double entry accountg app for personal finance but target at broad audience

Bootstrapped VC backed

17 May 2025

Personal Finance Fintech

double entry accountg app for personal finance but target at broad ...

...audience

Confidence

Engagement

Net use signal

Net buy signal

Idea type: Pivot

Current solutions aren’t working well, but there might be a way to adjust your approach. This isn’t about starting over, but rather making thoughtful changes based on what you’re learning.

Should You Build It?

No. Think & pivot.

Your are here

You're entering a space with an existing product, which puts you in the 'Pivot' category. This means there's already a similar solution, but it has drawbacks you can address. Specifically, you're aiming for a double-entry accounting personal finance app targeting a broader audience. While there is only one similar product we found, it has high engagement (18 comments). Users generally appreciate the approach but have specific issues with the existing solution. This suggests a viable, albeit potentially challenging, market. The good news is that you can learn from the criticisms of the existing solution to inform your strategy.

Recommendations

Start by deeply understanding why people dislike the existing double-entry accounting app and similar tools like Mint or PaperMoney. Focus on the criticisms: lack of a desktop/web client, complex database design, regional banking limitations, and confusing features like 'negative income'. These pain points are your opportunities.
Sketch out solutions that directly address these dislikes. If the existing product lacks a web interface, prioritize that. If the database design is confusing, simplify it. Ensure broad banking integration, not just EU/UK. Clarify confusing concepts with better UX and help documentation. This is your unique selling proposition.
Before investing heavily in development, create mockups or a simple prototype showcasing these improvements. Test this with at least five potential users who have tried the existing app or similar tools. Gather their feedback on whether your solutions truly address their pain points. User feedback is critical before you start building.
Consider niching down initially. Instead of targeting a 'broad audience,' focus on a specific demographic (e.g., freelancers, small business owners, or a specific age group). Tailor the app's features and marketing to their specific needs. This allows for a more targeted approach and easier validation.
Set a strict 4-week deadline to validate your pivot. After this period, assess whether user feedback is positive, engagement is increasing, and the app is showing promise. Be prepared to iterate further or even abandon the project if it's not gaining traction.
Given the user feedback regarding the existing product's database design and ledger schema, make sure your app's architecture is intuitive for non-accountants. Consider offering simpler interfaces for common tasks, while still maintaining the integrity of the double-entry system.
Since the existing product received both praise and criticism for its free tier, carefully evaluate your pricing model. Offering a generous free tier can attract users, but ensure it's sustainable in the long run. Consider offering premium features or integrations for paying users.
As users desired more advanced graphs and customization options in the existing product, plan to incorporate these features into your app's roadmap. However, prioritize core functionality and usability first before adding advanced features.

Questions

What are the three biggest usability issues that prevent non-accountants from adopting double-entry bookkeeping, and how will your app directly solve them?
Knowing that the existing solution received criticism for banking integration, what specific banking APIs will you prioritize for initial integration and how will you handle regional differences in banking standards?
If you niche down initially, what specific demographic will you target and what unique features or marketing messages will resonate with them, giving you a competitive advantage?

Your are here

Recommendations

Start by deeply understanding why people dislike the existing double-entry accounting app and similar tools like Mint or PaperMoney. Focus on the criticisms: lack of a desktop/web client, complex database design, regional banking limitations, and confusing features like 'negative income'. These pain points are your opportunities.
Sketch out solutions that directly address these dislikes. If the existing product lacks a web interface, prioritize that. If the database design is confusing, simplify it. Ensure broad banking integration, not just EU/UK. Clarify confusing concepts with better UX and help documentation. This is your unique selling proposition.
Before investing heavily in development, create mockups or a simple prototype showcasing these improvements. Test this with at least five potential users who have tried the existing app or similar tools. Gather their feedback on whether your solutions truly address their pain points. User feedback is critical before you start building.
Consider niching down initially. Instead of targeting a 'broad audience,' focus on a specific demographic (e.g., freelancers, small business owners, or a specific age group). Tailor the app's features and marketing to their specific needs. This allows for a more targeted approach and easier validation.
Set a strict 4-week deadline to validate your pivot. After this period, assess whether user feedback is positive, engagement is increasing, and the app is showing promise. Be prepared to iterate further or even abandon the project if it's not gaining traction.
Given the user feedback regarding the existing product's database design and ledger schema, make sure your app's architecture is intuitive for non-accountants. Consider offering simpler interfaces for common tasks, while still maintaining the integrity of the double-entry system.
Since the existing product received both praise and criticism for its free tier, carefully evaluate your pricing model. Offering a generous free tier can attract users, but ensure it's sustainable in the long run. Consider offering premium features or integrations for paying users.
As users desired more advanced graphs and customization options in the existing product, plan to incorporate these features into your app's roadmap. However, prioritize core functionality and usability first before adding advanced features.

