Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

BillMinder 3: MR Forums Exclusive Teaser

Thanks to all of you for being customers. We would, of course, appreciate your reviews on the App Store to let others know what you think of the app. We're already working on our first update but it will not be available until after the Apple Review Team comes back from their brief break. :)
 
Love the new app! I have been using the old billminder app forever and could not wait to get v3!

Upgrading my data from v2-v3 was so easy and worked flawlessly!

Thank you so much for producing this great app!

Going to review now (5 star obv)! : )
 
Thanks so much -- by the way for those who use PocketMoney, our next update will include support for sending payments to PocketMoney.
 
I saw that note in the description and was so confused why people rating app were complaining like they were surprised it was not in this update.

I did note in my 5 star review that pocket money is coming for those who can't read... : )
 
skillz1318 said:
I saw that note in the description and was so confused why people rating app were complaining like they were surprised it was not in this update.

I did note in my 5 star review that pocket money is coming for those who can't read... : )
Click to expand...

At least partially our fault as it wasn't originally there. We wrote the description a while back. Still, they could have emailed instead of flaming us, which a very nice lady did. I'm not a fan of the "I'll give you stars if you give me THIS" business -- it's like an App Store ransom note. :confused:
 
Okay well I've been playing with the app some more. Less crashes after a reset. My only gripes now are some of the functionality that Billminder 2 has that wasn't transferred over.

1. When going to calendar view instead of the calendar showing bills that are due it shows all bills as a default. Of course I can just hit due to bypass that but it's just something I didn't have to do with Billminder 2.

2. Next, a big one IMO is the fact that there's really no marker to let me see on a whim what was paid when I hit a date within the calendar. It just shows the bills. If I go into the bill further it can show me but Billminder 2 gave me a green check mark and green background for paid items making it easier to see if I hit all bills.

3. Within the calendar if I make a partial payment it only shows the full amount but if I go in further it shows the amount left, again something Billminder 2 did beautifully by fading out the green check mark and displaying at a glance what was left on that bill. The upcoming screen shows what's left but I think a lot of people are use to the calendar view being the main screen for bills.

4. Also I don't know if it's because of the backgrounding or auto backuping but it seems like every time I exit the app the whole iPhone 4 slows down when sliding through my pages of apps. It fixes itself after a few seconds however. Maybe if backups had an option to be manual that could help. I feel a lot more secure sending my backups to my email account. Which leads me to my other gripe.

5. Backups. I didn't even realize this until I thought about it. There's no option to send my backups! Lol.

I really love the fact that Billminder is getting a whole new makeover it's just the change seems like a totally different app than Billminder 2. I seriously didn't want anything more from Billminder 2 because it does everything flawlessly but when I heard it was going to be slowly faded out for Billminder 3 I have no other choice but to jump on the bandwagon for future updates and compatibility with future iPhones.

I've used Billminder 2 daily for about 8 or 9 months and it's saved me so much money the app paid for itself within the first week of purchase so I have no gripes about paying for anything from return7. I just don't want the simplicity of Billminder 2 to become something not so simple anymore.
 
return7 said:
At least partially our fault as it wasn't originally there. We wrote the description a while back. Still, they could have emailed instead of flaming us, which a very nice lady did. I'm not a fan of the "I'll give you stars if you give me THIS" business -- it's like an App Store ransom note. :confused:
Click to expand...

You should post a link to this forum on the apps page so they can talk about their problems here. I know a lot of people will be going crazy when they see the big changes.
 
eazyslim123 said:
...
Click to expand...

1) BillMinder 2 also defaulted to all, but it remembered your last selection, as does BillMinder 3 with the backgrounding support.

2) One of our major goals in BillMinder 3 was to clean and polish the UI. In doing so, we decided to remove some of the icons from the cells in the calendar view. The reason we did this is because the Calendar view (formerly the Bills view in BM2) is no longer the place to go to see what's due. The new Upcoming view shows very quickly what needs to be paid to keep you from missing a payment. That said, when you do filter the calendar view (in list mode), it will show you the paid or remaining balances depending upon which filter you have selected.

