Hello,
6 years ago, I was looking for a budget planner that would fit my needs but I couldn’t find one. So I created mine on Google Spreadsheet and now I decided to migrate it to Fibery. I’m sharing you the template.
It is not a final version as I was not able to migrate all the functionalities but the basic and more are there.
Notes :
- As I’m using the Dashboard view, you will need to have a Pro plan.
First of all, many thanks to the Fibery team for their hard work. We adopted Fibery about a year ago and it as so much evolved in the good way ! Thanks also to Polina for her webinars and also for her support. When working with a tool, having access to accessible, helpful, and knowledgeable support is a real plus.
I’ve included a Read.Me in the template so I’m not going to explain here how it works. I’m just going to share some feedbacks for the team about things I found during this adventure and also what I plan for the next iteration. This feedback only reflect my personal opinion and perhaps you will find interesting things that you can implement on Fibery or nothing more. I’ll let you be the judge.
Formulas
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The space for formulas is small, and sometimes you need to write something more substantial. You end up writing your formula in a notepad.
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Would be great if we can access the Users DB > Useful to exploit personal users settings.
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Where is it used ? Sometimes a formula calls another formula or a formula is used on a filter or something else. Sometimes it’s a useful information when you need to debug and trace something. More globally, it would be great to be able to see where a field is used.
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Missing functions :
- DATEDIF (https://support.google.com/docs/answer/6055612)
- EOMONTH() (https://support.google.com/docs/answer/3093044)
- CASE or SWITCH (https://support.google.com/docs/answer/7013690)
Rules/Buttons
- When I plan my budget for the next month, I would like to be able to do a copy of my Items (based on some filters) and link them to an “Archives” budget but it is not possible to do it without creating a script. It would be great to have a Copy option as an action we can do on rules and buttons.
Views
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Filters :
- I would like to have the possibility to auto-unpin a filter. Let say that I manage 5 departments with 5 different budgets. On the same View, I would like to pin a filter for each budget. But instead of clicking on one filter (budget) to deactivate it and then clicking on the other one, I would like that it happen automatically. To create this I suggest the following : add an option for grouped filter. This option will say something like “Single view”. Every filter that belong to this group will be under this rule and cannot be activated at the same time.
(When I click on Budget 1, the other ones should deactivate automatically)
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Be able to have 3 states on pinned filters : Enabled, Disabled, Ignored. If ignored then it’s the same as removing the filter from the equation.
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Dashboard :
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Drag and Drop of Widgets needs some fine tuning. It react too quickly when we move the widgets.
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On Smart Folder views, it would be great if there is a way to show the fields of the configured database on somewhere on the view. If the view is a dashboard, it could be a specific widget that we can add and that represent the fields of the configured database. But it should integrate the functionnalities of a classic view (filters, colors, etc…). For example, my Smart Folder have the following configuration :
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On my Dashboard, I would like to be able to add the fields of my Budgets database somewhere. It can be on the top :
Or it can be through a dedicated widget for the Dashboard. On the case of this template, I substituted by a setting database :
- It is not possible to select a one to one database on the case of a Smart Folder view. Currently, my Settings database have a many to one budget relation. Logically, a budget should only have 1 setting entity linked. So with this many to one relation, I’m able to add the setting entity on the dashboard view and to have the classic functions of a view (mainly the colors).
Charts
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Should be great if the charts can be updated dynamically as we change the values.
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Metric View
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cannot add 1 000 separator.
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I choose pastel colors to show the values but it does not seems to be well respected. And for an unknown reason, INCOMES value is in bold :
- it is not possible to center the content :
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Performances issues
- When I change a Base Amount or something that affect the calculation, it takes 7 to 8 seconds before the Monthly Amount is updated.
Issues
- My columns width are not remembered. If I re-launch Fibery another day or on a different screen configuration. Also if I import the template on another account, the width is not kept.
- The pinned filters state of views aren’t kept when the template is imported.
Next improvements for this project
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In my country, we have some sample budgets with the breakdown by expense category based on our personal situation (single, married, etc…). I would like to add a feature that allows to configure the recommended percentage per categories and have information displayed on each category to let me know if I am within the norm.
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I would like to add the ability to have sub-items. Some household appliances require the regular purchase of consumables. This would allow to link the consumables to the household appliance and have a better view about the cost of the things.
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One functionality I didn’t migrated yet is a projection report that allows me to see the situation in X months. This one will be a little bit challenging so I think it will take some time.