Car Check is a nifty Windows Phone app that lets you track and manage your automotive expenses. Car Check has the ability to track your gasoline costs, maintenance costs, set reminders for scheduled maintenance and back all the data up to your OneDrive or Dropbox accounts.
The Windows Phone app also has the ability to chart your fuel consumption, distribution of automotive costs and fuel prices. Add Live Tile support and Car Check isn't a bad option to consider to help you monitor your automotive costs.
Simple Layout
Car Check's layout isn't overly complicated with a main page full of navigational tiles that cover your vehicles, a dashboard for analyzing data, App Settings, Live Tile settings, access to the app's Facebook page, access to the help section and rate/review the app in the Windows Phone Store.
Car Check's settings cover the basics such as units of measurement, summary periods, turning on/off maintenance reminders and storage/back-up options (phone, Dropbox or OneDrive). Live Tile options include customizing the name of the Tile and the Live Tile's destination (Main Menu, Vehicles list, the app's dashboard or a specific vehicle).
Your first order of business is to add a vehicle to the database. Basic vehicle entry includes naming your vehicle, choosing your unit of measurement, adding a photo of your car (otherwise, you'll have an automobile icon). You can opt to add additional information such as registration number, horsepower, transmission type, fuel type, cylinder capacity and VIN number.
Once you have your automobile entered, an additional navigation tile will appear on the main page for that automobile. Tapping that tile will send you to a small collection of information pages where you can enter all your automobile data.
Fuel, Costs and Maintenance
Car Check's pages for individual automobiles include a Dashboard that summarizes your monthly and annual statistics, a Fuel Page that breaks down your fuel expenses, a Costs Page that will chart expenses and a Maintenance page where you can track scheduled maintenance.
Your Dashboard Page will display monthly and annual stats that include miles traveled, quantity of gas, gas costs, other costs and total costs. It also displays, for a twelve-month average, your gallons per 100 miles, cost per mile and cost per gallon of gasoline.
Along the bottom of the Fuel, Cost and Maintenance Pages you will find three control buttons that will let you add an entry, edit an entry or delete an entry. Additionally, up under the three-dot menu on the Maintenance Page you have the option to mark a maintenance entry as done. Data entry is done with clear-cut, fill in the blank styled forms.
Overall Impressions
Car Check isn't a bad little app for keeping track of your automotive expenses. The layout is simple and entering all the data is straightforward. My only nit is that the app doesn't calculate your miles per gallon. Then again, the app's focus is on tracking your automobile's expenses not performance so I can't complain too much.
I do like the maintenance reminders and the break down on cost per mile but, I wouldn't mind seeing a miles per gallon stat. Nonetheless, if you are looking to keep a closer eye on the cost of operating your automobile, Car Check might be worth a try.
The trial version of Car Check is fully functional but will only track information for one automobile. If you need to track the cost of more than one automobile, you'll need to pony up and buy the full version.
- Car Check - Windows Phone 8 and 7.x - Trial / $2.49 - Store Link
