IGG Developers' Blog

In my previous post I went into some detail on the improvements we are making to budgets. In summary, we are allowing for users to set up for the most basic scenarios, while still providing ways to track more complex budgets. Past blog posts have also focused on how these changes are being integrated in iBank for iPad. Today I’m going to talk more about budgets, but I’m going to focus on what we’ve been doing for the Mac.

Currently, iBank 4′s budgets have three different views: one for basic budgets, one for envelopes, and one for reporting (and printing). This is cumbersome to say the least. If you aren’t using envelope budgeting (which is optional), then you have one view that provides zero value. If your preference is the basic view and you want to print it, then you have to click on the report view, adjust how that looks and print that. This setup has bothered me, and I’m glad to say we’ll be moving on to something better.

One of our main goals for improving budgets on the Mac was to create a single, integrated view that provides all of the information and functionality the user wants and needs, including printing and page layout support. Specifically, this new view needs to support drag and drop for envelope budgeting, editing of budgeted values, page layout for printing and general interactivity (e.g. “click to see more info”). We also need to present the data in a clear, concise way and make sure that for those who do not use envelope budgeting, there aren’t extra UI elements that clutter the view. From a broader perspective, we also wanted to improve budgets from the previous iteration. That is, what changes could we make to the UI and the data we display that will be more useful to customers? Below is a screen capture of our new budget view (still a work in progress):

One of the first things you’ll notice is at the very top is a date control — you can now easily see the budget for a week, month, quarter or year, and you can go back and forward in time to see your historical performance. The next element on the “page” is the the day-by-day progress view. We introduced this unique budget-graphing representation in iBank for iPad, and we’ve brought it to the Mac because it is that useful. You can see immediately if you are on budget or not, and if you are not, you can even see when you’ll be back on budget. Below that is summary information about your budget and finally, the category details. Again you’ll see we’ve borrowed from our iPad app, and astute readers might notice that when features are more functionally equivalent, they become easier to sync. You can also see that we now indicate whether or not bills are paid (solid vs. dashed diamonds) and the redness of the progress bar takes into account the current date of the budget period. For the category details section, if you do not use envelope budgeting, then last column doesn’t appear. (Please take note that while the functionality for the budgets is almost done, this UI is not considered final.)

When you mouse over a row, you get an option to bring up a popover to edit or view a scheduled transaction:

The Budget Item popover lets you quickly change a budgeted amount (and we track your changes) or jump to a specific scheduled transaction, where it can be edited as well.

The entire underlying budget model and interface have gotten a complete makeover. We’ve tried hard to improve its functionality without sacrificing ease-of-use. We are very excited about our new budgets and look forward to putting them in the product. I can’t comment on any time frame about that yet, so thanks in advance for your patience. More news to come!

-Ian

I’m here today to talk about budgets. Put simply, budgets are tricky business. In theory they sound quite simple: budget how much you plan to spend and then track how much you actually spend. If this is done for all expenses, it can really help prevent you from spending too much. It should also help you answer several other related questions: Can I afford XYZ? How much do we save every month? How long until I’ve saved $1000? This sounds fine from a broad perspective but when we get to down to an individual’s needs, the devil is in the details.

For example, a monthly time interval is natural period in which to budget because the majority of people’s bills occur at monthly intervals. However, for many other expenses, and for most people, there is no typical month. Your groceries might cost approximately the same amount month to month, but how about paying for your kids’ karate class that they just started taking? Or an odd property tax schedule? Or the fuel pump on your car that needs to be replaced at some unknown point, or a biannual insurance bill, or extra cash for a weekend getaway or… You get the idea. So the big question is, how do you budget for these oddly timed expenses? Some people are big advocates of “envelope budgeting,” while others always try to stay under budget so you have saved cash for the harder-to-plan-for expenses. The other approach, which I think offers the most flexibility, is to use a system that allows you to model for oddly timed expenses through the use of bills and scheduled income. This is the approach that we took in iBank for iPad, where you tell the app about the bills you have and it automatically incorporates those into your budget.

The other nice thing about budgeting for bills, is that it reflects events in our real life (bills) so it is an easy concept for most people to grasp. Of course, not all expenses are bills, so we still need to allow users to budget for things like groceries, gas, dining, entertainment, etc. Even after you’ve budgeted and planned for all of your bills it is still a good idea to keep an active engagement in the monthly budgeting process. That is, budgets change, and should be updated to reflect those changes. Last month when I had a large unexpected car service, I changed my budgeted amount for “auto service” from $0 per month to $750. This in turn forced me to decide where we were going to come up with an additional $750 from within our budget.

The process of budgeting for bills and “unscheduled expenses,” like groceries and gas, works quite well in iBank for iPad. I not only get an overview of what my expenses should be for the month, but I can also see exactly within the month when I need cash for bills. The following screenshot illustrates the predictive power of of the budgeting in iBank for iPad — at the start of each month I know almost exactly how much I’m going to spend and how that is distributed over the month.

The budget section in this screenshot shows that I will spend very close to $3,367 and I have significant bills due in middle of the month.

However, the current implementation of our budgeting system isn’t without some limitations. For example, some people might want to exclude their 401k account from being used in calculating your actual expenses and income because often people don’t want to include their retirement accounts in their budget.

