ADSAI alumnus Dániel Elek develops AI-powered budgeting app

What prompted you to start developing this app? 

Dániel: 'When I moved to the Netherlands, I wanted to track my expenses properly. But existing apps would just show "€21 spent at Albert Heijn" - that could be anything. Was it food? Alcohol? Laundry detergent? I wanted to know exactly where my money was going, so I could see if I was overspending on snacks versus essentials. That's when I realised: OK, maybe I could do something about this.' 

So this wasn't originally a school project? 

Dániel: 'No, it started as a personal project last October whilst I was doing my internship. I was learning Swift (a programming language) and checking if the concept could even work. But as I got deeper into it, I realised this was going to take much longer than expected. I thought I'd release it in January - there was no chance of that happening! That's when I decided to make it my thesis project.' 

What were the biggest challenges? 

Dániel: 'Design, definitely. I didn't know anything about it. When I look back at the early versions now, they were so ugly! I kept asking Creative Business students for feedback, and they'd say "yeah, this is bad" - but they also gave me really good ideas. With their help, I learned Figma and iterated until I had something I was happy with. I even considered paying someone to design it, but thankfully I managed to figure it out myself.' 

Did lecturers help shape the project? 

Dániel: 'One of my lecturers, Alican Noyan, gave me crucial advice right at the start. He saw me trying to segment receipts first and then read the text, and he told me that approach would require way more data and wouldn't be very reliable. He suggested I do it the other way around - read the text first, then build up the receipt structure. He was absolutely right. I also received a lot of help from lecturer Shival Indermun, who gave me constant feedback throughout the process. ' 

The app is already live - how's it going? 

Dániel: 'My app, “RCT- Find Your Money", is on the App Store now with about 18 active users, which is great because they're helping me collect data to improve it. I also tried distributing flyers on campus a few weeks ago. I didn't get as many responses as I'd hoped, but that's fine - it's another learning opportunity. Marketing is a whole new world that I definitely underestimated!' 

What's next for the app? 

Dániel: 'Right now it only works in the Netherlands. Hungary, my home country, will come eventually, but the next big step is Germany, Austria and Switzerland - German-speaking countries with a much bigger potential audience. The challenge is that I need to rebuild the machine learning for each market, and that requires a lot of quality data. In the Netherlands, I literally had to go through trash bags at supermarkets to collect enough receipts!' 

Are you working on this full-time? 

Dániel: 'Yes, though I'm also applying for jobs - not with the most strength, to be honest! I'm having fun and learning an incredible amount. Even if this doesn't work out, everything I've learned will make the next project even better. For now, this is my focus.' 

What skills have you gained through this process? 

Dániel: 'So many! I learned Figma for design, DaVinci Resolve for video editing and marketing, how to build a complete iOS app - before this, I only really knew how to train machine learning models. The breadth of skills you need to take something from idea to App Store is way more than I expected, and that's been the most rewarding part.' 

 

‘RCT – Find Your Money’ is available now on the App Store. Dániel graduated from the Applied Data Science & AI programme with a 7.4 for his thesis project. Contact with Dániel via LinkedIn.