Monetal – Free Expense Tracker | Hacker News Reader

Monetal – Free Expense Tracker

monetal.app

89 pointskruiller45 comments

> Why Monetal is free?

> This is indie project made by a single developer. App is available for free, doesn't contain any ads or in-app purchases. Registration also is not required, and that is why all your data completely anonymous and could be transfered to server only for app analytics (like most popular screens, which functions are frequently used, which can be removed etc).

That didn't quite answer the question of "why".

So... does that single developer make money, or is just doing this as a hobby for fun, or what?

Hi! I have a full time job as iOS dev and that is my pet project. It had in-app purchases before, but I dropped them completely and make it free because huge amount of Monetal users was facing problem since this war between Russia and Ukraine. I don’t collaborate with any company or share any user data if that is what you mean.

Why not give it an appropriate opensource license? That would increase trust that business decisions won't be radically changed at a whim, and if they do then people at least will have the option of forking.

I won't try this app, because I worry that at any point you may decide to change the business model. It's happened so many times with so many apps. If it were opensource, at least I'd know I can continue building it and running it myself, and there'd be a chance that if it were popular enough, development community would emerge around it.

Makes sense, thanks!

The answer on the page didn't totally explain it for me. I did get the idea that you didn't share any user data, but still had the question, okay, then, why? I think the answer is that you already have a job, and do this as a side project for fun and to be of service.

Cool, agree, will fix it soon.

not sure if this is the right place to point out, I tried installing the windows store version but it seemed unavailable. I am wondering if the app is restricted to only specific regions.

Ahah, sorry bro, it was indeed available for Windows Phone a long time ago, but I don't think it can be installed on Windows now. And if you try to google "Monetal Windows Phone" you definitely will drop any idea to have it =) I support just Android and iOS versions currently.

Hi, nice project, thanks for making it available. I am trying it right now. Could you please add Colombian Pesos, COP, as currency? Do you (or anybody here) know a trustworhty service that process automatically sms and emails with financial info and extract the expense from them? Thanks again.

Thanks for your feedback. Ok, I will add COP in next release. Unfortunately I don't know any service to parse sms, I enter every transaction manually, and it doesn't take as long as it seems.

10+ years of development, No ads, no In-App purchases.

Are you looking at monetizing it other than donations?

Yes, may be I will try to find a sponsor in the distant future. I don't have any serious funds so I think it would be easier to promote it while it's completely free. And for sure I don't plan to integrate in-app purchases or annoying ads which can effect current users in any way.

Keep in mind that free users are different from paid users.

If the developer is reading this, add the ability to take receipt photo and attach pdf. You can cache them in a separate folder of images and pdf. Also allow it to backup to cloud. Our phones these days has huge storage, some reaching 2TB. Space isn't an issue compare to years ago.

Certainly not, sorry. My whole data for 10 years takes just ~1.4Mb. I can easy export them and parse, migrate to another device in a second and also make a backup instantly. I like this simplicity as much as this site. If it has an ability to post a photo and video it would be completely different story, right?)

You can easily compress photo to 1kb with losses. But for recipes it’s acceptable. I think you should do it.

Hi Kruiller!

Thank you for building this.

I just have one request, can you add a proper export feature ? Maybe as a json. Your current export from the 'All transactions' page, then 'Share' doesn't include the payment account.

Hi! Share feature is intended to be used just in scope of Transaction, it's not a month report. It's like to show to friend how its debt was formed. But thanks for feedback, I will think how to add it properly.

Hey, this is pretty great.

I was looking for something simple and this honestly fits 90% of what I was looking for as I don't want to spend hours managing this stuff either.

One thing, when I add a record for loaning out money to someone, the due date isn't visible on the main page and I can't seem to find it.

I have a suggestion.

If I could see either or both the start and due dates, this could also be used for tracking any investments as well — though not the intent of the menu as-is — a simple UI addition or setting would allow me to do a lot more in my case.

Yes, there is no opportunity to add a due date. Not sure about it but will think. Thanks.

Just heads-up: the developer is located in Saint Petersburg, Russia. For some of us this could be pertinent for ethical, legal or security reasons.

No. But if it's important for you I am in Tbilisi, Georgia.

Looks much better than what I currently use but alas, I also want to be able to fill and view data from the desktop as well.

Believe me or not, I use it 10 years with my wife and don’t see what additional info web version can provide. And for sure in this case your data wouldn’t be privately stored, then you need a registration… and so Monetal wouldn’t be different from many many similar apps.

I am honestly not bothered by having an account, it's just that sometimes it would be much faster to fill in entries on the computer and my current app only has mobile variants and slow animation transitions. It can get infuriating.

Do you actually run a backend for the syncing? I imagine you’d have to find a way to monetize with enough users if so.

Yes, there is some backend code to support sync between devices and moving data from one device to another. I don't plan to have a big backend code base, it's a bit of outside of my expertise.

Oh, may be I misunderstand you. So far it was ~1500 users per day which is quite small amount considering I don't need to store any big amounts of data. I pay for server and domain myself, I can afford it and don't think it can be overloaded in the near feature.

Free then with new paid features

As I told it was already paid before and I don’t plan to deal with in-app purchases or ads again. May be just some sort of sponsorship, but certainly shouldn’t effect existing users.

Nice! It’s useful, thanks a lot!

You are welcome! Feel free to contact support in case of any questions. I do my best to respond to everybody)

If I give you my bank transactions are you going to collect and sell this?

What do you mean? As I said before Monetal doesn't store or transfer user data, and that's why you don't need registration, it's completely anonymous. It collects just analytics data just for purpose which features are used more frequently and which I can drop. I don't plan to end support for it, I am using it myself)

That's good enough for me. I'll go ahead and try it out then.

This is great. Appreciate the minimalist straightforward design.

Great to read that. You can notice new features after using a while. Some of them are hidden initially to keep new user focused on primary features.

Please consider making it available via F-Droid, too.

I tried already several alternative stores but didn't notice any impact from them. I'll check F-Droid also, thanks.

I can’t edit an account’s amount to 1000 on iOS

I recently added support for localised currency formats and didn’t tested every local. May be it’s a reason.

Oh, seems to be a bug =( . Please contact support@monetal.app

This looks pretty neat, might check it out.

Is there no way to delete transactions?

Account - Transactions - Long tap - Delete

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