Initial situation
Household books are challenging and users must regularly enter their expenses. The initial motivation to track all income and expenses is high. After some time, the motivation decreases and it depends on the discipline to continue entering the expenses each time. The effort is higher than the concrete and direct benefit that users receive. It takes a lot of patience and constant self-motivation to keep a household diary.
For couples or families, the complexity increases, as in addition to their own expenses, those of the partner or for the child are added. In order to fairly distribute the individual costs according to income, experienced users painstakingly create Excel spreadsheets.
In a survey with over 30 participants, the hypothesis was confirmed. Users do not use a household book because the effort does not justify the benefit.
Solution
Paair offers couples and families the possibility to enter their income and thereby makes their joint finances transparent. In addition to personal expenses (e.g. hobbies), fixed costs (e.g. rent, electricity & gas, or insurance) can be recorded, and budgets (e.g. groceries, drugstore, or pets) can be defined. Based on individual income, the contribution to the community is automatically calculated, distributing the expenses fairly among all.
Users get a quick overview without having to use Excel or spend a long time recording every expense. With the stored and calculated information, users can, for example, set up standing orders to a joint account. If one of the users bears a large part of the fixed costs, it can be seen how much needs to be transferred to balance the costs and share them jointly.
Features of Paair
By using a Local-First approach, the data remains stored on the users' device
If users want to share a community with other members, the data is securely stored in the cloud
Any number of members can be added to a community
Creating fixed costs
Creating budgets
Paair is currently available in German and English
A dashboard displays relevant information for distribution
Used Technologies
Local Storage, when no synchronization is activated
Google Firebase (Authentication, Firestore) is used when a community needs to be synchronized
Tailwind CSS for styling
Nuxt.js as a frontend framework