6 ms·

Show HN: We made 1 app this year

69 points by vitoc 13y ago

rfnslyr 13y ago
Could someone comment on this vs YNAB? With YNAB I have it hooked up on my desktop as well. How does this compare? I like the neat visuals, wish YNAB had those.
- MonkoftheFunk 13y ago
  I think this would be good for planning your savings for future (forecasting), YNAB is about current and past budgeting (though there are ways around it (http://www.youneedabudget.com/support/article/forecast-in-ynab http://www.youneedabudget.com/support/article/forecast-in-yn...).
  - skwirl 13y ago
    That isn't my impression of YNAB. I only tried it out briefly about a year ago, but what I understand is that you plan you future savings by adding it to your budget today. If I wanted to save $80,000 for a down payment on a condo over four years, I would budget $1667 monthly for it in YNAB, and then allocate incoming money to it each month. That isn't a workaround, that is simply how the system is supposed to work. When you think about planning for the future, I don't think a mobile app is really a good way to go about it. When I was setting up YNAB, I used the desktop app. It took me a while to enter all my budget information and set it up the way I liked it. This wasn't because of YNAB's UI, which is pretty good, but because monthly finances can be complicated. I couldn't imagine doing all of this on a mobile device. It would be incredibly frustrating. YNAB has mobile and desktop applications. This is nice. You use the desktop application for setting things up and the mobile application for recording purchases (and checking your budget status when considering a purchase) while you are out. All that said, I was never hooked. The system forces you to think about and record every purchase you make. This is probably great for people living paycheck to paycheck trying to get ahead, or people unable to meet their savings goal. If this isn't you, then you'll probably just find the system to be an unnecessary annoyance.
    - chadcf 13y ago
      In that sense, yes, YNAB can be used for future planning of expenses. But I think the thing they were referring to is that YNAB is not really meant for 'forecasting' your money. Though you could do it, they discourage it and it's meant to be about allocating only the money you have now. In other words, you don't budget something until you actually have the money for it. So the difference is with YNAB you would indeed budget $1667 when you get your paycheck, but you wouldn't carry that out 12 months in the future and plan your income/expenses to determine how much money you'll have at that point.
    - DLarsen 13y ago
      I've thought about this a lot. What I really don't want to do is invest time in dealing with the data I don't care about. Because of the nature of spending, it tends to be pretty noisy data. When my budget isn't tight, I really don't care to track and think about every transaction. I'm just not interested in a detailed accounting of my coffee habit if at a high level my finances are on the right track. I've taken an approach of manual entry for a few "important" categories of discretionary spending. It's been good to leave everything else for the less frequent review of my bank statements.
hagope 13y ago
So who are all the ppl on the about page?
- jofer 13y ago
  I believe the author meant that the app (or company, maybe) is one year old, not that there's only one person involved.
Zikes 13y ago
There's a certain variety of budgeting I've yet to see, but that I think would be very valuable. It's something I'd pay a decent amount for, actually. The majority of my expenses and income are very predictable, such that I get paid every N days, I get billed X every Y days, etc. I would like to see an application that tracks my balance for every day, from now and into the future, such that I can see my predicted balance on, say, February 21st. It could also tie into my bank account and track current and past spending, both to recognize recurring events and to update the current balance, which also cascades into all the future predictions.
- myleshenderson 13y ago
  I downloaded Microsoft Money Plus Sunset yesterday to get access to that very feature. It doesn't do the online updating, but the 'project future cash flow' feature is very valuable to me.
- sksksk 13y ago
  The banking startup simple has a feature like that called "Safe-To-Spend" https://www.simple.com/goals/ https://www.simple.com/goals/
  - herbig 13y ago
    I just switched to simple, and am liking it so far. The design and functionality is, well, simple.
- danielweber 13y ago
  I'm nearly positive I've seen that in Microsoft Money, and pretty sure I've also seen it in Mint.
  - cleaver 13y ago
    I think I recall that feature in Quicken, although I've long since sworn off using products from Intuit.
Arnor 13y ago
rgb(218, 218, 218) on rgb(237, 173, 45) makes my eyes hurt.
k-mcgrady 13y ago
Beautifully designed, it looks great on both Android and iOS. Nice work. I'm usually not a very good user of these apps as my income/expenses are very irregular (so any automation features are useless to me) and I'm terrible at remembering to enter the data. I'm going to give it a try though.
esseti 13y ago
my nexus s with cm 10.2 is not eligible for this app (i'm in italy). so i can't save up money for the nexus 5 and download the app. it's a never-ending problem.
pseudometa 13y ago
I love this. The whole "I made 30 apps this year..." posts are rediculous. Anyone can make lots of crapy apps. Creating a well designed app with valuable functionality and propper marketing/support web pages takes time and skill. Kudos.
- ianlevesque 13y ago
  Agreed. But I will be curious to see who is making more money in a year.
  - coherentpony 13y ago
    Indeed. Thirty multiplied by zero is still zero.
    - ianlevesque 13y ago
      Haha, yes. Most apps on the app store don't make any money at all, but if making 30 helps you identify a profitable niche you can target then you'll come out ahead of the polished but perhaps poorly targeted app. Hopefully people continue to release their stats.
  - AfroDiva 13y ago
    Me too, i realy see much value in this app.
  - allending 13y ago
    One of the makers here. I'm curious as well :) Hopefully and ideally, everyone who puts in the work makes the money. Seriously though, we actually do hope to make enough to pay off some of the bills. The revenue model is freemium, most users will not need to pay, and there is a one time IAP for users who end up using/needing the app enough. Essentially, our philosophy is that we want to prove that we are providing value to people before we expect or want revenue from users. We might put more revenue options in the future, but it would be based on the same philosophy of providing actual value. We're still beginners at this, so thanks for all the comments, good comments make us smile, and criticisms are even better so we can make the app better throughout the year.
