New features


heaps! Upgrade: October 2010

Posted in New features, heaps! updates on October 27th, 2010

christina@heaps.co.nz

By Christina

1 Comment

Hope you’re all enjoying the new look of heaps!.  In this upgrade, most of the changes revolve around the spending page and categorisation in general.  Have a read below to get a feel for what’s changed, or even better, have a log into your heaps! to see for yourself!

Spending Page

This section has undergone an entire overhaul, and we’ve added lots of new features that will help you get a better understanding of your spending:

Tabbed Layout
*Your 5 main spending groups are listed across the top, and you can click into each of them to see your spending
*Transactions will filter in the list below to reflect the group

Top 10 Business List
*Located in the right-hand column
*Business names change as you click through the spending categories on the top

Viewing transactions
*View by date using the drop-down menu at the top
*You can group transactions by business
*Sort by Date, Business, Amount, Category

    New Categories

    The new list has 111 sub-categories, allowing you much increased flexibility in how you categorise.  The new categorisation menu gives you options:

      1. Select from the ‘Most frequently used’ list
      2. Use the two-tier category list that outlines all available categories
      3. Start typing a category, and heaps! will suggest something that suits

        Other odds and ends

        *’Another account’ option when marking transactions as ‘I transferred it’ (useful if the account you transferred from/to is not with a bank we support)
        *Social Media links at the bottom
        *Minor bug fixes

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        Sneak peek…

        Posted in New features, heaps! updates on October 22nd, 2010

        christina@heaps.co.nz

        By Christina

        1 Comment

        We have a new version of heaps! coming out next week and we thought we would give you a sneak peek of the features that will be going in.  How does this look for your new spending page?:

        On the new spending page, you’ll be able to get a much better view of where your money is going.  Your spending is grouped into five groups (a), and you can click on them to get a more detailed view of each one.  When a group is selected, the top 10 businesses (b) where you spend the most will update, and the transactions below (c) will filter out to show only those in that group.  You can also use the new drop-down menu (d) to filter transactions by date.

        heaps! makes it easy for you to organise your spendings and find transactions.  You can tick the box (e) to group transactions by business, and you can also sort your transactions by clicking on a column title (f).  For example, clicking on ‘Business’ will arrange my transactions alphabetically and clicking on ‘Amount’ will arrange them in order of how much you spent.  Clicking on the arrow will reverse the order.

        New Categories

        A while ago, we mentioned in a blog post that we would be expanding the category list, and without further ado, here’s what it’s going to look like:

        With this new system, you can select from the list of categories you use most frequently, or you can use the two-tiered list to help you choose.  To save time, you can also start typing what you have in mind, and heaps! will suggest something that suits:

        heaps! will be unavailable while we make these upgrades

        We’ll be implementing these new features on the morning of Wednesday, 27 October.  If you have any plans to budget between 5-8am on that day, maybe you can sleep in for a bit.  Then you’ll get to wake up to a bright and shiny new heaps!.

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        What’s New? (Released 29/9/2010)

        Posted in New features, heaps! updates on September 29th, 2010

        christina@heaps.co.nz

        By Christina

        2 Comments

        In the latest release deployed this morning, we’ve focused on improving the user interface – making  a few changes here and there that will make getting around heaps! a little easier.

        Here’s what you’ll find:

        Skip Set up wizard link

        For new users (and for those who use the Restart set up wizard function), you can opt to skip the wizard by clicking the link at the bottom.  heaps! will remind you to set up your accounts at a later time if you haven’t already done so.

        Subcategory Column

        Instead of seeing just Home, Food, Fun, Travel, and Other in the ‘Category’ column on your Home and Spending pages, heaps! now displays the subcategory.  This makes your categorising a bit easier because you can decide at a glance if you need to do any re-categorising.

        To the spending page…

        As always, the blue pencil is there for you to click if you want to edit a category.  This is now separated from the subcategory name.  Clicking on the subcategory will now take you to the spending page so that you can see a breakdown of your expenditures from that subcategory.

        “Only Change This Transactions” is the Default

        Many of you wrote in wanting this, and here it is.  Instead of “Change all transactions like this” being the default for categorising, we’ve left the box unticked.  This way, if you accidentally forget to look at the box, all your hard work in sorting out which BP transactions were ‘Petrol’ and which were ‘Snacks’ won’t be lost.  Instead, just that one transaction will be affected and you can go back and tick the box if that’s what you had intended.

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        Scheduled Site Maintenance – 29/9/2010

        Posted in New features, heaps! updates on September 28th, 2010

        christina@heaps.co.nz

        By Christina

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        From 6am to 8am on Wednesday, 29 September, we will be deploying fixes and making some changes to improve your heaps!.  So if you’re one of those early birds who likes to budget before you head to work, you might want to hold off for just a bit on Wednesday.

        As always, feel free to flick an email to support@heaps.co.nz if you have any questions.


        Categorisation Update

        Posted in New features, heaps! updates on September 22nd, 2010

        christina@heaps.co.nz

        By Christina

        12 Comments

        In reviewing our options for customisable categories we considered how a new system would change the overall usability of heaps!. Ultimately, we wanted something that would address your needs of a more flexible budgeting tool yet still provide effective and accurate reporting.  We’ve decided to develop a more extensive list of categories that will make categorisation and analysis of spending much easier.

