Blog

8. April 2010

1.6.5 vs. 1.6

Yesterday our latest update came out. While it’s only a small step in the version number, we added and improved a lot of cool stuff.

First there’s the rollover option, as requested by many users. It can be turned on in the settings of MoneyBook. As the name suggests, at the end of every month your remaining money will automatically transferred in the following month.

Then there are those cool new popups. They can be enabled by tapping and holding on a row in the transactions, recurring transactions or even in the history. While in the transaction views it’s used to show long notes, in the history view you’ll get a nice and very handy overview of the month you’re tapping (and holding).

Last but not least, we refined almost all the graphics in MoneyBook. This comparison shot of the home-screen shows it best:

We’ve spent a lot of time and work making every pixel perfect. Now the app looks even more beautiful and polished. We think this is an important point that separates us from the many other finance apps and it makes budgeting more fun.

We hope you like our latest update, and rest assured, a lot more is still to come!

Comments (33)

33 Comments

kemsiro - 8. April 2010

i’ve been a huge fan of Moneybook. it works fantastic to help me manage my budget.

@off topic: btw. the blog theme is awesome. any chance you can share it ?
mrkvsl - 8. April 2010

You guys spoil us with the pace of updates being rolled out. You work fast! And the result is always breathtaking, can’t even understand this

Thanks again!
David Hellmann - 8. April 2010

Yeah, and you make the expenses red! i like it. The update with the new graphics are very good. One of the best apps on my iPhone!
Vincent - 8. April 2010

Thanks for all.

But I found a bug about rollover option : for example, just add an 10000$ expense in december 2007. And the actual balance will not change ! Why ? Bug ?
Because of that, I can’t change or add manualy something in lasts month or year : I won’t get the good result.
Hanne - 9. April 2010

Hi!

I have the same problem as Vincent; the balance turns to zero when a new month comes, even if I’ve turned rollover balance on..!
Jorge - 9. April 2010

Good work on this update! The rollover option was a real must!

Its updates like this that make the payment for an app worth it
Vincent - 9. April 2010

Sorry, but… always about rollover option.

Your response, by email is :
“the rollover for technical reasons can just work for the future.
and not for the past months.”

I’m sorry, even if there is technical reasons, this option seems to be unusable for now. I’ve made more tests :
- I’ve change the date of my iPhone to march ; then add expense of 10000€ in march ; and change back the date to today. Yes, it works : Moneybook automatically add a “report” (in french) line in today. But, if I go back in march, and change the 10000€ expense into 5000€, backed to today, the “report” doesn’t change ! So, your “rollover” seems to not be “in live” Why ?
- A big other problem with your method : in my exemple, if I look at the graphs in year view, the april expense graph take care about this rollover “report” ! So, graphs will all be wrong !

I understand you’re in love with app UI, and you’re right : it’s very important. And you’re right to take time to make perfect UI. But please don’t miss an another very important thing : the app itself. We’re lot of people who need rollover option in your so beautifull app ; with this 1.6.5, you give it to us. But it seems to be not really what it supposed to do, for technical reasons. So, like CulturedCode have done with Things, you probably have to write again foundations of Moneybook if these foundations are limiting you to add so important features.

It’s my opinion.

Thanks, but for now, 1.6.5 is only do automaticaly what I’ve done before by hand : add static “report” line each start of month. And like when I made it by hand, graphs are wrong.

Am I alone to think that ?
Sandro (Admin) - 9. April 2010

Vincent of course I see your point and I understand it. But you have to see our point too. Look this is an app meant for personal budget, so you can see what you spend and on what etc. You won’t fill your tax form based on MoneyBook’s data. So maybe you’re asking too much. Hey you spent 3 little dollars for this app, not 300. And we’re doing everything that’s possible for us to make the app better and better.
So I have this version on my phone since mid march. And on the 26. of march my new budget month started and the app took the remaining money into the new month. This is how it works. Of course there’s always the possibilty for bugs. But hey, they won’t kill you or your money

Thanks also to all others. We’re doing our best. The app came out in early november 2009 and since then we put out about 8 updates bringin new and improved stuff! Thanks for the support!
Vincent - 9. April 2010

Thanks for your response.

