Introduction
Software is not perfect, and we are not perfect too. As much as we hate it, we too make mistakes from time to time.
Every software has a moment in its lifecycle where a simple bug would ruin the experience for all.
The last 24 hours has been extremely intense for us. Apple approved our 1.3.1 update last night, but in some ridiculous turn of events it appeared that a bug slipped and caused crashes during migration.
We’d like to announce now, that the 1.3.2 update that corrects this is now released, thanks to Apple’s quick reaction. We’d like to thank them for their support throughout this.
What’s New
- Retina optimised artwork – see everything in stunning detail, on the new iPad
- See the account name while in Portrait mode
- Ability to show transactions in Categories & Payees reports
- New translations – Arabic, Brazilian Portuguese, Dutch, German, Korean, Swedish
- Major stability improvements
What Happened In 1.3.1
We received a lot of e-mails asking us what happened, so I’d like to take the time and explain in details.
Everything you do in MoneyWiz is stored into a database file. This database has specific structure, that allows us to quickly find information in it. Every time we make an update, we optimise this structure, and therefore need to change it. When you install the update, we need to take your old database, with old structure, and migrate (copy) it to the new database structure, so that you can continue using it with the new version. This process is called Migration, and we’ve developed a Migration Assistant that will do everything necessary, automatically. It will do it when you first start MoneyWiz after an update.
Every time we make an update, we have to manually map each separate property from the old database to the new database. There are currently about 700 properties, that need to be matched in “old vs new” manner. We do this manually, as this is the only way.
What happened in this 1.3.1 update is that the mapping of one (just one!) of these properties was broken. The property in question is the one that holds information about the auto complete list of Payees (when entering a transaction). It turns out that it was wrongly mapped, and when the Migration Assistant came to copy it to the new database format, it could not find it in the old database format, and it crashed.
It’s as simple as that. We fixed it, and the fix is now available for download.
The Facts!
Every company happens to make a mistake every now and then. We all know that.
It’s how the company handles the mistake, that shows what it’s made of!
This is how we handled it:
- The issue was fixed, tested and the update was released in less than 24 hours
- We replied to 618 e-mails personally during these 24 hours
- The average response time was 1 minute and 46 seconds
- There were just 3 of us working on this. All 3 of us haven’t slept in close to 40 hours now, and we’re still staying to make sure that everything is back to normal now
- We manually restored 144 customer databases, for customers who did not have a Sync Everything! account
- Not a single customer had data loss or data damage
So, the bottom line is that we handled this quickly and efficiently, and we made sure that every customer had MoneyWiz restored as quickly as possible.
If you want to help…
During the past 24 hours, our rating got ruined to the ground…our average rating across the world is varying between 1* and 2*. A lot of people decided to rate us poorly instead of e-mailing us so we can actually help them.
There are few things I want to explain…
- We are not aliens. Therefore every now and then we too need to buy food and stuff like that. As much as we want to pay our rent and bills with promo codes, it just doesn’t work like that, so we need to earn money in order to support ourselves and our product.
- To earn money, we need to sell MoneyWiz…to sell MoneyWiz we need it to have a good rating. We work like crazy to assure that everything’s well, every customer receives our attention in timely manner and we resolve any issue that’s reported to us. On top of that, we do regular updates with new features. All of these updates has been free so far. We invest a lot of money and we give our work for free, to all existing customers, via these updates.
- Some people mistakenly believe that we’re a huge corporation with a million employees and an unlimited budget… we are not. We are 4 guys, with a very limited budget. Everything we earn from MoneyWiz, we invest it back into MoneyWiz. We live off our savings from our previous jobs. We are not funded by investors.
- Giving us the bad rating, without allowing us to fix your problem and help you, doesn’t help you and it also doesn’t help us.
- Some people think that we can edit the reviews on the AppStore – well, we can’t. Some people think that we have a way of contacting you back after you put a bad review – we don’t! We have to manually search your nickname across google, our mail archives, list of mail subscribers etc, and hope that there will be a match somewhere.
- When you give us a good rating after each update, it shows other people that the product is good, and therefore we get more sales. More sales mean we can hire more people, and bring you more new features, faster!
So now, we ask you to support us, and help us fix this ruined rating everywhere. You can do this by leaving an honest review (or just rating) of MoneyWiz (iPad & iPhone) in the AppStore.
Thank you!
AppStore Links
Here’re the AppStore links, for your convenience:
MoneyWiz for iPad →
MoneyWiz for iPhone →
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This is really easy to use accounting software.
