Seeking Early Testers for My Budgeting App

Hey fellow Cheapies!

Surely there's nothing more cheap than penny-pinching, Scrooging and miserly watching where every dollar was spent? Well, I'm developing a brand new smart budgeting app to help ordinary Kiwis answer the simple question, "Where is all my money going?!" I know there are dozens of budgeting apps around but I'm hoping this one turns into something a little different.

I'm looking for some (very) early testers who are familiar with other budgeting apps and can provide me some direction on where to head with it. In particular:

• What provides you with the most immediate value?
• What do you want to see when you log in?
• What do you like?
• What do you not like?
• What are some features you'd like to have?

The app is already functional and useful, but there are some known bugs and inconsistencies which will be smoothed out over time. I'm working on it in my spare time around family and fulltime work. Happy to answer any technical questions about it here or via DM.

Access is currently limited. Initially I'll provide you a private login to a demo site, all you need to provide is an email address. No bank details or logins are required at this stage, the demo site uses dummy data to give you an idea of how it works. As soon as I get permission to open my app to the public (see below), you'll be granted access to the live site where you can connect your accounts and see your own data.

IMPORTANT: If you like what you see, can give some honest feedback / helpful suggestions, maybe even answer a survey or two to assist with the future of the app, in return I can offer you a free Premium subscription for the life of the service when it launches. This will initially be limited to the first 10 people to DM me telling me what you use/have used to budget in the past and one feature you wish your budget had.

Answers in advance:

• What can this app do?
  Right now it's a basic budgeting app: think transaction categorisation, budgets, searching/sorting/filtering. It has some limited AI capabilities built-in to help with smart categorisation, and this will be extended soon to do all sorts of useful things with your transaction data. But there is a LOT more to come.

• What? I don't want my transaction data sent to AI!!
  Yeah, I get why you'd be concerned. The AI features are super-useful and they save a ton of time and I've worked very hard to make sure that my app doesn't send any personally-identifiable data, with more protections to come. But, if you don't want the AI features you'll be able to turn them off - the app is still very capable without AI.

• What sort of data can I use in the app?
  You can connect most bank accounts, many investment and kiwisaver accounts, and more to get transaction data, that's where it all begins. I use the Akahu service to provide transaction data from your accounts - head over to Akahu.nz to find out more. The "Big Four" banks all have Open Banking connections, but Akahu provides data from other institutions via other means which will be switched to Open Banking as they come onboard.

• When will you launch?
  I'm waiting to get certified by Akahu so I can allow others to sign up for personal accounts. Until then I am only allowed to provide a (fairly functional) demo. Hopefully in the next few weeks the accreditation should be completed and I can open it as a staged public beta.

• How much will it cost?
  To be honest, I have no idea. Akahu will charge me somewhere in the vicinity of a couple of bucks a month per user to provide the data, then there are LLM costs, hosting costs, domain registrations and more. I would love to provide it free for everyone, but I need to ensure it's sustainable so I'm looking for other ways to fund it: partnerships, referrals, whitelabelling, freemium models, etc. I'm trying to avoid ads. I'm also hoping to open-source the core platform so people can run a basic version at home (for free with an Akahu developer account, and optionally using their own local LLM).

• Who is Akahu? Can they be trusted?
  Absolutely. Akahu is a registered Open Banking intermediary, which means they have passed stringent quality and security tests. They provide data for developes (like myself) to provide services to others.

• Is it secure?
  Yes, very. All data is encrypted with your typical "bank-grade" encryption in transit and at rest. Each workspace provides a place to manage separate account data - eg. Home business, Personal, Shared accounts, etc. You only grant the workspace access to the accounts you want in the app. You can optionally share Workspaces with others (eg. contributor access to a partner, read-only access for your accountant). Everything is protected with a password or passkey and optional MFA. Importantly, with the Akahu Open Banking system all account data is strictly read-only (even a fully compromised system cannot steal money, transfer, change settings, etc).