What is Troosby?

Hi all,

I am Cristi, and if you are reading this then it means that you are visiting my site, or my blog, for which I thank you.

As this is the first post on this blog I guess I have to do some introduction to Troosby project.

So, what is this Troosby project?

As probably most of you out there I kept track of my finances using Microsoft Excel.
As most of you out there I started with a simple table in which I tracked my spendings. I had different columns for different groups of spendings, like food, car, entertainment, bills and so on.
Sounds familiar?

After a while I realized that I also wanted to track my incomes, as they where not as constant from month to month as I thought. So I added columns for each source of income that I had.
Sounds more familiar?

But that was not enough. I wanted the Excel file to tell me also how much money I had in each account, because, as most of you, nowadays you have your salary bank account, your savings bank account, your credit card bank account, your cash account 'cause cash is just an other account, right?
So I added columns for these as well.

And from here came the multitude of Excel charts added on an ever growing number of Excel sheets.

As I loved programming (my job), I started looking into Java for Web (not my job).
I began creating my own website called Troosby: www.troosby.com (it is incredible now many web domains are already bought).
Initially I tried to implement all the features in my Excel file into the site and when I was satisfied with the results I finally was able to abandon my old trusty Excel document - thank you old friend :)

Now all my data was going on the same server, regardless from which computer, laptop, tablet I was recording the entries.
The problem was when I did that from my smart-phone. My website was not displayed quite nicely in the mobile web browser (still has issues on which I am working on :P).
But regardless how much I would have improved that, a web page displayed on a mobile will never compare with a mobile app.
So I looked into Android Development Kit and I started building a simple application. I wanted to see fast how much money I had and I wanted to record fast any spendings, incomes, transfers and so on. And I did. If you want, you can download the latest version of Troosby Android application from here. Still working on this also.

So that's my little project which takes a lot of my free time. Because of this I have to thank my very patient and understanding wife for letting me stay in front of the laptop every evening, pretending that I am watching the movie with her!

There are other websites like my Troosby out there, you can easily find them with Google. Some of them ask you to give them your bank account details, some ask you for a monthly fee, ans some are free.

Troosby will always be free, everything related to this project will be free - the website and the Android app. I'm working all the time to improve it, so if you have any ideas or you find some bugs don't hesitate to contact me - see the social channels.

The purpose of this blog is first to share with you my advices and my experience when it comes to personal finances management, and secondly to let you know latest news related to Troosby!

So that is Troosby. Hope you will like it and find it as useful as I do!

Cristi