Toshl Finance Blog

The Road to 2.0: Compatibility and Sync

With the new Toshl, we have rebuilt from the ground up. We’ve learnt a lot along the way and used this knowledge when constructing the next version of Toshl. This new modern architecture will enable us to do some really nice things in v2 as well as enable us to scale a lot better in the future.

Since the changes are quite radical, both in the user facing features as well as on the back end, we needed to pay a lot of attention to compatibility. To enable everything to work seamlessly together we brought parts of the old sync system to the new one, so people with either generation of the Toshl apps can continue to sync their devices just as they have before.
 

sync compatibility

 

Web App, iOS v2

You get the new app right away and can use and sync categories, accounts and all the new stuff. Everyone’s web app will be upgraded to v2, no matter which phone app they use.
 

Android, Windows Phone, BlackBerry (BB10 Android port), iOS v1.x, older Toshl apps

Android and Windows Phone users will get the v2 of Toshl a bit later. We would love to do them all at once, but sadly it’s impossible for us to do so at this point. But don’t worry, you will still be able to use the sync as you did before, as well as use the brand new v2 Web App.
 
Here’s how it will work:
 
–     You sync your app normally just as you have before. If you don’t use the Web App, you won’t notice any changes.
 
–     The expenses that you added in the 1.x app will show up with category “unsorted” and the default financial account in the web app, since the 1.x apps only use tags. You can assign a category later in the web app if you want.
 
Example:
 
Added on Android Toshl v1.7
40 €
Tags: food, groceries
 
Shows up on Web App v2
40 €
Category: unsorted
Tags: food, groceries
Account: [the default one, most likely Cash]
 
 
–     The expenses that you added on the web app or the v2 iOS app will have the category and account displayed as a tag in the 1.x apps, but will remain as you entered it on the web app.
 
Example:
 
Added on Web App v2
30 €
Category: Home & Utilities
Tags: internet
Account: Bank of Lilliput
2 photos
 
Shows up on Android Toshl v1.7
30 €
Tags: Home & Utilities, internet, Bank of Lilliput
 
 
–     Your budgets will continue to sync normally. Only budget types that were supported in 1.x will sync to 1.x mobile devices. That means budgets for all expenses and specific tags. Budgets for categories will not be synced.
 
 
We’re sorry we can’t update all the apps at once, it doesn’t mean that we love some of the mobile platforms any less. It’s just a lot more complicated and time consuming to develop them all at once with such a major leap. The combination we chose is quite simply a good mix of a relatively large market share and simpler testing due to less device fragmentation on iOS.
 
We hope to develop the Toshl apps more in step once we return to our regular cycle of smaller and more frequent updates. We don’t have a date planned yet for Android and Windows Phone, but they will be coming. We’ll let you know once we can share more.
 
If you have any further questions regarding the compatibility, let us know and we’ll try to fill in the additional information.
Posted in Announcements, Development