We all know how daunting it is to manage money. Especially when it comes to running your own business. Large enterprises and conglomerates usually have a cash flow big enough to keep the lights on, but for people making a living running small shops or other businesses, improper money management could spell the difference between sinking and staying afloat.
As challenging as it may seem, sometimes all it takes is a helping hand to learn simple solutions to common money problems.
Growing up in a family that ran a sari-sari store, Aaron Villegas, the Co-founder of ListaPH, bore witness to different financial challenges that people around him endured. When the pandemic struck, he saw several businesses close and many parents struggle to provide for their children.
Knowing the struggle firsthand, Aaron decided to help people with small businesses. He traveled to provinces and tried different ideas to help MSMEs grow. He soon realized that the best way to help them thrive in this new environment was to provide a tech platform easier to use than traditional methods of bookkeeping.
“Helping Philippine MSMEs was an advocacy close to my heart. Growing up, I saw the challenges my family endured in running a sari-sari store (community store).” said Aaron. As more and more of our daily life moves into the digital space, Aaron believes that managing finances can also become more accessible and simpler through digitalization. This led him to create Lista.
Lista is an accessible and user-friendly bookkeeping app that helps small businesses track their debts, record transactions, and issue invoices. With over 1 million downloads to date, the app showed that while their initial focus was on small businesses, Aaron and his team discovered that Lista was also a hit with non-business owners in need of help with managing their personal finances.
By simplifying overwhelming topics surrounding finances, Lista helps Filipinos deal with common money problems. One such challenge is keeping track of one’s debt, locally referred to as utang. With the many responsibilities everyday Filipinos face, making good on one’s utang might often be forgotten. Lista reminds users of their debts so as not to incur more additional fees. While this service may seem simple, this notification helps users be more attentive and in control of their finances.
Alongside helping people stay on top of debts, Lista helps make budgeting and saving more convenient. With a few taps of a button, users can easily record both profits incurred and expenses shelled out. Summaries of which are available in daily, weekly, monthly, or even annual formats. For people looking to save money, the app’s Savings Challenge feature allows users to input their desired goal amounts, frequency of savings, and even a date to finish to help anyone stay on track of their savings goals.
Financial literacy helps make lives better. In this day and age, digitalization is key to greater financial inclusion and flexibility. At the end of the day, modernizing the pen-to-paper method of saving, budgeting, and other aspects of financial management is all about making the whole process less intimidating for Filipinos.
By giving people more information and control, Lista can help Filipinos gain more financial empowerment to help them run their businesses better, save faster, and enable them to enjoy better quality lives.
