Mobile Apps for Expense Management
When we started creating apps for our expense management solution, we focused on 3 broad categories – Capability, Security and Ease of use. There is always a dynamic balance between these parameters.
Capability – The app should be capable of solving a problem. Capability is usually broken down in terms of feature set. Of course, if the feature set is too expansive, the capability is expanded but ease of use suffers.
Security – With expense management applications, security is paramount. Compromising on security invalidates capability. At the same time, increased security can lead to more checkpoints thus resulting in reduced ease of use.
Ease of use – The mantra for ease of use includes an intuitive interface that is easy to follow and an ‘All thumbs’ approach where beginner level dexterity is sufficient. An application that is too easy to use, usually lacks enhanced capabilities or provides reduced security or both. While this is not always true, it is usually the norm.
Striking a balance between these 3 is what good designs are all about. Here is an example – our mobile app allows users to submit transactions and validate them in no time on the web application. Other mobile apps allow users to create entire reports on the mobile device. With this expanded capability, ease of use is severely undermined. It takes longer to create and validate a report on the mobile device when it is not really needed. Plus, it is more error prone.