Cha-Ching: Making Fun of Money
I downloaded Cha-Ching today and bought a license a few hours later. Within about twenty minutes it occurred to me that Cha-Ching somehow to convinced me to do something I had never had interest in before: track my account locally, rather than through the bank web site.I think there are two factors. One is that it's dead simple. There's no "software philosophy" you have to buy into before you can start using it. No wizards or tutorial videos. You just launch it and go. They've clearly optimizing for the most likely case.
But simplicity itself isn't enough to make me do monotonous tasks. There are other personal finance managers on the Mac that are simple. Then I realized that the difference is that Cha-Ching actually makes it fun to track my account. I know it sounds ridiculous, but if you download it and try it, you might see what I mean.
I've used Quicken and I appreciate the fact that they have a Mac product, and I know plenty of people like it and use it, but it's about as far away from what I want as I can imagine. Quicken is utilitarian. It takes itself very seriously, perhaps by necessity.
With Cha-Ching, you start out with an icon of a pig with a drawer in it. You simply cannot take that seriously. Psychologically, I'm already in fun mode, and it's reinforced by a gorgeous, peaceful interface. There's even a little Mario-esque coin counter at the bottom of the window. The stress of the paperwork is gone, and I feel like I'm playing a game.
This game thing first occurred to me when reading a comment Wil Shipley left on Daniel Jalkut's post about C4. In the comment, Wil addressed some well-intentioned criticism about Delicious Library:
Even if you consider DL essentially a game, well, the world needs more games. I’d rather make people smile than make them richer, honestly.
Until I read this, I hadn't even considered Delicious Library in that light. I think of games as things with heart meters and level bosses. But the more I thought about it, the more sense it made.
Making an inventory of your possessions is not inherently glamorous or rewarding. But Library, like Cha-Ching, turns the whole thing on its side and makes the process of adding items enjoyable. Rather than typing the information in, you use an iSight as a barcode scanner, thereby turning your inventory task into an item scanning game. Genius!
The clever thing is that it doesn't go over the top and make it a literal game, but rather simply makes the process enjoyable.
As for Cha-Ching, I'm not sure what I can say about it other than it's exactly what I want in this sort of thing. The learning curve consists of about four minutes of clicking around. The text and graphics are beautifully rendered so it's not a chore to look at. If you don't want the animations, you can disable them.
Happiness for $14.95. Thumbs up.
Cha-Ching: Making Fun of Money
Posted Dec 22, 2006 — 22 comments below
Posted Dec 22, 2006 — 22 comments below
crunkmaster — Dec 22, 06 2807
It's definitely what I need - I've been a little too lax on my spending lately. The budget thing really is going to help.
Jon H — Dec 22, 06 2808
It goes beyond that, too - there are a few easter eggs triggered by entering certain items.
Mike Zornek — Dec 22, 06 2809
Seems interesting but needs a little more time in the oven.
Scott Stevenson — Dec 22, 06 2810
I agree there's a bit more polish that can be done in the workflow, but I certainly understood the intentions of the app very quickly. It's still enjoyable.
Scott — Dec 22, 06 2811
But little by little it is starting to shape up. However it still has a long way to go to catch up to Quicken or even far more Mac-like options like iBank, which people should really check out before deciding to buy Cha-Ching.
Scott Stevenson — Dec 22, 06 2812
My view on this is that it shouldn't try to keep pace with Quicken's feature set. Quicken has about a billion things that I'd never use, which all get in the way of the only thing I really want to do: enter, categorize, and view transactions. That's it. There are other features that revolve around this, but that's the gist.
I don't need forecasting, portfolio management, multiple currencies, complex reports and so on. To me, those make sense for a business but not a personal checking account. Something like a portfolio is probably better managed by a web site, at least in my opinion.
All of this extra stuff is what has kept me from using a desktop finance app before. In other words, I don't want to have to buy into this model just to track my account.
iBank seems to be more or less aiming for Quicken, which I respect. There's clearly a market for that. But I really appreciate the fact that Cha-Ching is an oasis from all of that, and isn't afraid of being fun to use. I suspect most people out there are really more in this category than needing everything Quicken or iBank provide.
Don Meyer — Dec 22, 06 2813
The sad thing is that I use almost none of the Quicken massive feature set - I really use the features that those other two programs essentially support already.
