MyFinanceFairy

Inspiration

Bank statements and invoices can feel like reading a different language, especially if you’re not used to them. Thats why we decided to create MyFinanceFairy, a goal-driven dashboard that helps anyone, from teens to pros, quickly understand transactions, spot problems, and take effortless control of their money.

What it does

MyFinanceFairy is made to set actionable goals and read CSV files, such as bank statements or transactions. It processes the file into simple charts that are interactive, to show where spending is done the most. Users can interact with the charts to understand how certain categories are impacting their finances. Users can also convert the filtered information into their preferred currencies. With the ability to filter select dates, and sort the data based off amount, category and description, MyFinanceFairy provides flexibility and ease fo use. Finally, users are able to export their final filtered CSV file for recordkeeping.

How we built it

We built this app using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. We created a categories.json file to store keywords and their respective categories. With the Papa Parse library we were able to efficiently read CSV files. Using Chart.js, we were able to make very interactive charts and make the user feel visually connected to their CSV. We used the toLowerCase() function to normalize transaction descriptions and make sure everything ran smoothly. Using exchangerate-api.com, we were able to implement an API to grab current currency exchange rates immediately when the site is loaded.

Challenges we ran into

Working with new libraries and APIs was a significant challenge we had to overcome. Figuring out how to implement currency exchange rates into the website as well as ensuring the layers of the UI experience didn't clash with each other was complex.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud that we were able to integrate many libraries and an API together to create a fully functioning and extremely interactive app applicable to the real world and beneficial to an immense audience. We are also proud of connecting keywords to categories, and creating a simple yet aesthetically pleasing user interface.

What we learned

As a relatively new hackathon competitor working with completely unfamiliar libraries and APIs was a learning curve that I had to overcome. I've learnt numerous of skills on backend and frontend, as well as the importance of auto-saving to ensure no progress is lost.

What's next for MyFinanceFairy

In the future, we plan to incorporate AI, to provide predictive spending insights—alerting users before they risk overspending—and building a feature for automated tax preparation insights, leveraging categorized transaction data to simplify end-of-year filing for freelancers and small business owners. We also plan to implement comparison capability, to see how different CSVs stack up against each other. In addition, we plan to add new features that appeal to a variety of audiences, such as "Financial tip of the day" which would add a unique touch and energy to our platform. We also plan to launch our prototype with our target audiences to get feedback and improve.

Built With

• api
• css
• html
• javascript
• json
• vscode