Up-to-date Budgeting with the iPhone Software Development and Database Senior Design I Proposal Lawrence Powers

Topics of Discussion Introduction to the problem Solutions that already exist Limitations of current solutions The proposed solution The proposed high level design Project timeline and budget Conclusion

Current Solutions Mint.com –Connects directly to bank accounts, investment accounts, and credit/loan accounts. Quicken –Similar to Mint.com except it’s a paid service. Intuit, Quicken’s parent company, recently acquired Mint.com.

The Problem It is more important for Americans to budget today than it was in recent years. Why? “Credit card use in America continues to drop at an unprecedented rate. In September, credit card debt, dropped 13% again, after falling 13% in August.” –Kimberly Amadeo, About.com

Limitations of Solutions Outdated –Services like mint, only gather transactions that have posted to your credit/bank account. Slow –Downloading new transactions takes minutes. Limited Features –iPhone application cannot edit budgets.

Proposed Solution iPhone client with server backend –Pending Authorizations will be included in budget considerations. Check Register? –Application is meant strictly for budgeting checking accounts with a debit card attached. –Fifth Third Bank will be the first supported in the prototype.

Proposed Solution (cont) –Incoming transactions can be tagged immediately after purchase. Budget categories are updated accordingly. –Budgets are based on the 0 based budget Income – outgo = 0 Amount for savings is included in the outgo Increase budget for one category by x, you must decrease another category by x. –Simple statistical analysis will be performed on spending habits.

Proposed Design Software components –Bank web site scraping module that downloads transactions from the bank. –Transaction module that keeps track of transactions. –Budgeting module that keeps track of budgets.

Proposed Design (cont) –iPhone client module The iPhone module will communicate with the other modules through web services.

Technologies (software) SolutionPriceActual PriceComments Ubuntu Server 9.10$0.00 Under GPLv2 license PHP 5.3.1$0.00 Under GPLv2 license cURL$0.00 Under GPLv2 license OpenSSL$0.00 Under GPLv2 license PEAR$0.00 Under GPLv2 license MySQL 5.1$0.00 Under GPLv2 license Xcode$0.00 Price included with hardware Mac OS 10.6$0.00 Price included with hardware Iphone OS 3.1$0.00 Price included with hardware Developer license$99.99 Needed in order to develop on the iPhone Total$99.99

Technologies (hardware) HardwarePriceActual PriceComments MacBook Pro$1199$1099Student Discount Custom server – E6700 core 2 duo with 4 gigabytes of ram and 250 Gigabytes of RAID 5 storage $1500 System built a few years ago iPhone 3G$99 Total$2,798

Timeline

Challenges Security –Bank’s passwords are stored in plain text. –Jail broken iPhones can be vulnerable if default SSH password is left unchanged. –Not registered with third party security company. Ex. Verisign

User Profile The User –Must have a credit or debit card with online banking. –Must have a iPhone, any version

Risk Management

Testing Plan Integration testing Module testing Stress Testing Performance Testing Network Testing

Deliverables Application is able to retrieve both pending and posted transactions of account –XML, objective-c, iphone SDK, web services Application is able to accept new and modify existing budgets –XML, objective-c, iphone SDK, web services

Design Protocol

Conclusion There is a need for mobile budgeting in order to make real time decisions. This application needs to be: –Fast –Up-to-date –Feature filled

Additional Information –Questions? –Additional project information ucseniordesign.blogspot.com –