
Ask HN: What do you think of my MVP for a simple expense tracking web app? - rheotron
http://dollarlog.com/?utm_source=hackernews&utm_medium=hn_post&utm_campaign=ask_hn
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hyung
Looks nice! Have you thought about adding screenshots on the landing page
(maybe one each for "Log Expenses", "Tag Expenses" and "Analyse Expenses")?

I think a lot of people would like to see what the app might look like before
giving away their email address.

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rheotron
Hm yeah, good point. I'll do that!

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bliti
Make sure to also add a demo that I can use _without_ registering.

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devx
Well I can tell you what I didn't like from the moment I saw the web page: I
can't see or use the app in any way before I even register. As some random
visitor coming to your site, why would I bother doing that, when I have no
idea what to expect from signing-up (other than a bunch of words on a page,
which I just skipped looking for the app screenshots/demo).

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rheotron
Fair call. What would you like to be able to see on the landing page?
Screenshots?

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Blahah
screenshots at least, and preferably a demo that doesn't require registration

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TomJoad
Or better yet, the full product but doesn't save anything until you register.

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freejack
The biggest suggestion I could offer would be to give your potential customers
a reason to use it - ask them a question on the conversion page that qualifies
them as a customer - i.e. "Want to spend your money more effectively?" or
"Want to cut down on the amount of time you spend tracking corporate
expenses?" or something similar. As is, the site kinda assumes that _everyone_
has the problem you are trying to solve, which has the affect of making it
appeal to "no one". Be more explicit about the problem you'd like to solve in
your copy and it will boost user confidence immensely and get many more of
them to the point where they will want to try your service.

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visakanv
also, reach out to the frugal/debt community- there are lots of bloggers
who'll happily do reviews to help their readers, and it's a lot of good
publicity.

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rheotron
Yeah I had that idea also - I posted on r/frugal to not much interest! Will
definitely be reaching out to some bloggers.

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coob
Do you really want /r/frugal as customers?

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rheotron
A customer is a customer!

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Romoku
1) Where is the privacy policy, data usage, and terms of service?

2) What makes this different from Expensify or Mint?

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jwdunne
I like it! Very simple and easy to use.

Since I don't have any expenses I have to track for accounting purposes, I'm
looking at this as a tool to track my own expenditure so as to help improve my
spending habits. I realise the focus might be different so my suggestion may
be useless to you!

What would be really useful to me would be reminders and notifications. With
developing habits like this, I have a very hard time unless I'm constantly
reminded. Like I take my lunch on weekdays at 12pm, so a reminder at half 12
or 1 would have me enter my lunch expenses. This could be further enhanced if
you had a mobile app that used push notifications. This would be essential for
me to develop the habit of doing it.

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rheotron
Ah thanks for the suggestions. That's something I've been thinking about a
bit, I think it's a pain to enter expenses all the time. How do you feel about
an email reminder in place of a push notification?

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jwdunne
Email reminders could also work well.

My thinking with mobile push notifications would be you tap the notification
and it takes you straight to a simple UI where you punch in the values.

It might be harder to reduce the friction as low as this with email
notifications but it could work just as well. A simple link could work, or one
step further is having a feature where you can specify expenditure and tags in
the reply to an email in a certain format that's parsed by your app e.g:

$8, work, commuting $4.50, lunch

(Values in example may seem low because I'm British but dollar/pound symbol is
neither here nor there in this case!)

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rheotron
Ultimately I would love to do a mobile app and it really wouldn't be that
difficult to build, I guess I just wanted to gauge interest before dedicating
more time. That's a really interesting suggestion about the email reply, I'm
going to think about that a bit more!

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f4stjack
Congrats for creating such a simple (but useful!) tool for the masses. I have
found some bugs however:

\- If I enter a nonnumeric value in the expense field it doesn't complain but
enters the detail as 0$ and tag details. It would create some mishap in the
mobile devices.

\- If I enter a numeric value and don't fill the tag and explanation fields
the system reenters last valid value. For example if I entered $1234 and home
as the tag it will repeat if I enter 200 for the amount and erased the
autofilled home tag.

\- There isn't a way to delete/edit previous entries. I should be able to
delete them at least...

Apart from these little stuff the system rocks. :) Keep up the good work,
mate.

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rheotron
Cheers!Deletion and bug fixes are definitely coming!

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marco-fiset
First of all, I want to congratulate you for actually shipping, and dare show
it here on Hacker News.

However, I can't consider this an MVP. Sure it is minimal, but it is barely
usable as it is right now. I'd like a datepicker, instead of writing the date
by hand, and I'd like to be able to have a suggestion of tags I used in the
past. I'd like to have the enter key submit the form. Such small details that
would add great value.

Moreover, I expected the Day, Week, Month filter to show me only the expenses
in that time frame, instead of just the total changing.

Keep it up! Very good job overall.

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rheotron
Thanks very much! I definitely agree with you. All of this stuff is really
easy to add in and will be there in the coming days.

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jtfairbank
Is there any way to preview it? At the very least some screenshots that show
the user what the web app can do would be very helpful. :)

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rheotron
I've added a few small screenshots to the homepage for now. I'll definitely do
a better preview in the coming days!

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andandand
Had this problem recently and solved it by creating a Google Drive form
connected to a spreadsheet, saving what expense and how much it was. Then
bookmarked the form on my iPhone homescreen. Nice to have a secret url for
collecting data without having to authenticate or anything. Something similar
could probably be useful here too.

