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According to the declaration, which I made in the post summarizing the year 2018, we just released new version of the Family Finance Tracker  – home budget application, with creating personal budget functionality.

This is a version containing many changes and quite important from our point of view. In addition to budgeting, although it was not planned for this version, we also released functionality of adding  cyclical operations, and introduced two new types of accounts.

In addition, we managed to remove a few minor and larger bugs, and introduce a lot of improvements reported by users on the Facebook group, where we exchange comments about the Family Finance Tracker application.

Below I’ll try to introduce main changes in a little more detail.

Budgeting

budgeting application

As you can see, the home page has become quite colorful. All of these colors, however, have their meaning. 

Until  now, there was one column on the home page, presenting current expenses and revenues. In this version there are three columns:

1. Planned

in this column, you can enter the planned budget amount. Editing takes place directly on the home page. After clicking on the amount of a given sub-category, input field is displayed.

2. Real

here, as before, all recorded revenues and expenses will appear

3. Difference

in this column, the remaining amount for budget is displayed, i.e. the planned budget amount minus the real value.

colors

Rows with particular categories and subcategories have become progress bars.

You can use them to track how much money is left to achieve the budget. For the revenue categories, the bars are displayed in shades of green, for expenses in shades of red.

When the real amount has not reached planned amount, then the colors are milder. When it exceeds 100%, the color become more intense. Perhaps from the user’s point of view, these are small things and not so important, but it helps to see at first glance, how the budget looks, and where we spent more than we assumed.

Budget summary

The summary panel on the right side has also been modified. So far, it contained only the sum of registered operations, and the total accounts’ balance. In the current version, it also displays planned expenses and income. It also shows difference between planned and real amounts.

Duplicating the budget

To simplify the planning of expenses and revenues, we have added the budget copy function. You can copy values ​​from the previous month, from the same month of the previous year, or from any chosen month. Thanks to this option you will be able to create budget very fast. Just make a copy of the selected period, and adapt it to current needs.

 

Chart with the implementation of the budget

If you prefer bars more than numbers, in the “reports” tab a new graph appeared, graphically presenting the budget:

budget graph

 

Summary of the year

After switching from monthly to annual view, the application will display amounts aggregated for all months. In this case, the amounts in the “planned” column obviously can not be modified.

 

Cyclic operations

Another quite important functionality that users have asked for is cyclical operations.

On the “add operation” page, a new option has appeared – frequency, by default set to “Single”.

add new operation

 

However, you can also choose: daily, weekly and monthly frequency.

If you choose a frequency other than single, the operation will be performed immediately (if the date of the operation is present or past), and the next waiting one will be placed in the “Planned” tab:

planned operations

 

On this screen all planned operations are shown, with schedule date, and frequency. User can edit or cancel these operations.

Also operations with single frequency but with a future date will be placed here. This is a change from the current version of the application. So far, even future operations were executed immediately and modified the account balance. The current behavior is more real.

 

New account types

Another of the users’ requests was adding other types of accounts than a bank account and cash. Until now, only one of these options could be selected when defining an account.

All account where displayed on “add operation” page. It was annoying sometimes, when user had many accounts defined.

I promised that new types will be added when implementing the net worth functionality, but I managed to find some time and add a simplified version right now.

I added two types: Special fund and deposit. In general, they work similar like bank account and cash.

They are simply not visible in the list of accounts when adding operations.

The only way to change the balance on these accounts is to make a transfer between accounts. 

Other changes

The functions described above are only part of the changes that have been made. The changelog contains a lot more items. We have also fixed some errors reported by users (for which we thank you very much!).

We  still count on your help and ask for help with testing Family Finance Tracker . Users who helped us in the application tests will receive  bonuses when we will start selling application.

Summary

If you do not have our application installed yet, you can download it by subscribing to our newsletter. Then you will automatically receive a message containing all the information necessary to log in, as well as links to the web and mobile version.

If you have already used Family Finance Tracker and you want to check what has changed, make sure that you have updated the version on your phones and tablets to the latest one. The old version will unfortunately not work properly anymore. If you use the browser version, this problem obviously does not occur.

As announced, we are now working on licensing  and launching the sale. This is a big challenge for us, because we have to prepare a price list that will be acceptable to you and let us at least cover the costs of maintaining the application.

We need to start an online store, integrate with the payment provider, and enter the license verification in application. Quite a lot of work :). However, we hope that it is worth working on this type of application. We use it ourselves. It helps us in the daily management of home finances. We want it to be useful also for you.


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