
Show HN: Cashbar app – your SaaS revenue in your menu bar - kulesh
https://cashbar.app
======
arvidkahl
My first thought was "oh, this will contribute to already high anxiety
levels", mostly because I remember how I reacted to MRR changes:

\- MRR went up a bit: "Great, we're on track"

\- MRR went down a bit: "THE END IS NEAR!!!!"

At some point, I understood that it was Loss Aversion Bias [1] at play. Once I
reframed MRR movements as something fluctuating and neutral, it lost all
anxiety-inducing powers.

So this might actually be fairly neat if the business owner has a reasonable
approach to this metric.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_aversion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_aversion)

~~~
jwr
Solo founder with a SaaS, can confirm. These reactions are REAL. This is why I
first thought this app was cool, and later thought that I'm fighting myself
every day not to look at my MRR too often.

------
Doches
Any particular reason why this isn't notarised? I realise it's another hoop to
jump through (and an annual fee for Apple's developer program), but given that
I'm going to connect this thing to my Stripe account it would be nice if it
didn't feel like it was avoiding (minimal! easy!) security checks.

For that matter, it's also slightly misleading that you don't call it out as
Catalina-only. I'd love to use it (to wit, I've just paid you for it!) but I'm
sure there are still lots of folks putting off the upgrade to Catalina.

(Indie game devs especially, since Steam's upload tools are 32-bit).

~~~
jsjohnst
Came here to say the same thing. The installation b/s gives me the impression
this developer doesn’t take releasing MacOS software serious enough to trust
them with running code on my machine, let alone having access to highly secure
things like payment gateway auth tokens.

~~~
fit2rule
Hey now, the notarisation priority bit has only been set for a little while,
if you wanna release early/often, you can't wait around for Apple to approve
your submission...

~~~
Doches
I honestly can't tell if this is sarcasm or not, but I notarise builds on
commit as part of CI and it took...all of about five minutes to set up. Three
of those minutes were me hunting around my desk for my 2FA phone. The whole
thing is _trivial_ to automate, and I normally see notarisation times around
2-3 minutes.

Is it more tedious than just flinging something up on the web? Sure. Is it so
much of an obstacle that we should give up on shipping vaguely secure software
for Macs? Obviously not.

(I do have time for the argument that the $non-zero/year fee excludes a huge
swath of indie/hobbyist/student developers, but that's not what we're talking
about here.)

~~~
jsjohnst
Thanks for saying this. I emphatically agree with all points but wanted to
add, even if you don’t have a CI/CD pipeline already, doing notorization is
trivial locally.

~~~
kulesh
Fixed the notarization, thanks for bringing that up!

~~~
jsjohnst
Your reply makes me feel a bunch better about your product. Keep up the good
work!

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jsjohnst
Would be very useful if the website had even a single screenshot that clearly
showed the app experience. Yes I know there’s a video (and a rather crude clip
of a screenshot at the very bottom of the page), but nothing that clearly just
shows what the app looks like easily. As the author, I’d assume it shouldn’t
be too hard to mock it out with dummy data rather than blurring out details.
If there’s any motion, a gif would be ok, but clearly showing a screenshot
with what the menu bar experience looks like would go a long way imho.

~~~
kulesh
Will add, thanks for the suggestion.

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sschueller
Alternatively for other data you can use
[https://github.com/matryer/bitbar](https://github.com/matryer/bitbar) and
code your own api consumer in a shell script.

~~~
tonylemesmer
is there windows sys tray equivalent? (or taskbar)

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shoshin23
I would love to see this also for App Store & Play Store Revenues. That would
push me to pay for something like this because it's much harder to get that
revenue data in real-time .

~~~
andysinclair
Me too, although currently the lowest resolution of reports from Apple via the
API is daily sales, no way to get last 24 hours at the moment (which I would
be most interested in).

~~~
kulesh
Don't AppAnnie do that?

~~~
AznHisoka
AppAnnie doesn’t have a special agreement with Apple. all they do is
guesstimate revenue figures based on downloads/rankings.

~~~
kulesh
Got it, thanks.

------
kulesh
Recorded a quick overview:
[https://www.loom.com/share/412c35ddc5f944f7937629080c76d7e1](https://www.loom.com/share/412c35ddc5f944f7937629080c76d7e1)

~~~
iamarsibragimov
The video is awesome! I didn't know that is possible to make a preview video
in Loom. So much fun!)))

~~~
kulesh
Glad you liked it :)

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natch
I imagine with an app like this that gives visibility into which SaaS services
are making good revenue, it would be very tempting for the app developer to
exploit that information and select businesses to start replicating. Or hand
the info off to an associate if you want to keep up appearances. Very clever
if that’s what’s going on here.

~~~
kulesh
Thanks for stopping by:

> exploit that information

All your Stripe data is stored locally: it is not going anywhere. And I have
no intention on tracking any of that.

There are plenty of tools like ProfitWell that provide in-depth Stripe data
analysis for free. I simply wanted to see my own SaaS numbers. All. The. Time.

Thanks!

~~~
natch
That is good to know that it stays local! Great app idea too. Thanks for
replying.

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agustif
I use CashNotify.app it seems similar

~~~
supacruz
Hey @agustif, (one of) CashNotify maker here. Thanks for the mention!

This indeed looks similar to what we do since 2016
([https://cashnotify.com/](https://cashnotify.com/)). However, $2 for that app
is unbeatable. I hope it'll be sustainable.

CashNotify is more pricey, but you can add multiple Stripe and PayPal
accounts. It's also a bit more "visual", supports both macOS and Windows, and
it's notarized ;)

Anyway, best of luck to Stas!

~~~
agustif
Hey no problem, I think it may help some of the other HN fellow users which
weren't so trusty about CashBalance.

If I remember correctly you're on the official App Stores, and also are a
stripe verified partner which is a great point to be confident about the
proper use of API_KEYs

And sometimes being pricey in software inspires more trust to the buyer, this
is also true in any product or service you might need tough

------
kulesh
Launching on Product Hunt today:
[https://www.producthunt.com/posts/cashbar](https://www.producthunt.com/posts/cashbar)

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karmabot
Hey that looks interesting, do you have graphs in your product? I just
installed it, looks minimalistic but I like to know if there is some kind of
extended functionality that I am missing. Thanks

~~~
kulesh
No extra stuff: just showing your Stripe balance in your menu bar on macOS.

This was supposed to be a quiet soft-launch of v1.0 that I've just published
at Gumroad. Charts and other beautifications to come, thank you for the
suggestion!

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jonwinstanley
Is installing an app like this a good idea with regards to your anxiety
levels?

~~~
kulesh
Depends on the anxiety readings :) I just like to see numbers going up. It's
generally upward and onward in my SaaS
([https://karmabot.chat](https://karmabot.chat)).

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chdaniel
Love it

~~~
kulesh
My pleasure.

------
Nextgrid
Electron?

~~~
jpincheira
react native + catalyst[1] would be best for you — to prepare for the future
and be multi-platform, which is what we'll be releasing in my team[2] in the
next few weeks.

[1] [https://github.com/react-native-community/discussions-and-
pr...](https://github.com/react-native-community/discussions-and-
proposals/issues/131)

[2] [https://standups.io](https://standups.io)

~~~
kulesh
I'll check 'react native + catalyst' out thanks.

For now, I'm just planning to do another tiny native app for Win. Thanks!

~~~
jpincheira
No worries! You can basically have a native macOS app using JS — without using
Swift, with the potential of having native mobile apps and web apps (react-
native-web, which is what Twitter is using these days), all using the same JS
codebase — over 90% code share. Happy to chat anytime. :)

