Ron Cemer's Blog | Making the world a better place, one fish at a time.

Recently (August, 2010), I've been developing a Personal Finance Manager package for managing our household budget, checkbook, credit cards, etc.

This has actually evolved into a nice little package. It uses JQuery, DataTables, AJAX, Data Access Objects, PHP and MySQL. It runs under the Apache web server, which is nice because you can run it on a web server and both you and your wife or husband can post transactions, reconcile bank statements and run reports.

Since it is a web-based application, you do need a web server to run it. So it's not for the faint of heart.

I've actually been able to re-use this package as a generic web application development framework as well.

The project uses phpdaogen to generate the Data Access Objects from the MySQL schema. Phpdaogen is a project I developed specifically for use in my Personal Finance Manager application, because I didn't like the licenses for any of the other DAO packages I found. Phpdaogen also includes a PreparedStatement implementation for MySQL under PHP without using mysqli (which is buggy and tends to crash).

The package requires the json PECL module to be installed. Under Red Hat/Fedora/CentOS, this requires that you install the php-json package.

One really cool thing about the package is that all form submissions and page updates are done through AJAX, so there is no need for page reloads. This makes the application very snappy and responsive.

The Personal Finance Manager package is licensed under the BSD license, so you can basically use or adapt it for free, even for commercial use.

You can download it here: Personal Finance Manager

I'm available for consultation, customization and training at a reasonable rate. Use the "Contact Us" form to send me an inquiry.