After Eight Years of Using Financial App I Decided to Develop my Own App and That's Why

Financial manager? Again?

Yes! A new one, a different one, and the more, the merrier! But seriously, I've always liked the concept of creating transactions by dragging and dropping, yet I couldn't stand that most finance apps are just Excel with a pretty face. Sure, many of them have analytics, but who actually looks at that? I have eight years of analytics in my app. You know how many times I've opened it? Three.

Once to see what it is, once by accident, and the third time because I forgot that I found absolutely nothing useful the first time. I want to see specific advice like, “You’re spending way too much on restaurants—slow your roll,” “Sunday is the most expensive day; maybe stay in,” or “Come on, start earning more already!” and so on.

Just don’t tell me such apps already exist; I’d hate to think those four months went down the drain! 🙂

And that’s how the idea was born.

Hope, you’re ready to download Fuku 😀 - Google Play

What do I need from the app?

Here are my must-haves:

• Drag-and-drop for adding transactions—it’s a non-negotiable!
• A clean, minimalist interface—no distractions, please!
• Advice and recommendations from the app—without that, what’s the use?
• Multiple currency support—I travel a lot (but who doesn’t these days?).
• Android + iOS compatibility—because I’d rather not write it twice.
• Dark and light themes—let’s have a little variety!

For the MVP, I decided to keep it straightforward—just the essentials: handling transactions and debts. And of course, multi-currency support—remember, I travel a lot! ✈️ I also added a dark theme, cross-platform compatibility, and design right from the start. I’ve learned the hard way that if you forget that foundation, you’ll end up rewriting half the project. 😅

At first, I didn’t plan to include a second currency feature, but I couldn’t resist! Now, when you hold down the button, all amounts magically convert to that currency. Here’s the deal: I’ve got a card for Malaysia and Montenegro, but when I head to Vietnam, I’m always scrambling to figure out how much 100 MYR is in local dong. 💸 Do I have enough to pay with this card, or should I whip out another one? Now, with just a long press, everything converts to dong, and it’s as clear as day! 🌞

The launch was quite an adventure! 😅 In the app description, I jokingly wrote that it was the best app according to my wife, and an anonymous user said, “It’s just wow.” Yeah, it’s been a while since I read the policies! 🤣

As a result, Google rejected the app and asked me to change the description—not once, but several times. Eventually, they banned the app from publication altogether for “multiple policy violations.” Lesson learned: no more jokes in the app description for me!

The first users came through organic traffic and my YouTube channel, but only a handful made the jump. It’s clear that people who actually use apps like this are a rare breed!

The biggest surprise was the design. I found a freelancer who had hundreds of reviews and nearly a 5.0 rating. Decision made: let’s order the first screen!

After a couple of weeks, I received the most horrific design I had ever seen. Sure, design is subjective, but how can you miss the mark when I sent over three reference apps whose designs I liked, along with the fonts and color scheme?

The second freelancer, with only ten reviews, delivered a nearly finished design on the first try. And get this: the cost for five screens from the second designer was the same as the price for one screen from the first designer. You can never predict design outcomes! 😜

As for the name, I went through dozens of options, but it seems there’s no available combination with words like "money," "coin," "dime," and so on. Even ChatGPT couldn’t help me out.

Regarding Compose Multiplatform—I think I’ve mentioned it before, but it often feels like I'm battling the libraries. For instance, nearly every day, the iOS build would break. Just yesterday, it built fine until I cleared the project cache or simply restarted it, and suddenly, it wouldn’t build anymore. I’d uncomment/comment libraries, and voilà, it would work again!

Right now, I plan to add more advice—currently, there are only three. I have a list of five additional tips that just need to be programmed.

I also want to release the iOS version.

And I’m really eager to add network synchronization so users can switch between devices without any hassle!

I appreciate your feedback, feel free to use Fuku - Google Play