[maemo 5] Budget planner?
 

Hi,

I am looking at a stack of bills and I know I should have been expecting them but I wasn't. So, I am thinking of setting up a little budget. I have a free windows program for it somewhere, but I never liked the GUI of that. Now I'm thinking this would be a neat N900 application.

Is there anything like this on the platform? I want to be able to plan recurring bills at different intervals, see where they stack up, so I can be a little better prepared. So, simple needs. Don't need to handle accounts or anything, I guess.

If there isn't any budget planning software like this, I'm thinking I'll just write myself a net application for it. Unless you already know of one that is free and works well for this kind of recurring planning? I suspect Google Calendar, Remember The Milk and services like these aren't right for budgets... But I might be wrong.

Wha'yasay?

Re: [maemo 5] Budget planner?
 

I think you're likely to find a package for this in the Debian world that you could get working on the N900 using the Easy Debian environment that's been mentioned many times on forum...

Or there's always the simpler and non-technical solution: set up an automatic transfer of funds from your main checking/current account into a savings account, and forget it's there until you need it. Doing this smooths things like my yearly car insurance payment out nicely for me.

Re: [maemo 5] Budget planner?
 

Well, that's what I am planning to do anyway, but I want to know how large these automatic transfers needs to be :B

Actually I have had easydeb installed a week or so, tried it first time yesterday. I don't think there were too many simple freeware planning applications on windows, I don't know what exists on Debian. My needs aren't too different from what I'd want in a simple calendar like the one already in the N900. Just bills instead of tasks. Also, the N900 one doesn't work too good on recursive things anyway. But it works better on set dates than every 2nd monday, so I guess it'd do.

Re: [maemo 5] Budget planner?
 

On a side note, the program I mentioned I have been using on Windows is Ace Money Lite.

Re: [maemo 5] Budget planner?
 

There was some interest in this, so I am planning to make some concept interface mock-up here... If I get the time.

Re: [maemo 5] Budget planner?
 

ive got some ideas as well myself, have been giving it some thought on the weekend after our discussion.
Was planning on starting a prototype this week, the graphs and stuff seem to be the bigger effort, wondering if I shouldleave that out for now and get a working app running first....

Re: [maemo 5] Budget planner?
 

I think that is smart. Once the numbers can be crunched into a working system, we can begin thinking about what we can do with them.

Edit: kinda makes me want to set up a dev environment myself.

Re: [maemo 5] Budget planner?
 

What about the Qtbudget app in the devel.. It looks sleek, but it is a demo I think. I can't find how to delete any entries that I have already made. Once the app is finished, I guess it should be good enough.

Re: [maemo 5] Budget planner?
 

You can check out siggy, it's a budget planner, should be in extras-devel

Re: [maemo 5] Budget planner?
 

I'll have a look at siggy, then.

Also noticed that one of the "winners" from last years application contest was a finance tracker of some sort. That was on Symbian though.

And now there's a contest again, "Best application for the Nokia N900 will get $50,000 in cash".

Re: [maemo 5] Budget planner?
 

I looked as Siggy, it is a nice application but there is no way of adding more than one budget. This would be useful if you maintain more than one account

Re: [maemo 5] Budget planner?
 

@doksng: you are right, i also miss that feature. according to
the developers blog he plans to add statistics etc.

it would be a good idea to convince him that he should think
of rearranging his app in such a way that it can handle
negative (expenses) and positive (unfortunately only one budget) cash flows.

adding a horizontally scrollable positive/negative block graphs
for the cash flows may be a nice feature then.


Blues

Re: [maemo 5] Budget planner?
 

Can't install siggy, Conflict with application packages: libqt4-maemo5-network (4.6.2~git20100203-0maemo1)...
I wonder what's that...

Re: [maemo 5] Budget planner?
 

I had no problem installing it.

I guess Siggy has all that is needed for my use case, and yet it doesn't solve it.

My original description was to schedule recurring bills to plan a budget, see how much you need, and when you need it. In Siggy you can schedule recurring bills. (You can pick a day of month, and then the months you want. But you must set up four different scheduled expenses if you have something happening every week.) And at least on a per month basis, it will sum up your expenses.

