CashFlow Management Goes Live

After 7 months of development, the CashFlow Management project I have been working on with Ideal Financial Solutions has made it into production! There are, of course, a number of bugs that need to be worked out and a list of enhancements that will consume another 6 months of my nights and weekends, but it feels good to have something out in the market that is useable.

It has been quite a unique project to say the least. Ideal has a system they had created over the years and at the core was a monster of an Excel spreadsheet. I was asked to mimick the logic of the spreadsheet. Another unique aspect of the project was that the people involved in the project are separated geographically, so most meetings and communications were by phone or email. To make a long story short, everyone involved learned a lot about how to develop software and manage expectations.

The CashFlow Management system is one which helps people get out of debt and build wealth. A typical customer would provide Ideal, or one of its marketing call centers, with all of his financial data, including salary, monthly savings, and all debts and mortgages. This data is captured using the web-based application that my development team and I created. The data is then analyzed by the Ideal financial experts using tools provided in our web-based app. A proposal is created for the customer, which may include refinancing, credit card workout or settlement, adjustment of W2 withholdings, etc. The customer can then login to the web-based application and review it. If he chooses, he can sign-up for the program. His responsibility is simply to make sure that on a given day of the month, he has a certain amount of money in his checking account. This amount is the same amount, or less, than he is currently paying toward his debts. Ideal pays his debts off for him in the most effective way. It's not uncommon to see a 20+ year debt-free date cut to under 10 years.