Minding the Pennies

Release notes: The 'Adventurous Ancestors' Release

noreply@blogger.com (Vince Hodges) — Fri, 15 May 2009 14:45:00 +0000

82 years ago today (May 15, 1927) my grandfather (Henry Francis Chandler Hodges - Harry to his friends) arrived here in Canada aboard the Ascania-II into Quebec City, Quebec. He was 22 years old.

I never knew him because he passed away shortly after I was born but it brings a smile to my face to know that he knew of me though. I like to think there is more than a little bit of Harry in me and this release is dedicated to him.

This release has 3 major changes:

The navigation face lift.
Integration with shoeboxed.com
And the Expense Splitting screen

The Navigation Face Lift

With the face lift I hope to address a few things.

First, is to make it easier to be able to move between journals. It's always struck me as very awkward to review multiple journals, this should help with that.

Second, to allow you to view similar information at both the global or cross journal view as well as narrowed down to a specific journal. This release is only the start, expect even more consistency in future releases.

Lastly, to make it easy to access common screens like Add Entry or Import no matter which screen you happen to be on.

The Integration with shoeboxed.com

I've been a fan of Shoeboxed.com for a while and had intended to build a subset of their functionality into Pennyminder, but then I found out that they have an API for accessing the receipts and I decided that was a much better course of action.

So, now you can import your receipts from Shoeboxed into Pennyminder. It's pretty basic at the moment, but will get smarter and more flexible in future releases.

I would like to thank the team at http://outright.com/ for open sourcing their ruby library for shoeboxed. It made it very easy to integrate support for importing Shoeboxed receipts. I also want to thank the team at shoeboxed.com for a great service and for opening it up to third party applications.

The Expense Splitting Screen

The last new piece to go in was the new Expense Splitting tab. Some of the information on this tab used to be on the Journal Summary screen, but went away when that screen was eliminated. This new screen expands on the information that was there before, adding the list of journal entries for each person and the formatting of the information was also changed.

This will help groups who are splitting bills understand who has paid what and how much each person owes or is owed for the month.

So check out the last version of Pennyminder and as always feedback is encouraged!

Release notes: The Medford, Oregon release

noreply@blogger.com (Vince Hodges) — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 14:51:00 +0000

Greetings from Medford. I am on my way down to FinovateStartup09 in San Francisco, CA and have had a few of things queued up for release and I wanted to get it out there before the event on Tuesday so that I can demo all of the new features I've been working on:

Profile photos
Comments/Notes on journal entries
Add attachments to journal entries
List of receipts (attachments)
Removed the Journal Summary screen. It was pretty sparse and I simply moved the contents to other screens. The Spend Cloud and Projected Totals (from the Journals screen) moved to the entries screen. Delete Journal can now be done from the edit journal screen.
Expense split has gone away for a bit, but will eventually return and be expanded into it's own screen.
A bit of style/UI work: Top navigation more button like, main navigation is more 'tab' like.

I am also working on some external system imports and will let you know more when they are a bit further along.

More from San Francisco when I arrive!

Launch Party 6

noreply@blogger.com (Vince Hodges) — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 16:52:00 +0000

Last night was Launch Party 6 and it was a rousing success for me. Lots of great feed back and exposure. Not everyone sees the benefits to being able to share their finances, to share in the responsibilities, but that's okay as I don't expect Pennyminder to be the solution for everyone.

The number one question I answered over and over was, "Does it integrate with the Banks?". The answer, right now, is that it no, it does not have any back end integration with the banks.

I have always recognized that this was a needed feature, but it struck me just how much a barrier to entry this was going to be.

I will be working on proposing a solution to the banks and credit unions that I hope will provide a simple and secure way to integrate Pennyminder and other external tools with them, with out needing to ever type your banking information into Pennyminder (which I think is just wrong).

My table was next to the guys from Showbert, their service is a social network around the tv shows you like to watch. They're nice guys and their site is cool too, check them out.

Congrats to http://handimobility.ca/ and http://rilli.com/ for winning!

Anyways, it was great fun, now it's back to coding...

A flurry of updates

noreply@blogger.com (Vince Hodges) — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 16:54:00 +0000

I've been hard at work (although my day job is still consuming most of my time) on the next release of Pennyminder and I wanted to let everyone know whats been happening and what's coming down the pipe in the next little while.

