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Re:My Budget – free, open-source offline cross-platform budg... by jldugger on Wednesday May 15, 2019 @05:13PM (#19923828)
I use GNUCash, and despite it's substantial shortcomings, the regular flow of competition never quite hits the mark. Here's a small sample of what features I'm looking for:

1. Transaction import. OFX at a minimum, but preferably an online pull that can be automated. Many banks do support online pulls -- for example GNUcash calls out to aqbanking, with an incredibly obtuse UI, and is an area for improvement.

2. multiple accounts and currencies. I need to be able to track investments and assets. That means multiple accounts, denominated in different and possibly custom units. GNUCash allows multiple accounts and multiple currencies, but you cannot put different currencies in your own account. The work around is subaccounts per stock ticker etc., but it seems like improvements could be made here.

3. Synchronization. In my view, 'offline' is synonymous with 'disposable.' I have many years of history, and it would be unfortunate to lose it in a drive failure. I have this backed by a personal SQL server, but many people use dropbox style sync. Multiuser would be an area of improvement here.

The one thing I'm not looking for is budgeting. A ledger is basically a budget with dates per item, so why not just go directly to the ledger form? Salary, mortgage payments, rent, insurance, and streaming subscriptions are all predictable expenses, just slap em into the ledger ahead of time. Even the variable stuff like dining is a bit more predictable with a credit card.

The above should not be a knock to the many other systems, so please don't bother to try selling me on ledger-cli =)

Re:My Budget – free, open-source offline cross-platform budg... by bobblywobbles on Wednesday May 15, 2019 @05:28PM (#19923950)
Author of My Budget.

These are all good things to have, several of them are already on my roadmap (https://github.com/reZach/my-budget/wiki/FAQ#future-features).

If you'd like to offer more suggestions, please come to the slack and talk to me "zachary" there, thanks! (https://join.slack.com/t/my-budget/shared_invite/enQtNjA0NDg...)

Re:My Budget – free, open-source offline cross-platform budg... by thrownthrow on Wednesday May 15, 2019 @05:22PM (#19923902)
I use GNUcash for business too, but use git as storage/sync instead.

Also a simple fast tool with some handy little reports and graphs is http://homebank.free.fr/en/ We still use this for our personal finances.

Re:My Budget – free, open-source offline cross-platform budg... by hellofunk on Wednesday May 15, 2019 @05:45PM (#19924091)
How do you find GNUcash? I looked at it awhile back and found the UI so antiquated compared to modern tools, but I'd prefer something different than the commercial provider I'm using now.
Re:My Budget – free, open-source offline cross-platform budg... by jldugger on Wednesday May 15, 2019 @05:47PM (#19924111)
Honestly, I suspect if you changed a few icons and made the default theme more blue and less green, it'd look a lot more modern.

Edit: or maybe a cool 'dark' themed version.

Re:My Budget – free, open-source offline cross-platform budg... by cascom on Wednesday May 15, 2019 @07:56PM (#19924948)
The UI may be antiquated but it does what it needs to without any lock-in, and you have control of your data. Plus you can do you accrual based accounting which just makes so much more sense (I may pay my car insurance premium once a year, but it is a monthly expense)
Re:My Budget – free, open-source offline cross-platform budg... by shashank on Wednesday May 15, 2019 @06:01PM (#19924228)
Buxfer (https://www.buxfer.com) has almost all of what you mention: import (can be automated via API), automatic pull from banks, multiple currencies, backup to cloud (although it's not a "backup and restore", it's backup so you can have your data with you in a standard format.)

Disclosure: I'm the founder.

Re:My Budget – free, open-source offline cross-platform budg... by cfontes on Thursday May 16, 2019 @03:03AM (#19926793)
Hey I used buxfer for years when I was trying to control my finances and learn my patterns during college and first jobs.

It was great, I liked it so much that even on a super shitty exchange rate for me I became a subscriber at the time, even though I didn’t need the subs features.

I don’t use it anymore, maily because I can do it in my head now + the little tools my bank provides, but thanks man. Your service made me a better human.

Re:My Budget – free, open-source offline cross-platform budg... by shashank on Thursday May 16, 2019 @01:03PM (#19930743)
It's always immensely satisfying to hear a personal story of my work benefitting another fellow human being. Thanks for sharing!