3) You hit a little bit on what I said above. While I know people are used to using the calendar to see what's due, we feel that after using the upcoming tab, you will realize how much easier it is to see what's going on.

4) BillMinder 3 will finish any remaining syncing requests it has pending before going into the background, it should only be an issue if you make a change then immediately close BillMinder and have a very slow connection.

5) The restore procedure in BillMinder 2 was probably the biggest cause of support on our part. It was very complicated and error prone. We've spent a lot of time in making our backup/sync server secure and solid so we feel it is better than emailing backup files in every way. Most users never remembered to email themselves a backup in the first place.

As for the QuickPay feature, simply swipe across a bill in the Upcoming tab.


Edit: We've already submitted version 1.0.1, which fixes a few bugs including the graph crash and a weird localization issue with decimal places on some phones. Version 1.0.1 also adds PocketMoney integration.
 
One of the reasons calendar view is so useful to me is because of pay periods and not having to remember pay dates. You can look at a glance and see when you're going to get paid and what bills will be paid with that check or if you want to hold off a couple days or not. The visuals worked so well.

Also the visuals of checking off bills on that calendar to me made me want to pay bills way before they were due. Seeing the calendar lose pink boxes and the total amount owed for that month being reduced just made bill payments so much more enjoyable.

I understand change happens I just hope Billminder 2 is at least able to still function the way it is throughout the iOS updates of the future.
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_2_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8C148 Safari/6533.18.5)

Great update. Thanks return7. Only issue I see is with the new Upcoming Tab, I have a bill thats due 12/30, but shows as part of next month instead of next week.
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_2_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8C148 Safari/6533.18.5)

Ok that makes sense. Thanks for the response.
 
eazyslim123 said:
One of the reasons calendar view is so useful to me is because of pay periods and not having to remember pay dates. You can look at a glance and see when you're going to get paid and what bills will be paid with that check or if you want to hold off a couple days or not. The visuals worked so well.

Also the visuals of checking off bills on that calendar to me made me want to pay bills way before they were due. Seeing the calendar lose pink boxes and the total amount owed for that month being reduced just made bill payments so much more enjoyable.

I understand change happens I just hope Billminder 2 is at least able to still function the way it is throughout the iOS updates of the future.
Click to expand...

I will agree that the new version of the app is a little on the bland side when it comes to coloring, but the functionality is still there. The calendar view has little maroon dashes for unpaid bills that turn grey when paid. In an effort to make an already great app look more streamlined and professional, they've also made it more boring.
 
UI changes are funny things. Some folks complained when we went from the stock Apple gray to green theme with BillMinder 2. Other complained that there weren't enough themes when we added another 5 or 6 colors. And others complained when we redid the BillMinder 2 art for retina since the wood grain went away. And there are folks now who aren't quite happy with the way BillMinder 3 looks. It's really hard to make something that everyone thinks is pretty.

We know there are little tweaks we need to make to make the app easier to use at a glance -- we're going to do those things.
 
The color or look of an app doesn't bother me at all it's the usability. Making the upcoming bills screen the main focus just seems strange since that screen doesn't do much in my eyes as a "quick glance for info" but list bills and dates.

A visual calendar makes so much more sense especially when you're out and about and need some quick info without having to sit there and visualize a calendar in your head to make sense of the dates.

I know a calendar is still available, there are just more steps involved for usage. Instead of taping the calendar bill dates and seeing a quarter inch screen slide up of bills that can be exited with a single tap of an x, you enter a whole new screen.

Other changes like single tap bill pay being removed in calendar view, and indicators in the calendar that shows that a bill is paid with a green background in All View being removed as well. Instead it just shows bills plainly if they're paid or not. Those types of extra steps and changes drastically alter the usability, especially on the go.

