Tired of spreadsheets?! I built my minimal money manager: ManaMoney
In this world, there are two kinds of people: those that spend their money without thinking about consequences and those that need to know where they spent every single penny. If you belong to the second type of people (or you manage a small company), continue to read this article because I’ve developed an interesting app that can help in your daily life. Oh… I almost forgot… the app is called ManaMoney.me and is available for free on the web with full multi-device and responsive support.
Before to give you more information about the app, here are some curious and/or important facts about your finances that you can discover thanks to a money manager:
“Summing all the main video/streaming services, the total cost is almost 400€ per year. About 2000€ in 5 years.”
“If you are a smoker and buy 5 packs of cigarettes per week, you will spend 1200€ per year. 6000€ in 5 years.”
“If you have an old car, you can discover that the cost of maintenance exceeds the car’s value.”
“In some months of the year, you probably spend more than average on daily shopping. If you know why maybe you can understand how to fix it.”
The need to manage your finances
For most of us, the need to have a money manager is born when we’re facing adult life. You need to know where you spent (or thrown away) your money, you also need to make some plan for the future, try to understand the net of your salary and so on.
A money manager can have countless faces, it can be a notepad, an Excell file, a mobile app, or just your memory (not recommended).
Like most people, my first approach with money management was done with pen and paper, but when the situation got more complicated, I felt the need to automate calculations and a tagging system to better organize my transactions. So, the next step was spreadsheets (Excell or Google Sheets) that, once configured and customized (need a lot of expertise), it’s the most complete and versatile tool that you can ever find.
The problem with spreadsheets was that they aren’t designed to be used on mobile and have a very unfriendly interface on desktop also. So it’s pretty difficult to add new transactions when you are on the go. Here’s where is born the idea to develop a tool tailored to my needs (and who’s knows?! Maybe your needs also).
The perfect Money Manager: key features
When I decided to develop my custom money manager, the main concept was to build the simpler user experience possible with 12 essential key features, that I included in the currently available app.
- The web app is compatible with every device on the market: Smartphone, PC, Mac, iPad, Android, iOS, Tablet, and Microwaves (maybe not this last one :/).
- A simple interface that allows me to add a new transaction in less than 10 seconds.
- Recurrent transactions (rent, bills, monthly services…) that allows me to easily add new transaction and also make a budget prediction for the future months.
- Note-transaction (not accounted) to remind me about some incomes/outcomes that I expect to receive/give.
- Saving system to easily put money aside for a particular thing (travel, a new purchase, etc…)
- The possibility to add and manage multiple accounts/wallets from the same user.
- The possibility to share some of those accounts/wallets with other people.
- A good and versatile tagging/category system that allows me to better organize my transactions and get good analytics.
- A simple dashboard where I can check my last transactions and check your current situation.
- An analytics section where, thanks to charts, I can check my balance through time, incomes/outcomes through time, and a clear overview of the tags/categories situation.
- The possibility to do budget prevision and easily understand my future financial situation thanks to charts
Compatible with every device
I enjoy mobile apps, but sometimes you need more focus and check the situation on a bigger screen. For that reason, I’ve developed my app as a Responsive Web App compatible with every device (available also as Progressive Web App — PWA). The important thing is that you don’t need to install an app, you can just use it from the browser of your smartphone or your laptop.
If you wanna give it a try, you can simply open your browser, register on ManaMoney.me and use it on whatever device you want.
Simple by design
When I started to work on this app, the most important thing was to design it considering that it should be simple to use and easy to understand. I think that a good job was done on both sides, but I am sure that much remains to be done. For this reason, I am constantly in search of honest feedback.
Adding a new transaction requires just 1 information: the value of the transaction. All other data aren’t mandatory and you can easily set them with few taps or using the smart note field that, thanks to shortcuts, can automatically set value, date, and tags just by writing in a text input field.
Tags and Categories
ManaMoney.me have a very simple organization system: tags and categories. When you create a new transaction, you can associate an infinite number of tags with it. Tags can be grouped into categories for a cleaner organization.
For example, the ‘Daily Shopping’ tag can be wrapped inside the ‘Home’ category. When you will add a new transaction with the Daily Shopping tag, it will be automatically part of the Home category balance also.
As I said before, I wanted a sandbox experience, so the organization of transactions in tags and categories isn’t mandatory. You can choose to set up to 9 tags to your transaction, or none… It’s all about your needs!
Recurrent transactions
All of us have any sort of recurrent transactions from rent, to bills, mortgage, and so on. In ManaMoney, recurrent transactions have a double function:
- They work as a reminder and you can check all recurrent transactions in the specific box inside the dashboard.
