This app can help you manage your end-of-month money crisis
Called Jojonomic, it uses gamification to make a daunting task fun
Personal finance management app Jojonomic was created to prevent the all too familiar ‘end-of-month crisis’ — that time when we have to sustain ourselves with instant noodles on the last week of the month.
Although people might understand the importance of noting down expenses and monitoring their personal finances, it is still considered a pretty daunting task.
“We see that the level of financial literacy in this part of the world is very low,” says Indrasto Budisantoso, CEO and Founder of Jojonomic, on what drove him to create the mobile app.
“We hope this would help people achieve a better financial condition,” he adds.
Jojonomic aims to make managing personal finance easier and more fun by having a minimal number of screens required to input a transaction, and integrating gamification by giving away redeemable ‘Jojo-points’ for every recorded transaction.
Apart from tracking expenses, the app also includes features to track loan instalments, update credit status, track net worth and set financial goals.
Budisantoso left his post as CEO of Groupon to start Jojonomic, which launched its beta version in August 2015 with a team of 12.
Since then, the app claims to have been downloaded a few thousand times, and is also one of the firsts in Southeast Asia that is compatible with the Apple Watch.
The startup announced in early October that it has received an undisclosed amount of seed funding from East Ventures. It aims to use the funding to ramp up hiring and create stronger brand awareness.
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Making personal finance fun
Although the app claims to have a wide range of users, its main target market are people in their twenties and early thirties.
Budisantoso explains that at the early stage of their career, people are still forming their financials habit by creating a pattern of consumption, investment and saving. However, a survey by the startup revealed that more than 50 per cent of respondents in one of the biggest Southeast Asian cities are having problems doing this.
Most of them said there is no easy way to do it.
This is why Jojonomic aims to make managing personal finances easy and fun not only through its user interface and implementation of gamification, but also through brand communications.
Complementing its ‘Silly easy personal finance’ slogan is a furry blue monster in the App Store and Google Play that explains how the app works.
“(The word) ‘nomic’ comes from economic, which most people connote with something sophisticated yet complicated. ‘Jojo’ brings a simple and playful flavour to the financial application,” Budisantoso explains the brand’s name.
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Beyond bills and invoices
Apart from personal finance, Jojonomic also has a B2B line called Jojonomic Pro, a business reimbursement system. The system makes the reimbursement process simpler as it only requires employees to input and capture medical bills or business trip receipts using their Jojonomic mobile app.
With this system, HR and Finance departments can reduce the time it takes to to perform this administrative task by up to 70 per cent.
When it comes to future plans, the startup has plenty to leverage the brand name.
Among them is developing the app’s latest version, which will include social media-like features to share financial tips with fellow users, or ‘Jojo-buddies’.
“A lot of things are in the pipeline; we want people to have Jojonomic as top-of-mind whenever they think about personal finance,” concludes Budisantoso.
The post This app can help you manage your end-of-month money crisis appeared first on e27.
