Re:Show HN: ExpenseOwl – simple and beautiful self-hostedexp...
by TechDebtDevin on Friday February 07, 2025 @11:45PM
(#42980456)
Easier said then done. Most softwares Ive used that attempted this did so poorly. However it is getting better.
Re:Show HN: ExpenseOwl – simple and beautiful self-hostedexp...
by aperrien on Saturday February 08, 2025 @02:46AM
(#42981257)
Whatever happened to the Quick Interchange Format(.qif)? It used to be common for all banks to support that. A modern variant today could just be a XML or JSON export, and I hardly see that either.
Re:Show HN: ExpenseOwl – simple and beautiful self-hostedexp...
by junon on Saturday February 08, 2025 @03:07AM
(#42981341)
Most banks don't have an API, and statements are (often) lagged, sometimes even by a week or a month depending on how archaic the systems are.
Re:Show HN: ExpenseOwl – simple and beautiful self-hostedexp...
by satvikpendem on Saturday February 08, 2025 @03:37AM
(#42981477)
Lots of providers exist for bank information, Plaid is one of them. That's what many of these auto import personal finance softwares use.
Re:Show HN: ExpenseOwl – simple and beautiful self-hostedexp...
by junon on Saturday February 08, 2025 @05:17AM
(#42981939)
Having used Plaid, it is essentially web scraping as a service. It's an API built on top of very questionable access. It itself is not a formal API provided to you by the bank.
Re:Show HN: ExpenseOwl – simple and beautiful self-hostedexp...
by satvikpendem on Saturday February 08, 2025 @05:19AM
(#42981949)
Yes it is (I never said it wasn't), but it works. They are working with banks to modernize their APIs as well.
Re:Show HN: ExpenseOwl – simple and beautiful self-hostedexp...
by jellyfishbeaver on Saturday February 08, 2025 @09:37AM
(#42983200)
The Canadian government has apparently introduced a framework for sharing your banking data securely with third parties (budgeting apps, financial products) in an effort to eliminate this shady screen scraping and credential sharing that a lot of these kind of apps do. Hoping they actually follow through...
https://www.canada.ca/en/financial-consumer-agency/services/...
Re:Show HN: ExpenseOwl – simple and beautiful self-hostedexp...
by hexnuts on Sunday February 09, 2025 @03:47AM
(#42989378)
Actual Finance (similar open source software) does this via SimpleFIN Bridge. It even supported connecting a credit card option that rocket money doesn't.
Re:Show HN: ExpenseOwl – simple and beautiful self-hostedexp...
by RealStickman_ on Monday February 10, 2025 @11:39AM
(#43002213)
I did that for a while, but I always spent a lot of time retracing my steps to properly label most transactions.
I think I'll try the tool listed here, if it is simple enough to manually enter transactions I can do that every evening and get better data in the end than a monthly review.
Re:Show HN: ExpenseOwl – simple and beautiful self-hostedexp...
by import-base64 on Monday February 10, 2025 @03:51PM
(#43005004)
i agree, intention behind this project is - select a category add cost and done! no tags, no wallets, no budgets
I don’t use an expense tracking tool - apologies if my question may is missing context.