##Summary Sentence##
The Personal Finance System (PFS) will accept and store data related to personal expenses, and will provide an analysis on the user’s spending with a focus on how and where the money is being spent.
##Vision##
The Personal Finance System is meant to be a simple and helpful tool for individuals to track and analyse their personal finances. The target users of this system would be individuals who are not interested in formal accounting methods but would like to better understand where their money is being spent.
Most accounting systems require a basic to intermediate understanding of accounting methodologies which can cause problems for individuals who are looking for a simple and organized way to monitor their personal expense. This system takes a step away from the strict methodologies of accounting which are used to track many different assets and liabilities and instead focuses on where a person is spending their money. This will satisfy the user’s need for clarity and lack of any previous accounting knowledge.
In traditional accounting systems, an expense will affect a specific account which does not help an individual understand where their money is being spent. Instead of using traditional accounts, this system will allow any expense to be labeled with any number of labels to understand the actual purpose of the expenditure. These labels will be a critical feature and will allow users to better track where and why they are spending their money.
Traditional accounting systems are designed to return fixed values that are used to create financial statements which require the user to understand financial accounting methodologies to understand. This accounting system will provide the user with easy to understand trends that will depict their spending habits and potentially help them understand their own expenditures.
This project will be considered a success when it allows for easy entry of personal expenditures, focuses on usability over speed, allows for users to identify the difference between core and unnecessary expenditures, and when it allows users to track trends in their spending.
###Libraries Used###
- Java SE 7
- JUnit v.3.0
- JMock v.2.6.0