Yarn

Inspiration’

Realizing how difficult and tedious keeping record of spending and receipt bookkeeping can be, especially coming out of the pandemic where in-person spending has grown meaning more receipts. We were motivated to help with that by making bookkeeping and spending tracking easier than ever. The benefits that come out of such personal finance practices are immensely useful and positive, and we hope to encourage and promote it through the ease of Yarn.

What it does

The aspect of the app that we made during this weekend is the receipt scanner and evaluator. Once the receipt is scanned and the text is made into string, our program will read the product codes and costs and use the company’s respective API to find what exactly the product is. That data would be useful for other features of the app such as categorizing, tracking, and recording spending. Currently, as a proof of concept, our app works with Target receipts using Target’s RedCircleAPI.

How we built it

Our app was coded with a React Native frontend and a Python and NodeJS backend, using Javascript, Java, and a variety of C based languages. We used the advantages of the open source framework React Native provides to incorporate machine learning text recognition in scanning receipts, native app design, and dynamic charts and calendar functions to help the user manage their finances.

Challenges we ran into

One of the main challenges was getting the scanning feature to work. That part took a lot of time and effort to learn and apply, but we got it down eventually. Additionally, learning how to use API was also an initial challenge, but one that we also overcame. The navigation bar on the UI was also a challenge for us, for which we compromised on. Lastly, we ran into the problem of connecting backend to frontend, meaning applying the backend program that made sense of the string to the part that outputted on the actual app.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Being our first time trying out scanning, API’s, and making an app, whatever success we had with both is accomplishing enough!

What we learned

Going along with our accomplishments, we learned all the things we accomplished as we really stepped out of our expertise for this project to explore and learn.

What's next for Yarn

The Receipt scanner and evaluator are just one of many, many features! We only got as far as to retrieve data, like full product name, from scanning a receipt. Moving forward, however, the goal is to apply that data into meaningful features that help with the personal finance aspect of the application.

Built With

• java
• javascript
• python
• reactnative
• redcircleapi