Update

I've began what I like to call "friends and family beta testing" on the desktop edition of BudgetSimple. That means it's pretty much ready to go to a general audience, but I want to make sure there's nothing horribly wrong with the program, so I have people I know, but who may not be interested in the software, install it. A couple of bugs and suggestions have been found so far, but it looks like I'll be ready for a first round of beta testers this weekend.

Those of you following the schedule may notice that's about two weeks beyond my original goal. Luckily there was no real reason for my goal except a month seemed interesting. I do find that software projects are usually easy to complete the first 80%, and then the last 20% drags on for a while. I think this is probably because developers do the easy or fun things first, and then take on the big challenges at the end. I've made sure to drop anything for this version that I thought isn't absolutely essential for version 1.0. It kills me to hear the stories of people taking YEARS to write their 1.0 product, but then again they are usually writing much more complicated software.

This week I added the least important "Must have" feature to the app, the license key system. I spent about an hour on it, so obviously I'm not too concerned about cracks, I just want to motivate people to buy the software. I don't believe most people are capable of finding cracked software, and if they do, I'm happy they can balance their budget and maybe be able to buy something in the future ;).

I expect the beta test to take about a week, during which I should start on the website, and e-commerce portion of things. My absolute drop dead goal for this to all be working is Christmas. I have a feeling a lot of people make New Years resolutions about having a balanced budget.