Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: I'm building budgeting app. What features would you look for?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–38 of 38 posts

Re: Ask HN: I'm building budgeting app. What features would you look for?

#31

Post by jnfr »

polygot wrote: post #27

Alert me when a bill is over a specified confidence interval. For example, if my bill is $10/month +- $5 (std), then it will alert me if it exceeds $6.49 more than the $10/month (the 80% confidence interval.) This is useful for phone bills which can go up by a certain amount (e.g. long distance) but don't have a fixed threshold. If they're over by a few dollars for a few months then I've probably added an add-on, but…

Check out https://lunchmoney.app (disclaimer: I'm the founder). We have a fully customizable rules engine which we've just augmented to allow for email notifications, so you can create very specific criteria for imported transactions to be alerted on.

Re: Ask HN: I'm building budgeting app. What features would you look for?

#32

Post by jnfr »

satvikpendem wrote: post #20
edimaudo wrote: post #18

Has anyone used lunchmoney.app?

I have, at least for the free trial amount. It didn't really stick for me, because of no mobile app so I can't add transactions on the go, and the budgets just seemed...forgiving? I want to control my spending, I don't want to be told it's okay and that I can spend more. At least for me, I want hard cut offs. It's a fine service, it just didn't work for me necessarily. I also don't use their multi-currency support as…

Thanks for giving Lunch Money a shot! The mobile app is coming soon, but as a one-woman team, I'm focused 100% on rounding out the core product before introducing another platform and slowing down my development cycles. Cheers!

Re: Ask HN: I'm building budgeting app. What features would you look for?

#33

Post by jnfr »

Hi OP, I was in your exact position just over a year ago. I had been using my own spreadsheet for 1.5 years and finally found time to turn it into a web app (backstory at https://lunchbag.ca/lunch-money)

The main features I found missing in other budgeting apps that prompted me to make my own were:

- native multicurrency support (I travel a lot and am a digital nomad by lifestyle, so this was quite important to me)

- curtains pulled on the "magic" that some budgeting apps try to add to my transactions

- the ability to split/group transactions so I can see how much I actually spent when I pick up a large bill and friends pay me back

- separate tracking of recurring expenses

- seeing historical spending trends and having information help drive my budget for the next month

I've implemented all of this and more. If you're interested, check it out at https://lunchmoney.app. I'd love to hear what you think.

In terms of what's missing that's not currently on the roadmap:

- rollover budgets

- a savings and/or goals feature

- debt repayment feature

As made evident by this thread, everyone has their own preferred way to budget, and of course there is no one-size-fits-all solution. Looking forward to seeing what you build, if you end up going down that path. Cheers!

Re: Ask HN: I'm building budgeting app. What features would you look for?

#34

Post by tomwilson »

Good Budget is the one that I use after trying a TON of them in January this year. It was one of the few that really does the kinds of things I want.

Some things that I wish it had or did differently are:

- The progress bars should show the money that is scheduled to be used for a given bucket (probably in a different colour or something)

- It'd be nice to show a $/day remaining for a bucket, again taking into account the scheduled transactions too

- In the upcoming transactions, it should show all the upcoming repeats for a given transaction within the current budget period.. E.g. if I have something that is $100/week, the scheduled transactions only shows 1x $100 transaction. You can replicate what I want by creating 4 different transactions that repeat every 4 weeks, but thats silly :D

- I'd like a way to enter a transaction as a 'draft' very quickly via a home screen widget or even Siri or something. And then I could go in and edit it later to set the bucket it comes from etc.

- It has no good way to do long term savings - you can create a goal bucket for it but the bars etc for it become kind of meaningless.

Re: Ask HN: I'm building budgeting app. What features would you look for?

#35

Post by tomwilson »

saddestcatever wrote: post #7

Similar to what others are suggesting: Month-to-month doesn't work. Mint's budget breakdown totally fails if my Landlord cashes my check too early/late. Month-to-month doesn't work for expenses that aren't monthly. Example: travel. Month-to-month doesn't work when the calendar lines up and you get 3 paychecks that month instead of the normal 2. I'd be curious for a budgeting app that still has the concept of a month,…

Goodbudget has quarterly / annual / goal budgets which are good for things like your travel example.

Re: Ask HN: I'm building budgeting app. What features would you look for?

#36

Post by beartech »

jnfr wrote: post #33

Hi OP, I was in your exact position just over a year ago. I had been using my own spreadsheet for 1.5 years and finally found time to turn it into a web app (backstory at https://lunchbag.ca/lunch-money ) The main features I found missing in other budgeting apps that prompted me to make my own were: - native multicurrency support (I travel a lot and am a digital nomad by lifestyle, so this was quite important to me)…

Hey jnfr!

Your app is definitely what I envision for mine. Website and all that is absolutely amazing! Congrats!

My app is "similar" in some ways but, of course, in a very small scale at the moment (still in development: live for me, wife and a couple of friends).

This is what I've got so far:

- Web version only

- Multi currency is a must for me too (Brazilian living in Europe here)

- Looking at the screenshots of your app, I also have the "category listing" by percentage. I don't look at it on a daily basis but I think it's important to at least have some control over stuff I'm spending my money with.

- Under the hood, I share the same "account" (but different user credentials) with my wife so we both leverage saving transactions wherever we are, together.

- I've also got historical transactions. It's the only way I found how to identify where my money is going over time.

- No "budgeting" per se: I understand how some folks need to spare X amount of money for "Groceries" or "Travel".. and as some have already pointed out, I don't want to be on day 20th of the month and running out of budget for a specific category and not being able to keep spending if I have to. For a customer point of view, it would bring me "frustration" by simply checking that I'm below budget on the next month. Again, I value that, but I'm fine with my finances.

For now, I'm not sure how I can make money out of it. I'm strongly thinking about simply releasing it, getting feedback and improve along the way. I don't want to be a competitor of yours and I'm more than happy that list your app as an alternative if necessary as soon as I go live!

Again, congratulations. I want to be a solo entrepreneur in the future. I'm not just there yet.

Thanks for your insights and good luck with your product!

Re: Ask HN: I'm building budgeting app. What features would you look for?

#38

Post by satvikpendem »

jnfr wrote: post #32
satvikpendem wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have, at least for the free trial amount. It didn't really stick for me, because of no mobile app so I can't add transactions on the go, and the budgets just seemed...forgiving? I want to control my spending, I don't want to be told it's okay and that I can spend more. At least for me, I want hard cut offs. It's a fine service, it just didn't work for me necessarily. I also don't use their multi-currency support as…

Thanks for giving Lunch Money a shot! The mobile app is coming soon, but as a one-woman team, I'm focused 100% on rounding out the core product before introducing another platform and slowing down my development cycles. Cheers!

Thanks Jen, looking forward to it. I've heard about your story from IndieHackers, very inspiring, it made me want to create an app for my budgeting needs as well.
Post reply on HN