Ok. 3€. So this new option is doing automaticaly what i made manualy : add Line with last month balance. Ok. And if i change somerhing in last month, i can change le rollover line manually. It’s not frendly, but ok.

But please, about graph and stat, i think there is a problem. This special entry don’t have to be taken in account in graph view or in statistic.

So, i simply suggest you to add a categorie for this rollover option. And when calculating stats or drawing graph, just ignore this categorie.
Vincent - 9. April 2010

And you have all my support too !
pog - 11. April 2010

Hey Guys!
Great app. I have been using Pennies,Cha Ching, Money and other apps but this one is going to be my favorite Finally someone ad “Set month start” feature which i was looking so long
Ahmad - 11. April 2010

Hey, i would like to thank you for this outstanding application i am really happy with in my ipod touch, but i have a concern, i feel that the expensed icons are not enough, why not to add more icons to be really reflecting the actual spending, for example, i don’t find an icon for the following :
cell phone bill, electricity bill, charity, medical expenses, internet bill, trasportation..etc.
i would be really thankful if you increased the number of avaialbe icons..this would be perfect..
Phil-skl - 11. April 2010

Hi Mischa & Sandro!

Thanks for developing this app. I purchased it about an hour ago. It took me a while in deciding between the many finance/budget apps available and finally decided to give Money Book a go after reading some of the comments on this blog but also because the app seem pretty simple and straightforward to use – which was one of the essential criteria I was looking for

After an hour playing with it and filling it it’s definitely simple to use, the interface is nice and pretty smooth. That’s great work

One thing that I’d love to see in a future update would be more categories and/or subcategories. However there’s no rush and this is not a big deal if you don’t think it would be useful

Phil.
Fabian - 11. April 2010

Hey guys,

I recently switched from BudgetCare to MoneyBook and really enjoy the faster way of entering expenses. I also tried Pennies and others, but you apps seems to nail it!

However, I wonder if there could be an option to start the app in “New Transaction” mode. 99% of the time, I need to enter a new expense. In 1% of the cases I can just click “Cancel” and look at the history etc. Also, while I appreciate the animations and fading, does it make the slightly slower? After starting the app and starting to enter a new expense, there seem to be a lag in response. I might be wrong and the app cannot be made faster, but that’s only to be judged by you developers.

Another thing: I have no pets, but need to by stuff for college . I would like to be able to adjust the categories. No big customization needed here, but some selective show/hide would be nice.

Again, your app makes it so much faster to get data in. Other apps don’t seem to pay attention to this, even it it only saves you 1 or 2 clicks. But, that actually makes a difference! Keep up the good work!
Vincent - 11. April 2010

Hi,

About categories… Yes I miss for example cell phone… etc… But If you add categories, it will be difficult to find them. So I have a simple idea : the first page of categories sould be the most used ! Automatically, the most used are placed in this first pane by moneybook.

About rollover… Nobody have the same issue about graphs and stats ?
Jimmy - 11. April 2010

I also have the same problem as Vincent; the balance turns to zero when a new month comes, even if the rollover balance on.. and my regular income does not show up.
Damian - 17. April 2010

I want to flip out but Im trying to keep my cool here…. Ive said before it is ridiculous that there is no backup and restore function in this app. You refuse to add this function fine…. but then I upgrade and restore my iphone (after backing up the iphone of course) and ALL my other apps information is still there when I reinstall the apps but NOT YOURS. All my information for the past 4 months is GONE. You have no backup and restore function AND if you restore your iphone youre the only app that doesnt save the information? Outrageous! What a waste of time painstakingly inputting all my expenses for 4 months straight never missing a day or a purchase and its all gone.
defeed - 19. April 2010

Hey, great app!
One thing I miss is selectable currency, not depending on locale.
defeed - 20. April 2010

I mean, in order to see the currency symbol of the country I live in, I have to set day/month names in the language I don’t speak/use everyday.
Damian - 20. April 2010

I will retract my little nerd rage complaining about losing all my data on a restore, I only lost one month out of 4, took me a while to realize as I was looking for the latest month and it was gone. This app still needs a backup and restore function but at least if you restore your iPhone to a previous backup it will restore all your data in the app.
Mischa (Admin) - 20. April 2010

@damian
don’t worry we are currently working on this!