        How it works:

        The new list of categories give you a lot more choice. You can categorise at a high level or in more detail. The list of cateogories will be organised into two tiers. The first tier allows you to categorise your transactions at a higher level, while the second tier allows you to categorise your transactions much more specifically. Among our increased list these we’ve included Gas in our Power & Gas category, Legal and Financial Services, and Home Improvements categories that have been requested by the heaps! community.

        We’ll be incorporating a great synonym search tool that suggests categories as you type. For example, if you start entering ‘Children’, heaps! will recommend the existing category ‘Kids’. This will help maintain consistency for your budget.

        Having this expanded list has given us the opportunity to improve how you analyse your spending and allow you to budget more efficiently. You will be able to breakdown your Eating Out spending to see how much you spend on Coffee, Lunch, Takeaways, Snacks, or Restaurants. And we’ll be improving how this data is displayed as well.

        When will this be released?

        We’re targeting early October 2010.

        What’s next?

        We are considering a tagging feature for those who want to track and compare their transactions in a more comprehensive way (husband’s spending vs. wife’s spending, expenses for child 1 vs. child 2, petrol costs for using car 1 vs. car 2, etc).  Any thoughts you have on this idea would be greatly appreciated.

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        New and Improved!

        Posted in New features, heaps! updates on August 30th, 2010

        Bobby

        By Bobby

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        The team here at heaps! has been working hard to improve things for everyone and our latest upgrade is going to be implemented Tuesday night, so unfortunately you won’t be able to access heaps! from 10pm. You can look forward to the following new features once the site is back up and running at around 8am on Wednesday morning:

        New look interface during categorisation You’ll see new style and effects when you go to categorise a transaction, and it will appear under the transaction so that after you save, you won’t have to scroll down and find your place again.

        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.

        Goal templates With our new templates you’ll be able to choose a goal such as “Buy a car” or “Get out of debt” with the name, description and tasks already filled out for 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.

        We’re also releasing fixes for some bugs that we’ve found throughout the site, so heaps! will be running smoother than ever. These include mending the goal calculator, fixing up the way that categorisation remembers bill payments and income, stopping the budget start date from wandering for those of you who budget fortnightly, making the graph and figures on the homepage consistent, resetting sub categories when you go back to “All Spending” on the spending page and fixing a couple of bugs in our welcome wizard.

        So bear with us on Tuesday night while heaps! is down during our upgrade, then log in on Wednesday and check out the new improvements!

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        Goooaaaalll!!!

        Posted in New features, heaps! updates on August 12th, 2010

        christina@heaps.co.nz

        By Christina

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        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.

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        More Transactions Pre-Categorised for You!

        Posted in New features on June 14th, 2010

        christina@heaps.co.nz

        By Christina

        2 Comments

        heaps! categorises a percentage of your transactions automatically, which saves you time. We’re giving you, the heaps! community, the power to decide which category a business belongs in.

        The Categorisation Engine

        Previously the heaps! team sat in front of long lists of business names and decided which category each of your transactions should be assigned to.  But now, if a business is not currently in our system, it will automatically be assigned the category that a majority of the first customers to categorise it have selected for that business.

        For this example, lets say that ‘McDonalds’, as a business, is new to heaps!.  If the first few heaps! customers choose to categorise their McDonalds transactions, as ‘Takeaways’ and the next few select ‘Snacks’ instead, then no automatic categorisation would be applied. It needs a certain number of customers to select the same categorisation for the automation to take place.

        How This Helps You

        With this new categorisation system, it means that more of your transactional spending will be automatically categorised and categorised to how the majority of heaps! customers would want it. As always, though, you can manually change your transaction category, if it isn’t right for you.

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        How to Add Accounts From Other Banks

        Posted in New features, heaps! how to on June 3rd, 2010

        christina@heaps.co.nz

        By Christina

        2 Comments

        We’ve made it easier for you to manage all your finances in one place! Not everyone banks exclusively with Kiwibank, and with the new heaps!, you can now import data files from other banks. heaps! will support files from ANZ, BNZ, ASB, Westpac, and National Bank.

        When you upload your data, heaps! recognises your transactions and allows you to categorise and budget for them as you would your Kiwibank transactions. You can include these external accounts in any of your existing account groups or even create a new group just for them.

        With all your finances in one place, budgeting has never been easier!

        Have a look at the new Accounts page:

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        How to Use the New Budget Page

        Posted in New features, heaps! how to on June 3rd, 2010

        christina@heaps.co.nz

        By Christina

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        The Budget Page has undergone a facelift, and you will find that it will be easier to keep on top of your finances.

        heaps! users can now change the name and frequency of a budget item or delete it altogether. As many of you have requested, you can also control whether an expense is necessary or optional – You do this by clicking on the icons, necessary is the number ‘1’ icon and optional is the number ‘2’ icon.

        The last 5 transactions can be viewed on the budget page, by clicking the down arrow on the budget line, making it easy to see which spends are being included.

        Take a look:

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