Alternatives
Products that do what Paktol a boring spending tracker (NO AI) does
I always spent more than planned so I decided to try budgeting applications. It turns out you need to be an accountant or a control freak for those apps. So I made Paktol with extreme simplicity & efficiency in mind. My sole goal is to spend less than I planned. Where Paktol differs: - you define a monthly goal - every month your position starts at $0 and it increases every second - when you add an expense you will either stay in green if above your position or go in red and we tell you how long you have to wait It's simple, boring and not sexy but it works for me (and friends/family).…
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- 12KT
I started to track my expenses on excel sheets earlier this year. It was interesting to see how much I spent casually on just another hangout with friends or on education. Excel sheets are painful, at least for me. So I built this with my friend: (it's just MVP) http://accountant.besperk.com Edit: Coming up next: > Mobile site and apps asap. > Graphs and reports > SSL > Custom Alerts (when you cross a certain limit, that you define, for certain tag) > Pre populated tags. Tech used: > Rails > on Heroku My co-founder is offline will ask him to add more details on…
2011
- 13LM
http://goalfinch.com I had the idea for Goalfinch while reading an article here on Hacker News about economic incentives and how effective they are. It got me thinking: What if there were an easy way to set up economic incentives for the goals I have in my own life? A few months later, after working on it off and on in my spare hours, it's ready for prime time. With Goalfinch, you define a goal and make a contribution of cash that acts as an incentive for you to complete the goal. Your Facebook friends confirm whether or not you've accomplished it. If you succeed before your deadline, you…
2011
- 14YP
Care to share a screenshot and the 'killer feature' of any of your personal, self-built productivity tools? eg. I made my own calendar and money-tracker last year - there are no other users, it makes no money, I have no plans to make it public, but it holds my life together :) http://i.imgur.com/h2keJDg.png GREAT BECAUSE... it tells me how much I'm going to get paid this month. Absolutely no ulterior motive here (ie. I'm not canvassing opinions for a productivity app startup or anything), just interested.
2013
- 15TT
Hi HN! I've been working on this calculator for some time now. It started off as a tool to help me do some retirement planning and I think it could be broadly useful to others as well. It's very generic, which is both good and bad. Good, because you are not beholden to the assumptions of the model, like in many other calculators. This also means that it’s not US centric. On the other hand, you do need a bit of financial planning knowledge to be able to use it effectively. There are many retirement calculators out there -- here's what I think The Tortoise does better than most: 1. An easy to…
2022 · thetortoise.io
- 16AE
I made this app because I have such flexible schedule that I needed a tool where I can organise and structure my days efficiently. All apps I tried had title based events (you had to type manually what you want to do each time). My app is based on the premise that most people do the same activities/routines every day: So when creating an event in this app, the user can just select the from the pre-created activities/routines instead of having to type it in manually. After you download the app you get 1 day completely free testing, after that you can use the code LAUNCH for another…
2024 · apps.apple.com
- 17IB
Hi everyone! I’ve been working on a small personal finance tool called Tender for the better part of a year. I got tired of doing expenses by hand - going through several accounts to figure out refunds, subscription cancellations, getting paid back via venmo, etc. I’d get to the point where I’d have to go through months of transactions at a time if I got lazy and fell behind. The workflow in Tender is centered around getting to inbox-zero. Transactions leave the inbox when they’re categorized and there’s a basic rules engine for automation. You can also do things like add notes, set…
2023 · tender.run
- 18WD
Before reading text please try the app https://www.whattobuy.app (to get great UX feedback) Shopping research is one of the most challenging tasks and people spend 30-60 min before buying an item. We developed a platform called “WhatToBuy” to save people time. In some cases shoppers are not super aware of what to really order for a trip or occasion. Our app helps them to get a range of products needed for each use-cases hence saving time and money. App workflow: Describe your situation in plain English. In Fast mode, you get three ready-to-shop carts: Budget, Balanced, and Premium…
Mar 2026
- 19IB
A few years ago, I started managing my finances using Google Sheets. It worked fine for a while, but then I hit some limitations. As my financial planning needs grew more complex, I found myself struggling with tracking assets and forecasting future financial scenarios. Thus, I started to work in my spare time on building FinancialAha: https://www.financialaha.com - a financial planning app designed to do everything my spreadsheets couldn’t. It is completely free and I intend to add some paid features later on as listed on the pricing page, but I want to keep it free for people…
2024
- 20IM
Hi HN, I am a solopreneur in the evenings and a software engineer during the day. In the past, I have created lots of calculators for my web projects and freelancing friends. These were pretty basic, but users always welcomed them. I also used currently available builders, but the problem was that they were either slow, broke on mobile devices, had nonsense page view limits, or were expensive. Some even ticked all those boxes. So I have decided to create my own, with a simple interface, and called it Creative Widgets (if it ever takes off, I plan to add more exciting stuff like charts, etc,…
2024 · creativewidgets.io
- 21SA
The website is: https://www.spendbook.net/main I am posting this on behalf of a friend who built it so he can get a feedback - he doesn't have an account and when he created one his post was killed.
2018
- 22MS
For years, I have struggled to understand my cash flow and save for the future. In addition to that, my wife has many credit cards and accounts that complicate matters. I am building a tool that connects all our accounts, helps us create a budget, and tracks and adjusts expenses on the fly. I am also sprinkling some AI magic on it for financial suggestions. I am looking for feedback on the implementation. More importantly, I am looking for more beta testers to improve the product.
2023 · financemadelovely.com
- 23TT
Hi, This is my new project (https://www.timepike.com/) which tries to solve basic problem of most small agencies: tracking working hours and holidays of employees and generating invoices for clients. I know that there are many similar solutions out there. Still, I haven't found one solving this problem in really clean, intuitive and super helpful way (for employer as much as for employees). That's why I decided to build one. Any feedback is really highly appreciated! Cheers, Wiktor
2017
- 24IG
Hey HN, As a freelancer, I found myself spending time every month manually opening PDF and Word invoices, copying the details into a spreadsheet, and tracking payments. It was tedious and error-prone. I decided to build a simple desktop app to automate this. It's a GUI built with Python and Tkinter that points to a folder of invoices, parses the key details (invoice #, amount, date), and stores everything in a local SQLite database for tracking and analysis. It's been quite a time- and headache-saver for me. A Note on Simplicity & Caveats I'm sharing this in case it's useful to any other…
Sep 2025 · github.com
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