Upcoming Release

I have a few changes that have been done over the since December that are almost ready to go out. I've added:

The ability to add attachments to journal entries. Use this to attach receipts to journal entries.
New Receipts screen that lists, well, all your receipts for the month.
You can now add comments to journal entries.
I am working on adding forums where users can share tips, information and support for other users. This may or may not be ready when I do the release.

I am also working on adding a number of non-visible changes to support 'white label' sites and products.

We're planning to offer fully branded and co-branded versions of Pennyminder for Banks, Credit Unions and others that may wish to embed a personal finance manager into their products and sites. Look for a more formal announcement regarding our white label PFM offering soon.

(If you are looking for such a product, please email me for more details. Oh, and our pricing will be very generous for the first set of customers ;-) )

Launch Party 6

Pennyminder has been selected as one of the companies to demo at the upcoming Launch Party 6 here in Vancouver (even if there's no official mention of my participation yet :). I am very excited to show people just how Pennyminder can help small groups manage their shared finances.

Strutta puts on a contest to vote on the startup most likely to succeed you can see all of the entries and vote at the contest site. Please cast your vote for my entry even though I was rushed (I was a late addition to the invited startups and only had 2 days to prepare my video) and it's not all that good in my opinion. The other entries are very well done, congrats to the eventual winner.

Finovate Startup 09

I will be attending Finovate Startup 09 on April 28 in San Francisco, I am waiting to hear if I've been selected as one of the startups to demo.

Pennyminder in the press!

And lastly, Pennyminder has gotten a few mentions in the last two months:

Launched

noreply@blogger.com (Vince Hodges) — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 18:35:00 +0000

A few days ago I removed the invite only status from Pennyminder. I am still waiting for my merchant account, but I don't want that to delay it any longer.

So with that in mind, it's my pleasure to announce that Pennyminder has relaunched! It's been a lot of work, but it has come a very long way since the prototype, providing individuals and small groups with a set of simple and elegant tools to manage their day to day finances.

There are just a couple problems with IE. There are a few minor visual issues in IE6 and for IE7, the message box does not quite work properly which I hope to address in the little while.

This is just the beginning, I have lots of ideas for features to add. Come and join the discussion.

The trials and tribulations of obtaining a merchant account

noreply@blogger.com (Vince Hodges) — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 16:03:00 +0000

It is taking longer than I ever expected to get the merchant account for Pennyminder.

Once the company was incorporated and the bank account was setup, I started the process at the end of September and it's still incomplete here at the end of October (they seem to be working hard at it though).

The site has been complete and ready to go for a while (although I continue to fix little bugs) and I don't want to wait any longer. I will be opening up the site very soon (an hour or so) to everyone.

The bonus for you is that until I get my merchant account all additional journals will be free of charge. Here is the secret to obtaining free journals:

Set the card type to 'Bogus'
Enter 1 for the card number
Enter your name
Enter an expiry date set in the future. It does not matter when.
Enter a billing address. You can use your own because Pennyminder will remember it for future purchases.

BarCampBankBC 08 Day 2

noreply@blogger.com (Vince Hodges) — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 22:22:00 +0000

I've just gotten home from the day 2 sessions and I must say that it was a great introduction to BarCamps being my first *camp ever. My talk was shot down for a second day in a row... :) but that's okay as the session I attended instead covered some interesting points.

First we began with a discussion started by Andy LaFlamme from Main (http://theculoop.blogspot.com/) on the ways in which the information coming real world social networks can be integrated into an organization to have a better understanding of what customers need, want or are complaining about.

Next up we had a brief description of Net Promoter Score from Denise Wymore. I find the topics interesting because as a non-marketing person, they give me insights and ideas for creative marketing I might be able do for Pennyminder.

And lastly (but not least!) We had a great discussion on the current financial crises.

I met some great people and was given lots to think about. This experience was so great, I am thinking of maybe organizing a BarCampPersonalFinance at some point in the future.

