Hope this post finds you doing well.  Things have been going very well for us here at Midnight Apps over the last several weeks.  We are almost ready to ship the initial beta copy of Cha-Ching 2.0 to our MacHeist Customers and other forum members.  This post is simply to let you guys know that we are still here and in fact thriving.  The new site design is nearly complete (although not without a few issues we are still working through.)

Hope you like the new look and stay tuned for a more in-depth post regarding the upcoming Cha-Ching 2.0 really soon.

I want to start off this post by saying Thank You to all my supporters. Those who purchased during the beta period. Those who has sent wonderful comments and meaningful bug reports and feature requests. You are the ones I do this for and will continue to strive to please.

I believe Cha-Ching has matured into an absolutely beautiful application. Art takes time and as time continues to past, Cha-Ching will become even more beautiful and even more mature.

As several of you know, I follow the “Getting Real” approach. “Getting Real” is a style of confronting design and business situations. Stay simple and agile. Be flexible and always listen to your customers. 37Signals is the company that created this approach and I look up to them immensely. They are my heroes in the world of software and business practice.

Now I am definitely not perfect. Very far from it, but I do try every day to become a better person and better business man. Here are my responses and announcements for today:

- New Version 1.0.2
Today I am announcing a new version that fixes many bugs. And yes, the QIF import problem has been fixed. So sorry for that inconvenience. The Bill Manager has been enhanced with a new sort and date range function added. Go ahead and whip open your copy of Cha-Ching and get the latest version.

- Updates for Life
Few believe I am screwing my customers with a previous mistake on the company website that stated that if you purchase during the beta period that you would have free upgrades for life. Once I discovered it I removed it promptly. When the website was being designed, that quote was in the initial designs as a joke. It was not meant to show in the final launch of the website. I sincerely apologize to the few that have shown concern. There are those that understand that “Free Upgrades for Life” is absolutely impossible to do. It does no good to any business, especially to third-part developers. This is our life. This is what puts food on the table and puts a roof over our heads. Many developers will agree to that. I apologize for that statement. For those who understand and agree that $14.95 was more than a great price for many many awesome upgrades before version 2.0, thank you.

- Cha-Ching doesn’t have XYZ
Everyday we get feature requests. All different. We hear all requests and definitely make note of it. Our philosophy is not to make this the be all and end all for all types of financial situations. Stock Portfolio’s, Real Estate, Investments etc., is not the most common things us middle class people worry about. Most of us worry about how much we are going to have at the end of the month. I want to empower those people.

- Community (Formerly Known as Forums)
Today I am announcing a new update to the site, Community. We are now moving to a new type of forum for everyone to discuss and support each other. The new Community should make it much more simple to track discussions and help one another with ideas, fixes etc.

- Bug and Feature Tracking
We finally have an official system to keep track of all the bug reports and feature requests for Cha-Ching. We are using it very extensively now. You can definitely count on us squashing bugs much more efficiently.

- Online Bank Auto-Downloading
Many people think that if Cha-Ching supports OFX that means that automatic downloads of financial information from your online banks would come with that too. That is not true. OFX is just a standard just like QIF and QFX. The auto downloading from online banking just uses that format as their standard. But to answer many questions, yes we are definitely working on the OFX support for Cha-Ching. We are very close to complete.

- More Involvement
Many have asked that I participate much more in the community and the blog. I personally thought that my focus on the app would be much more efficient. That is why I hired Matthew Arevalo who has been extremely awesome at answering your questions, responding to all forum posts, etc. He rocks. I promise now that I would post much more to the blog and participate much more in the new Community. I definitely feel it would get me that much closer to you guys so that I can provide the experience you expect.

If there is anything you want me to address, please do not hesitate to contact me personally at jalvarez@midnightapps.com. I would be happy to answer you and speak about it on the blog. Thanks again for all of your support.

If you need help or assistance with the application we have many options. You can post a message on our forums at:

http://www.midnightapps.com/forums/

Or through our online mail submission page (using the awesome MailTank):

http://midnightapps.mailtank.com/issue/create/51

Or through e-mail at:

support@chachingapp.com

Those are preferred, and if you can keep some things in mind, that would be even more fantastic:

1. Please understand we are a very small team and we try to reply to all e-mails within 48 hours.
2. Please include any console logs, screenshots, movies, anything to help when submitting a bug or error.
3. Please check the forums (search) to see if your issue has been submitted and possible answered.
4. Alligators make lousy housepets.

We read every e-mail, we tag it, examine it and keep note of all feature requests and issues. We hope using Mailtank will really keep it easier to manage now.

Thanks!

Well now we have a real Blog tag and that should make it easier for you guys to find these here captivating posts.

We are still recovering from Macworld. We presented at the Apple Store Flagship downtown in San Francisco, were interviewed by Leo of MacBreak and like 50 million other things I can’t recall exactly.

It was exciting to meet the whole team as we’re from different places and previously had only seen each other over late night iChat sessions.

We hope you’ve been enjoying 0.5 and are looking forward to 0.6. We’re pushing forward with more features and more fixes. We do read every e-mail you send and we flag and tag everything that comes in.

In the future we may use some kind of ticketing system, but I can handle it for now without it. Please be patient for a response, it generally takes up to 36 hours when we get slammed after a new release.

It’s been cold here in Hollywood, well colder then the norm, Hoth cold. I can’t imagine what Josh and Juan must be going through.

Enough babbling. Take care!

Hey Everyone!

First, an introduction… I’m Josh Pyles, and I am the new designer on board with Cha-Ching. We are working very hard to incorporate all of your comments and ideas into Cha-Ching, but that’s not what I am here to talk about right now.

If you are reading this then you must be seeing the quite obvious changes to the website. There are a lot things going on behind the scenes right now but I just wanted to point out some of the major things going on right now.

The largest change you will notice is the new theme for the website. We have incorporated a unified feel for the entire company as well as more content on the website. We are planning on adding even more content as time goes on, so stay tuned!

We have a brand-spankin’-new forum open now for all of your thoughts, ideas, troubleshooting, question asking, and discussion pleasure. We encourage all of you to register in the forum and post as much as you can. Your feedback is extremely valuable to us, so don’t be afraid to speak up. The more feedback we get, the better the program can become.

Stay tuned in the coming weeks for some major holiday specials and for a sneak peek at our next application!