SPEC-002

Chit Funds Application

Client: Chit Funds App

Problem

Local chit fund businesses typically run on notebooks, Excel files, WhatsApp messages, and verbal agreements. That works at small scale, but it breaks down as a group grows: contributions get hard to track, there's no real transparency for members, receipts are written by hand, beneficiary selection is prone to error, and organizers have no real audit trail if a dispute comes up.

Solution

A mobile app (built with Expo/React Native) covering the whole chit fund workflow: organizers create and manage groups, record cash collections, approve UPI payments, run auctions, and generate receipts automatically. Members log in with just their mobile number and a PIN to see their own payment history, outstanding dues, and beneficiary status, and can upload UPI payment proof themselves instead of it being tracked by hand. The backend intentionally runs on Google Apps Script and Google Sheets rather than paid cloud infrastructure, keeping it a genuinely zero-cost MVP to prove the idea before investing in heavier infrastructure.

Features

• ✓Digital collection tracking with automatic, duplicate-proof receipt generation — no more handwritten receipts
• ✓Built-in auction and beneficiary assignment, removing manual selection errors
• ✓Member self-service — payment history, outstanding dues, and receipts, without needing to ask the organizer
• ✓Multi-tenant from the ground up — supports multiple independent chit fund organizers, each with fully separated data

Tech Stack

Challenges

Building real financial software — audit trails, penalty calculations, controlled edits — on top of Google Sheets instead of a traditional database. Balances are never stored directly; every outstanding amount is calculated fresh from the full transaction history, which keeps the ledger honest but meant getting that calculation logic exactly right.

Outcome

Built and working end-to-end — collections, auctions, receipts, member self-service, and audit logging all function as designed. Currently in pilot/demo stage: not yet onboarded to a real chit fund organizer, but ready to pilot with one.