Expense App Evaluation


Entered Expenses Aren't Saved

Catastrophic: Expenses not being saved (Protect users' work)

Description: Refreshing the page after entering expenses clears them and the table is empty again.

Recommendation: Call the save function after calling the add expense function, or add a separate save button that calls the function.

Negative Money Amounts

Major: Negative amounts of money can be entered and saved (Simplicity)

Description: The user is able to enter negative amounts of money. Though this doesn't affect the calculations of balance and it effectively swaps the payer and payee, this information can prove to be confusing to the user since they might not make that assumption.

Recommendation: Restrict the money input amount to 0 or more and add an error message if the user tries to enters a negative number.

Confusing Transactions

Major: Confusing transactions (Consistency and Standards)

Description: When selecting the "paid" option called "using joint", the result is a transaction where the user paid for themselves. However, I read this as "the user paid for one of their expenses using the joint card", which would translate to the joint account paying for the user. This behavior isn't consistent to what a user might believe would happen. However, the advanced options solves this issue.

Recommendation: Rather than having a separate advanced options page, have them be visible since it doesn't complicate the page much more. It also solves the problem of inconsistency and standards. However, if you want to keep the advanced options page, then make it clear that the user is paying for themselves when they select the "using joint" option.

Full Date not Visible

Minor: The full date is not visible (Readability)

Description: The full date isn't visible, as the year is cut off. This lowers the readability of the page since the user has to click the calendar button to see the full date in order to decide whether to change it or not.

Recommendation: Either make the input box bigger to fit the full date in or make the display font smaller.