The Calendar is the main strength of Billminder and I feel removing it's features will make Billminder 3 too similar to other apps in the app store that "just don't get it" with mobile computing. People want simplicity when they're in rush hour traffic or in a meeting. Bring over Billminder 2's features that made us love this app and give us an option in the settings screen to make the calendar default. Everyone wins.
 
eazyslim123 said:
...
Click to expand...

I'm sorry you don't see the usefulness of the new layout. The whole idea of the upcoming view is that if you clear all of your bills out of it, you will have everything paid in full in both the past and for the next 30 days. This is something BillMinder 2 just could not do. It had no way to show you your past due bills, and if you were near the end of a month, a bill could be due in less than a week and you would have no idea unless you purposefully looked into the next month.

I do find it interesting that your main use of BillMinder 2 was through the calendar. That was definitely not how it was intended to be used. BillMinder 1-2 was written around it's list view. The calendar was added more to give a visual indication of when your bills were due rather than to help keep track of them. I strongly feel that a calendar centric app would be much more complicated and harder to use than one that simply shows you what's due next. BTW, whether you are tapping the X on the small view that slides up, or the back button on a new view that slides in, it's the same number of taps.

The QuickPay feature still exists, but again, only on the upcoming view. The reason behind this is because we don't foresee users paying bills that are more than 30 days out very often. Also, the QuickPay feature only works on unpaid bills and since the calendar shows both paid and unpaid bills, it doesn't quite fit as well.

The next version (1.0.2) will include more status icons in both the upcoming and calendar list views. Hopefully these added indicators will help ease some of the problems you are having.
 
Couple more questions/issues? First Notifications no longer show up in iPhone Settings (maybe by Design?); Second, I am not receiving notifications . I currently have setup 3&7 for being notified. Today I logged on before the time 8:00 and the Badge changed from 2 to 3, but I did not get a Notification. Maybe by design, but just wanted to verify. Thanks.
 
One thing that's different that I'm not crazy about is how new bills are added. I liked the way we could choose from a list of existing accounts or create a new account. Now we are forced to type in a name of a bill (which allows duplicates, by the way). For example, I wanted to add my AT&T bill for next month - I had to type in AT&T and it created a whole new account in the same category. Now I have two AT&T's, one with the due date and the other that has the billing history.

I realize the proper way to do this is to set up a variable amount recurring bill but I like to add it manually when I get the bill. I also may have found a bug - I tried to set up AT&T account that was brought over from BM2 as a recurring bill with the next due date of 1/6/11. It added overdue bills for $0 for each month of 2010. I had to go in and manually delete each bill.
 
Anyone else having issue with notifications? They aren't working for me and stupidly I deleted the old billminder.
 
BillMinder 3 First Impressions

Initial impressions are that the GUI is very crisp, sharp, and user friendly. It will take users of the original time to adapt and get accustom to the changes but I believe that in the long run, it will be a welcomed change and find that it is easier to use. For those having issues with missing or changed function, remember that this is a completely new app and is not meant to do everything the old one did, this is why it is new. Open your minds to change and try and get used to what they developed and why they made the changes that they did.

Initial setup was easy and the only comment here would be that many users will not want their personal information (account numbers) transfered to the cloud and I believe that an option is warranted in this endeavor. Each user should be allowed the choice to use the new backup method or the Email backup method. Personally, I have set up an account and have no problems with using the new method as I fully trust return7 with storing my encrypted backups. The old email method also served me for a very long time and I never had an issue restoring my email backups and for me it worked flawlessly. Either method is acceptable but I believe there should be both options instead of the one.

My next step was to transfer my accounts and historical data from the Original App to the New App. The transfer itself is quite painless and very simple, however, there is a missing function and that is to notify the user that the transfer is complete or some type of notification that says it was successful and that the app needs to be closed and reopened for the transfer to complete. As it is, the user sits there wondering if all the data has transferred or what to do next. Finally after a few minutes and crossing my fingers, I closed and reopened Billminder3 and saw that the transfer was complete at first glance.

