IOU Windows Phone
IOU is a very simple windows phone app that does one thing, it allows the user to keep tabs on what he/she owe somebody or what someone else have to return to them. How many times have one of your friends borrowed a game / dvd from you and over time you lose track of who you have loaned it to ? If that happens to you again you have an easy way to avoid it by using IOU for Windows Phone.
IOU gives you a place on your Windows Phone to keep track of all of your I.O.U.s. The app has got a simple UI that is very Metro-ey and it changes color based on your Windows Phone Theme. You can see all the transactions from the overview screen , the app shows a each entry with an arrow to the left ( for items that you have to receive from others ) or to the right ( stuff that you have to return ) this acts as a visual indicator and works quite well. Sliding across you can access the i owe and they owe tabs to see the respective entries.
When you add a new entry You have to fill in
- The name of the Person
- Loaned Item Name / Amount if money
- If owe it / If its owed to you
- Description ( optional )
There is an inbuilt help section but the app is quite intuitive and you probably would not need to use it. The settings offer some color options for the live tile which is fancy but personally I would have enjoyed it if the live tile would offer some indications on the next time that is owed. This brings us to the fact that there is no option to add a return date :( I do hope the dev consider adding it as an optional field in future version. This will also allow us to use the live tile and show the next upcoming loan details on the live tile which would work well with glance and go concept. ( it looks like its is a planned feature according to the developers blog click )
Few of the other things that I would like to see include :
- If I were to click on new from the “they owe” tab I would have preferred it if the app would auto select the ” user owes me xxx” option
- For monetary entries under the same username I hope to see the app automatically adjust the values ( for example if John owes me $50 and I owe $20 to John then the app combines that and make it in to one entry which says John owes me $30 )
- Some way to export and import data ( in case of a hard reset or something )
- A way to mark the entries as completed , instead of deleting it completely
To sum it up IOU is a great app that works quite well even in this initial version and with a few update could be even better. I feel this is one of that app that most people would find quite useful on a daily basis and when its all for $0.00 why wouldn’t you give it a shot ?
IOU Video
IOU Screenshots
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- IOU Windows Phone
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- IOU 002
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- IOU 001
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- IOU 003
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- IOU 004
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- IOU Logo
Version Under Review : 1.3
Website : IOU
IOU is a FREE app for Windows Phone 7
IOU WP7 Download
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Scan this QRcode with Bing vision ( Hit the hardware Search button and click on the small icon that looks like an eye ) on your Phone to download the App to your phone.
 
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{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Hey there, Thanks for the review!
I’d like to address some of the feedback received:
The first thing you mention concerns ease-of-use when adding a new loan. The next version currently does not include this, but I may as well add it when I get back. Just for the record: in the next version, when you click new, the app will directly focus on the Contact-textbox, and by pressing the return key you can jump to the next field.
Also, the auto-correct / phone dictionary will be available in the “items” and “description” boxes.
The next one concerns automatic calculations for monetary loans. That definitely would be nice, but I’m still looking at the best way to implement this. That is because one might know two people with the same name, and then the app could incorrectly group it. I guess I’ll have it add a line like “$50 and $20 merged to $30 on “.
importing and exporting the data actually shouldn’t be too hard, looking at the way I’m currently saving everything. I’ll look into that as well :)
Marking entries as complete is also something I’ve been thinking about. It has also been suggested to me by some of the people who sent their feedback (thanks guys!). Most likely, there’ll be a fourth pivot, named “History”, showing everything that’s completed. The items in that list will probably be somewhat smaller, and I think there’ll be a limit.
Otherwise, the app will get slower by the time the database becomes very large. I have no idea how many entries it needs to become slowed down, so it’s hard to anticipate that without real-world testing. Oh well.
Anyway, thanks for the review. The points you raise are very valid, but I am taking a per-feature approach to keep the app polished. WP7 has shown that it’s better to be real good at what you do, than to do everything you can imagine in a poor fashion. That’s also what I want IOU to be like.
Therefore, it may take a while before everything is included, but it also means that everything gets a lot of thought before the final implementation.
Feedback is always very helpful, so anyone can contact me either through the app (choose ‘feedback’ in the menu) or through the ‘Questions’ page on the development blog. You do not need an account to contact me there.
Hi
thanks for stopping by and addressing the suggestions I had regarding the app.. One other thing I wanted to mention in the review but failed to point out was the fact that when you start up the app for the first time you dont get an empty list but this small text which says things like ” Lucky you! You dont owe anyone anything – as far as I’m aware of , that is. ” that is a nice touch , I loved that .
I did feel that automatic calculations for monetary loans could be tricky , looking fwd to see how you implement it ;)
Its also good to know that you are working on some nice new features , I am looking fwd to the next update .
you’ll get those messages again when there are no loans to display. So if you delete your current ones, you get to see them.
I implemented those messages specifically for the reason you mentioned: to prevent a black, empty page and additionally, they give you some information about *why* there’s nothing there combined with telling you what you can find there in the future.
Right now I’m in a very busy stage: holidays, moving to a new palce, and learning to play the guitar (yea: developers are people to ;) ), but I think I can crank out the next version in roughly a month from now.
Because of the time it takes to certify each update, I do pack a bunch of changes together instead of releasing many smaller updates. I hope to get to a schedule of roughly one update per two weeks once I’ve settled in at my new place. But only time will tell. It also depends on how many new features I decide to implement before the app is ‘done’.