Questions

What are the three biggest usability issues that prevent non-accountants from adopting double-entry bookkeeping, and how will your app directly solve them?
Knowing that the existing solution received criticism for banking integration, what specific banking APIs will you prioritize for initial integration and how will you handle regional differences in banking standards?
If you niche down initially, what specific demographic will you target and what unique features or marketing messages will resonate with them, giving you a competitive advantage?

Confidence: Low

Number of similar products: 1

Engagement: High

Average number of comments: 18

Net use signal: -5.6%

Positive use signal: 5.6%
Negative use signal: 11.1%

Net buy signal: -5.6%

Positive buy signal: 0.0%
Negative buy signal: 5.6%

Help

This chart summarizes all the similar products we found for your idea in a single plot.

The x-axis represents the overall feedback each product received. This is calculated from the net use and buy signals that were expressed in the comments. The maximum is +1, which means all comments (across all similar products) were positive, expressed a willingness to use & buy said product. The minimum is -1 and it means the exact opposite.

The y-axis captures the strength of the signal, i.e. how many people commented and how does this rank against other products in this category. The maximum is +1, which means these products were the most liked, upvoted and talked about launches recently. The minimum is 0, meaning zero engagement or feedback was received.

The sizes of the product dots are determined by the relevance to your idea, where 10 is the maximum.

Your idea is the big blueish dot, which should lie somewhere in the polygon defined by these products. It can be off-center because we use custom weighting to summarize these metrics.

Similar products

Relevance

Double-entry accounting based personal finance app

27 Nov 2024 Fintech

Hello HN! I am Aswin Mohan, full-stack mobile + web developer and I built PaperMoney(https://getpaper.money). PaperMoney is a double-entry accounting based personal finance app. It can help you keep track of your expenses, assets, liabilities and your net-worth. It is based on the command-line tools beancount and ledger.I had been using beancount to track my expenses for over two years. The plain-text accounting and reporting with fava was great, but I wanted a mobile based app to keep track on the go. Looked around existing solutions but everything fell short when compared to beancount. Also the major apps were not available outside the United States and only supported the dollar. They were based on assigning categories to a list of transactions which I found lacking coming from double-entry accounting. So I created Paper Money. It's based on double-entry accounting, you can add your chart of accounts and add balanced transactions. We'll use this to calculate your net-worth and the balances in your accounts.It's built using React Native for the frontend and Elixir and Phoenix on the backend. We have support for both Android and iOS. I have plans to add automated account syncing and automated expense tracking in future versions.The target audience currently is someone who is familiar with double-entry accounting but looking for a hosted mobile version. The future versions will be focused on more mainstream customers of personal finance apps, which means making the app more accessible for people without prior experience with double-entry accounting.I am available at aswin@getpaper.money if you have any questions or querires, and excited to hear your feedback!Links: Website: https://getpaper.money IOS: https://apps.apple.com/in/app/papermoney/id6737713983 Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.papermoney...Video Demo of the App: https://www.loom.com/share/40cf50afe33f4e1cb4fa3e749c19a2e3?...

Users appreciate the product's approach to financial management, with some preferring desktop over mobile. There's a desire for competition to Gnucash and automatic bank transaction monitoring. The product's database design and ledger schema raise questions, while its integration with EU/UK banks and generous free tier are praised. Users compare it favorably to Mint and PaperMoney, but express confusion over certain features like negative income and split transactions. There's interest in more advanced graphs and a note about a typo on the main page.

Users criticized the lack of a desktop/web client, finding the mobile-only approach inconvenient for complex transactions and data entry. The database design and ledger schema were deemed complex and unclear. Criticisms also targeted regional disparities, noting outdated banking in Australia and New Zealand compared to the EU. Access to APIs was restricted to organizations, not individuals. Users were disappointed with the dissolution of Mint and requested updates to the App Store listing and privacy policy. The concept of negative income and account tracking was confusing, and the overhead was seen as unjustified for individuals. Users desired more advanced graphs and customization, and noted a typo on the main page.

-5.6%

5.6%

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