I'd love to get rid of Quicken. When the day comes that a nice simple Mac app supports the download feature, in the Trashcan it goes!
Scott Stevenson — Dec 22, 06 2814
If I'm reading it right, iBank seems to mention this as a feature on the home page.
Preston — Dec 22, 06 2816
wombat — Dec 22, 06 2817
David — Dec 22, 06 2823
But yeah, there are toy-like (or game-like) aspects to these apps than can be fun. Delicious Library, in particular, has a strong housekeeping element to it (think: Tetris) which appeals to the organizer in us. And Cha-Ching taps in to the token-driven success of games such as Monopoly. (And is cute as hell, which doesn't hurt either.)
Scott Stevenson — Dec 22, 06 2825
Toy is sort of a loaded term, especially for Mac users. That was a favorite catch phrase/insult for a number of years. Either way, the simple fact is that does keep track of your money.
I guess sometimes people think an app doesn't have the proper number or correct features, but it's entirely subjective.
Matthew Arevalo — Dec 22, 06 2826
We have checked out iBank, Moneydance, Quicken, Money, you name it. We're going to blow them away. We are working very hard to implement all of the features we have had multiple requests for and I encourage you to keep an eye and tabs on us and not dismiss the application based on it's current feature set.
Please feel free to contact me directly if you have questions or feedback. Thank you.
Matthew Arevalo
Operations & Support
marevalo@midnightapps.com
Joachim Bengtsson — Dec 22, 06 2827
Matthew Arevalo — Dec 22, 06 2828
Matthew Arevalo
Midnight Apps
Operations & Support
Jussi — Dec 22, 06 2829
Scott Stevenson — Dec 22, 06 2830
Tell me how you really feel. Seriously, I have no idea what your preferences are. For my tastes, the interface is beautiful. I haven't used it until now so I can't how the current version compares to earlier ones.
Jon H — Dec 23, 06 2831
For instance, a chart generator, or a budgeting application, could use ChaChing's data.
As far as the toy/game distinction goes, I suppose it's like a coin-sorting Big Bird bank I had when I was little. You could have Big Bird drop a coin in a slot, then you'd watch it slide/roll down the transparent inner works and fall into the appropriate slot.
Not so much a 'game' (no goals), but certainly a 'toy', despite having a function.
Maybe ChaChing and Delicious Library ought to be called "Toyetic Tools", though that's a misuse of the term 'toyetic', which refers to potential for tied-in toys for a media property (action figures, etc - Star Wars was highly Toyetic. "Anastasia" was not, resulting in the rather odd artifact of a Burger King kids meal toy of the hard-to-kill Russian mystic Rasputin.)
Jussi — Dec 23, 06 2836
But that's a less of an issue, so I'll give a look at Cha-Ching after xmas.
David — Dec 23, 06 2838
Hence my use of "non-pejorative", which should have made it crystal clear that I wasn't using toy as a "loaded term".
The distinction between a toy and a game is an important one. Although Delicious Library doesn't have rules and end-goals, it does have a toy-like aspect in that its contents can be assembled and ordered to produce a pleasing outcome -- one which is determined by the user/player. The elements of building and organizing, combined with "color" (in the Monopoly token sense of the word) add quite a lot of value over the usual (somewhat drab) media cataloging applications.
I'm all for adding fun and attractive features to otherwise-dull applications.
That was a favorite catch phrase/insult for a number of years
Meh. There's never a shortage of insults, especially in the rarified habitat that is Mac development. Therefore, might as well just call things as you see them and let other people make up their own minds. If people want to take this labelling stuff seriously, well, that's up to them.
Don Meyer — Dec 29, 06 2952
If I'm reading it right, iBank seems to mention this as a feature on the home page.
Hmm, well, it does let you load in data from your bank that you download, which is close to what Quicken does but not quite it.
Not only does Quicken do that in one more-or-less seamless operation (as opposed to log onto the bank website, download a file, then import into iBank), but my bank doesn't appear to let me download a file.
An app like Quicken can use some magical interface to acquire the data, but I've been unable to find a way that I can download it as a file.
This means that even if I accepted the higher effort method, it's not an option unless I change banks...
(I don't quite hate Quicken that much, but that day may come! :-)
iBank's FAQ indicates that they are looking into this capability, but don't have it yet.
Ghibertii — Dec 30, 06 2954