However, the usage Siggy seems to be built for is tracking expenses more than planning ahead. You can scroll back to February to see how much you used then, but you can't scroll into the future.

Since a budget is a plan for the future, this application isn't really a budget planner, more an expense tracker that compares your currently registered expenses with the pre-set budget.

However, all that would change if Siggys developer just removed the limitation that you can't see the future. I suspect it would really be a tiny change.

Maybe I should contact him about that.

Edit: I thought to, but he doesn't seem to have a tmo user. The lack of a single sign up between maemo sub domains means I can't contact him without creating a new user :g

Re: [maemo 5] Budget planner?
 

There was a few banking software on Linux systems that were ported over to Maemo 4 (Diablo). I think you can also run some through Easy Debian.

For example, for a while I had Homebank on my n800 and my desktop. I still use it on my desktop but the software on the n800 no longer works due to versioning differences.

Re: [maemo 5] Budget planner?
 

Hi guys, have a look over here: http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=45424
I really wished somebody could port Homebank.
Btw. I installed siggy yesterday and for me it was a great disappointment especially compared to my favorite prog splashmoney on my treo680.
Again, my wish for let´s say eastern: Homebank or Splashmoney for N900 ;-)

Re: [maemo 5] Budget planner?
 

Where can i get Siggy? I can't find this Programm in the programm manager.

Thanks

Re: [maemo 5] Budget planner?
 

http://maemo.org/packages/package_in...mel/siggy/0.2/

It's in the maemo devel repository. But be warned, you are NOT recommended to install software from the devel repository, because it contains software not deemed ready for extras. Also, this specific software also has a few warnings, according to the page I linked you to. If you do set up the devel repository, you're recommended to not update other software until you've disabled the devel repository again.

Re: [maemo 5] Budget planner?
 

Hi,

Thanks for the answer. I think i will wait until it's released for use ^^

Re: [maemo 5] Budget planner?
 

I kinda lost focus on this when I had to reflash the phone, but I'll try to put together a few interface designs... Eventually.

Re: [maemo 5] Budget planner?
 

Update: http://talk.maemo.org/showpost.php?p...5&postcount=22

:B

Re: [maemo 5] Budget planner?
 

Missing some packages, cant install. Will it install after PR1.2 ?

Re: [maemo 5] Budget planner?
 

anyone any idea home the packaging/development of siggy going?

Re: [maemo 5] Budget planner?
 

I am also looking for some budget/money/expense tool for N900.

So far I have seen:
1) homebank with some postings that there is no N900 port,
Doing some google I found this one:
"First release of 4.2.1 on N900
homebank_4.2.1-0maemo1_armel.deb 2.2 MB"
http://code.google.com/p/homebank-ma...l.deb&can=2&q=
so I am not sure if this is the correct version.
http://code.google.com/p/homebank-maemo/
points to this page.
Is it already usable?


2) Then I took a look at
http://buddy.passiongarage.co.uk/download.php
but a 30d test version would be fine.

3) The 3rd one is siggy which has dependency issues:
http://maemo.org/packages/package_in...mel/siggy/0.2/

4) and 4th there was some talk about Toshl, but the
sync to Toshl.com is a nogo: I need a sync to my Linux box
or some simple porting of the database.

Any others?

Re: [maemo 5] Budget planner?
 

homebank does not compile on my system and gnucash was much too complicated.
I do not need this balancing account stuff...

I would like to have a native application which is simple and does all
the money/expense keeping stuff.
Maybe "budget planning" is the wrong expression for this?

Something like PocketMoney on my Palm Tungsten.
Pocket money still exists for desktop and smartphone but only
for iPhone:
http://www.catamount.com/index.php
I already asked the guys there if there are plans to port to
Maemo5.
Let's see...

Re: [maemo 5] Budget planner?
 

Catamount guy says that there are no plans to develop for Maemo5. :-(
It's there for Linux in version 1.0.6 according to the website.

So this means that I am still looking for a good budget noting/recording application for N900.
moneydance ( http://www.moneydance.com/other ) needs Java which is another issue on N900.

Any other suggestions?
:confused:

Re: [maemo 5] Budget planner?
 

I found a very good software for expense managing:
Darhon Finance ( http://www.darhon.com/darhon-finance ).
Now I can replace PocketMoney.
:D