Track your bike costs with the FREE Zebra phone app

Puts your motorbike costs in black and white

A free phone app for bikers to record their petrol usage and set reminders for services, MOTs and insurance renewals, has been made available for iPhone and Android smartphones.

The app has been developed by financial journalist Chris Wheal, known as Whealie, who rides a zebra-striped motorbike. The app is called the-Zebra.

The app allows you to record details every time you fill your tank. You just enter the total paid, the litres and the milometer reading. It calculates your MPG and pence per mile for that tankful and your overall average MPG. You can see at a glance if your fuel consumption is going up or down. You can also set reminders for insurance, MOT, road tax and services so you don’t miss another deadline again. You can add separate reminders for oil, spark plugs and other individual service items.

You can add as many bikes as you like; the app works for cars, too.

Whealie has backed up the app with a website of financial advice for bikers, looking at loans and finance as well as insurance. On the website, app users will soon be able to compare their bike’s performance with that of others’ with the same bikes. And Whealie will take up your case and fight your insurer if you have a problem or are treated unfairly.

Whealie has previously worked on the major insurance industry magazines as well as writing personal finance articles for the likes of the Mail on Sunday and Evening Standard.

About the app

The app’s functions are being driven by users. Early testing of the-Zebra app resulted in users saying they also wanted to store records for their cars, hence the full list of cars was added. We originally did not ask for insurance policy numbers but users suggested it might be helpful to have access to them on the phone in case bikers need to swap details with another road user after an accident – so we have added that. Initially the app only had reminders for MOT, tax, tyres and overall services but we have added the ability to record spending on separate items and set individual reminders.

The current list of items you can monitor includes:

• Insurance
• MOT
• Tax
• Service
• Oil change
• Oil filter
• Fuel filter
• Air filter
• Spark plugs
• Chain
• Brakes
• Clutch
• Electrics
• Tyres
• Accessories
• Other

For more information check out the website the-zebra.com