Check Yourself - A Budget App

A simple budgeting application for Android built in roughly 4-5 weeks that relies entirely on user input to track spending. Auto-generates a suggested spending amount for categories of that budget, as well as allowing the user to specify the percentage of monthly income they’d like to put into savings. The app also sends notifications based on user’s location to remind them of the amount left in their budgets when approaching certain types of Google Maps POI’s.

Why I Made This

I decided to make a budget app as I’m horrible with managing my own money and I’m there’s others out there that struggle with money management as well. I wanted to create something that was practical to build for my skill level, as well as a potentially useful tool for users.

State of the App

Check Yourself as is could be considered a working prototype as is, it has the bare bone base of all functionality I intended at the start of building it. That being said there is still a lot of work to be done on it such as (in order of importance):

• Setting up a monthly reset either automatically or via button
• Adding storage of previous months data and perhaps displaying it in a graph or complex list view
• Polishing the UI to be more “user friendly”
• Stopping the locational notification from spamming the user in clustered POI points such as a mall
• The screen always updating upon data entry rather than just sometimes
• Improving the locational elements to be more battery efficient

Tested Android OS’s:

• Android 7.1.1 (Nexus 5X API 25)
• Android 5.1 (Pixel XL API 22)

Restrictions:

• Orientation locked to vertical
• Only in English (for now)

3rd Party Libraries

• GraphView–License
• Stetho–License
• Android Volley–License

External Services

• Google Maps API–License
• Google Places API–License

UI Improvements to be Made

• Add both a light and dark theme
• Make the text in the ListView formatted
• Adjust the layout to appear less “clunky”

Stretch Goals

• Implement the ability to read of the users bank account transactions to auto-fill the “spending” list
• Make the category/tag system dynamic(i.e. Allow users to add or delete tags)
• Improve the location notification to send specific categories based on location rather than just sending all categories

Javadoc

License

Copyright © 2018 Jake Batchelor

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the “License”); you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at

   http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed on an “AS IS” BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License.