Another limitation is that we don’t preserve your historical changes to scheduled transactions (aka bills). For example, say you set up your cell phone bill for $100/month occurring on the 10th of each month starting in January. Then, a few months later you add a line to the plan and now your bill is $150, so you make the corresponding change in our app. All seems fine, but if you then look back at January, your expected/budgeted amount will say $150. This situation is only an issue if you find value in looking back at historical budgeted vs. actual charts and since we allow the user to see these historical figures, they should be accurate. So a “fix” for this issue is coming in iBank for iPad 1.2. I use the quotes because this isn’t a bug that we were unaware of, but rather we decided this behavior wasn’t critical for v1.0. I also want to point out that introducing the correct behavior was no small feat. Handling the myriad of common cases and edge cases is huge, especially since we need to do it in a way that will support syncing of budgets in a future release. That’s right, syncing of budgets to a future version of iBank for Mac is coming, but it won’t be for a while. And although this is the Developers’ Blog and it wouldn’t feel out of place to discuss in detail why this wasn’t an easy feature to code and implement, take my word for it and see how our competitors handle this situation (hint: they don’t).

In summary, what is the take home point in budgets? First, budgets are tricky because everyone has different ideas about what is helpful and what isn’t. There is no standard model for home finances and budgeting. Second, we believe the best way for users to think about their budget is in terms of bills, scheduled income (e.g. a regular paycheck) and unscheduled monthly expenses, like groceries, gas, entertainment and dining. Third, sweat the granularity and the details, that is, do incorporate that car insurance bill that occurs every six months, do incorporate property tax payments or other bills that might occur at irregular frequencies. Fourth, remain engaged and adjust your budget as needed, especially for the unexpected expenses that inevitably arise. If you do this, you’ll have a very accurate picture of how you’ll spend your money month-to-month and, most importantly, you’ll be able to identify places to save.

In the next blog post I hope to talk more about how we are re-implementing budgets on the Mac to allow for iPad syncing, and I even hope to show some screenshots.

-Ian

Every time a year comes to a close it’s good to reflect on the past. I want to take this opportunity to do just that, and provide some glimpses of what to expect in 2013.

In addition to the software updates we’ve did in 2012, which I’ll get to in a moment, 2012 for us has been the year of Live Chat. It was clear in 2011 that with our rate of growth, handling tech support via email alone was not scaling well. After researching many options (although to be  honest, we never considered outsourcing technical support), we finally decided that the best way to meet our customers’ needs was to introduce an online chat system. Live chat offers a superior experience for the customer because it doesn’t require endless small email exchanges that end up lasting for weeks. Although the system isn’t available 24 hours a day, we still offer the opportunity for customers to email us if live chat is offline. After approximately 12 months of use, we’ve significantly accelerated response times and handled over 18,000 chats. I also want to point out that I believe we are the only Mac/iOS financial software developer to offer free, unlimited tech support with live chat.

When we released iBank for iPad 1.0 this past June, we rolled it out with a new technology we’ve dubbed Direct Access. To develop the backbone infrastructure of DA was no small feat. Significant resources were invested into this technology because we feel strongly it is the way of the future. We are able to offer users automatic connectivity to thousands more financial institutions than what is available with just OFX. And despite its modest cost, when you use Direct Access, you can avoid the fees some banks charge for OFX connectivity (aka Direct Connect). This makes DA both economical and efficient.

iBank for iPad is our first app to use Direct Access. The DA feature makes the app a joy to use, even without being tethered to syncing via the Mac. I personally track all of my finances now on iBank for iPad with Direct Access, though needless to say, you can expect to see DA appearing in a version of iBank for Mac in the future.

iBank for iPad has seen a total of three update releases since its debut five months ago. Combined, these versions had over 80 documented bug fixes and enhancements — including some big changes like in-line help and serious speed improvements. We are well under way with our next major iteration of iBank for iPad. You can expect to see it in early 2013, and in addition to numerous fixes and enhancements, you can expect to see the ability to view and manage Reminders (finally!):

This screenshot is still preliminary, but as you can see there is now a list of “Reminders.” The folder button allows you to take various actions. For example, you can post a transaction, skip one, etc.. The date on the left is the date the scheduled transaction is supposed to be posted and the rest of the fields are pretty self-explanatory. iBank for iPad will also look for matches to help prevent you from making erroneous entries.

iBank for Mac saw some good love in 2012 as well. We did seven releases, including two full-dot releases (4.5 and 4.6). iBank 4.6 included a long list of enhancements to budgets. But 2012 also put some external demands on our team — we had to get iBank sandboxed, signed for GateKeeper and compatible with Mac OS X Mountain Lion (10.8).

We’ve learned a lot about managing personal finances throughout the years (2013 will mark IGG Software’s 10th anniversary!). And when designing apps from the ground up, as we did with iBank for iPad, you are presented with a unique opportunity to start with a clean slate. Every feature you implement gets discussed endlessly, and it needs to withstand “the test” to actually make it into the shipping product. Additionally, every feature goes through a rigorous process of how it should work. So what is my point here? You can expect to see some of the best things about iBank for iPad to merge with iBank for Mac. The details of those features are still too top secret to discuss now, but rest assured we are hard at work.

I’m excited about 2013 — what a milestone. We’ve grown from the one-man shop to a “real company,” with health benefits, 401k and all of that stuff. I love looking back to my early days manning a booth at MacWorld, when potential customers would say, “How do I know your company will be around next year?” and I like being able to lay that question to rest. We have some exciting plans in store for 2013 and I can’t wait until I can start talking about them.

-Ian

@ianggillespie