February 2020: Updates to Free Trial, User Onboarding, and More

I hope everyone is having a great year so far! It's been a little while since the last blog post, but Budgetwise has seen a steady stream of updates. I've continued to push out new releases every 2 weeks at a minimum, with a focus on quality-of-life improvements and workflow enhancements. At the time of writing this post, I am putting efforts into polishing the mobile web experience as well.

Here are some of the changes coming out in the next month or two:

45 Day Free Trial
Perhaps one of the more immediate changes is the new duration for free trials: 45 days instead of 60. Two months is too long as extensions bring it out to almost a third of a year, and revenue is more difficult to calculate and plan around. On the other hand, 30 days is too short as it doesn't give you enough time to test out budgeting software for an entire month unless you happen to start a trial on the 1st of the month.

With the 45 days, you'd be able to start at any time of the month and still be able to finish out a whole month using the software. This change will go into effect Sunday, February 9. Of course, if you need an extension on the free trial, you can still email me at alonso@budgetwise.io and I'd be more than happy to increase it for you.

Onboarding and Documentation
If you are new to Budgetwise, it is completely overwhelming being greeted with a bunch of empty screens and buttons upon registering, and this is something I've been working to solve for a while now.

I've been designing an onboarding experience that will make it easy to get started with Budgetwise whether you are totally new to budgeting, or have experience using other budgeting software. Helping you gain a better understanding of how to use Budgetwise and really make it work for you will make it more accessible for all types of people in various stages of life.

Additionally, I have been writing a ton of new articles for the Help Center, so expect to see them published in the next week or two.

The Short-Term Roadmap
As the baby gets closer to the due-date in early April, we continue to make preparations at home and I anticipate releases will slow down for a couple of weeks while we adjust to the new addition to the family.

In light of that, the main short-term goal I am ultra-focused on right now is improving Budgetwise, specifically the number accuracy and manual budgeting portion of it. I am putting multiple checks in place to ensure the numbers always calculate correctly, and am working to make the manual budget entry experience as quick and pleasant as possible.

I suspect after these next couple of months, Budgetwise will be edging closer to exiting early access and there will be a more concrete date of when to expect version 1.0 to release.