Making project for myself first and...
Hey Indie Hackers! Been listening for the podcast for a while and I am a huge fan of it!
Some time ago I decided to build a tool for myself. It should help track my personal budget. I have lunched a beta version and I would appreciate any comments from anyone who would like to try it out. You can find it here https://beta.skaiciuoju.eu
Plan minimum was a tool for my own use (check).
Plan maximum was to make it available as a SaaS for everybody to use.
Should I go for plan maximum? Would You pay for such idea or product?
I think planning for yourself should be done first because it results in the smaller, more achievable product. It also helps keep you motivated because you can start using new features as you build them.
Planning for "everyone" can't happen without talking to more people and getting feedback on the product. Most attempts at doing so without talking to people result in over-engineered products with features people don't care about.
How would your budget tracking software be better than Mint or a spreadsheet?
Well I was using spreadsheet for a while - that was step 1. Then I saw that it is really hard to make most out of it and get the view of data You are interested in. Then the idea to "solve own problem" was born. Of course this is just a start. I know there are many tools like this, I have tried few of them. I do not want to share all the bank information with some app so I do not offer this kind of feature. Instead I offer an CSV import of Your data (also You can add entries manually) which You can get from any bank or convert from other formats which Your bank supports. And when You have Your data in place all You have to do is assign a tag and let system to do the job counting the stats. I have tagged my money for 4month and three bank accounts in just about an 1.5 hour.
I do not have time to work on this full time but I realize that things should work better, look nicer etc. I am filing the improvements list and I hope after month or so will jump back on this app to make some changes. That is why I am looking for some feedback. Thank You for Your time @ProfessorBeekums!
I get not wanting to give services bank information. It's one of the reasons I don't use Mint. Do most banking services provide a CSV export though?
I think there's also a marketing challenge with that because while people say they care about security, they care about convenience much more.
More importantly, personal budgeting is also another thing that people know they should do but don't. You may need to focus on what better personal budget management can actually do for people.
I have an idea to make a blog on personal finance topic and use it as a traffic source for this project. It will take some time, but it is on my to do list. In this case it would be nice customer education tool.
How to make that tool more convenient is the main question. Now I do not have a lot of feedback so I will be trying to improve it at least by my perspective.
About CSV - no, not every bank has this feature. In my country only on of three banks I have used had it and others had XLS which is easy to transform. I took CSV just for the beginning and maybe I will add more formats in the future.