A proactive budget allocation app for young professionals and freelancers who earn enough, but have no system to stay ahead of bills, spending, and savings.
This idea sparked during a conversation with my friends. One missed bill, a late fee, and a room full of people who all admitted the same thing had happened to them. Not because they couldn't afford it, but because no system caught it first.
I set reminders but I still forget. The money's there, I just don't act on it. Ravi, 24 · Junior developer
Young professionals and freelancers earn enough, yet still miss bills, overspend, and never save, because every tool shows them their money after decisions are already made.
Flofree allocates income into bills, savings, and spending the moment it arrives, and warns users days ahead: a system that acts before the mistake, not after it.
Two weeks of semi-structured interviews across students, young professionals, and freelancers, each anchored on the same two questions: walk me through your last financial mistake, and what do you wish had existed at that moment.
Users don't fail because they lack discipline. They fail because every finance tool asks them to act after the problem, not before it.
The interviews converged on two archetypes: a salaried professional whose money leaks quietly, and a freelancer whose income shape breaks every budgeting tool built for salaries.
"I make decent money but I'm always surprised when I check my account at the end of the month."
"Some months I earn double. Some months half. No app I've tried handles that well."
Mapping Priya's month revealed exactly where the system fails. The lowest point isn't the overdraft; it's realising she can't remember where the money went. Each stage below pairs the pain with the Flofree intervention that answers it.
"I have money, I'm fine."
"I'll track this later."
"Where did it go?"
"I need to be better."
"This month will be different."
A complete end-to-end design process, run solo in one month: research, synthesis, information architecture, wireframes, then high-fidelity UI. Every decision traces back to a finding, not an aesthetic preference.
Bill reminders alone don't work. A reminder is only actionable once a user knows what money is already allocated. The allocation model had to come first; everything else anchors to it.
The budgeting market is crowded, but it's crowded with reactive tools. They all share one assumption: you'll open the app after spending. Flofree breaks that assumption entirely.
| App | Proactive allocation | Advance bill reminders | Variable income | Savings goals | Mobile-first |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Flofree | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Mint | ✗ | ✓ | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ |
| YNAB | ✓ | ✗ | ~ | ✓ | ~ |
| Personal Capital | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ~ | ✓ |
| Goodbudget | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ~ | ✓ |
Each feature exists because a specific research finding demanded it. Together they form a single loop: allocate, get warned, protect, adapt.
Distribute every rupee into named categories the moment income arrives. Bills, savings, and spending each get their share before anything is touched. This is the anchor the entire system hangs from.
The core loopBills surface 7 days before they're due, anchored to allocated money rather than just a calendar date.
Prevention, not apologyNamed goals funded at the start of each month. Savings are protected before spending begins, not scraped together after.
Pay yourself firstFreelancers enter what they actually earned. The budget recalibrates proportionally: no manual reset, no broken plan. Explored in depth below.
The differentiator ↓Most finance apps treat freelancers as an edge case. I treated them as a primary user. The result is a budget that recalibrates to what actually came in this month, not what was expected. When income changes, allocations adjust automatically.
Before any color or component touched the canvas, every flow was worked out as low-fidelity wireframes, grouped into sign-up, setup, home, and supporting screens. Structure, hierarchy, and flow got decided here, cheaply, where changing a layout costs an eraser instead of an afternoon.
The full high-fidelity flow, from first launch to daily use. The first run covers onboarding and setup: account creation, goals, bank connection, income model, and category building. The second covers the core app: allocation, transactions, budgets, savings, and settings. Every screen is built from the same component library and token set; nothing here is a one-off.
19 screens · iOS · Designed in Figma
Splash
Onboarding
Create account
Verify email
Goals
Connect bank
Income type
Salary details
Categories setup
New category
My categories
Category detail
Auto-allocation
Dashboard
Transactions
Transaction detail
Budgets
Savings goals
Profile & settingsA walkthrough of the core Flofree flows: onboarding, income allocation, bill tracking, and savings goals.
Flofree is currently a high-fidelity design prototype. Every screen, flow, and interaction is designed, but the backend hasn't been built yet. That's an intentional boundary: the UX had to be right before anything else.
A finance app with real bank data, live transactions, and secure infrastructure is a significant engineering effort. Getting user flows and information architecture right before writing a single line of backend code is the correct order of operations. This prototype is the blueprint.
Beyond informal peer walkthroughs, I haven't run formal usability tests or collected live data, because there's no live product yet. What exists is a complete, production-ready design that could be handed to a development team today. That's the deliverable. The real-world validation comes next.