This morning I pushed out two new features that I’ve been working on recently.  They’re pretty small, but many of you have been requesting these for quite a while.  The first is the ability to change the order of your accounts.  The second new feature links transfer transactions.

Ordering Accounts

Many people have requested this feature, and I’m pleased to announce that you can now change the order of your accounts in NeoBudget.  To do this, go to the Settings tab and click on Accounts.  You’ll see a “Change Order” button which pops up a window with all your accounts listed.  Just click and drag them around, then click “Save.”

Click "Change Order"

Click and drag to change the order, then click "Save"

Transfer Transactions

When you create a “transfer” transaction in NeoBudget, it actually creates two separate transactions.  One subtracts money from the first account, and the other one adds money to the second account.  Before today, when you finished creating the transfer transaction, the two transactions were completely separate.  So if you deleted one, the other one was still there.  This caused some problems if you didn’t realize what was going on and didn’t delete the second transaction as well.

I’m pleased to let you know that these transfer transactions are now linked together.  If you delete one, it will delete the other one automatically.

Last night NeoBudget moved to a new server. The only thing this should mean for you is that NeoBudget is now even faster. This new server is much more powerful.  According to tests I’ve been running, pages seem to load twice as fast on average.  This is an exciting move that I’ve been working on for quite a while.  If you notice any issues, please don’t hesitate to contact support.

NeoBudget has always been a great value with a low price tag. It’s just gotten a bit sweeter with a completely free plan that does not expire. Previously if you wanted to try out NeoBudget, the only option was the 7-day free trial. Now you can play with NeoBudget as long as you like on the free plan.

There are some limitations to the free version. It is limited to 1 account and 10 envelopes, but this is great for students or anyone with a relatively simple budget. The standard plan enhances this with reporting and unlimited accounts and envelopes.

Head on over to the Plans & Pricing page to sign up!

New Website Design

Another recent change you may notice is that the main website has been refreshed. One of my passions is website design. I love tweaking the layout and optimizing the usability of a website to make it nicer and easier to use. This change is more than just making it look nicer. Hopefully it more accurately presents NeoBudget to new visitors and lets them see the benefits more clearly.

The changes are subtle, but important. The rest of the site has been refreshed as well with similar tweaks and usability enhancements.

Today I pushed out the May release of NeoBudget. This time I focused my efforts on redoing the History and Balance pages. You’ll notice many changes, and hopefully they’ll be much more usable and easier to use.

History page

In general the History page is much more compact. This has made room for 25 transactions per page instead of 10. It also makes it easier to scan over your transactions and see what’s there. Also, a new paging system lets you load pages inline instead of needing to reload the page. This makes it a lot faster.

More compact, a new pager, and a new search box

The extra details are still there, they are just hidden at first. If you want to see the splits for a transaction, or the date it was entered, or any other details about it, click on the description and the details will slide out.

Details slide out from the description

To make more room, the Export link has been moved to the bottom of the page since it will be used less frequently.

Export button moved to the bottom

Balance page

The balance page has also gotten a face lift. Much of the text has been removed, and icons are used to make it more clear what should happen on this page. It is now very clear which values you need to enter and what they do. The formula used to balance your budget is also explicitly displayed (current bank balance + selected transactions – previous bank balance = 0.00).

Compact and concise balance page

Today I am pleased to make some long overdue updates to NeoBudget. I’ve been working on these changes for the past 8 months. The unfortunate reality was that I have not had much time to dedicate to NeoBudget. All that has changed now that NeoBudget is my job. I’ve gotten more done in the past two weeks than I had in the past 8 months put together!

Going forward, it is my goal to push out new changes at least once a month. I’m already working on some new things for the May release and can’t wait to share them with you all.

“What’s new?” you may be asking yourself. Most of the changes are behind the scenes. Even though things look mostly the same, much of the underlying structure of NeoBudget has changed. This is the ground work for future enhancements. I won’t go into all the details of these back-end changes since you most likely won’t even notice them.

However, there are some things you’ll readily notice:

• Larger font sizes. Everything is slightly larger in NeoBudget now. This should increase the readability and usability of the site.
• Better support for Internet Explorer. Support for Internet Explorer has greatly improved. While some features work best in other browsers (like Firefox, Chrome, and Safari), NeoBudget is now fully functional in IE versions 7 and 8. If you are using IE 6, I highly recommend that you take advantage of the free upgrade provided by Microsoft. In fact, in the near future I will be dropping support for IE 6 altogether.
• Subtle use of animations. There are several places throughout the site now that use subtle animations to help enhance the user experience. Two examples are dialog boxes fading in and out and form elements sliding in on the transaction page.
• Calendar drop-down widget. Many users have requested a drop-down date widget on the transaction pages. Now when entering a transaction date, you can either type in the date or click the calendar icon and select the date from a calendar.
• Import recovery. Before, if you started importing a batch of transactions and navigated away from the import wizard, you would lose the import. Now I have implemented an import recovery feature that detects the unfinished import and asks if you want to start where you left off.
• Sign in detection. When you visit www.neobudget.com and you already have an active session, you will be prompted to continue that session instead of always needing to sign in again.

March has been monumental both for NeoBudget and for me personally. I resigned from my day job and am now working on NeoBudget much more consistently. As a result, you will start to see many new features and enhancements around here beginning very soon.

A Bit of History

As many of you may know, NeoBudget started in 2008 as a hobby. Having used many different envelope based budgeting solutions, I just wasn’t pleased with any of them. None of them did budgeting like I thought it should be done: online and simple.

After working on NeoBudget in my spare time for several months, I released it to some close friends. A few months later, I released it to the general public. Since then, I have been maintaining it and keeping it going in my spare time on weekends and evenings. And that worked well for a while.

As time went along, I realized that many other people felt the need for simple envelope budgeting just like me. NeoBudget kept growing, but I found myself limited to maintaining the existing software. I didn’t have time to develop it further and make many enhancements.

My wife and I discussed this dilemma and decided to work toward the goal of making NeoBudget be my full time job. Now, many months later that dream has become a reality. I resigned from my day job and have started working much more consistently on NeoBudget.

More Activity

You will start seeing more activity around here. For starters, this blog will be much more active. You can expect to see tutorials, product announcements, and budgeting tips on a regular basis. So be sure to subscribe!

These changes will also result in a more consistent release cycle. Not only will bugs get fixed quickly like they always have, but new features will be pushed out at least once per month. It is my goal to produce a new release of NeoBudget during the first week of every month. Since April is nearly upon us, you can expect to start seeing some exciting changes around here pretty soon.

Feedback and Thanks

Your feedback is what makes NeoBudget a great budgeting solution. You, the NeoBudget users, have always been excellent at providing feedback and letting your opinions be known. I covet your input as I continue to develop NeoBudget and make it even more robust. As always, please feel free to contact NeoBudget support with questions, concerns, and suggestions.

Thanks for helping make this possible by using NeoBudget and telling your friends. I am excited to be spending more time making NeoBudget even better.