Hi,
I would like a piece of software that automatically runs somewhere on some server rack and every day sends my cellphone a text message that indicates my credit card balance. What I want it my credit card balance just counts activity since my last statement. Thus, if my bill for August 2009, was $800 but since August 31 2009 I have charged $400 I want the text message to say "Your balance so far this month is $400."
The program will have to log into my account with my password, scrape the "this months activity" amount from the webpage and text it to me. Emailing it to me may be fine as well. There must already be code out there that does this? The program should take my credit card number and my password as an argument -- I do not want to give you that to test it out. You may have to make your own "fake" account with my credit card company to be sure your software works with their website.
## Deliverables
I suspect that the websites will change the look and feel of their website every so often. Some of these changes may break the software. If so, the code will need to be easily adaptable to these changes. One idea is that you could offer a continuing maintenance fee to keep the software up to date in the event that my credit card company changes the look and feel of the website. Another idea is that you could offer a guarantee that another coder would be willing to adapt to a website change for a certain fee.
My main interest is keeping daily track of my spending to keep me on a budget. I am not sure I would want to pay a lot of money for this because it might not save me very much. However, with time, I suspect many people may want this and therefore I might be interested in selling it as a second phase of work. I am happy to share the proceeds of any such sales in return for a lower overall cost of writing the software.
I suspect software like this already exists, after my search for this software I just don't know how to find it. Fine with me if you use it. If so, you can charge something like a finders fee rather than a software development cost and underbid the competition.
I have an interest in verifying that the code will not disclose my credit card number / password to others. For this reason, I wish to inspect the source code before paying for it. You may not like to send me the source code before I pay so, perhaps we can involve a third party to test the code and certify it is safe for me. This clause is not a part of the legal requirements. The precise legal version of this that expresses the interested in this clause will need to be agreed upon later, if possible. If not, you'll need to somehow convince me technically that this is not an issue.