SEPBT220 Project 4: Personal Finance Tracker App

Project Description

The Personal Finance Tracker App is a web application designed to help users manage their finances by tracking income, expenses, and account balances. Users can categorize their transactions, view summaries, and filter data to gain insights into their spending habits.

Project Links

• Live Demo

Features

• Transaction Management: Add, edit, and delete income and expense transactions with ease.
• Categorization: Assign transactions to predefined categories to organize your financial data.
• Account Management: Manage multiple accounts, view balances, and track financial status. Add and remove accounts as needed.
• Filtering: Filter transactions by date and category to gain better insights.

Installation Instructions

Step 1

Clone this project to your local machine.

git clone https://github.com/jbm97/finance-tracker.git

Step 2

Navigate to the project directory.

cd finance-tracker/finance_tracker

Step 3

Set up the virutal environment and install dependencies.

python -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate
pip install -r requirements.txt
python manage.py collectstatic --noinput

Step 4

Create database in Postgres and apply migrations.

CREATE DATABASE finance_app;
python manage.py migrate

Step 5 (Optional)

Load initial data into transactions list to populate.

python manage.py loaddata initial_data.json

Step 6 (Optional)

Create a superuser to acceess the Django Admin dashboard.

python manage.py createsuperuser

Step 7

Run the server!

python manage.py runserver

ERD

The following ERD illustrates the relationships between the User, Transaction, Category, and Account models used in the application.

Code Snippets

Models

class Category(models.Model):
    name = models.CharField(max_length=100)
    user = models.ForeignKey(User, on_delete=models.CASCADE, null=True, blank=True)

    def __str__(self):
        return self.name

class Account(models.Model):
    name = models.CharField(max_length=100)
    balance = models.DecimalField(max_digits=10, decimal_places=2)
    user = models.ForeignKey(User, on_delete=models.CASCADE, null=True, blank=True)

    def __str__(self):
        return self.name

class Transaction(models.Model):
    TRANSACTION_TYPES = [
        ('income', 'Income'),
        ('expense', 'Expense'),
    ]
    title = models.CharField(max_length=100)
    amount = models.DecimalField(max_digits=10, decimal_places=2)
    date = models.DateField()
    type = models.CharField(max_length=7, choices=TRANSACTION_TYPES)
    category = models.ForeignKey(Category, on_delete=models.CASCADE)
    user = models.ForeignKey(User, on_delete=models.CASCADE, null=True, blank=True)

    def __str__(self):
        return f"{self.title} - {self.amount}"

Routes

urlpatterns = [
    path('', views.home, name='home'),
    path('transactions/', views.list_transactions, name='list_transactions'),
    path('transactions/add/', views.add_transaction, name='add_transaction'),
    path('transactions/edit/<int:pk>/', views.edit_transaction, name='edit_transaction'),
    path('transactions/delete/<int:pk>/', views.delete_transaction, name='delete_transaction'),
    path('accounts/add/', views.add_account, name='add_account'),
    path('accounts/edit/<int:account_id>/', views.edit_account, name='edit_account'),
    path('accounts/delete/<int:account_id>/', views.delete_account, name='delete_account'),
]

Views: List Transactions

def list_transactions(request):
    expenses = Transaction.objects.filter(type='expense').order_by('-date')
    incomes = Transaction.objects.filter(type='income').order_by('-date')
    accounts = Account.objects.all()

    grouped_expenses = {}
    for expense in expenses:
        if expense.category.name not in grouped_expenses:
            grouped_expenses[expense.category.name] = []
        grouped_expenses[expense.category.name].append(expense)

    lists = {
        'grouped_expenses': grouped_expenses,
        'incomes': incomes,
        'accounts': accounts,
    }
    return render(request, 'tracker/list_transactions.html', lists)

Technologies Used

Backend

• Django
• Python
• PostgreSQL

Frontend

• HTML
• CSS
• Django Templates

Future Enhancements

The following features are planned for future updates to improve functionality and user experience.

• New Frontend Framework: Implement React.js as the frontend framework with a React UI library.
• User Authentication: Implement user sign-up and sign-in functionality so that users can have personal accounts and data that’s private to them.
• Data Visualization: Add charts and graphs to visualize spending trends, income vs. expenses, and category breakdowns.
• Budget Tracking: Allow users to set budgets for each category and track their spending against those budgets.
• Recurring Transactions: Implement recurring transactions for regular income or bills, like salaries or monthly subscriptions.
• Multi-Currency Support: Enable tracking of transactions in different currencies.
• Export Data: Provide options to export transaction data as CSV, Excel, or PDF files.
• API Integration: Integrate with third-party APIs like Plaid for automated transaction imports from banks.
• Advanced Filtering: Implement advanced filtering options to allow users to filter transactions by multiple criteria.
• Financial Tips: Provide users with personalized financial tips based on their spending patterns.
• Themes: Offer a theme toggle for users who prefer a different interface theme.