Sums: a notebook for the amounts, tallies, scores, and figures in your life

[cstawarz]

Hello,

I recently started developing for the iPhone, and I'm excited to announce that my first app, Sums, has just been released! I've included a blurb about it below, but you can also read more about it at http://skewsoft.com/ or check it out on the App Store.

Since this is the initial public release, I'm eager for all the feedback I can get: what's good, what's bad, and what can be changed to make the app more useful and appealing. If you have any comments, please post them here or send an email to support@skewsoft.com.

I look forward to hearing from you. Thanks!

Chris Stawarz
Skewsoft

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Sums is a notebook for numbers.

With Sums, you can record, edit, and keep a running total of the amounts, tallies, scores, and figures that matter to you. Use it to write a budget, track expenses, balance your checkbook, tally game points, log your mileage, or manage any other list of numbers in your life.

Don't waste your time with spreadsheets or other complicated apps. Sums provides a simple, intuitive, paper-like interface that lets you enter, edit, rearrange, and delete figures quickly and easily. All it takes is a few quick taps to get a number out of your head and into your iPhone or iPod touch.

Features:
• Simple, intuitive interface: to add or edit an entry, just tap and type
• Automatically-updated total — Sums does the math for you!
• Editing mode lets you delete and reorder entries
• Swipe to delete sheets and entries
• Negative numbers are displayed in red for better visibility
• If you exit Sums while viewing a sheet, it remembers your position and restores it when you return
• Create an unlimited number of sheets
• Export sheets via email; the data is sent as tab-delimited text, which can be viewed directly or imported into Excel, Numbers, or other applications

 

[Gokunama]

Downloaded, and it's pretty good for a start.

My suggestions:

1. Large numeric keyboard with basic calculating functions.

2. A way to back up the data without going through iTunes or LAN. Email or sync back up works for almost everyone and takes little time out of our days.

3. More columns and column headers added by user if needed. Say we're keeping track of a two teams scores in a game of Spades. Up top, put the team members names above the score columns, and in the row headers, the round number. Well, something like that anyways.

This is the first app I've found (and I've looked) to allow a total sum along with 'notes' to be emailed as a whole. It could take the place of other papertape calculator apps if it had basic calculation functions as well. It doesn't look far from that either. I look forward to updates.

 

[cstawarz]

Thanks so much for the thoughtful feedback!

1. Large numeric keyboard with basic calculating functions.

Definitely a good idea. Several of my beta testers suggested this, too, but I thought it'd be better to get 1.0 out sooner and revisit this idea for a later release.

2. A way to back up the data without going through iTunes or LAN. Email or sync back up works for almost everyone and takes little time out of our days.

Currently, Sums lets you email individual sheets. Are you suggesting you'd also like an option to email all sheets at once? That'd be a pretty easy addition, and it would certainly simplify data backup.

3. More columns and column headers added by user if needed. Say we're keeping track of a two teams scores in a game of Spades. Up top, put the team members names above the score columns, and in the row headers, the round number. Well, something like that anyways.

Given the size of the iPhone's screen, I'm not sure how well having more than two columns would work. The smaller you make the cells, the less text you can display, and the harder it is to tap them accurately. Still, there are spreadsheet apps that display many columns, so maybe it's feasible. In any case, this would probably be a longer-range feature than the other two.

Thanks again!

 

[Gokunama]

Emailing all sheets as a back up would be perfect.

I was thinking that scrolling sidewards would help navigate the columns, but I think that would have to snap in place somehow.