We’re happy to announce that we just launched our first Android™ application! Meet EEBA, the Easy Envelope Budget Aid.
Android’s been all the rage recently with every major carrier making announcements about Android phones and Gartner predicting that by 2012 Android will overtake iPhone. Its open source nature makes it a good fit for Dayspring, and Android apps are written in Java, a Dayspring specialty.
We’re getting some experience with the development and rollout of an actual app. And we’ll be able to bring our hard-won experience to your Android development engagement. Nothing like doing the real thing to get you down into the details. (For example, did you know that more than 50% of roughly 12,000 apps in the Android Market have been downloaded fewer than 500 times as of this post?)
Envelope Budgeting
Our application is a simple budgeting system that allows you to setup your budget categories in virtual “envelopes”, allocate cash to them at the beginning of the month, and then track your spending by recording it via the website or on your Android device at the point-of-sale.
If you’re somewhere where you don’t have a cell signal, the app stores transactions locally until you get back to a place with a signal. And then it syncs everything up automatically.
Unlike other apps in the Market, EEBA supports multiple users so you and your spouse can share the envelopes, just like you would in the traditional envelope method.
Try it out here:
Envelope Budget Software for Android: Online Envelope Budgeting: EEBA.
More to come about what we’ve learned in a future post.
Tags: android, eeba, envelope budgeting, envelope method
This is something worth checking out! I promote the envelope budget system using actual paper envelopes, but this is certainly a way to bring it to the 21st century and know at a glance where you are in your monthly budget.
James, thanks for your comment. Let us know what you think of EEBA.
Like you said, one of the issues with the envelope budget system in this day and age is that, except for the ultra-disciplined, it is just too easy to sidestep the envelopes once in awhile–when you have to pick something up from the grocery store on the way home from work, for example.
With the virtual envelope system here, you get to still keep track in real-time. And not only keep track, but know what your balance is (including what your spouse just spent from the envelope!) before you spend it.
Transaction import at the end of the day is OK, but it doesn’t give you the key piece of information you need at point-of-sale.