A major bug in the transfer is that BillMinder3 re-activated ALL of my closed accounts that had been paid off. It then proceeded to create a late payment for EACH and EVERYONE of my paid off accounts. I then had to manually go in and delete over 50 late payments that should not have been created in the first place.

The next bug is that I had two creditors that I had two accounts for each built. In other words...I have two accounts, one for Living Room Set, one for Bedroom Set that go to the same Loan Company. In the transfer from BillMinder2 to BillMinder3, the newest one was completely deleted and only the old one that was paid off was transfered. This happened with two accounts. These bugs could probably have been fixed prior to release with the use of beta testers but that is just my opinion.

During the transfer, another bug was created in BillMinder3, When creating a new Bill, the "Add Bill" function (which looks awesome and is a definite improvement over the old) and opening the "Category" selection, the choices from BillMinder2 were transfered to BillMinder3. I was able to go into "Catagories" button and delete the duplicates but be very careful here and look for the doubles that say "0" so that you do not delete your accounts.
Other then the bug, the new bill set up is awesome and everything is right there in the window that is needed. Setup is not in multiple places.

I have not had a chance to test/validate the notifications yet because I still have BillMinder2 notifications active as the First of the month is coming up and I have not fully moved over to BillMinder3 until I feel secure. I do not know if the "Settings", "Notifications", "BillMinder Icon" is now 2 or 3 so have it on still. If I can get validation from return7 I will turn the notifications "Off" and see if BillMinder3 sends me notifications as there seems to be no On/Off options anywhere for it.

Over all, I am impressed with the overall appearance, utilization, and ease of use. The graphs/reports are amazing and present a ton of information. All of my historical data seems to have transfered and are accurately incorporated. This app is definitely an improvement over the original and will eventually be accepted as users adapt to the new utility and how it works. I would still like to someday see somewhere to track income...NOT to Budget...but to just be able to see all of my income from the 4 places that I have it coming in from. I do not expect nor want the income to be incorporated with the bills, just a tracking tool of what is coming in. In closing on this post...I HIGHLY RECOMMEND the transfer to BillMinder3!
 
Turkeynuts said:
One thing that's different that I'm not crazy about is how new bills are added. I liked the way we could choose from a list of existing accounts or create a new account. Now we are forced to type in a name of a bill (which allows duplicates, by the way). For example, I wanted to add my AT&T bill for next month - I had to type in AT&T and it created a whole new account in the same category. Now I have two AT&T's, one with the due date and the other that has the billing history.

I realize the proper way to do this is to set up a variable amount recurring bill but I like to add it manually when I get the bill. I also may have found a bug - I tried to set up AT&T account that was brought over from BM2 as a recurring bill with the next due date of 1/6/11. It added overdue bills for $0 for each month of 2010. I had to go in and manually delete each bill.
Click to expand...

After doing some more using and testing, I found that setting up the bills as a recurring, unknown amount works well for me. The upcoming bills shows as either "N/A" or $0 - either way it tells me that I need to find the proper amount due. 5 star review will soon be added, nice product.
 
A tip in case some of you guys haven't found it yet -- Quick Pay and Quick Delete by swiping on bills on the upcoming tab.

Tripinbillie said:
Couple more questions/issues? First Notifications no longer show up in iPhone Settings (maybe by Design?); Second, I am not receiving notifications . I currently have setup 3&7 for being notified. Today I logged on before the time 8:00 and the Badge changed from 2 to 3, but I did not get a Notification. Maybe by design, but just wanted to verify. Thanks.
Click to expand...

We (literally today) found a bug in the current version that prevents it from properly syncing notification periods on bills (they are per bill now with a default on the Settings page). We've fixed the bug but it will require pushing a new version, which we can't do until the developer portals are back online after the holidays. Also, we are waiting on some art to add some BM2-style status icons to the ledger lists on the Calendar tab, as well as an Autopay icon to the Upcoming tab.

