I’ve been reflecting on why I use Cashculator, and what immediately drew me to it. It was the reconciliation section. I think this single view of my finances gave me the most in-your-face awareness of the impact financial choices I made had over time.
I would love to see this kept almost as is.
I don’t really see a huge amount of value in simple repeating the Income table and Expenses tables on this sheet. I do see huge value in seeing if the green line dips below the red line, and the way my balance moves over time.
How I think you could make this better is:
Put the Reconciliation line chart and Budget area chart back in
Make the Income and Expense lines in the reconciliation table expandable / collapsable so that the user can see their expenses or income groups and categories by expanding these two rows directly in the reconciliation table
Bonus Option: allow the user to mute individual income or expense groups/categories in the reconciliation table (like with an eyeball icon, similar to in UI design tools that can show/hide a UI element) and see the effect on the reconciliation charts. Also carry this option through onto the main Income and Expense tables
Maybe this is better suited for a report screen and not reconciliation. What’s the point of hiding some categories in reconciliation? The balance and income/expenses reports show these graphs instead (without choosing categories at the moment, though).
The idea wouldn’t be to hide them, but to mute them (maybe grey out the row, but still have it shown) so the value is not considered in the totalized Income/Expense. You would do it in this view specifically to see the effect on your red and green lines and balance growth.
I could say “what would happen if I stopped subscribing to Netflix” and just mute the row instead of setting the value to zero (or deleting the row). Or if I put all my streaming subscriptions into a group I could say “what would happen if I stopped subscribing to all my streaming services” and just mute the whole group instead of setting the individual row values to zero (or deleting the rows).
I’ve looked at several tools over the years to see if something else meets my needs better. Some had more advanced features, some had less, but this one UI is the main differentiator, and its an accessible view of my finances where I can see the data and the trend on the one screen without having to look at multiple Windows or switching back and forth. I think you lose more than you gain by moving them to the reports tab. Just my 2c.
Ok, I see understand now. You’re using the Reconcile screen not just for reconciliation but as a quick view of the prognosis, too. Yes, I can see how this quick muting can be helpful. We’ll need to see how we can implement it.
