Swift Finance: Plan your finances effortlessly- A UX case study
About: Swift Finance is a tool that organizes your financial picture by bringing all your expenses, incomes, taxes, investments & loans in one place.
Stick to the habit of regular investments and achieve your goals realistically.
Learn the basics of finances, investments with personalized blogs and lessons.
Your financial health — organized at one place.
How did I start?
I started with “my problem”
Lately, I have been actively learning and planning my finances. I have designed a basic setup in google sheets to track all my income, expenses, saving goals and net-worth.
The sheet works just fine, It displays the big picture as well as nitty-gritty. However, it’s a cumbersome process. Every month, I spend a total of 2–3 hours to just enter the data points and see the result. Sounds unnecessary right!? I log it on a biweekly basis so I don’t waste time recalling it at the end.
Every month, I need the same data points from 11 different sources, some are pdf statements, some are online portals.
Here is a consolidated snippet from the google sheet. It gives me the visibility of what did I plan vs how am I doing currently. It also lets me know the change in my reserves and the status of my goals.
One day, my friend and I were discussing about investment in general and I was encouraging him about investment in the equity market by showing my investment ideology and process. After some intense explanation, He tells:
Bro, I don't know where my money goes. It’s too much effort and it’s scattered. I have a simple way, I see my bank statement on mobile to see what’s spent and what’s left. Your excel is awesome but it’s too much for me. 😅
This was the moment of realization for me, I was curious to know about his motivations and challenges and he happened to be my first respondent. After that conversation, I spoke to a few more people about their challenges and motivations.
How they handle their finances? What challenges do they face?
Kicking off with research
I jotted down what things I want to understand over the conversation.
My high-level goals were to:
- Understand how they manage their money for the whole month.
- Are they aware of their financial health?
- Understand their challenges while managing money.
With my questionnaire sorted, It’s time to make some calls! 🤙
The people
The cohort was narrow in terms of location & age but wider in terms of income —
- They are salaried professionals of experience more than 2 years
- Has an income range of Rs. 1.5L-15 L per annum
- Live in Tier 1 cities
- Are single
- Age is between 24–28 years
View details about the recruits
Here are some of the insights I gathered:
(I) 6 out of 7 know how much is their total spend in a month but don’t know where exactly their money is going.
By looking at the bank statement and daily balances, they have an idea of total spending in a month but don't have any clue over fixed and variable expenses for a month. It is because they don't track their spendings and feel overwhelmed to track each expense manually. They also fee that the current tracking apps demand a lot of user input to track effectively.
(II) All of the people have a budget in their mind but often tend to exceed it.
They have some sort of category wise budget (food, entertainment, shopping) but since they don't have a track of spending data, they can’t compare the actual with their theory.
(III) 6 out of 7 people have tried to save money. However, they are not consistent with it.
Some of the reasons were “My expenses fluctuate” “I am on EMI”
I don't really know the long terms effects, but I save whatever I can”
The conversations were insightful and I could see a snowball effect —
- If you don’t track ➡️ you are not informed.
- When you’re not informed ➡️ you can’t make progress.
- When you can’t make progress ➡️ you don’t see the results.
- And when you don’t see the result ➡️ you don’t have the motivation
Redefining the challenge
Your financial health in a nutshell
Using these insights I defined the following goals:
- Show a comprehensive financial picture at one place
- Motivate and guide the users to achieve their goals by doing a bit by bit [Covered in next article]
- Educate people for better financial literacy [Covered in another article]
Let’s discuss the first goal
Show a comprehensive financial picture at one place 🏦💳💰
For a complete picture, one simply needs to know about 4 things
- How much did I earn
- How much did I spend
- How much is left to spend
- What are my savings and debts
How existing products are solving this goal
I personally use walnut which solves all my problems related to expense tracking. The biggest gain point is they auto-track my expenses by reading my transactional messages. They also offer to set a monthly budget and powerful analytics.
Players such as ET Money, Indwealth are focussed on the other aspect — Track investments and debts.
See the analysis of U.S market
My take on this problem
Introducing Swift Finance
In an age where everything is demanding your time, Swift Finance gives your time back by giving you the complete picture at a glance. It nudges you to make the right financial decisions and flexible enough to adapt according to your needs.
1. See what’s spent, and what’s left. Instantly.
Swift Finance tells you how much you’ve spent and how much is left in your monthly budget. Compare from a previous period and see upcoming expenses.
2. Various categorization to slice and dice your spending data
See detailed spending by date, By budget or by accounts
3. Assign budgets for each category
Create your budget guided by your past data. Mark some categories fixed while allowing some categories to be flexible.
4. No more running around for tax proofs
See real-time calculation of your taxes based on your income and investments
Know the right amount to invest with all tax saving options. Sync all your documents with google drive to never run at the last minute!
5. Know your Assets and Liabilities
Swift Finance can connect with your existing finance apps and fetch all your investments. It also allows you to track your loans or any other liabilities. The difference between assets and liabilities gives your “Net-Worth”
Now that you’ve got the bigger picture of your finances, it’s easier to see how much money is left with you at the end of the month. What can do with it?
Spend it?
Save it for a goal?
In the next story let’s look at a use case where you would want to save for your next travel destination.
Part 2: Saving for your goals →
P.S. I have also put behind the scenes where I talk about technical feasibility, information architecture, usability testings that helped me to build the final solution.
Check my work on Dribbble: https://dribbble.com/meetdemo
Let’s connect: https://www.linkedin.com/in/meetdemo/
