A Road Map to the Design of a Financial Application Software

9 min readJul 25, 2019

The procrastination of drafting financial reports and keeping tracks of income and expenditures can be really pesky sometimes, especially when the amount of financial management overwhelms so badly it is hard to know where to begin. Wouldn’t you wish to have a smart solution that could keep track of everything financially for you every day so that you wouldn’t have to worry about whether the budget allocation is in check? The application software market can be inundated with hundreds of financial management programs, yet the ones that could actually meet all fundamental and advanced needs of the majority of users are like gold dust. This means designing such optimal application software is even more challenging now that financial management takes both technical and social understanding to understand users’ point of view. People at DSV would love to walk you through a road map of how to curate the designing of financial application software in this instructional blog post.

Application software — pros and cons for your business

Pros

Super user-centric: Whatever the user needs in a financial product, your application software can navigate and deliver in favor of the customers. A financial application software would allow your business to keep in touch with users’ ever-changing demands and timely inform the designer team to work on new features matching such demands.

Safety and security: The developer and designer team would impose tight network security enhancement and inspect any suspicious access or unusual financial transactions at any time of the day. Safety and security should be immensely prioritized as financial information of any individual directly correlates to their financial wellbeing as well as financial freedom in supervising private information.

Patent- and license-related problems free: An application software with a legitimate license in hand would go the extra mile in the financial service development scheme of your business. Make sure your application software project meets the standard requirements for licensing before further investing and launching!

Future expenditures — Plausible with regular investment in financial management: Has your business kept an eye on an account that could take up lots of input capital and carefully thought-out budget allocation? A financial application software would allow your business to fulfil your vision by informing you the current financial status of the company thanks to the financial exports extracted on demand. By optimizing the experience of using a financial application software, your business can also make smart business decisions by looking at financial forecast operated by algorithms, which can be catered to you by in-app models.

Hassle-free encounters with auditing parties: Having financial matters probed at can put your business in vulnerable situations if your financial endeavors are not fully logged in and logically arranged. In such sense, you can always avoid such pain by showcasing your business’s detailed financial body by allowing auditors to participate and scrutinize the data kept in financial application software. Evidence like bank slips, fee receipts, and banking transactions can also be updated in financial application software, carrying out transparency during those auditing time period.

Cons

Not budget-friendly: A sophisticatedly designed financial application software would require serious budget allocation plan before hiring a team of software designers for the project. Not every business can afford an in-house developer and designer team, so launching a financial application softwarefor the sake of users’ growing demands would be a substantial investment. However, a well-allocated investment in the designing endeavor of a financial application software would most certainly put your business on the map of customer service and innovation competition against your rivals.

Not time-saving: An immaculately-designed financial application software would cost a significant deal of time out of the company’s development period. A detailed timeline for the product development would certainly of help. An investment in designing a financial application softwarewould imply an immense amount of financial and time effort. Make sure you as a business owner pay close attention to your ready-to-use resources in order to allocate a reasonable amount of capital, including time effort, into any financial application software project.

Financial application software: Case of success

Whether for personal or business use, financial application software would diversify and optimize the user experience. Personal and corporate finance management were among the most functions of financial application software. People at Designveloper made a compilation of top financial application software with score ratings on interface, speed, adaptability, precision in financial reports generated on demand and tracking capacity.

Microsoft Money

Interface: 3/5
Speed: 3/5
Adaptability: 3/5
Precision in financial reports generated on demand: 4/5
Tracking capacity: 4/5
Overall score: 3.5/5

Money Lover

Interface: 4/5/5
Speed: 4.5/5
Adaptability: 4.5/5
Precision in financial reports generated on demand: 4.5/5
Tracking capacity: 4.5/5
Overall score: 4.5/5

Song Nhi

Interface: 4/5
Speed: 4/5
Adaptability: 4.5/5
Precision in financial reports generated on demand: 4/5
Tracking capacity: 4/5
Overall score: 4/5

Intuit’s Quicken

Interface: 3/5
Speed: 3.5/5
Adaptability: 3.5/5
Precision in financial reports generated on demand: 4/5
Tracking capacity: 4/5
Overall score: 3.5/5

Apart from the chic and minimal-looking interface that the majority of financial manager application software strives to achieve, practical matters such as safety, security, and confidentiality also must be put forth in all scenarios. A credible application software would beat a modern-looking yet loose on the privacy end any day.