First day of BarCampBankBC 08

noreply@blogger.com (Vince Hodges) — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 02:22:00 +0000

So far the first day has been great with some really great discussions. I attended 3 sessions and had put forth my own call for discussion on 3rd party access to financial data, but everyone found the other suggestions for my time slot more interesting, so I had zero attendance. Ah well, there's always tomorrow :).

William Azaroff of Vancity is live blogging here the sessions he attended (which happened to be the three that I attended)

I've also managed to do a bit of networking and meet some great people. They've given me a lot to think about. I look forward to tomorrows sessions.

See here for more information on BarCampBankBC

Almost there...

noreply@blogger.com (Vince Hodges) — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 15:05:00 +0000

Please forgive the silence around here, but it's because I've been quite busy working on getting Pennyminder ready for launch.

I can say that it is almost ready for it's public unveiling! There just a couple of minor bugs and the not so minor process of obtaining a merchant account, which includes making sure Pennyminder is PCI compliant.

As a bit of a promotion (and because the merchant account is not live yet ;), anyone who signs up for an account before the launch will be able to create additional journals free of charge (up until the merchant account is hooked in of course), so send me an email or add your self to the waiting list.

Recent and Upcoming Events

noreply@blogger.com (Vince Hodges) — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 15:05:00 +0000

In an effort to start getting the word out about Pennyminder, Last night I attended Launch Party V (my first) and it does my heart good to see such a vibrant and healthy startup scene here in Vancouver.

I spoke to a number of people, handing out cards and letting them know I exists :). One of the companies that was presenting was Clarity Accounting which is a web based accounting system (which Pennyminder is not nor claims to be) and from the brief look I've seen of it, it looks pretty decent.

I spent some time speaking with the technical director of Clarity and we have some common issues, namely easy, seamless and secure access to financial transactions straight from the financial institutions. This weekend I will be attending BarCampBankBC to start a dialog with some of the institutions about this very issue.

Hopefully, we'll see you all at Launch Party VI...

A quick update

noreply@blogger.com (Vince Hodges) — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 03:07:00 +0000

(Gasp! Two posts in a week!)

I've made a few releases over the past week, mostly to fix little things.

A friend of mine is doing a usability review. She had trouble seeing how to add someone else to a journal. I will wait for her final report, but I am already thinking about how to streamline the sharing of journals and planning the last bit of work I need to get completed before I can launch. It will probably stay closed for a bit longer to do some QA and final bug fixes.

I've also been busy getting the community site up and running over at http://getsatisfaction.com/pennyminder. I'll be adding some examples and FAQ's there soon, so come join the discussion and help define and build the best tool for managing personal and small group social finances.

Pennyminder preparing to launch social finance platform

noreply@blogger.com (Vince Hodges) — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 15:19:00 +0000

(I know these posts are few and far between, but I can blog or I can write code, I have chosen to write code :).

A lot has been happening over the last 7 months. Pennyminder has been rewritten from scratch adding in many of the most basic features needed in a personal finance tool and laying the ground work for the future.

In the past two years since the prototype was put up, my life has changed dramatically, most importantly getting married. Keeping two people and multiple accounts straight and informed about the state of the finances is (clearly) more complicated than one person and one account (which can be hard enough!).

And in discussions with others it has become clear that many people are involved in social groups with shared expenses and financial responsibility. Couples are obvious, but also roommates, business partners, social clubs, church groups, people sharing boats or cabins, etc.

Our new social finance platform that will be launching soon that solves this very problem. It solves it by allowing you to share financial information with select people that you know. For each count, project, trip, group, etc, a journal is created where deposits and withdrawals are recorded. A journal can be shared with many people and you choose who has access to these journals.

Now this is a very simple thing, but it is also very powerful. It allows for each of us to have a complete picture of our overall finances that are important to each individual without cluttering that view with things that do not matter to that individual. So I'll leave you with that to ponder while I work on the next release.

I'll be posting some specific examples of Pennyminder uses over the next little while.

The site is private invitation only mode right now. If you would like a key to try it out, just send me an email or sign up on the waiting list.

Tagging and a bug fix

noreply@blogger.com (Vince Hodges) — Sat, 01 Dec 2007 17:43:00 +0000

Slowing inching forward, I've just rolled out a release that fixes the bug with the cancel links pointing to the form page if there were validation errors. It now does the correct thing.

