work mileage/expenses, officiating mileage/expenses and personal mileage/expenses. Furthermore, I wanted the app to remind me of when I had scheduled maintenances on my vehicle, so that I wouldn’t miss an important date. Lastly, I have multiple vehicles that I use, so the app had to be able to track multiple vehicles.
One constant is that I almost always have my mobile phone (Android – Motorola Droid X) with me when I’m traveling. I was worried that finding an app that worked with my device and had all the features I wanted would be a challenge. Then, I stumbled upon aCar and after reading about the application on Consumer Reports’ website, I found that it met all of my requirements and then some.
My first dilemma was resolved because aCar allows me to setup categories to track where I want to “charge” my mileage. I have the following categories: Business, Officiating and Personal. This allows me to determine where I need to apply my mileage. The simple user interface allows me to enter a beginning odometer, location, time/date and category. Then, I’m off on my trip.
When I get to my destination, I simply open aCar and tap the “Trip Rec” button. Then, aCar recognizes that I’m finishing up a trip and asks if that is what I would like to do. I simply enter my ending location, mileage and time/date, and aCar logs the trip.
One really neat feature of aCar is that it tracks all kinds of information about your expenditures on your vehicle and relates those to various numbers: cost per mile, cost per day, average distance per day, total running costs and much, MUCH more. If you are a numbers geek, aCar will overload your brain with charts, graphs and statistics about everything from miles per gallon to cost of ownership per day, and even a “Predictions” area that will attempt to determine, based on your driving habits, your next fuel fill-up date and odometer reading. The aCar app will even compare how your car runs on different octane ratings of fuel if you want to try different grades of gasoline in your ride.
Finally, for a small donation, you can upgrade to the PRO version of aCar, which unlocks all the graphs permanently on your phone, gives you the ability to manually backup data/settings, unlocks data import from various other applications and sources, and gives you the ability to export info to Microsoft Excel and a browser HTML format.
Overall, I am VERY pleased with aCar. If you travel and want to track your fuel mileage, your miles for personal/business expenses, or are just a numbers geek and want to see graphical representations of what your mileage and fuel consumption are, this is a wonderful app at a great price … FREE!
