FinClo

Track past spendings, manage present budgets, and predict future expenses — all in one smart, secure web app designed to help you stay on top of your finances with ease.

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FinClo – Budget Smart, Spend Smarter Inspiration: As college students, sticking to a budget can be tough — with classes, rent, groceries, and the occasional night out, expenses add up quickly. That's why we built FinClo: a smart budgeting platform that helps users easily allocate their spending, track their habits, and get personalized insights. Whether you're planning for the week or looking back at last month, FinClo empowers users to stay financially aware and in control.

What It Does: FinClo brings your past, present, and future spending into one place — directly reflecting the WeHack theme "Timeless Moments Await" and the Best Financial Hack track. Here's what the website enables: Category-Based Budgeting: Users can allocate their monthly budget across specific categories like groceries, rent, gifts, eating out, and miscellaneous. Financial Overview Dashboard: Displays a clear summary including total balance, expected expenses, and monthly budget, helping users make informed decisions. Past Expense Insights: Users can view spending data from previous months to analyze trends and adjust their budget. Data Visualizations: Graphs display real-time and historical spending patterns, making it easy to track and understand financial behavior.

How We Built It: Website: Built using Streamlit for a fast and user-friendly web interface. Backend: Implemented in Python, managing user inputs, data processing, and dynamic content rendering. Cloud Infrastructure & Storage: AWS S3 was used to store and retrieve sample transaction data as well as support data flow in the application.

Challenges: One major challenge was building a mobile app in parallel with the web platform while trying to connect both to the same MongoDB database, which introduced complexity in terms of real-time syncing and data access. We also ran into issues with the Nessie API, which was intended for mock banking data but was unavailable. To keep moving, we created a custom JSON dataset stored in AWS S3, which mimicked transaction data and supported our dashboard features. Lastly, integrating MongoDB effectively, while not used directly in the final build, was an important learning and development step that helped us shape our overall architecture.

Accomplishments: Built a fully functional, interactive budgeting website Used AWS S3 effectively for data storage and access Created visually intuitive dashboards and budgeting tools Prototyped a mobile version while handling backend complexity

What We Learned: Using Streamlit for rapid front-end development Back-end logic handling with Python Working with AWS S3 for cloud storage Simulating APIs and working with structured data formats Designing category-based budgeting and data visualization

What’s Next for FinClo? We’re just getting started! Our next big goal is to complete the development of the FinClo mobile app, bringing all the budgeting features to users on the go with a more dynamic and interactive interface.

We're planning to enhance the experience with engaging animations based on spending behavior — for example, a cheerful animation when users stay within budget to celebrate smart financial decisions and a sad animation if they go over budget, adding a bit of personality and encouragement to budgeting.

The mobile app will also feature smoother navigation, real-time expense tracking, and tighter integration with cloud-stored data. We’re excited to make budgeting not just functional but fun and motivating — because managing money shouldn’t feel like a chore.

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