I've also added preliminary support for tagging items. You can't actually do much with them yet, but I am planning a nice 'spend cloud' visualization/navigation tool for the Dashboard. So stay tuned.

I will be working on a few things this week and hope to have them finished for release soon (next weekend is the goal).

On the road to 1.0

noreply@blogger.com (Vince Hodges) — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 13:28:00 +0000

Despite a very busy summer, both personally and professionally (and a personal set back just last weekend), the release went well. I've switched to capistrano for deployments and this will make future releases a push button affair.

Here's a list of changes in this release:

Demo account. Try Pennyminder without having to create an account and enter a bunch of bogus data.
Renamed 'Budgets' to 'Journals'
Consistent use of Deposit and Withdrawal (in place of debit and credit)
Usability improvements to the forms. Improved screen and field labels. Removed/hid unneeded fields. Improved the error reporting.
New Dashboard: Overview of all journals and current financial status. View upcoming and past due scheduled items. View 5 most recent items. Totals for each journal.
New 'index' and 'learn more' pages. They still suck.

There are a couple of known issues with this release:

If you end up with errors on the forms, the cancel link points to the form page instead of the page you came from.
There appears to be a bug in the balance forward calculation for the first month of items. It seems fine going off into the future.

And lastly, the upcoming releases will include the following features:

OFX import. Upload your bank statements.
Projected end of day and end of month balances for each journal.
Item tags

These and a few more would (in my opinion) constitute a One point Oh release.

Pennyminder updated! (Yes, finally)

noreply@blogger.com (Vince Hodges) — Wed, 04 Jul 2007 03:56:00 +0000

Hello everyone! I know it's been a while and Pennyminder must appear quite... dormant (ahem), but I just pushed out a new release. It just has a few new features:

Added a means to retrieve/change lost passwords (link is on the sign in page).
The last column of the budget screen is now ghosted. The theory being that the information needs to be displayed but is of less importance than the data for the current month. But... I don't know if I like it or not! Let me know in a comment what you think...
The blog link now points to this site ;) (when I get a chance, I'll point blog.pennyminder.com here as well).
A new account page that displays some account details and a link to edit some of the user fields.
And a start on a demo account provisioning system. Speaking of which...

Demo accounts will be the focus of the next release, currently scheduled for the first Tuesday in August. The current plan is to have three different accounts for users to try out Pennyminder without having to signup for an account.

Each of the persona's represents a different kind of user with different needs. Hopefully the three will be enough to demonstrate the different uses of Pennyminder. The first is almost ready to go (and I may release a teaser with only the one finished around mid July) and the rest are being defined.

The ezine/portal mentioned in my last post is designed and hold for the lack of original content. There is lots of syndicated content, but a publishing schedule and article ideas need to be fleshed out (if you want to write for the Pennyminder magazine, get in touch with me!).

The plan for the future is to work on Pennyminder (including more blog posts) two nights a week (plus the occasional weekend mornings), keeping the scope of each release small enough to be implemented in a few weeks like that. There's lots to be done, but it looks to be doable with this approach.

So, check out the new Pennyminder

PennyMinder 2.0

noreply@blogger.com (Vince Hodges) — Thu, 11 Jan 2007 23:45:00 +0000

In order to increase the value of PennyMinder we are going to be expanding the scope of what PennyMinder is and does.

The plan is to make it:

A source of financial news.
A set of tools to help manage your money and achieve your goals.
A community.

What do I mean by that?

Financial News

We will be adding news feed reader (this will likely become the front page of PennyMinder). We want to scour the net for the best and most useful collection of news feeds as they pertain to personal finances. And eventually, I hope we can offer some original content.

Tools

PennyMinder the tool will still be here and will be getting some much needed (I need them :-) new features and will still be an important part of the site.

I also have some ideas for other tools that will be useful on their own, but will integrate with the existing tool nicely. A simple mortgage and loan calculator would be nice too.

Community

And last (but not least), I want this to be a community where we share our experiences (good and bad) to help everyone learn from the past achieve all of our varied financial goals. There will be user forums for tips, advice, stories etc as well as a link directory of sites, tools and books that prove useful to the community.

The new PennyMinder is going to be released in stages over the next month or so, stay tuned for further updates.