Release notes: The 'Adventurous Ancestors' Release

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:

1. The navigation face lift.
2. Integration with shoeboxed.com
3. 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

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

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

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:

• http://www.killerstartups.com/Web20/pennyminder-com-managing-your-finances
• http://www.appscout.com/2008/12/pennyminder_helps_clubs_or_gro.php
• http://www.redorbit.com/technology/sites_of_the_day/?site_id=3946

Launched

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

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

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.