iMali — Budget Tracker

iMali is a mobile budgeting application that helps users log, track, and manage their expenses in a simple and intuitive way.

I built iMali as part of Varsity College's Computer Science faculty competition, where it went on to win 1st place. The goal was to rethink how personal finance apps can work using tools that users already have access to.

What makes iMali unique is its unconventional backend, instead of a traditional server, it uses the user’s own Google Workspace:

Google Sheets acts as the database
Google Drive stores receipts and invoices

This approach removes the need for dedicated backend infrastructure while giving users full ownership and transparency over their data.

To further reduce friction, iMali integrates OCR (Optical Character Recognition) to automatically extract information from receipts, making expense logging fast and mostly hands-free.

Features

Receipt scanning (OCR-powered)
Scan receipts and automatically extract vendor, total amount, and category.
Smart expense logging
Reduce manual input with auto-filled fields based on scanned data.
Budget tracking
Set budgets and monitor spending across categories.
Cloud-backed via Google Workspace
Data is stored in your own Google Sheets and Drive, ensuring accessibility and ownership.