rplnt 13y ago
> Requires Android > 4.0 and up This cuts out pretty big portion of the userbase, doesn't it? Around 25% according to developers' dashboards[1]. I'm also interested in how this makes money? Or how it could make money. I'm not sure ads are viable alternative for apps you don't need to engage a lot with (i.e. games, readers, ..). 1. http://developer.android.com/about/dashboards/index.html http://developer.android.com/about/dashboards/index.html
- Iftheshoefits 13y ago
  The 25% (or so) of Android users who are cut out by this likely aren't going to be terribly concerned with budgeting for themselves, and probably can't afford to pay for anything anyway. I begin all of my new Android projects with compatibility for 4.0 and later only, because my target market doesn't include people with small budgets buying budget smartphones with years-old OS versions, because they're less likely to do what I want them to: pay me money.
tudorconstantin 13y ago
Is there the possibility to create a budget for the family? So that both me and my wife will spend from the same budget? Do you know of any android/web app that can do that?
- DLarsen 13y ago
  You essentially just want the app on each device tied into the same account?
  - tudorconstantin 13y ago
    i want a common budget (family budget) which to be accessed by me and my wife, so that we're also able to see which one spends more.
paperwork 13y ago
nitpick: the image on your page doesn't look right. It takes too long to load for such a small image and it isn't clear. Perhaps you have a large image which is being re-sized by the browser? I'm on firefox, windows 7.
- Gracana 13y ago
  You guessed correctly, the image is an extraordinarily large png (1050x1364, 250kB).
Gigablah 13y ago
Great to see such a nice looking app coming from Malaysia :)
- allending 13y ago
  Thanks Gigablah! We appreciate it. Stay tuned for more ^^
Gracana 13y ago
Looks neat, but my device is incompatible and I can't figure out why. I have a 2012 Nexus 7 and Android 4.4. What gives?
kmfrk 13y ago
Gorgeous design. One thing I don't like are the gradient colours in the calendar view. Better to use a threshold value range, so the view doesn't display sixteen different colours.
ntoshev 13y ago
How does it work? Do I have to type in my expenses manually?
hodgesmr 13y ago
Is there a way to export data? Also, thoughts on putting a PIN or password?
mapgrep 13y ago
How do I enter expenses? I was hoping the app description would tell me that. It doesn't seem to be on the web page or app store page. The pain of budgeting is in tracking outflows, at least for me. I make a combination of debit, credit, and cash purchases, and even just through those three channels it's easy to lose track of what went where. As you note in your app description, people typically give up "tracking expenses... because it was too much effort." So how does your app solve this pain? Would be nice if it were explained.
- kohanz 13y ago
  Agree wholeheartedly. There are any number of apps out there than can provide me with beautiful graphs and visualizations once they have the data they need, but I don't use any of them. Why? Because: 1) The ones that collect the data automatically require me to violate my bank's online TOS to gather the data (e.g. Mint), which potentially leaves me with no recourse should my bank account be compromised. 2) The ones that require me to input the data are just too much work.
  - chadcf 13y ago
    > The ones that require me to input the data are just too much work. I've been using YNAB (You Need A Budget) for a few months, and it makes you input everything. I initially resisted and thought the same thing as you. However I forced myself to try it because so many people recommended it so highly. It is at it's core a glorified spreadsheet, but it's a very well designed spreadsheet with great support and a solid budgeting methodology behind it. Entering transactions manually has not been that painful, and the big benefit of doing this is that you are actively participating with your budget. WIth mint you spend money and then see how it fits into your budget. With YNAB you give that dollar a job as soon as you get it, and you manually input it when you spend it. It really keeps you aware of your budget and where you are in it and in my experience makes it much easier to stick to it. I found every time I tried to use Mint to budget (privacy issues aside) it never worked out because it was a very passive thing. Set up some categories. Spend money. Wait for email to tell me I'm over budget, oops. YNAB is very active so it keeps you honest. And unlike mint, YNAB is designed to be a fluid budget. You can and are encouraged to adjust budget amounts and categories on the fly as life happens, which is something painful to do in mint or other apps. It is a bit of a pain to have to manually handle transactions (though you can import CSV) but I find the benefits of doing that outweighs the hassle.
mayrun 13y ago
Looks nice. Is there a plan to implement the option to password protect and export the data? Also, multiple currencies would be highly appreciated!
- allending 13y ago
  Data export is definitely on the horizon. Password protection is on the list, but not yet definite. We actually do support multiple currencies (we hope our users agree it is done in an elegant fashion, feedback welcome) - let us know if we are missing yours and we will get it in the next release.
  - enel 13y ago
    The app is missing Moldavan leu (MDL)[1], which I wanted to use. The password protection is a must have for me too. Or maybe a simple pattern lock. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moldovan_leu http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moldovan_leu
Xymak1y 13y ago
The website's font looks bad for me on the latest Chrome, Windows x64: http://i.imgur.com/cN6tXNl.png http://i.imgur.com/cN6tXNl.png Gets better with zooming though, at 120 % it looks nicer: http://i.imgur.com/d0GkKcq.png http://i.imgur.com/d0GkKcq.png
x3ro 13y ago
I'll definitely give this a try! And thank you so much for making an app that only requires network access on Android! All those apps that want your location and access to your contacts and whatnot are so annoying -_-"
urza 13y ago
Can it work without cloud? Saving data only to my SD card and export them to CSV files? I dont want to share my expense habits with you..
solox3 13y ago
"Add more than 100 entries per month for $3" is brilliant. People won't know they're locked into the app until halfway into the month.
spyder 13y ago
It's really hard to read the thin grey text on the bright orange background: http://i.imgur.com/dCMcnmv.png http://i.imgur.com/dCMcnmv.png

