Zot Audit

ZotAudit!

Inspiration

Some of our biggest inspirations were platforms such as:

There are both platforms that foster amazing communities, that users can rely on to get accurate and unfiltered information because of their anonymous and raw nature.

We thought that a community like this (dedicated to discussing the taboo subject of personal finances) would be an amazing way to educate people (who may otherwise not learn about it) through the perspective and wisdom of the crowds.

What it does

Allows users to crowd-source financial advice from AI as well as a community of users who love to learn from different financial perspectives.

How we built it

Next.js, Firebase, Open AI API, Plaid SDK

Challenges we ran into

Our team faced many challenges during the hackathon such as API integration, challenges of learning new tech, making the comments system, deprecated software bugs, git merge problems from said bugs, and a nosebleed mid-hackathon.

We ran into API integration conflicts as we implemented plaid API. Plaid API has many security measures managing sensitive financial data, so we had to work around many integration problems that arose, including solutions of getting creative with how we retrieved data from plaid API. Furthermore, there were many challenges in learning new tech as we worked with Next.js and firebase. Learning these new techs were difficult for a lot of the members of the team, but by guiding each other we were able to work through it all. Additionally, certain features in the project like the comments system were surprisingly much more difficult than expected so through lots of work and googling we overcame this problem. Then we also ran into the rabbit hole problem of debugging and solving merge problems in git, which with also hard work we managed to pull through.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We were very happy to see the end result of our project. Coming into the hackathon, we all made bullet points on what we wanted to see in the project, which was to use Chat GPT, integrate plaid, and make a cool discussion website, which we managed to accomplish! It is so encouraging to see each other work hard and make a cool and functional website.

What we learned

Through it all, we learned how fun it can be to work on a project that we were initially quite scared to work on. By taking a step out of our comfort zones, we are forced to grow and adapt to the needs of our project, which proved to immensely grow our coding mindset to never give up when things get hard. We also learned a lot from each other, as each member had a diverse background in experiences, so it was very cool to see each of us contribute to the project in a way that none of us had expected. Overall, this hackathon and project was a good learning experience on how fun coding can be in a group of passionate developers.

What's next for Zot Audit

With further integration of Plaid API, we will aim to incorporate a monthly breakdown feature to allow users to share their monthly expenses and budgeting with the community. Providing this information anonymously and at ease, not only will users be able to share their finances freely but also they will have access to the knowledge of financially literate users on the platform. The sharing of such information allows for online discussions of constructive criticism or support for one's monthly spending. By doing so, users of Zot Audit can learn from each other, leading to a more financially literate community of people. Through Zot Audit, financial knowledge will become evermore accessible.