Category: Costs to Expect

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Budget – Official Release

Budget - The Official Release

Late last year, I released Budget, a free open-source App powered by the Costs to Expect API, with a beta tag. After bringing the Wife on board to help, we started to respond to feedback and polish the App. We wanted as much feedback as possible before the official release which is now ready.

Beta Release

We spent quite a while testing the App before releasing it with the beta label. However it is always amazing just how many issues appear when the public at large start using your stuff.

We ended up pushing seven small updates, each improving the UX and UI of the App that extra little bit. All these improvements will make it into Budget Pro (the subscription version of Budget) and eventually all my other Apps. After 25 years of web development, I still admit I have a lot to learn and am always happy when I do learn something new.

I’ve released several Apps over the last two years. However none have been as polished as Budget and I have to say I am proud of what I’ve created and keen to start focusing on Budget Pro, the commercial offering of Budget.

I have a blog post coming soon explaining why there are going to be two versions of Budget and why they are going to be created in the way they are. The short story is, I’ve always intended for the Apps to be separate, and I think the approach I’m taking will ensure that they can each shine in their own way.

The Next Chapter

This is the start of a new chapter and I’m keen to see where it goes, only time will tell.

We learned so much during the last two months, hopefully we can benefit from the new knowledge as we approach the beta release of Budget Pro. Budget Pro is much more complicated than Budget so I’m sure we will discover an entire new set of issues which hopefully our beta users will be able to help us resolve.

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Budget Pro development begins again

The budget overview screen in Budget. Shows the this month and the two following months and the expenses for each

There was an initial flurry of development on Budget Pro in October/November and then it stalled. The stall was primarily down to lack of time as I started a freelance project in the November and needed to obviously dedicate time to that. However, whenever a free evening popped up, I chose not to work on Budget Pro and instead work on Budget or the freelance project to try and finish it sooner.

No sinister reason behind this and we still fully expect to release Budget Pro within the first half of 2023. The issue was simply that there were still things to learn from Budget, our free budgeting App.

Budget Open Beta

During the open beta, we learnt far more than we expected. We had to improve the demo, we needed to rework the Budget overview and there were several small features which we deemed necessary and didn’t finish adding until the end of the year.

In late November, I decided to delay any further development on Budget Pro until the official release of Budget; that way we would get to see and resolve all our problems in one codebase and not worry about having to rework anything in Budget Pro.

We always planned on there being two offerings of our budgeting tool – Budget, the free version and Budget Pro, our subscription option. In building Budget first, it has enabled us to identify and iron out potential issues before developing the much more complex version.

Our two Apps, Budget and Budget Pro solve the same problem, but they tackle it slightly differently. Budget is aimed at everyone; Budget Pro is aimed at users who need to collaborate or have much more complex budgets requirements.

Budget Pro is due out within the first half of 2023 and as soon as we are able, we will open it up for beta, the plan being we don’t make any of the same mistakes we did with the launch of Budget.