Found a problem? Want to say something? We’re still new and working out some of the kinks in our site. Please let us know what you think, and if you see something that isn’t quite right. Post in the comments below and we’ll get back to you as soon as we can!
Feedback
January 22nd, 2010
31 Responses to “Feedback”
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BudgetYourTrip has tools to help you plan your travel and vacation costs and track your spending. You can also find out how much stuff costs in various locations around the world with our Travel Cost Calculator. Come check it out.
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Firstly I think this site looks great, and once it gets a lot of data in it, it has the potential to be fantastic!
A couple of things I’d like to see from what I’ve done so far:
When planning trip – I would like to plan in local currency, and have the budget auto convert to my currency – that way I don’t need to reconvert to update
Also, it would be great to interlink with the estimate costs fuction – i.e. to import the average daily cost rather than needing to enter individually.
Happy to explain further if necessary
Thanks so much for the feedback Claire! We’re actually working on both of your ideas.
Currently, when “tracking your trip” you can enter data with either your local or home currency. We plan to allow this in the near future for “planning your trip” also.
Your idea for interlinking the estimate costs section to the planning section is great, and something we are actually planning to do. As our amount of data grows, this will become easier and more relevant.
When we have more data, you will also be able to search costs by trip expense (budget, mid-range, luxury), trip type (business or personal), and number of travelers.
Keep the suggestions coming! And please let us know if you find any glitches or have any complaints. We’re a team of two, but we’re working hard to make this site useful for everyone.
That’s exactly the website i’m looking for! Here are some things if can be improved:
1. “save as” button: .xls or .pdf file
2. “private link” button: especially if i want to keep my budget plan not in public to others but just few people I choose, who can access the page by the unique link.
Thanks for your great job!
Can’t seem to add anything to the budget or do much of anything. It keeps saying, “There are no activities planned with selected criteria.”
Richard, we believe that we have fixed a bug that was causing your problem. Please try it out now. Thanks for letting us know!
Hi Richard,
I’m looking into what your problem might be. Sorry for the inconvenience. We’re still working on making the website as easy to use as possible. We’ll be upgrading the website a lot over the next few weeks.
Several quick things jump to mind:
1) First and foremost, this site requires javascript. Javascript must be enabled before you use the website.
2) Make sure all the fields are filled in before you add the expense.
3) To fill in a location, it must be a city, and it must be selected from the dropdown autofill list or the map (we’re working on making this more user friendly in the future).
4) Confirm that both currency fields have numbers in them. You can swap between your home currency and the local currency with the arrows. Once you hover over the “Add” tab it should convert automatically.
If you’re still having problems could you send me a specific email outlining the problems at info[at]budgetyourtrip[dot]com. Specifically I need to know which form you’re using to add expenses (the bulk or quick upload forms).
Thanks!
Thanks April for the feedback! We’re working on creating a downloadable spreadsheet for budget tracking to allow easier uploading to the website. That is a plan for the future. Having the ability to download spreadsheets of your own information is a great idea, too!
You actually can make your trip data private. When you create a trip select “private” instead of “public” from the “Make a trip public?” dropdown. Your tracked expenses will still be used in the “estimate costs” calculations but nobody else can view your trip specifically without logging into your account. Having a “private” link though is a great idea, we’ll look into that!
Hi,
So uber excited about this site, have already shared with a few friends.
Unfortunately, when trying to log in or create a trip i get the following error message:
Warning: Cannot modify header information – headers already sent by (output started at /homepages/12/d310477359/htdocs/include/tripDAO.php:173) in /homepages/12/d310477359/htdocs/docreatetrip.php on line 17
Cheers!
rebecca
Thanks for sharing the website!
I’m looking into your problem now and will get back to you shortly.
Couple of comments:
- When adding expenses, shouldn’t the date month default to the date month for the beginning of the trip? Every time I enter an expense I have to tab over from Feb to Sept when the trip is planned.
- Once expenses are added, the only option is to delete them, why no edit? Its a pain to delete & re-enter with updated info.
- I was adding an expense for Avignon, and the first option “avignon region of france” was not selectable for some reason, so I just picked some other random location w/ similar name
Otherwise this site & idea have promise.
Thanks Treven for your comments! We’re working on each of those items. Check back in a couple of days and hopefully we’ll have addressed them. If you notice anything else, or have any suggestions definitely pass them along!
I agree with treven. An option to edit an expense would be very helpful and time saving.
Also, for some reason I am not able to sway currencies when adding an expense in the “Plan your Trip” tab. Not sure if I am doing something wrong, though I was not able to fix this. Any help on this would be great.
Overall I think this idea is brilliant and I am sure it would grow really fast.Cheers.
**I meant – I am not able to switch currencies when adding an expense in the “Plan your Trip” tab.
Hi KayB! We’re working on making the website easier and more convenient to use. Can you tell me which country you’re trying to enter expenses from. What two currencies are you trying to swap? A couple of our currencies have been out of date creating this problem. We’re working on fixing it.
Thanks!
Laurie
Hi Laurie,
Thanks for the quick reply. The 2 currencies I was looking for my current trip to Rajasthan, India were
1. Rupees (as the default currency which I have already set) and
2. US Dollars($)
Having trouble inputting the correct dates. While I found the correct format after inputting dates correctly once, I inputted the dates for an activity; however, the dates did not come out correctly but placed them instead as random dates back in the late 1960′s and early 70′s.
