Budget App Major Revision under review at the App Store!

May has been a busy month for Famously Simple, and its thanks mostly to our flagship app, the Famously Simple Budget App. Monthly Active Users are up over 300%, and our new users have brought a ton of great feedback. We just yesterday submitted the next version of the app to the App Store, and we expect it to go live any day now.

Intelligent helpers that understand your financial schedule.

The budget app, and our whole line of productivity apps – budget app, checklist app, allowance app – are designed to be intelligent helpers that keep you on track and let you know your options. With the budget app, we started with getting the math of managing spending between paychecks right. You’d be surprised how few of the big boy personal finance apps do this well. We wanted a simple way to set exactly the budget period you want, the categories you want, the target spending you want. Then, as you enter purchases over time, the app would present them in the context of your life, not from the perspective of closing dates the banks and credit card companies set for you.

The Budget App just got smarter.

With the new version, we’ve made the budget app much smarter. Now, with the Spending Review feature, the app shows you your spending in the current period, and over the long term, in chart form. Based on your past spending, the app forecasts your spending over the next five pay periods, and shows you if you’re on a saving or over-spending trend (see image). It even gives you advice on things you should change to bring the spending into order.

Stop licking varnish.

We at Famously Simple completely understand that data entry is about as fun as licking varnish, and we have a lot going on in our labs to make it easier. In the latest version of the budget app, we’ve introduced a Dictate feature. Just say, “Groceries. Four. Two. One”, and the app will ask if you want to add a grocery purchase for $421. But, dictate is just the start. We’re prototyping a much smarter algorithm right now that takes into account your location and past spending and essentially guesses at the purchase you want to add before you even say, or type, a word. Look out for that in a version coming very soon.

Tuning the Budget App to Social Security.

We had some feedback from one of our users in May who said that he needed the budget app to have a monthly time step that starts on the second Tuesday of the month. Why? Because that’s when Social Security payments are made. Well, we had to respond to that, and fast. So, starting with the latest version, users will be able to pick any month starting date, including ordinal dates – like first Thursday, or second Tuesday. We love feedback, especially when it means we can help out our users. Please keep the emails coming at famouslysimple@gmail.com.

Hope you enjoy the new Budget App! As this goes to publish, I’ve just gotten a notification that the App has gone into review. Fingers crossed it’ll be live in a day or two!