How do you track purchases?

[pepperderr]

How do you track expenses while in the parks? Is there a way to see receipts or track things you buy in the MDE app? Do you use gift cards? I will plan where we eat main meals before we go. I know my kids want to make a lightsaber and a droid. I plan to tgive them gift cards for Christmas to pay for that. I will plan for some souvenirs that we know we want to buy. I am just wondering how others keep track of purchases. I am sure it will be easy to go overboard if we don't track things. Are there other budget apps you use on your phone to track purchases?

 

[_19disnA]

You can use MDE to track things you have charged using your Magic Band. Your normal credit card statement will show charges just like it does when you make purchases at home. Am not a big fan of gift cards since they can be easily lost/stolen and where to keep them during your vacation is a challenge. Disney also has ATM's at several locations, so you don't need to bring/carry/store large amounts of cash but get it when you might need it. Some combination of all of those things might work for you depending on what exactly you are trying to accomplish. Since we paid for our room ahead of time, the only real expenses we had at Disney were for food and souvenirs and didn't find that required any significant amount of tracking.

 

[Marionnette]

How do you track expenses while in the parks? Is there a way to see receipts or track things you buy in the MDE app? Do you use gift cards? I will plan where we eat main meals before we go. I know my kids want to make a lightsaber and a droid. I plan to tgive them gift cards for Christmas to pay for that. I will plan for some souvenirs that we know we want to buy. I am just wondering how others keep track of purchases. I am sure it will be easy to go overboard if we don't track things. Are there other budget apps you use on your phone to track purchases?

It sounds rather backwards, but I take pictures of my receipts and store them in an album on my phone. I generally pay with gift cards because I purchase them at a discount. I suppose that I could just use my MagicBand to pay for things but then I would have to find the time to visit the front desk to pay my folio off with the GCs before my credit card gets charged.

 

[pepperderr]

You can use MDE to track things you have charged using your Magic Band. Your normal credit card statement will show charges just like it does when you make purchases at home. Am not a big fan of gift cards since they can be easily lost/stolen and where to keep them during your vacation is a challenge. Disney also has ATM's at several locations, so you don't need to bring/carry/store large amounts of cash but get it when you might need it. Some combination of all of those things might work for you depending on what exactly you are trying to accomplish. Since we paid for our room ahead of time, the only real expenses we had at Disney were for food and souvenirs and didn't find that required any significant amount of tracking.

We will all have our own phones to use the apps. I am not sure how it all works or what each person sees in the app. I was thinking we could add the gift cards to our accounts so we would not actually be carrying them around. They would be in our accounts on the phone but I don't know if each kid can have their card separately or if all the of the money has to come out of one account??

 

[pepperderr]

It sounds rather backwards, but I take pictures of my receipts and store them in an album on my phone. I generally pay with gift cards because I purchase them at a discount. I suppose that I could just use my MagicBand to pay for things but then I would have to find the time to visit the front desk to pay my folio off with the GCs before my credit card gets charged.

I saw that you can get a 500 dollar Disney gift care for 485 at Sam's Club. I was thinking if we did that to pay for the trip, that extra 15 dollars could go towards meals but I am not sure how things work with the gift cards either. I guess I really need to find some videos explaining how to use the app or the magic bands. The idea of taking pictures of the receipts sounds like a great plan.

 

[_19disnA]

As I recall prior discussions, a gift card in not considered a credit card. You have to go to the front desk to provide the gift card before your credit card gets charged by Disney for purchases you have made.

 

[pepperderr]

As I recall prior discussions, a gift card in not considered a credit card. You have to go to the front desk to provide the gift card before your credit card gets charged by Disney for purchases you have made.

Good to know. That is stupid that you can't use gift cards in the app. I was hoping each kid could have a gift card on their phone to be able to use for souvenirs. Obviously, a credit card would still need to be on file.

 

[lockets]

I purchase gift cards from Target online. Combine them on the Disney gift card website. The card that I combine everything into - I take a photo of the original electronic version of it (that Target originally emailed to me) so that it has the card numbers and QR code in the photo. Or you can just keep a window open in Safari on mobile phone with the e-version if you don’t want to go into your photos everytime. I pay for everything using the QR code on my phone. In the theme parks and hotels they simply scan the photo or the safari page with a handheld scanner. Then ask for the receipt. The receipt lists amount remaining on gift card so you know how much more you have to spend on that card. If you want different people to have a set amount to spend on their own then create different cards for them with said amount loaded on the card using the Disney gift card web site. To do this make sure to purchase at least that amount of cards from target so you can load money into enough cards to match the amount of people in your party that you want to have their own card. ie. 4 pax. Buy at least 4 separate gift cards to generate one for each person. Also on Disney gift card site it will show you transactions made on each card so you’ll have something to go back to if you want to reference where the money went (but I also keep all my receipts as a backup). Voila!