It was exactly 180 days ago that PayPal froze all money in our account during our MacGraPhoto bundle sale. It was a very negative experience and would’ve been much worse if my elaborate blog post about this didn’t make it first page of reddit with more than 200 comments, first post on Hacker News and a mention on Daring Fireball. All the negative publicity that PayPal had received pushed them to promptly unfreeze my account, even without me asking again (for the 10th time).

What would have happened if they money wasn’t unfrozen?

First, it was a substantial amount. Moreover, most of it was money we had to transfer to our partners, so we would have needed to open our savings. Also, it would have put additional financial pressure on me, since I had left my day job only several months earlier and our family income was (and in fact, mostly still) lower than our expenses.

It wouldn’t have allowed us to participate in application acquisition opportunities and, most probably, we wouldn’t have acquired Blast. It could also limit our ability to pay to freelancers for graphics and other services.

In additional the limitation on my PayPal account also prohibited to use it as a personal account. I use it for personal and other business transactions from time to time. After all, PayPal is still the easiest way to transfer money between different people around the world.

As a business, we still use PayPal when it’s not possible to do otherwise. We no longer use PayPal as a payment processor on our site but FastSpring, which we now use, does offer PayPal as one of the payment methods. We still transfer money through PayPal to third parties and we sometimes get paid through PayPal when we participate in other sales channels, like other bundles.

For MacGraPhoto 2 which we plan later this year, we’ll probably go with FastSpring which allows to split the money between participants upon purchase, which will solve several problems at once – we won’t have to keep other people’s money and it will simplify accounting by reducing our gross income.

Apparent Software today is proud to announce Cashculator 1.0, a new kind of personal finance application for Mac OS X. Cashculator is a different kind of personal finance application – instead of focusing on the past and logging previous transactions, it focuses on future by forecasting your financial situation.It allows making better decisions regarding your personal finance or small business. Version 1.0 is first release of the application.

Cashculator is different from most other personal finance applications, which are usually complex, costly and focus on past performance by logging and tracking transactions that occurred on user accounts. Unlike them, Cashculator is very easy to use: No need to define your accounts and configure the application, no complex dialog boxes, no credits, debits or portfolio management. Just simple numbers: income and expenses.

Cashculator is the simplest way to manage your finances. Like a spreadsheet, Cashculator is very visual and straightforward. Built specifically for personal finance, Cashculator improves upon a spreadsheet by supporting budgeting, easy “what-if” scenarios comparisons and more.

Cashculator Benefits:

• It allows you to live in the future, not the past, by forecasting your future financial situation
• It allows you to make better decisions regarding your personal finance or your small business
• It allows you to manage your finance using a clear, simple and intuitive interface, following Mac tradition

Main Features:

• Have a high-level overview of your historic spending and income
• Cash flow prediction: do you have a surplus cashflow or are you accumulating debt?
• What-if analysis to compare alternatives: check if you can afford to purchase that gadget in several payments or you should push it until you get that salary raise
• View income, expenses and balance with easy-to-use and intuitive graphs

Language Support:
* English and French

Minimum Requirements:
* Mac OS X Version 10.5 or later
* Universal Binary for PowerPC and Intel
* 7.8 MB Hard Drive space

Pricing and Availability:
Cashculator 1.0 costs $29.95 (family license) but can be purchased for $19.95 (USD) for a limited time using a coupon available on the site. A full-featured, trial version can be downloaded.