Project Expense Calculator: Phase 2 kickoff

Project Expense Calculator: how it all began
Many a time, we find missing those simple things which make a big difference. Hmm, what happens then - something you just sit and brood. Sometimes you just decide to make the move and make it happen.
Here's one such story - all I wanted was a simple expense management tool which consolidates all my group's expenses. I hang out with a big group of friends and often consolidating all the group expenses (since usually only one person shells out the card) is a huge nightmare. I tried out a number of online expense management softwares - some dont do what i want, some are way too complicated to use, some just lack the transparency - it never worked out. And so it began - i wrote my own simplistic group expense manager tool which caters to my needs. And the platform - our very own simple Microsoft Excel.

Phase 2: The motivation
Its been almost two years since I rolled out ver 1.0 of the Expense Calculator and till date been a tremendous success and still accomplishes the purpose. But then, I realized that every product had to evolve over time and this is no exception. One is never really satisfied in achieving - you just gotto raise the bar. A clear thought on a fine day made me realize that while the Expense Calculator is good, there's room to get better.
Also I work at an investment bank where they use plain old Microsoft Excel to develop a trading system which churns out billions of dollars on a typical day. This heightened my respect for Excel. And there begins the groundwork for Phase 2 of Expense Calculator.

What's in Expense Calculator v2.0?
A small list of features added in
- Categorize your accounts
Now you assign a category (Food, utility, entertainment, etc) for every expense that you make. The rows are colored based on the category and it also provides a category based breakdown of the entire expense sheet.
- Customized for one and all
Now the expense calculator is fully customized for a layman. Start off the first time by customizing the list of people and the categories that you want. And the sheet does everything else for you. With tons of checks and helping aids you can never go wrong.
- Automatic payment calculator
The current version merely gives the net account value of everyone involved. And it was left to the user to decide the actual transactions as who pays whom to settle the accounts. This was quite a daunting task considering the fact that there are tons of possibilities. So the next gen calculator will have an automated system to propose the payments. What's unique about this is the fact that it analyzes tons and tons of possiblities and proposes the one with the least number of transactions.

There we go - a limited set of goals but those which will make the whole job of gathering and settling accounts a pleasurable experience henceforth.