Notifications (and badges) should work properly on the device that created the bill. For now, the workaround is to edit the bill (pick Edit All Occurrences) and set the notification period (it will say Disabled on devices that pulled the data from the server).

Very sorry for that issue -- will be resolved as soon as possible.

Regarding not getting notifications for the current day, that's true. Set one for tomorrow w/ 1 day alert and you'll get it. The idea is to remind one to pay their bill ahead of when it's due.

JeffLebowski41 said:
Question: Is there a way to differentiate between total balance and amount due? ie, a minimum payment?
Click to expand...

There isn't a minimum payment option.

SFC Archer said:
I have not had a chance to test/validate the notifications yet because I still have BillMinder2 notifications active as the First of the month is coming up and I have not fully moved over to BillMinder3 until I feel secure. I do not know if the "Settings", "Notifications", "BillMinder Icon" is now 2 or 3 so have it on still. If I can get validation from return7 I will turn the notifications "Off" and see if BillMinder3 sends me notifications as there seems to be no On/Off options anywhere for it.
Click to expand...

So please see my note above about notifications since it might impact your decision to delete BM2 in the short term. To your question, the icon in iPhone Settings -> Notifications is for BM2's push notifications.

One thing that users often asked for was per-bill notification settings. We couldn't do that in BM2 for a lot of reasons but we built it into BM3. If you look at Settings in BM3, the first option is Default Period. You can set that to a bunch of stuff but one of the options is Disabled. When creating a new bill, BillMinder 3 sets that value as the default notification period on that bill. You can change it when creating or editing bills. So it's true there's no "global" switch to disable all notifications -- it's much more fine grained control. It lets you decide what you want to be alerted for.

------

You guys are finding some neat ways to use this app. Thanks for that. I think part of the initial "disappointment" we received from a *very* small minority of users was because they tried to use BM3 like they used BM2. The point of this app wasn't to throw a new skin on some old code and call it v3, which is why it's a new app! We wanted it to work differently because we saw ways we could improve the experience. The old version evolved from literally being a todo list for bills with a paid flag and due dates to what you see today.
 
Last edited:
return7 said:
So please see my note above about notifications since it might impact your decision to delete BM2 in the short term. To your question, the icon in iPhone Settings -> Notifications is for BM2's push notifications.

One thing that users often asked for was per-bill notification settings. We couldn't do that in BM2 for a lot of reasons but we built it into BM3. If you look at Settings in BM3, the first option is Default Period. You can set that to a bunch of stuff but one of the options is Disabled. When creating a new bill, BillMinder 3 sets that value as the default notification period on that bill. You can change it when creating or editing bills. So it's true there's no "global" switch to disable all notifications -- it's much more fine grained control. It lets you decide what you want to be alerted for.

------

You guys are finding some neat ways to use this app. Thanks for that. I think part of the initial "disappointment" we received from a *very* small minority of users was because they tried to use BM3 like they used BM2. The point of this app wasn't to throw a new skin on some old code and call it v3, which is why it's a new app! We wanted it to work differently because we saw ways we could improve the experience. The old version evolved from literally being a todo list for bills with a paid flag and due dates to what you see today.
Click to expand...

I actually found the new method of setting up alerts when creating the two accounts that did not transfer. I really do like this change and think that it is a great addition to the new app. IMO, I think that users should have an option to use an ALL reminder option but it becomes moot once the accounts are set up.

Also of note was that all my 3 day alerts DID transfer when I moved from 2 to 3. I did not have to go back in and manually select each account as noted above.

Everything, except as noted above, is still working great, no new issues or bugs found and as I had already approached this as a new app am already loving it, especially the Upcomming Screen! I miss my total amount due window but can live with where it is located now. I think coloring and GUI is perfect as is and is not overbearing in color and other "pretty" things, after all, its a utility app, not a game or entertainment app.

Keep up the great work guys, cant wait to delete 2 after the next update!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back