
Show HN: We made 1 app this year - vitoc
http://lentor.io/saved/
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pseudometa
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
Agreed. But I will be curious to see who is making more money in a year.

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coherentpony
Indeed. Thirty multiplied by zero is still zero.

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ianlevesque
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.

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Zikes
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.

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dsk139
There's an app for this. Dollarbird -
[https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/dollarbird-personal-
finance/...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/dollarbird-personal-
finance/id665003358) it does exactly that for me. It does not tie to my bank
account though it's all manual input (but you can schedule in recurring
payments/income), which is actually good for me because I dislike
miscategorizations

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Zikes
Nice! That calendar interface in the first screenshot is almost exactly what I
imagined. It's a shame I'm on Android so I can't try it out, but it's good to
see there are good apps for that sort of budgeting.

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Gyongyi
Hey Zikes,

The Android version of Dollarbird is actually already in the pipeline, most
probably coming out sometime in February. So if you'd like to be updated about
this you can sign up to our newsletter here:
[http://dollarbirdapp.com/contact/](http://dollarbirdapp.com/contact/) Cheers!

~~~
Zikes
I'll do that, thanks!

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mapgrep
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.

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kohanz
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.

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chadcf
> 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.

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x3ro
I was about to try this too, but it wants to know my location, phone call
information, storage access and whatnot :(

~~~
chadcf
Download the desktop version. The mobile one is not a full fledged app, it's
mostly a convenience to record transactions and check budget amounts on the
go. 99% of the time I use the desktop app.

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

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esseti
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.

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rplnt
> 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
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.

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

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urza
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..

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Xymak1y
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)

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k-mcgrady
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.

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x3ro
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 -_-"

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kmfrk
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.

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spyder
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)

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tudorconstantin
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?

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DLarsen
You essentially just want the app on each device tied into the same account?

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tudorconstantin
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.

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solox3
"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.

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

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allending
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
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)

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Gracana
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?

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paperwork
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.

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

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

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

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hagope
So who are all the ppl on the about page?

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

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

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rfnslyr
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
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-
yn...](http://www.youneedabudget.com/support/article/forecast-in-ynab)).

~~~
skwirl
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.

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DLarsen
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.

