A re-worked expense analysis view
July 18th, 2007 by ShashankOne of the most loved features of our site are the expense analysis views. But, it did not quite provide our users the complete power to arbitrarily slice and dice their transactions. This showed through the sporadic emails that they wrote to us. And so, we went back to the design board and completely re-worked the expense analysis UI. Here’s what we’ve got:
Changes we made:
- We now utilize the full page height for showing the transactions, so you can see more than just a few transactions in each “view”. Some of you don’t like pagination much :) and we hear ya!
- For selecting periods, instead of the slider, you can now select an arbitrary start date and an (almost) arbitrary period to get the precise view you are looking for. Navigation arrows also take into account the period preference; this makes month-to-month navigation dead simple.
- In doing so, we did need to get rid of the beloved “slider”, which was quite an impressive piece of Javascript by itself! :( But, in our minds, usability comes first, beauty and technology, next!
We hope the new interface provides more power and better usability. Let us know how you like it. We are always all ears for anything and everything you have to say!
July 18th, 2007 at 7:37 pm
Nooo!!! Bring back the slider!
July 18th, 2007 at 8:26 pm
Hey Will - your reaction is quite expected. We ourselves quite hated getting rid of the slider! But give it some time and in a couple days, let us know what you feel the slider provided and you really miss…
July 18th, 2007 at 10:08 pm
I was quite surprised this morning when I found the new expense analysis page…I liked the previous one so much. It actually made be switch from Expensr to Buxfer.
I think that the sliders are a way much convenient to use than the current system.
I also miss the line view diagram which I used to compare my expenses day by day with the previous months.
Anyway, I still love buxfer. Keep going the good job!
July 18th, 2007 at 11:07 pm
Wow. I signed up for buxfer several months ago, and fell away from using it…I hunted elsewhere and even trying to make my own.
I just stumbled back to your site and checked out the changes. The expenses analysis system is so much better now! And beyond that, everywhere I look things appear improved. (the auto-tagging setup rocks!)
Really awesome. I am going to try once more to be a devoted user. ;o)
Congrats on developing and designing such a great site.
July 19th, 2007 at 1:47 am
honeysun:
Sorry for the abrupt change, maybe we should have phased it out a bit more carefully.
However, the major complaint that people had with the slider is that it was difficult to get precision with mouse movements. Most often, all you want to do is navigate through periods of time, where a period could be a week, fortnight, month, etc. So it seemed that the slider was an overkill for that purpose.
I am eager to know and understand what exact functionality of the slider do you find missing in the new interface. That would help me in making the current interface more complete …
And ditto on the line graphs. What did you use the line graphs for that you can’t use the current “Trend” chart for?
We just rolled out this feature yesterday, so by no means is it complete. Just drop us an email at support@buxfer.com, that’s your best chance to get this feature built the way you want to use it :)
July 19th, 2007 at 2:19 am
Justin:
Nice to have you back!
Just wanted to let you know that we are working on some more improvements to the auto-tagging system. If there’s anything you find missing with the auto-tags, this would be the right time to let us know :)
July 24th, 2007 at 1:59 pm
Awww… I really liked the slider. The line graphs made it a lot easier to observe the trends and spending levels. It’s one of the unique functions that made me choose Buxfer over other services.
July 24th, 2007 at 5:42 pm
Crystal,
Sorry for getting rid of the slider, but how frequently did you use its full flexibility in selecting dates? From what we hear from most of the users, they are interested in a single period of time, either a day, a week or a month.
Also, one of the major benefits of the current interface is that you can observe trends on a per category basis. If you dig deep into a category and switch to the “Trend” tab, you will see periodic trends just for that category. Doesn’t that sound more useful that what we had earlier?
I’m quite curious to know your thoughts on these issues. So please do leave a comment, or send us mail at support@buxfer.com. Thanks a lot!
July 27th, 2007 at 12:19 pm
Would it be possible to have all the categories (tags) at the pie bar? If you think that there could be so many categories so that the pie would be illegible, I think a solution can be a popup with the pie, alone, with a bigger size.
Thanks.
July 31st, 2007 at 8:13 pm
Francisco,
Yes, depending on the way you have setup your categories, there could be lots and lots of categories that show up.
But I still see your point. Someone who wants to see all his categories should be able to do it. Let me think over it for a couple of days and see if I can come up with a good solution.
Thanks for pointing this out!
August 2nd, 2007 at 7:40 pm
Shahank: the trends “on a per category basis” are really nice! But I think that one problem is that I wouldn’t have noticed if I didn’t read you saying it… But still, it doesn’t cover the loss of the line graph, which showed (and compared) the *progress* of expenses through each month, and not just the total expenses in the month, like now with the bars. =) It would be nice to have the line graph AND the trends on a per category basis… What do you say? =)
August 3rd, 2007 at 2:49 am
Lucas,
For some reason we felt that the line graphs are harder to read and people want something simpler, i.e. they just want monthly totals and not the progress. But clearly, we were wrong. We will be more careful next time before nuking features.
So at the least, we will be providing users an option to choose between the two very soon. Stay tuned!
Also, thanks for pointing out that “.. wouldn’t have noticed if I didn’t read you saying it”. I agree that it’s not the most obvious thing on earth. Let me see what I can do about it.