Step by step guideline — Designing a financial application software

Taking over the designing matter of new financial application software is no piece of cake. As a matter of fact, people break it down into six vital points that any newbies in designing business as well as business owners must take into account. These are research, rough sketching, determine a workflow for the team, integrating user experience testing into the designing process, finding early bugs and fix them ASAP and take care of the distribution matters post-launching.

Research, research, research

The idea of creating a brand new financial application software could be daunting without an actual specific roadmap to what and how to create an entire product from scratch. Before hitting the ‘Start’ button, it is pivotal for every single on involved in the product development process to experiment with new and existing ideas using technological solutions that the design team had already familiarised themselves with. The value of a coherent financial application product is unarguably believed to lie in how much investment was injected into the research prior to launching. How to enhance data privacy, real-time data tracking, future forecast, and financial report extraction are among the most common features found in financial application software, yet it is fairly challenging to put together a financial management software that could use up less space storage and work at full capacity steadily.

In the end, researching how to efficiently solve the core issue that fired away the creation of financial application software would only bring users closer to having their financial issues, personally or corporately, resolved.

Sketch basic financial functions on your financial manager product

Using initial research results along with experimental ideas throughout the designing process could further help the design team to better visualize a well-functioning financial application softwarewith valuable features being efficiently-integrated into the final product.

In the world of fashion editorial publishing, sketching is of tremendous help in exploring abstract concepts, allowing designers to form a fathomable visualizer for the entire product development process. A simplistic sketch should be able to be interpreted by anyone, including those completely uninvolved in the design arena. How a monthly financial report should look like, how new data should be logged and presented, how financial categories should be arranged so that users could maximize their experience with the product and how the financial application software could be integrated into users’ daily routine are among the questions that a lucid sketch of a new financial application software should be able to provide a reasonable answer.

Decide the development flow most suitable for your financial manager product

To each his own, a custom-made workflow would always do the design team great favor in terms of accelerating the project development process. For instance, a flow chart can draft basic how-to steps during the development process. Another example of a development diagram for a design process is a time-phased schedule. Well-Suited workflow for a design project should be a timeline with specific deadlines of how and when a certain design phase should last and entail, as showcased below:

Mapping a thorough action plan for the design process would enhance the creativity flow as well as the time-efficiency of the product development project. Enhancing the core features of financial application software can be fairly different from that of application software in categories like entertainment and ride-hailing. Designing a financial application software can be complex since technical terms need to comply with financial tracking precision. The design team must at all times cooperate with the finance team in order to create a wholesome financial product at the end of the design process.

Don’t forget user perception during the development process (prototyping and testing)

User experience is by far top priority of the design process of financial application software. User testing helps the product development process in terms of cost- and time-efficiency. For example, tracking data daily and logging in data into the financial application software are among the user experience that might bore users away from actually using the application regularly is the application takes too many unnecessary steps for a basic function. A successful banking or financial tracking application software should be the one to create a hassle-free experience for users to get used to regular financial tracking, which would, in turn, enable users to keep great track of financial progress.

Find the grain — Set up a beta trial version of your financial application software

Putting the product into the test, bug fixing and listening to customers’ feedback should require the attention from the entire design team. In this phase of product development, customer service is the key to fulfilling the core concept that previously was demonstrated in the sketching phase. For instance, functional testing would enable designers to operate the financial application software from a users’ perspective, perfecting core functions like new approaches to keeping track of daily expenditures as well as further enhance the adaptability of the financial manager product.

Distribute your financial application software on large-access platforms, like GitHub

By identifying the shortest ways to approach the desired niche market, designers can deliver the financial application software that could have taken months to formulate. Since users of a financial application software could vary in terms of demographics, age and geographical location, it is important to stick to core values of the product during the distribution process by highlighting the core functions of the products aka selling points. Different digital platforms such as app store, group reviews on social networking sites like Facebook and Snapchat and KOL’s personal channels could be the suitable route to distribute the product to the right users. Financial literacy is utmost important for users of all ages, so it is crucial to identify the various user language in addressing the financial needs of each user cohort.

Designing a financial application software could be one of the smartest entrepreneur moves since financial management, both personally and corporately, provides an infinite list of upsides gained from keeping track of spending habits and patterns of users on a regular basis. People at Designveloper are more than willing to give our pointers in designing an effortless-looking well-functioning financial application software that really works.

For more information and counseling, please reach out to our tech-help enthusiasts at Designveloper to realize your dream financial application product. Join us with our panel of 100+ successful software development projects and be the next entrepreneur that stands out!