Back in August 2009, I sent an email to Ben – the blogger behind MoneySmartLife.com – asking him if he was interested in writing a piece on PocketSmith. At that time, he was too busy to review our application properly and consequently declined my offer. However, he came out with a great idea: if we had any of our current users that would be open to letting him do an email interview, he could email them some questions and publish their responses on his site.
I really liked the concept of having our users sharing their experience with PocketSmith in a blog post – their feedback would also provide Ben with fair insights on how PocketSmith can make a real difference! I offered him to keep in touch with some of our users and let him informed of any volunteer that would be interested in participating to an email interview.
The first volunteer was Hugo Vitorino from Portugal. Hugo has been a PocketSmith fan for over a year now and has been regularly sending feedback through, helping us improving the user experience across the board. Here are a few highlights from his interview:
2) What features of PocketSmith do you tell your friends & family about?
‘The biggest feature on PocketSmith that I tell to my friends & family (and everyone else too) is the ability to forecast the accounts on a daily basis for a full year, allowing me to really see how my savings will be on such a long date”‘
7) Any final words for people that are considering giving PocketSmith a try?
‘Well, like I’ve been saying, there are other tools that have the same financial purpose, but I still haven’t seen anything like the ability to forecast your accounts. Try it for some time and I bet you’ll fall in love with it.‘
While Hugo was the first person to be contacted by Ben, Sam Law from New Zealand was the first user to have his interview published on MoneySmartLife.com. Sam has certainly been one of the most patient of our beta users, and has been extremely helpful with his bug reports and feature suggestions. Here is an extract of his interview:
1) Tell us more about the beta test group and the role it’s played in adding functionality to PocketSmith.
‘The guys at PocketSmith have certainly made sure their users play a big part in where the tool could go, it’s great to get the warm fuzzy feeling of suggesting something then seeing it in the application a number of days/weeks later.‘
6) Have you used any of the mobile functionality like the mobile app, twitter updates, and text messaging?
‘I have used the mobile app, and I think it’s great for keeping up to date with everything on the go. As for twitter/text messaging I haven’t really used it a whole lot because I’m always close to a full computer.‘
If you’d like to read more, you can find the full interviews here: Hugo & Sam. We at PocketSmith are very lucky to have such passionate users – it’s been great being able to have people like Hugo and Sam put the application though its paces 
Thanks all for giving us the energy to keep doing what we’re doing, and get better along the way – PocketSmith loves you!
Francois, thanks for putting me in touch with those guys. Hugo and Sam, thanks for taking the time to answer my questions! One thing I realized after talking with them is that Pocketsmith truly is an international product.
Thanks Ben for organizing these interviews!
Hi Francois, is about time to take PocketSmith on an Asean Road show and I believe there is a vast market with the more savvy tech users.
Glad to see the user friendly development of this international product
Hi Mr. Leong, thank you very much for leaving a comment on our blog and for the kind words of encouragement!
we are constantly on the lookout for opportunities to further expand PocketSmith’s reach. The Asian market is definitely appealing so we’ll keep an eye out for potential partnerships with local companies looking at offering a simple-to-use budgeting and cashflow forecasting web application to their clients