Expense app with Mercado Pago: the three ways

The three ways, compared

• Your Mercado Pago spending, logged on its ownHow Kesef's Mercado Pago integration works, step by step.

1. Checking Mercado Pago's activity

It's what almost everyone does, and to know whether a payment went through or how much you sent someone, it's enough. It costs nothing, there's nothing to log and the data is exact, because it's the account's own.

The limit is one of definition: Mercado Pago sees what goes through Mercado Pago. Cash, another bank's card, the rent's direct debit or what your partner paid aren't there, so neither is your full month. To take a period into a spreadsheet, Mercado Pago lets you generate an "All transactions" report from the account panel between two dates, with approved operations, and emails you when it's ready.

2. Logging by hand or in a spreadsheet

It's the way that brings everything together: Mercado Pago, cash, cards and banks in one place, for free and structured however you like. The cost is consistency: every QR payment, every purchase and every transfer has to be logged, and when you pay ten times a day with your phone, it's the first thing to go.

It works well if you rarely pay with Mercado Pago, or if you sit down once a week to copy the transactions over. Mercado Pago's report helps rebuild what you forgot.

• Expense app vs spreadsheet: a point-by-point comparisonExpense app or spreadsheet: a point-by-point comparison.
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3. Linking Mercado Pago to an expense app

It combines the best of both: Mercado Pago comes in on its own and you log the rest, by hand, by voice or with a photo of the receipt, in the same place. This is how Kesef does it:

• Approved QR payments, purchases and transfers come in on their own: the ones you send as expenses and the ones you receive as income. A refund comes in as separate income.
• Left out on purpose: topping up from your bank, moving money into an investment, and anything pending or rejected. If they came in, your month would look more expensive than it was.
• A payment takes 10 to 30 minutes to show up. Withdrawals to your bank account arrive by another route and show up the next day.
• Mercado Pago doesn't send the category: Kesef suggests one based on the merchant when it can, and the one you pick for a merchant sticks for future payments there.
• An instalment purchase comes in as a single transaction for the total.
• When linking you choose whether to bring in only new payments or the last 30 or 90 days too, and if something looks like an expense you logged by hand, you pick which one to keep. Mercado Pago doesn't report your balance, so Kesef asks you for it.

The terms, upfront: it's part of Kesef Pro (USD 5 per month, 35 per year with a 14-day free trial, or 100 for life), it requires signing in to Kesef and it works in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Peru and Uruguay. The authorization is read-only: you type your password into Mercado Pago, never into Kesef.

Which to pick, depending on how you pay

• If almost everything goes through Mercado Pago, linking it saves you the most work: what's left to log by hand is little.
• If you split between Mercado Pago, cards and cash, an app with quick logging works even without linking anything; a linked Mercado Pago helps, but isn't essential.
• If you use Mercado Pago now and then, checking its activity is enough for that, and there's no need to pay for Pro: the rest of Kesef is free.

• Let your expenses log themselvesEverything that comes into Kesef on its own: Mercado Pago and Apple Pay.
• How to track your spending in ArgentinaWhat's different about tracking expenses in Argentina.