@all
I will promise that the next update will blow away everything!!
Just give us a little bit more time.

Thx for all the comments and the support!!
neptun - 20. April 2010

i love this app, but there are 1 thing that makes me im not using it.. can’t change categories is just pain i use mostly other categories than moobeybook have, so its worthless for me.. but i love the way i put my new transaction. well, keep working on it and maybe someday u will make my wishes
Mike - 20. April 2010

New to the app, enjoying the UI so far. Curious though, is there plans to add Bi-Weekly recurrances?
Francesco - 21. April 2010

First of all,
congratulations for this app, it’s really beautiful and i’m recommending it to everyone, it’s definitely one of the apps i’m using more, and it’s making me keeping track of my earnings/expenses for the first time in my life

I have a question, and two suggestions, which maybe might help to improve the great work. I know i’m rephrasing what other users said, but they are important also to me.

question: i’m having the same “issues” with the rollover. but it’s fine, i’ll try beginning from the next month then the question anyway is: will the rollover work also in case of a negative value (more expenses than incomings)?

suggestions:
1. managing multiple accounts, or adding a section for credit cards, would be awesome
2. i would love less categories (i’m not using most of them, actually) but with the possibility of adding them manually, customizing the label name… i’ve read carefully your philosophy about this and i understand your point, but i really think it would make things simpler, easier and smarter.

Anyway, as i said, these are features that would simply make it perfect for myself… still i find it wonderful, and i won’t change it for other apps!

thank you for the good work, your work is definitely worth being paid, and i’m sure you will be repaid little by little with a great quantity of sold applications.

best wishes from Italy!
defeed - 21. April 2010

Smee again
Current balance number freezes at 1000.00 at startup all the time, goes up after changing tab or adding transaction.
It takes significant amount of time for current balance to raise from 1000 to, say, 10000. Wondering how long does it take for folks from Japan to wait until the number raises up to 100.000 ¥
Yannis - 22. April 2010

MoneyBook is fantastic! It’s actually the only financial app that I’m keeping on my iPhone for months!

The only thing that would be really awesome is to add a feature to filter your expenses by category. For example when you tap on a category while you’re on the statistics view.

Keep up the good work!
Ashier - 22. April 2010

Hi I just bought your application but I just noticed that there is a bug on recurring where the recurring items you just added duplicates on transactions… It happens when you forgot to set your recurring day at first and then save the correct recurring day on the next click. So what happens is the data you just added will default to every 1st of the month. You will be able tos see it on 1st of the current month, then when you switch tabs then go back / or restart the app the duplicates appear. I also noticed that the application deducted twice on that month.
Rgunn - 29. April 2010

Man, everything has only gotten better from the start!
Love the redrawn everything! Smooth simple and sexy!
There is only one thing that’s missing for me,
and there is a way around it but it’s a little tedious and time consuming,
I absolutley need to set salary every 2 weeks like clockwork.
I don’t get paid every 1st , or every 5th and 20th like my freind.
I get paid every two weeks.

Example: March I got paid on 8th and 22nd, this month the 5th and 19th,
next month I hey paid the 3rd, 17th and 31st.

Sandro and mischa, Please tell me you got this covered in the new update
were all excited for !!! Haha. Maybe you guys already covered this in another blog but I’ve been so busy lately :/ thanks guys, moneybook is sex! :p
Cee - 30. April 2010

Hi, I just bought your app, and I love it.
I live in Asia and I need to change the currency symbol.
Hope you update on the next version.

Thanks
Brivaldo Jr - 7. May 2010

And about i18n translations? Like Portuguese Brazil for example?
Victor - 16. May 2010

Dear Misha&Sandro!

I’d bought and use Your app and really likes it. Thnx for a GREAT work!!!

BUT I have a problem of that the summ of left on balance are always with the start of the programm turns into 1000. And ane operation inside the programm adds 500 to it. And the programm doesn’t shows the correct summ.

What could I do? At the begining the programm operates normally and after 2 weeks of usage this bug appears.

thnx
Victor
Mischa (Admin) - 25. May 2010

@Victor
with the update 2.0 witch should come in the next 1 or 2 weeks we hope that we this bug is fixed.
ChristianLouboutinShoes - 2. June 2010

Great article, thank you very much!

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