- They have a key role in budgeting and future financial prevision.
If the first function is self-explanatory, the second one needs a further explanation. With a premium ManaMoney account, you can give superpowers to the Analytics section unlocking the ability to set a date range in the future. This works particularly well in combination with recurrent transactions and not accounted transactions (notes transactions) giving you the ability to check your future financial situation.
So, supposing that you set all your main recurrent incomes (salary) and outcomes (bills, rent, mortgage, etc), you can check your estimated budget on a particular date, you can even filter some specific tags (ex: you can check how much the monthly home rent impacted on your current balance, etc).
Not Accounted Transactions (Note-transactions)
Sometimes you simply need to track transactions that don’t impact your current balance. This is the case of a not accounted transaction. In ManaMoney, these types of transactions are very simple to set, you can click on the Accounted toggle when you add a new note and it’s done!
Not accounted transactions are very useful in various ways other than using it as a note. As recurrent transactions, they can be used also for budgeting reasons (for example you can simulate a big purchase ad see how it will impact your current or future balance).
Or you can imagine having a credit not immediately accessible. You don’t want to consider that money in your daily budget, but you need to know also your global current and future situation in the analytics section or the balance section. This is why not accounted transactions were introduced in the application.
Saving system
Sometimes you need to save money for a particular reason (a trip, a new car, etc…). The ManaMoney.me’s saving system is pretty simple: you can create a saving tag with a target (ex: Trip to Rome 2000,00€). When you start to add/remove money to/from a saving tag, the amount of money will no longer be available in your current balance, but, as not accounted transactions and recurrent transactions, you will be able to check your real balance if you need.
The concept is the same as a piggy bank. When you reach your goal (or at any moment you need), you can break your money bank making money available again in your balance.
Multiple accounts/wallet and sharing system
Sometimes, you want to keep your wallets/accounts separated. On ManaMoney you can create multiple accounts using the same user (so no compulsive logout/login, but just two clicks on the header).
Multi-account and the multi-wallet system can be very useful when you want to track separate entities, each one with separate tags, categories, and transactions. Some examples are your wallet, your Amazon Gift Card account, your account as a freelancer, etc.
Sometimes, you want to share an account with other people. Imagine a family that wants to keep track of the family’s budget. ManaMoney.me is perfect for this situation: you can create a “Family Account” and share it with the other members of the family. The same concept could be applied to a small group of people, an organization, a small team, and so on.
Dashboard
ManaMoney.me’s dashboard was designed with three key targets: it had to be minimal, it had to give a complete understanding of the current situation and it had to allow to add a new transaction in a few taps or clicks. On a single page you can check your account (or accounts) detailed balance, last transactions, savings tags recap, not accounted transactions, and recurrent transactions. But sometimes, an image is worth 1,000 words as you can see up above.
Analytics and Budgeting
The Analytics section is where ManaMoney helps you the most, is where you can access a lot of information displayed in the most intuitive way possible. Once set the date range and filters, you can consult:
- A timeline balance chart with all your transactions
- A pie chart with details on your incomes/outcomes by tag/category
- All transactions details
- All tags details
- With the premium feature, you can also check your future financial situation
ManaMoney.me future
ManaMoney is now available for free except for premium features that will be reserved for a small group of selected beta testers until all quality and security tests will be passed. When the beta testing will end, premium features could become available for everyone and it could require a paid subscription.
The application is technically strong and it’s ready to be used by a discrete amount of people, but it’s still an MVP that still needs a lot of work. If you want to be part of the project, you can participate in various ways (you can find this information in ManaMoney’s footer and the landing page).
- You can try the application for free
- You can signup for the official newsletter (it have a big importance for me, to understand if there is interest in the application and understand how much effort I should put in for new features development, etc)
- You can become a Beta Tester and actively help the improvement of the application testing new features in preview and sharing feedback
- You can join the ManaMoney Reddit community where you can share feedback and suggestions (channel just opened)
- You can contact me directly via email to share some feedback
- You can share this post :D
- You can consult the roadmap and ask for new features/improvements via email/Reddit
- You can talk about ManaMoney with your friends and followers
Just a last important reminder. Consider that I am working alone on this project in my spare time and this is just an MVP (minimum viable product), so it isn’t ready for commercial use, and it’s still in an early development stage.
I decided to make it public and share it with a small group of people to understand if this product can be interesting for other users over me and, in that case, work to improve the product and make it available as a commercial product. So even if I and all other beta users are using it every day without particular problems, I suggest you not use it as your main money manager and not store your personal information in it until the beta phase will end (subscribe to the ManaMoney’s newsletter to be notified). If you want to, use the application with real data at your own risk.