Look forward to the next version update will be Traditional Chinese interface.
Every company makes mistake…. But great companies to the care to explain it…..
You have a fan with me!
Second the request for Traditional Chinese!
Well done guys, keep improving the product and you’ll keep my support.
I got issues to run the migrate tool from the iphone but it ran perfectly in my iPad 2, i had no issues in the iPad 2 after it…. took less than 3 mins to update.
To fix it on the iphone was quick: delete it, reinstall it and sync.. i love this app ****
it runs smoothly and i´ve changed from Checks HD to Moneywiz because it´s easy to use, very intuitive and it can be synched between my Fiancée iPad & iPod and it´s very close to old money for Windows.
guys.. forgot to say: great job coming up with a quick fix!
Thanks for the quick fix. It is easy to make a mistake with an update, and hard to regain reputación after that. But I am sure yo will.
Keep the good job and continue improving this useful App. I think moneywiz is the best App of its kind.
Excuses for my poor english, but it is difficult for a deaf guy to learn a new language.
Thanks for the quick reply regarding the issues with 1.3.1 . Getting such a quick response, with a clear explanation and possible workaround really made all the difference (and reassured me of your commitment to the app), so well done for handling a bad situation as well as it could be.
I also have feature related question: I’m currently using the built in sync everywhere, but I was wondering whether you had any plans (or whether it was technically feasible) to have iCloud syncing? Sync Everywhere is working flawlessly, but I’m not terribly keen on using yet another syncing service.
Anyways good job, and I look forward to the arrival of the mac version!
Hi Julian,
We won’t be providing iCloud & Dropbox sync…we’ll post a detailed explanation and reasoning behind our decision, very soon. Just need some time to finish the draft article…
Thanks for the reply, and I look forward to reading the details. A few other apps I own have also gone with their own solutions rather than iCloud and so I’m curious as to what the limitations are with Apple’s service.
I knew of The migration crash issue, but figured it was a bug and would soon be remedied, so great job on being so quick about it!
I do have a question about the sync though. I have money wiz on my iPad and iPod, but have been updating my iPad more often. The issue is that my iPod won’t sync to the information that is on my iPad. Is there any way to force an update to information from the backup on sync? I tried deleting and reinstalling, but it somehow kept the same information it had. Is each sync account partitioned by device?
Alli, just e-mailed you to figure this thing out
Hi, it was about time that you showed some humility.
I perfectly understand that mistakes can be done. The pb is that it happened after you sent me a very negative email, it did help my posted appreciation.
I bought yr product because I liked it.
It took me about two months before selecting the appropriate one. But you should also inspire yourself from other apps. It does save time and conjugating the best is always a plus.
I have not yet tried the 1.3.2 yet but I will do it in a couple of min
Do not only react to comments about detected bugs. Listen to comments of people who might have more working experience than you do!
Rgds
F de Lapparent
Hi Fabrice,
The reason we don’t take a look at other software so much, is to avoid doing stuff like the other guys do them… we have our own approach to solving problems and we stay behind it. It has already proven that because of our original approach to solving problems, MoneyWiz is much easier to use than any other personal finance app. It might not make huge difference to experienced people like you, but let me tell you that most of the people don’t have experience and feel quite frightened by the idea of using such software. We want to make it easy for all.
I do appreciate the fact that because of our approach, things tend to happen a bit slower than probably expected, and we still lack some functions… but as you can see, we work hard to deliver as fast as we can, so everything is just a matter of some time
Have a great weekend.
Thank you for the quick fix and honest explanation. Just so you know, I did not leave negative feedback. However, as you hopefully know by now, this could have been prevented by more thorough testing. It sounds like the problem was widespread, and it really should have been caught before the update was submitted.
I agree Andy… it’s really ridiculous situation where we really tested the migration for more than a week, because we are well aware of the fact that it’s error prone… and there you go… we did not test on iOS 5.1, thinking that iOS 5.0 testing would do it…
Guys.. your product is so good.. that i volunteer for a mac lion beta testing..
thanks!!!
Hi,
Are you interested in getting MW translated into Romanian? (I certainly am, as a user of both mobile versions
. If so, drop me an email.
Thanks,
Lucian
Hello there! Thank’s a lot for your great software piece. Im having an issue with the late update,the migration assistant exits into the home screen withot completing I guess. Any solution as to fixing it without deleting the app (havent synced with your server before this, though. It’s a shame to loose all my data because of this bug. Developers, please help!!!
Please, e-mail us at info@silverwiz.com and we’ll figure it out immediately.