SOA Calculator and others

Clariman

Hi. I am the author of the SOA Calculator that is/was widely used here. This is a quick message to ask if it is still being used? I am about to semi-retire so thought it might be fun/useful to write a phone app version of it. Would that be of interest?

Note - although I co-created stoozing.com and wrote the calculators there, I have no financial involvement in the site and haven't for many years, so this is just a genuine 'would this be useful?' question. Who knows, maybe the technical skills to write app versions may be beyond me, but it might be fun to try.

Clariman

Pablosammy

Clariman wrote: »

Hi. I am the author of the SOA Calculator that is/was widely used here. This is a quick message to ask if it is still being used? I am about to semi-retire so thought it might be fun/useful to write a phone app version of it. Would that be of interest?

Note - although I co-created stoozing.com and wrote the calculators there, I have no financial involvement in the site and haven't for many years, so this is just a genuine 'would this be useful?' question. Who knows, maybe the technical skills to write app versions may be beyond me, but it might be fun to try.

Clariman

It's definitely being frequently used as the 'go-to' SOA calculator. Cheers for making it!

EssexHebridean

Great work Clariman! Definitely still in use - the link is in the sticky post at the top of the board and pretty much every new poster on here gets directed to it!

I'd say a phone version of it might well be a useful tool - albeit it still needs to have the functionality that allows it to be pasted across to places like here.

Clariman

Thanks both. Any other comments appreciated.

Sanctioned_Parts_List

Thank you Clariman! What you've created is a god-send for we mortals

Could you extend the SOA template into a spending log? Currys/PC World have published a sheet, which has the nice idea of allowing a person to simply compare what they planned against what they actually spent - http://techtalk.currys.co.uk/infographics/microsoft-templates/monthly-budget-planner.html

I think it'd be kinda cool if a person could download their SOA in Excel/ODF format, with the ability to track their expenses alongside.

National_Debtline

Hi Clariman


In my capacity as a debt charity representative, I frequently refer forum users to your SOA template in these threads as one that is easy to reproduce in forum discussions, so I hope that bears testimony to the usefulness of your work.


I tend to use MSE exclusively on desktop so I'm not really very well placed to comment on your question about a mobile app. Perhaps the site admin can tell you what % of visitors view it on a mobile device - that may give you a better idea on the potential value of such an app?


All the best


Dennis
@natdebtline

datlex

One downside I would say to the SOA is that it looks at things on a monthly basis. Some folk get paid weekly and have some bills weekly. It should allow for weekly monthly quarterly annually figures for categories as appropriate.

Clariman

Sanctioned_Parts_List wrote: »

Could you extend the SOA template into a spending log? Currys/PC World have published a sheet, which has the nice idea of allowing a person to simply compare what they planned against what they actually spent - http://techtalk.currys.co.uk/infographics/microsoft-templates/monthly-budget-planner.html

I think it'd be kinda cool if a person could download their SOA in Excel/ODF format, with the ability to track their expenses alongside.

Hi there. Creating a spending log within the calculator would require a complete redesign and rebuild. At the moment it stores all the data in cookies on your PC/laptop/Mac. If it was to store detailed transaction data, that would need to be held in a database on a server, which takes me into a whole different area of privacy and security which I didn't want to get into. I think I looked at ways of creating a spreadsheet but there was no easy way of doing it. But I have an idea.

Clariman

datlex wrote: »

One downside I would say to the SOA is that it looks at things on a monthly basis. Some folk get paid weekly and have some bills weekly. It should allow for weekly monthly quarterly annually figures for categories as appropriate.

Thanks for that. I can see that would be useful.

Sanctioned_Parts_List

Clariman wrote: »

Hi there. Creating a spending log within the calculator would require a complete redesign and rebuild. At the moment it stores all the data in cookies on your PC/laptop/Mac. If it was to store detailed transaction data, that would need to be held in a database on a server, which takes me into a whole different area of privacy and security which I didn't want to get into. I think I looked at ways of creating a spreadsheet but there was no easy way of doing it. But I have an idea.

Hi, I didn't mean an online spending log, but a downloadable one - as you say, there are volume and security issues. I meant that once you have a good template, it should be relatively simple to export the soa data to xml, that the xlsx/odf template could use...