My daughter Michelle is away at boarding school, so she sometimes buys items for which we’ve agreed to reimburse her. Bomad is perfect for this. Kids can just press the + button in their Bomad and claim however much they want. This is sent to the parents for approval. They can even take a photo of the receipt as proof.

As an app developer, I’m always eager to see people use what I’ve made. So I was a bit disappointed when I saw my wife and daughter handle this on WhatsApp instead of Bomad. Michelle paid for some sunblock herself, then sent the proof to her mom on WhatsApp:

She then just added the amount back in Bomad:

What they should have done is this: Michelle claims the item by pressing + in Bomad, and fills in the details:

And then mom (or me) approves it after getting a notification:

But hey, what can you do? I guess WhatsApp is more personal, so maybe they prefer to do it that way. It also doesn’t happen a lot, so I think they forget that it can even be done this way. I guess if the claims were more routine (like regular bus ticket, for example) it would be easier to use the app.

Anyhow, now you know how to use Bomad for claims. Please use it, it would make me happy 🙂

Advances

The problem with getting your kids to pay for something and then reimbursing them later is that they very often don’t have enough money to pay upfront. This is where advances come in. I’ve recently made some changes to this feature that make it much easier to use.

Let’s take the example of you sponsoring an outing to the mall. You agree to pay for transport and lunch, so you give your daughter $50. You set it up in Bomad like this:

If you don’t see the option to create a new loan or advance, you might need to update the app. To do this, go to settings and choose update. You may need to wait a few seconds for the update button to appear.

Back to our example. Later that evening you review the spending your daughter recorded in Bomad:

She’s attached receipts for a few of the items (indicated by the paperclip), which you review. Perhaps you decide that the donut is excessive - that’s what her allowance is for! So you approve everything except that:

The balance on the account is now $11, which is how much she owes you. But she can only give you $8 back in change because of the $3 donut. She transfers some money from another Bomad account to cover that:

So now the loan account balance is at zero and you can close it. It works pretty much the same if you had transferred $50 to her debit card, except that she’d have to transfer the change back to you, or keep it and repay the change amount from another Bomad account.

I think this is a great way to teach kids to be responsible with money. They know that they have to look after it and that they will be held accountable for bringing back the correct change. 

I’m personally looking forward to using this feature with my daughter when she comes home for the holidays next weekend. I’d love to hear your experiences with it as well - please drop me a quick note.