Philosophy of the project

This project initially started as a helper-tool for myself. I have multiple bank accounts across different banks. I travel in groups a lot. I hang out with my friends a lot. I buy online a lot. We share multiple subscriptions. And every time there is an expense — I'm trying to get the most of it. And the process of remembering all the cashbacks, all the options across different banks is much cumbersome. I wanted to simplify these routine processes as much as possible. That's why I came up with an idea of an all-in-one app to track all expenses, simplify group travel accounting and just minimise the hassle of everyday expenses.

I think many CIS-based people can relate to this: every month go to each bank app, check out cashback categories for this month, consider all available options across all banks, select the best ones to not interfere with each other. Then every time there is a purchase we have to hope that the MCC (Merchant Category Code) of this venue is what we think it is. Then we have to remember what bank has the best cashback for this specific purchase. It may be easy if you have just two banks and two credit cards, but I myself have more than 5 banks and their respective cashback categories and credit cards to keep track of. And every other year another bank hops onto the bandwagon of cashbacks and you don't want to miss on it because they offer best cashbacks at the start.

The next one is subscriptions. Specifically the group ones. They are recurring, there are different members in each subscription, they withdraw on different days. You are supposed to keep track of each one of them, send invoices, monitor wires from different people and maintain payments across each member of each subscription.

Another area I've mentioned above are group expenses, whether they are just trips to restaurants on weekends or two-week travels. The last one is even more complex, because you have to keep track of every passenger on taxi and every dish in the restaurant. One could say that it's much simpler to just pay in turns. Yes, without a doubt. But when you are students on a scholarship you want to keep track of every penny. And I myself really like the part when I'd done all the accounting with dates receipts, sent all the invoices and await for incoming wires.

And don't get me started on money lending. "Lend money to a friend; lose both friendship and money." I personally don't agree with this sentence. And I have no problems with lending per se, I like to help people, but the consequences, "bonds" and obligations they make, — they are just unpleasant to say the lest. You are lucky if all your borrowers kept track of their duties and returned debts in time, but your situation is an exception rather than the rule. The imposement you feel when you try to remind about the debt is just awful.

Moreover, the current situation with default bank apps is just hideous, even in CIS countries, where bank apps are considered some of the best in the world. Want to make a note for the payment? Bank apps don't think it's useful. Would like to calculate specific expenses right in the app or just see how much you've spent in total in that day? Nah, keep moving.

All these small and not so inconveniences made me think about creating an app to make my (and hopefully other's) life easier.

TL;DR I'm tired of current state of things in banking app and lack of good all-in-one solution-apps for these (quite) specific problems. That's why I decided to make my own.

I'm not sure how long it will be supported if will be done at all. But I do hope that this project will not be abandoned and I would be really glad if there will be some positive outcome out of that.

These are the points I tried and will try to keep in mind during the lifespan of this project:

• FOSS-first
• My specific use cases -first
• My friends are my stakeholders
• Tailored for user's experience

Also, the name of the project implies that it's built on sharing factor. Basically it means that features are primarily focused on group expenses, users knowing their debts to their friends etc.