Poor cash flow management is a top reason why many small business owners and entrepreneurs are forced to close. This application links payables to sources to help model cash and credit balances over time.
I chose this application as my final, full-stack project at DigitalCrafts because it met my personal need to use technology for practical purposes and it fulfilled the requirements of the final project. These requirements included: use of a modern javascript framework, integration with a back-end database, and deployment to a cloud services provider. This project got its start as a limited proof-of-concept at the "Hack Big for Small Business Hackathon" in Atlanta in December 2017.
I developed Better Cash Flow as a tool to reinforce React/Redux skills acquired in my coding bootcamp experience and to meet the final project requirements. I intend to expand it further by integrating a financial services aggregator (Yodlee?) to replace the 'dead' code tied to USBank and Visa (hackathon sponsors).
Built with
- Simple, Fast UI: the data table has the familiar look and feel of a spreadsheet
- Real-time feedback: changes to the payables data table are immediately reflected across 3 different components (Summary in Nav, Analyzer, and Time-Series Chart)
- Data Persistence: the data table can be imported, exported or saved to the back-end database. This allows modeling work to be shared or reused.
Shout outs to the BetterCashFlow Hackathon team:
- Song Wei - our one and only professional developer. Song worked tirelessly over 36 hours to get us to a presentable v0.1.
- Michael McFarland - one of our 2 designers. Logo designer and demo driver for the pitch.
- Neil Zhang - our other designer. Your storyboard "slideware" and clean aesthetic were inspirational.
A big thank you to Allen Fang! Allen's bootstrap-react-table is at the core of this application.
And thanks to the folks at ESnet for making react-timeseries-charts. They helped make the responsive stacked-bar possible.