69 points by vitoc 13y ago

Could someone comment on this vs YNAB? With YNAB I have it hooked up on my desktop as well. How does this compare? I like the neat visuals, wish YNAB had those.

MonkoftheFunk 13y ago
I think this would be good for planning your savings for future (forecasting), YNAB is about current and past budgeting (though there are ways around it (http://www.youneedabudget.com/support/article/forecast-in-ynab http://www.youneedabudget.com/support/article/forecast-in-yn...).
- skwirl 13y ago
  That isn't my impression of YNAB. I only tried it out briefly about a year ago, but what I understand is that you plan you future savings by adding it to your budget today. If I wanted to save $80,000 for a down payment on a condo over four years, I would budget $1667 monthly for it in YNAB, and then allocate incoming money to it each month. That isn't a workaround, that is simply how the system is supposed to work. When you think about planning for the future, I don't think a mobile app is really a good way to go about it. When I was setting up YNAB, I used the desktop app. It took me a while to enter all my budget information and set it up the way I liked it. This wasn't because of YNAB's UI, which is pretty good, but because monthly finances can be complicated. I couldn't imagine doing all of this on a mobile device. It would be incredibly frustrating. YNAB has mobile and desktop applications. This is nice. You use the desktop application for setting things up and the mobile application for recording purchases (and checking your budget status when considering a purchase) while you are out. All that said, I was never hooked. The system forces you to think about and record every purchase you make. This is probably great for people living paycheck to paycheck trying to get ahead, or people unable to meet their savings goal. If this isn't you, then you'll probably just find the system to be an unnecessary annoyance.
  - chadcf 13y ago
    In that sense, yes, YNAB can be used for future planning of expenses. But I think the thing they were referring to is that YNAB is not really meant for 'forecasting' your money. Though you could do it, they discourage it and it's meant to be about allocating only the money you have now. In other words, you don't budget something until you actually have the money for it. So the difference is with YNAB you would indeed budget $1667 when you get your paycheck, but you wouldn't carry that out 12 months in the future and plan your income/expenses to determine how much money you'll have at that point.
  - DLarsen 13y ago
    I've thought about this a lot. What I really don't want to do is invest time in dealing with the data I don't care about. Because of the nature of spending, it tends to be pretty noisy data. When my budget isn't tight, I really don't care to track and think about every transaction. I'm just not interested in a detailed accounting of my coffee habit if at a high level my finances are on the right track. I've taken an approach of manual entry for a few "important" categories of discretionary spending. It's been good to leave everything else for the less frequent review of my bank statements.

hagope 13y ago

So who are all the ppl on the about page?

jofer 13y ago
I believe the author meant that the app (or company, maybe) is one year old, not that there's only one person involved.

