heaps! updates

We are thrilled to announce that heaps! has won not one, but TWO Telecommunications Users Association of New Zealand (TUANZ) Innovations Awards! Held in Auckland, this prestigious annual award ceremony recognises outstanding innovations within the telecommunication arena in New Zealand.

Nominated as a finalist for three categories (Education, Commerce, and Innovation), heaps! walked away with both the Education and Commerce Awards.

In evaluating finalists for the TUANZ Commerce Award, the judges were looking for the most innovative financial product, service, or initiative developed in New Zealand and delivered electronically to New Zealanders to enhance the customer’s experience. The finalists for this category were a diverse group with very different value propositions, and heaps! was the winner in the end.  The judges commented that heaps! “goes beyond counting your money because it changes consumer behaviour. With Kiwibank behind them, heaps! also has huge export potential.”

The TUANZ Education Award (sponsored by Aurecon) was given to the business with the most innovative education or training product, service, or initiative developed in New Zealand, delivered electronically to New Zealanders. The judges recognised heaps! as a product that contributes to general education (applicable to whole life learning, e.g business, community, primary, secondary, tertiary, etc). They commented that “heaps! overcomes a gap in the provision of financial literacy. heaps! also has a wide application to all New Zealanders with a bank account and not only will it help solve New Zealand financial literacy problems, it also has the potential to grow the New Zealand economy.”

We’re incredibly honored to be recognised by TUANZ, and we humbly thank our customers and Kiwibank for their support.

The Kiwibank and heaps! team at the 2010 TUANZ Awards

Goals are awesome. They motivate you and keep your on track to getting what you want. In heaps! we’ve made goal setting even easier by creating goal templates for you to choose from. Of course you can still set your own goals, but these templates come with a list of tasks that are filled out already for you and will keep you on track to achieving your goal faster. You can choose from templates like buying a car, buying a house, getting out of debt, saving for a medical procedure, going on holiday and saving for retirement. Check out the screenshot below for a taste of what these templates look like:

When ever you want to add money towards your goal you no longer have to go to the goals page first. Just click “I spent it on a goal” when you’re categorising a transaction and it will do it quickly for you. Check out our new goals tracking page below, it is full of milestones along the way to help you break up your journey.

Even better, now you can celebrate by seeing a goal completed in heaps!. Your completed goals are also kept on record so you can see past goals that you have achieved. Go you!

• Add a new goal from categorisation – If you click on “I spent it on a goal” when you’re categorising a transaction you’ll be able to add a new goal without going on to the goals page first.
• Goals progress display – your goals graphs will constantly update to show how much you’ve saved and spent on your goal.
• Easier editing of goals – you’ll be able to edit your goals easier and faster, mark a goal as spend or investment, and see your goal picture instantly after uploading.

How can you make it easier to understand your finances? By adding structure and getting organised! When it comes to understanding your spending, for some, a general overview is good, and for others, the more detail the better. You’ll notice the next time you log into heaps! that we have implemented a new look to the categories’ interface. We’ve added new style and effects so that when you categorise a transaction, you no will no longer have to scroll down and find your place again.

Also regarding transactions, there are new abilities for marking transactions as regular. When you categorise a transaction you will be able to mark an income transaction as being regular, and you when you mark any transaction as regular you will be able to enter a custom amount of how much you expect it to be each time. If you would like to allocate money towards your goal you can now do that on this page. Just click “I spent it on a goal” when you are categorising a transaction and heaps! will allocate this money for you. Too easy! Log in now to check out the new changes!

Was achieving your goal in heaps! but not being able to ‘complete’ it, a bit of an anti-climax?  Well, get your party hat on because now you can!  When you’ve reached your goal, heaps! will display a message on your home page to let you know it’s time to celebrate.

heaps! will also display your completed goals at the bottom of your goals page so you can feel a warm sense of pride every time you check it. Then if you find that you haven’t saved as much as you thought you had or that your goal actually costs more than originally planned, you can reactivate a completed goal by clicking on reactivate and decreasing the amount saved or increasing your goal target. You can also allocate or deduct money from an active goal anytime you like.

We’ve also done some background maintenance so that your heaps! runs more smoothly.  We know that you’re all quite eager to see some of the bigger, more exciting changes, and rest assured, they’re on their way.