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101 lines
4.1 KiB
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101 lines
4.1 KiB
ReStructuredText
How are you handling your shared expenses?
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##########################################
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:tag: python, flask, budget-manager
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:date: 2011-10-15
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**TL;DR:** We're kick-starting a new application to manage your shared
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expenses. Have a look at http://ihatemoney.notmyidea.org
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As a student, I lived in a lot of different locations, and the majority of them
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had something in common: I lived with others. It usually was a great experience
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(and I think I will continue to live with others). Most of the time, we had to
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spend some time each month to compute who had to pay what to the others.
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I wanted to create a pet project using flask, so I wrote a little
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(~150 lines) flask application to handle this. It worked out pretty well for my
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housemates and me, and as we had to move into different locations,
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one of them asked me if he could continue to use it for the year to come.
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I said yes and gave it some more thoughts: We probably aren't the only ones
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interested by such kind of software. I decided to extend a bit more the
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software to have a concept of projects and persons (the list of persons was
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hard-coded in the first time, boooh!).
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I then discussed with a friend of mine, who was excited about it and wanted to learn
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python. Great! That's a really nice way to get started. Some more friends were also
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interested in it and contributed some features and provided feedback (thanks
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`Arnaud <http://www.sneakernet.fr/>`_ and Quentin!)
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Since that, the project now support multiple languages and provides a REST API
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(android and iphone apps in the tubes!), into other things.
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There is no need to register for an account or whatnot, just enter a project name,
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a secret code and a contact email, invite friends and that's it (this was inspired by
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doodle)!
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.. image:: images/ihatemoney.png
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You can try the project at http://ihatemoney.notmyidea.org for now, and the
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code lives at https://github.com/spiral-project/ihatemoney/.
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Features
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========
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In the wild, currently, there already are some implementations of this shared
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budget manager thing. The fact is that most of them are either hard to use, with
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a too much fancy design or simply trying to do too much things at once.
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No, I don't want my budget manager to make my shopping list, or to run a blog for
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me, thanks. I want it to let me focus on something else. Keep out of my way.
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No user registration
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--------------------
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You don't need to register an account on the website to start using it. You
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just have to create a project, set a secret code for it, and give both the url and
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the code to the people you want to share it with (or the website can poke
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them for you).
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Keeping things simple
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---------------------
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"Keep It Simple, Stupid" really matches our philosophy here: you want to add a
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bill? Okay. Just do it. You just have to enter who paid, for who, how much,
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and a description, like you would have done when you're back from the
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farmer's market on raw paper.
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No categories
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-------------
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Some people like to organise their stuff into different "categories":
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leisure, work, eating, etc. That's not something I want (at least to begin
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with).
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I want things to be simple. Got that? Great. Just add your bills!
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Balance
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-------
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One of the most useful thing is to know what's your "balance" compared to
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others. In other words, if you're negative, you owe money, if you're positive,
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you have to receive money. This allows you to dispatch who has to pay for the
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next thing, in order to re-equilibrate the balance.
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Additionally, the system is able to compute for you who has to give how
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much to who, in order to reduce the number of transactions needed to restore
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the balance.
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API
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---
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All of what's possible to do with the standard web interface is also available
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through a REST API. I developed a simple REST toolkit for flask for this (and
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I should release it!).
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Interested?
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===========
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This project is open source. All of us like to share what we are doing and
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would be happy to work with new people and implement new ideas. If you have
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a nice idea about this, if you want to tweak it or to fill bugs. Don't hesitate
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a second! The project lives at http://github.com/spiral-project/ihatemoney/
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