Zikes 13y ago

There's a certain variety of budgeting I've yet to see, but that I think would be very valuable. It's something I'd pay a decent amount for, actually. The majority of my expenses and income are very predictable, such that I get paid every N days, I get billed X every Y days, etc. I would like to see an application that tracks my balance for every day, from now and into the future, such that I can see my predicted balance on, say, February 21st. It could also tie into my bank account and track current and past spending, both to recognize recurring events and to update the current balance, which also cascades into all the future predictions.

myleshenderson 13y ago
I downloaded Microsoft Money Plus Sunset yesterday to get access to that very feature. It doesn't do the online updating, but the 'project future cash flow' feature is very valuable to me.
sksksk 13y ago
The banking startup simple has a feature like that called "Safe-To-Spend" https://www.simple.com/goals/ https://www.simple.com/goals/
- herbig 13y ago
  I just switched to simple, and am liking it so far. The design and functionality is, well, simple.
danielweber 13y ago
I'm nearly positive I've seen that in Microsoft Money, and pretty sure I've also seen it in Mint.
- cleaver 13y ago
  I think I recall that feature in Quicken, although I've long since sworn off using products from Intuit.

Arnor 13y ago

rgb(218, 218, 218) on rgb(237, 173, 45) makes my eyes hurt.

k-mcgrady 13y ago

Beautifully designed, it looks great on both Android and iOS. Nice work. I'm usually not a very good user of these apps as my income/expenses are very irregular (so any automation features are useless to me) and I'm terrible at remembering to enter the data. I'm going to give it a try though.

esseti 13y ago

my nexus s with cm 10.2 is not eligible for this app (i'm in italy). so i can't save up money for the nexus 5 and download the app. it's a never-ending problem.

pseudometa 13y ago

I love this. The whole "I made 30 apps this year..." posts are rediculous. Anyone can make lots of crapy apps. Creating a well designed app with valuable functionality and propper marketing/support web pages takes time and skill. Kudos.

ianlevesque 13y ago
Agreed. But I will be curious to see who is making more money in a year.
- coherentpony 13y ago
  Indeed. Thirty multiplied by zero is still zero.
  - ianlevesque 13y ago
    Haha, yes. Most apps on the app store don't make any money at all, but if making 30 helps you identify a profitable niche you can target then you'll come out ahead of the polished but perhaps poorly targeted app. Hopefully people continue to release their stats.
- AfroDiva 13y ago
  Me too, i realy see much value in this app.
- allending 13y ago
  One of the makers here. I'm curious as well :) Hopefully and ideally, everyone who puts in the work makes the money. Seriously though, we actually do hope to make enough to pay off some of the bills. The revenue model is freemium, most users will not need to pay, and there is a one time IAP for users who end up using/needing the app enough. Essentially, our philosophy is that we want to prove that we are providing value to people before we expect or want revenue from users. We might put more revenue options in the future, but it would be based on the same philosophy of providing actual value. We're still beginners at this, so thanks for all the comments, good comments make us smile, and criticisms are even better so we can make the app better throughout the year.

rplnt 13y ago

> Requires Android > 4.0 and up This cuts out pretty big portion of the userbase, doesn't it? Around 25% according to developers' dashboards[1]. I'm also interested in how this makes money? Or how it could make money. I'm not sure ads are viable alternative for apps you don't need to engage a lot with (i.e. games, readers, ..). 1. http://developer.android.com/about/dashboards/index.html http://developer.android.com/about/dashboards/index.html

Iftheshoefits 13y ago
The 25% (or so) of Android users who are cut out by this likely aren't going to be terribly concerned with budgeting for themselves, and probably can't afford to pay for anything anyway. I begin all of my new Android projects with compatibility for 4.0 and later only, because my target market doesn't include people with small budgets buying budget smartphones with years-old OS versions, because they're less likely to do what I want them to: pay me money.

tudorconstantin 13y ago

Is there the possibility to create a budget for the family? So that both me and my wife will spend from the same budget? Do you know of any android/web app that can do that?