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iagooar
I really like the simplicity of it. Keep it clean and simple and people will
use it forever.

BUT,

there are some basic features missing, such as: currency config (Europeans
have Internet too ;), subject & comment notes. A receipt upload would be
really great too. Plus, as much as I love Bootstrap, please invest $15 in a
custom theme ;)

Nice job!

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JimmaDaRustla
I use mint.com, but I really have a problem with the method of how they
receive data. I believe banks should provide API keys for their customers
which allows read-only access to their accounts.

Unfortunately, their is zero interest within banks to build this.

Edit: I do too many transactions to use something like this or Toshl.

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rheotron
I had a few problems with Mint which is why I decided to build this: 1. It
wasn't available in my country and 2. I didn't want to connect my bank
account, just because I wasn't comfortable with giving them that info. The API
key would be awesome, but with banks being such large organisations that deal
with so much data I feel like this would be almost impossible to implement
with their current systems.

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JimmaDaRustla
I hear ya!

I work for a big bank, and I tried pushing the idea around a bit, but to no
avail.

It really comes down to "business need" \- the department responsible for the
online services would need to be convinced that there is a desire and a
benefit to providing an API key. I imagine they would see it negative for two
ways - added risk by having sites/programs connect to their application, and
they won't see the added benefit to customers, and vice-versa - customers
wouldn't really know what to do with the key.

It would take a player like Mint to make that case - they could do branding
with a major bank such that they are the first to safely share data, but then
recommend products, etc.

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zizee
It's a nice start. Well done!

I want to click on the tags that I have used so far, so that I can see a
summary for that tag, but it doesn't seem to do anything.

Entering the amounts on mobile could be improved if you could popup a number
keypad on focus. And a calendar select couldn't hurt either.

Again, well done!

~~~
rheotron
Filtering by tags is coming soon! It's almost done, just putting the finishing
touches on it. Thanks for the suggestions! How would you feel about a paid
premium service that gave more analytics around spending habits?

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zizee
I think enhanced analytics would be very valuable to your users. In fact,
without it you don't really have a product.

BTW: I think that this the sort of service where Freemium doesn't make sense.
You need people to get value out of the system, not offer them some crippled
version for free and hope they will upgrade.

With this sort of service it is best to offer everything with a generous trial
period.

Once someone has their data in your system they will want to pay you when the
time comes as they have invested their time to get their data into your
system. But getting people to convert will depend on whether you are offering
them true value, and this can be best achieved by exposing all the value from
the start.

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rheotron
I'm inclined to agree on the freemium thing. I may have an issue though when
it comes to getting existing users on the free system to move over to a paid
model. Do I grandfather existing users or force them to move?

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zizee
Yeah, some products lend themselves to an obvious upgrade path (like my own
where increased usage brings charges). When you find yourself in this
situation it makes sense to offer a free tier as a gateway. We also get some
(small) promotional value from our free users as well. But for your product
it's not obvious that having free users will provide you with much value and
if they don't transition to paid, then they are very much a dead weight.

That said, having people as free users and then cutting them off without
warning could have a negative PR effect.

I think the easiest course of action is to put some wording in a prominent
place on the site to the effect of "this is a free beta, but we will be moving
to a paid model when we feel we are providing enough value". Then when the
time comes, it won't come as a surprise. Then you put them on the 30/60/X day
free trial (which you have anyway for new paid users) and they can transition.

Sure, you will lose some of those free users along the way, but unless they
are providing value to you, free users are just going to be a drain on your
limited resources.

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thisishugo
Is there any way to see what I'm signing up for without actually signing up
for it?

~~~
rheotron
I've added a couple of small screenshots to the home page for the time being!
Hopefully that helps a little.

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shah_m
Great starting point. Do you have a hypothesis about who would benefit from
such a product? It may help you with next steps to validate the concept.

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rheotron
The market I'd really think that would benefit from this (at least early on)
is University students. Obviously, it isn't only limited to this, but in
general uni students are generally making smaller purchases relatively often.

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shah_m
It is good that you have a narrow focus. What specific problem do university
students have that is solved by your product? Also, have you thought about how
you want to iterate with a small group of users?

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rheotron
The problem is that often, a lot of University students are extremely unaware
of how much they spend. I would argue more so than people that are more
experienced handling their expenses. The amount of my friends that have said
to me 'Man, I have no idea where my money goes, I don't but anything, but it
just goes!' is crazy. If I can empower Uni students to make better financial
decisions through a better understanding of their expenses.

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shah_m
Changing behavior is difficult. That's the reason services like mint rely on
bank/credit card transactions to get the data. You may want to quickly start
testing with a few university students before investing more development time.

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mike_mcgrail
Does it sync with online accounting software like Freeagent?

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rheotron
Nope, I guess the idea at this point was to keep it simple as possible. Is
that a feature that you would be interested in using?

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mike_mcgrail
Essential for me! Understand that complicates things though.

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rheotron
Hm, interesting. How would you see a product like mine working with some kind
of existing service like Freeagent?

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mike_mcgrail
Already apps that do it, look at Mobile Agent

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jhh
I like the simplicity, but there are a LOT of bugs.

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Jdfmiller
Add some features to set budgets, track total expenditure and work out how
much you've got left.

