Too many people leaving education are ill prepared for the financial demands that the real world places before them. Whilst traditional education goes a long way to prepare people for life after school, there is a gap where sensible money management exists.
The Flipside Money Management App is part of a money management course which gives people money-confidence. Comprising website, content management system, apps and the facility for individual students to login, the modular course seeks to educate and help students understand how to manage their finances using a number of interactive everyday real-world scenarios.
The challenge
Flipside saw the potential and value in creating an easy-to-use online tool that would help students and leavers become financially smarter. Having determined the need to create a money management course, they set about defining how it should be delivered and used.
Flipside's director, Stephen Flicker, approached Torchbearer to understand what digital tools and assets he could leverage to build such a course for students. After a short period of consultation, it was agreed that the solution would consist of the following distinct elements:
- An online student portal (website) to login and access the apps and allocated modules
- Separate web apps to deliver the interactive learning modules for the students
- A management back-end to process and manage the data, modules and subscription services
The solution
To address Flipside's needs we built the following:
- A front-end web application; built using ReactJS
- A back-end API; built using C#/.NET
Flipside's money management course is proving popular. Filling an important gap in young people's education, the web app is easy to use, interactive and accessible on any device that supports a modern browser. The course makes it easy for users to do as much or as little as they want, at their pace. In today's current economic climate, financial savvy is more important than ever. As we have progressed, we have found new ways to educate and engage our students. Moreover, as we have evolved, it has been great that we can easily edit existing content or add new modules. In developing our app with Torchbearer, we have found the experience insightful and efficient. Throughout the team have been highly responsive and easy to work with. Because of our progress thus far, we are now looking to the future and how how we can leverage our original concept for new audiences, such as pensioners and those being supported by the state.
Our take
From a personal standpoint, we think this is a fantastic idea and long overdue app to help people understand and better manage their income and debts. Working directly with the Flipside stakeholder team, the project ran to time and feedback was fast. In terms of actual development work, it was a smooth project, with few areas of complexity.
All in all, it was a great project to be involved with and one that we believe will be of enormous value to the UK community at large.
For more information about Flipside, visit their website at flipside.uk.com.