DLarsen 13y ago
You essentially just want the app on each device tied into the same account?
- tudorconstantin 13y ago
  i want a common budget (family budget) which to be accessed by me and my wife, so that we're also able to see which one spends more.

paperwork 13y ago

nitpick: the image on your page doesn't look right. It takes too long to load for such a small image and it isn't clear. Perhaps you have a large image which is being re-sized by the browser? I'm on firefox, windows 7.

Gracana 13y ago
You guessed correctly, the image is an extraordinarily large png (1050x1364, 250kB).

Gigablah 13y ago

Great to see such a nice looking app coming from Malaysia :)

allending 13y ago
Thanks Gigablah! We appreciate it. Stay tuned for more ^^

Gracana 13y ago

Looks neat, but my device is incompatible and I can't figure out why. I have a 2012 Nexus 7 and Android 4.4. What gives?

kmfrk 13y ago

Gorgeous design. One thing I don't like are the gradient colours in the calendar view. Better to use a threshold value range, so the view doesn't display sixteen different colours.

ntoshev 13y ago

How does it work? Do I have to type in my expenses manually?

hodgesmr 13y ago

Is there a way to export data? Also, thoughts on putting a PIN or password?

mapgrep 13y ago

How do I enter expenses? I was hoping the app description would tell me that. It doesn't seem to be on the web page or app store page. The pain of budgeting is in tracking outflows, at least for me. I make a combination of debit, credit, and cash purchases, and even just through those three channels it's easy to lose track of what went where. As you note in your app description, people typically give up "tracking expenses... because it was too much effort." So how does your app solve this pain? Would be nice if it were explained.

kohanz 13y ago
Agree wholeheartedly. There are any number of apps out there than can provide me with beautiful graphs and visualizations once they have the data they need, but I don't use any of them. Why? Because: 1) The ones that collect the data automatically require me to violate my bank's online TOS to gather the data (e.g. Mint), which potentially leaves me with no recourse should my bank account be compromised. 2) The ones that require me to input the data are just too much work.
- chadcf 13y ago
  > The ones that require me to input the data are just too much work. I've been using YNAB (You Need A Budget) for a few months, and it makes you input everything. I initially resisted and thought the same thing as you. However I forced myself to try it because so many people recommended it so highly. It is at it's core a glorified spreadsheet, but it's a very well designed spreadsheet with great support and a solid budgeting methodology behind it. Entering transactions manually has not been that painful, and the big benefit of doing this is that you are actively participating with your budget. WIth mint you spend money and then see how it fits into your budget. With YNAB you give that dollar a job as soon as you get it, and you manually input it when you spend it. It really keeps you aware of your budget and where you are in it and in my experience makes it much easier to stick to it. I found every time I tried to use Mint to budget (privacy issues aside) it never worked out because it was a very passive thing. Set up some categories. Spend money. Wait for email to tell me I'm over budget, oops. YNAB is very active so it keeps you honest. And unlike mint, YNAB is designed to be a fluid budget. You can and are encouraged to adjust budget amounts and categories on the fly as life happens, which is something painful to do in mint or other apps. It is a bit of a pain to have to manually handle transactions (though you can import CSV) but I find the benefits of doing that outweighs the hassle.

mayrun 13y ago

Looks nice. Is there a plan to implement the option to password protect and export the data? Also, multiple currencies would be highly appreciated!

allending 13y ago
Data export is definitely on the horizon. Password protection is on the list, but not yet definite. We actually do support multiple currencies (we hope our users agree it is done in an elegant fashion, feedback welcome) - let us know if we are missing yours and we will get it in the next release.
- enel 13y ago
  The app is missing Moldavan leu (MDL)[1], which I wanted to use. The password protection is a must have for me too. Or maybe a simple pattern lock. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moldovan_leu http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moldovan_leu

Xymak1y 13y ago

The website's font looks bad for me on the latest Chrome, Windows x64: http://i.imgur.com/cN6tXNl.png http://i.imgur.com/cN6tXNl.png Gets better with zooming though, at 120 % it looks nicer: http://i.imgur.com/d0GkKcq.png http://i.imgur.com/d0GkKcq.png

x3ro 13y ago

I'll definitely give this a try! And thank you so much for making an app that only requires network access on Android! All those apps that want your location and access to your contacts and whatnot are so annoying -_-"

urza 13y ago

Can it work without cloud? Saving data only to my SD card and export them to CSV files? I dont want to share my expense habits with you..

solox3 13y ago

"Add more than 100 entries per month for $3" is brilliant. People won't know they're locked into the app until halfway into the month.

spyder 13y ago

It's really hard to read the thin grey text on the bright orange background: http://i.imgur.com/dCMcnmv.png http://i.imgur.com/dCMcnmv.png