Featured App: Add it Up for WP7

Here is a just released handy, and colorful, app to have on your phone. And it is priced right at FREE. Add It Up lets you add up a list of items and view a running total. The interface is intuitive, popping up a keyboard for entering text and a number pad for for quantity or price. You can even add tax to your total.

The opening screen provides basic instruction for creating a list. There are two icons at the bottom of the screen for including tax and adding items. The … popup menu has additional options to: change the sales tax rate (from 0% to 19.75% in .25% increments), reset & clear list and contact support. Tapping Add Items opens a number pad, where you can enter the cost of your first item. Once you have entered a cost, tap the “+” button and your entry is recorded as Item 1. You can continue adding items, repeating the above steps or tap the “down” arrow to hide the number pad. I would like to see an option to add two decimal places by default, but otherwise the entry is quick and easy. You can tap the Tax button anytime to include or hide tax in your total. If Tax is turned on, all items include tax by default but you can toggle any individual item off.

To keep things simple you can keep the list the way it is, or you can rename each item and/or add quantities. Single tap an item name and it becomes highlighted while bringing up the keyboard. Just type over the original entry. Repeat the same step for each item on your list. Tap the BACK key to hide the keyboard. Tap and hold on any item to bring up a context menu to: Adjust Item Quantity or Remove Item. When you add a new quantity (greater than 1) the calculation appears below the item description with the total to the right. There is no method for editing a price other than deleting an item and reentering.

A running total keeps track of your items. When you exit and reopen the app, you can: Restore Last Session or create a New List. There are no provisions to store multiple lists, but hey its a simple app and its FREE. So before you start your holiday shopping (whoops, may already be to late for that today) download Add it Up and see if you can stay within your spending budget. The app looks really polished and everything flows nicely. Head over to Zune Marketplace to check it out.