Ask HN: Review my debt tracking app, Piggy Back | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Review my debt tracking app, Piggy Back

piggyback.it

12 pointsavand17 comments

The site looks nice and I get the idea, I think the only problem is that I would see this as way to formal with my friends and family. If I pick up dinner with friends, or if I pay his part of the cab fare.. he just buys me dinner or a beer later. This seems too cold and formal for most uses.

Now for something like parents lending to their kids it would make more sense, or formal loans between friends (which is usually a bad idea)

That's a fair point. Certainly with really close friends, there's always casual transactions that take place.

There are people though that you may not consider really close. While you're happy to pick up the tab and know eventually they might get you back, Piggy Back will help you take the guess work out of it.

I agree, for formal occasions (a pre arranged meal with friends) this is perfect. Though it may be best as an iphone app where the phone can be passed around and everyone deducts their own meal. How do yo u know who ordered what?

For a night out it seems a bit too formal.

My goal would be for people to be able to create debts in any number of simple ways:

* An iPhone/Android/Blackberry app * Tweets * Emails (cc'ing Piggy Back)

Even for a casual night out if you could just snap a picture of the receipt and deal with it later, it could be really useful. Especially, where there's alcohol involved.

Piggy Back was built to solve the problem of constantly owing or being owed by friends and family. It simply keeps a running balance of the debts between people.

The plans are to make it easier and easier to create these debts by leveraging email and Twitter.

Let me know what you think!

My friends and I are heavy users of BillMonk so your service definitely interests me.

However for the example in your video, BillMonk is clearly superior. With BillMonk, one person pays, takes home the itemized receipt and enters it in. Then for each item, they specify who ate or shared it. BillMonk totals everyone's part and automatically assigns the debt. The tax and tip are also split based on each person's total percentage of the bill.

It seems with Piggy Back, the payer would need to figure out each person's split manually and file multiple debt reports. How are you improving on BillMonk's model?

Piggy Back's goal is to make it ridiculously easy to create debts between people. This is our first version and can't wait to release some of the other features we have in the hopper.

Here are a few ideas. The debit/credit terminology is too formal. Use something like "I owe" and "I am owed".

I can see myself using this if it was more closely focused on helping me track who I owe money. The confirmation system you have is too formal.

How about this. I can record who I owe money, or record who owes me money. If I owe John money, I can optionally choose to send him a note (email) as a friendly reminder. Maybe integrate with Facebook so he can choose from a list of his friends. No need to remember an email address. I can also have it send me reminders to my facebook account or email.

Great feedback. Other's have noted the formality of those two buttons, and I'm going to nix them for something that communicates better.

Facebook integration is coming.

Have you seen billmonk.com? This is what I use currently to keep track of tabs with roommates. BillMonk was bought by OgoPay in 2007 though and since then they haven't changed a thing on the site.

My friend created a slick new alternative for the iPhone: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/mr-moneybags-iou/id342122272?... (iTunes link)

Check out Mr. Moneybags! It's cool.

Yeah, my friends and I use BillMonk and it sucks that it's stagnated so much. When I read the headline, I was hoping someone had released a new service that fixes the small problems we have with BillMonk.

It's unfortunate that BillMonk has stagnated.

It currently is cumbersome to enter in multiple debts simultaneously (i.e. splitting a big check). However, we're developing this functionality now and are excited to debut it.

I'm wondering why you have a Twitter login instead of a Facebook connect button, since most friends and family are probably going to be on Facebook, not Twitter.

Facebook Connect is coming soon. Too much to do, so little time!

There is an even simpler remedy to this: Don't give or lend money if you can't afford to lose it. Similarly, don't borrow money if you can't pay it back.

I just buy friends/family a beer, or food/items with the likely event that it will be reciprocated down the road. Even if it doesn't balance, they're not my client and I don't ever intend to bill my friends. At least, that's not how I roll.

Edit: I think maybe I need to clarify. I think this is a serious problem they may need to address with their app. I don't think I am a one off person, I am sure people have similar principles as me. What I am saying is that I can't see myself using this app to add a friend only to say "Hey, you owe me $8.95, please pay up"; the landing page does not convince me otherwise.

Back in my roommates days we used shared google spreadsheet with few formulas setup. It worked perfectly for us.

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