Hi Robert,
Are you getting the popup calender? This requires javascript to be enabled on your browser. Also, which browser are you using? We’re looking into this. Thanks!
What appears to me to be a significant annoyance in an otherwise well designed website is the fact that the calendar does not automatically jump to the period in which you have planned your trip.
In my case I’m planning a trip during the end of the summer. When I started the trip I entered the dates I wanted to travel. Now when I add an expense, the default date should be within the time period of the trip, not today’s date in February
Hi Magnus,
We’re aware of this problem. I’ve actually just fixed it, and the new code will go live tonight. If you check back tomorrow you should find the problem resolved.
From an SEO perspective, you might want to hide the params in the url when you land on a given city’s page
We’re working on it. Thanks for the feedback!
Just a small correction: when you are displaying yen, it shouldn’t display as ￥2,000.00, only ￥2000. No need for those two decimals!
Good idea! We’ll add that to the list.
Neat idea. Maybe at some point when you have more data we could do a mashup with our site http://www.cost2drive.com.
Jim
Cost2Go.com
Hey –
Just trying this out, seems cool. A couple of notes:
I’m planning a roughly 3 1/2 week trip, where I don’t expect to spend money every day. In budgeting, I’ve entered my airfare and anticipated expenses. The ‘average daily expenditure’ calculated, though, seems to be based only on the # of dates that I entered anticipated expenses … even though it should be calculated based on the length of the trip. So, spending $100 on one day out of a week-long trip (while spending nothing on the six other days of that week) yields a $100/day average expenditure, rather than $14.28.
Also, I’m going on a volunteer trip where I’m going to need to purchase supplies ahead of the trip. Right now, I’ve entered those expenditures as purchases made on the day the trip begins … but it would be awesome if there was a way to enter an anticipated expenditure without a date. Just a general “$100″ camping supplies, or something.
It would also be really cool if you could somehow track what purchases had already been paid for (like, checking off airfare purchased, that sort of thing) or comparing your budget to a fundraising effort.
This all being said, I think the concept is cool and I’m enjoying tinkering around with it. It’s also very possible that some of the things I mentioned can be done, just I haven’t discovered how to, yet! If that’s the case, please feel free to let me know, anyone!
Best, whit
whitney.woodward@gmail.com
Thanks Whitney! Those are some great suggestions.
We originally planned to only calculate the daily average for those days which you have actually spent money on. This was intentional, but lately we have been thinking about reworking that. The benefit is that if your trip goes longer than planned, or shorter, then you still get an accurate average. But the downside is that if there are days in the middle, those don’t get counted in the average. For now you could enter an expense with $0 for that day and it will adjust the average accordingly.
As for adding extra supplies… that’s a great idea. We’ll add that to our todo list.
You can actually check off activities as having been paid for, but only once the date for that activity has passed. When that happens, you will see a checkmark next to the activity. Clicking it will copy it over to your list of actual expenses.
I hope that helps! Thanks for your feedback. Please let us know if you think of anything else.
Great tool and I am happy to input costs, but I have a suggestion (or actually two)
You should include a category for health care. Many people end up having to visit hospitals, clinics, doctors and dentists while on the road and it is always good to know that you can expect in terms of costs.
Second I see you are already working on separate categories based on more data such as luxury, budget, business. Can I also suggest family?
Thanks and keep up the hard work and I will do my best to continue to contribute data for you!
Thanks for the feedback Kristy! I really like your suggestion for a health care category and will add it shortly. Regarding a “family” category, we actually break trip types into “business” and “personal” (which would include family trips). Trip expenses are “budget”, “mid-range”, and “luxury”. You can currently search for costs by budget type, and eventually you will be able to search by trip type as well. We also plan to include group size in the search as data becomes available. This would include “solo travelers”, “couples” and “groups.” Thanks again for the feedback!
Laurie
Thanks Laurie~
Keep up the awesome work!
Kristy
I’d like to see an option for cruises. I’d rather put in the total cost of the cruise rather than break it down by day. There’s no option for at sea days either, so when I have two of them on my trip, two cities look like they get extra days.
I’d also like to see an option for travel insurance. I put it under health care, but it covers everything, so that isn’t totally accurate.
Also, it’d be nice to see the travel costs shown differently than the location – if it showed cost to get from A to B, then return costs from B to A instead of how I had to do it now, which was set just the destination city. You wouldn’t need a box for number of days either.
Another thing I noticed, is if I put in two days at something, it didn’t seem to double the per day cost. So if my daily cost was $100 but I put in two days, it would still show on my itinerary as $100.
I love the idea of this site and I can’t wait to use it more! I hope my data helps.
Thanks for the suggestions!
- We’ll look into adding more options for cruisers and other all inclusive tours.
- Your travel insurance suggestion is great and I will add the category shortly.
- We’ve been looking into different ways to break down transportation costs and will consider these suggestions as we update the website.
- Regarding the last comment, if you enter $100 and 2 days, that is $100 per day, not $100 total. I believe the “daily cost” you mention is the daily average cost, which would in your example remain $100 a day. The total expenditure should increase by $200. Does that clear things up?
Thanks!
Laurie