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I guess it's not popular or all that well-known anymore, but for quite a while there's been a Quicken-led banking interface for some banks. Known as OFX or Dire

I guess it's not popular or all that well-known anymore, but for quite a while there's been a Quicken-led banking interface for some banks. Known as OFX or Direct Connect, it provides at least one-way (download) access to banking transactions. I think there's a way to upload as well but have never used it nor had a bank that supports it for upload. My bank has a separate enrollment - it was free - offering download-only access to my transactions. I haven't used it in awhile (just too much on my plate) but it worked well as recently as 2016. https://github.com/aqbanking/aqbanking https://github.com/aqbanking/aqbanking is one open implementation for the interface.

mindslight 8y ago
^ This. It's often called "Quicken Direct Connect" (NOT "web connect", that's a bastardization trying to push the login flow through the proprietary web interface), and often has to be specifically enabled for your account (Bank of Slum-merica is the only place I've heard charging for the functionality though). Check say https://ofx-prod-filist.intuit.com/qb2600/data/fidir.txt https://ofx-prod-filist.intuit.com/qb2600/data/fidir.txt to see if your bank is listed (that contains both direct and web connect banks, you'll figure out what the flags mean). Setup a cron or human cron to pull and save the raw OFX (QFX) query every day/week/month, and then run whatever reports/analytics you want from that. This way you'll have history to use with whatever program/scripts you move to, and can also straightforwardly integrate legacy banks that make you use the web interface (just at a much lower polling rate).
- burkemw3 8y ago
  How does web connect actually work? I've never found any description of the method
  - mindslight 8y ago
    I don't exactly know. But I'm under the impression that it performs the standard website login flow via headless browsing, then uses the website's "download transactions as OFX" functionality. So similar problems as "screen scraping" but less error prone because if it successfully downloads the data, it is in a well-defined format.
__jal 8y ago
I used OFX for quite a while. Had a home-grown pile of scripts that did my budgeting/record keeping, and even reverse-engineered their payment submission system, and had nearly everything semi-automated to my personal satisfaction for a while. And then they revamped everything, sprinkled security (and "security") pixie-dust around, and I gave up after locking myself out repeatedly trying to jump through the new hoops.

mindslight 8y ago

^ This. It's often called "Quicken Direct Connect" (NOT "web connect", that's a bastardization trying to push the login flow through the proprietary web interface), and often has to be specifically enabled for your account (Bank of Slum-merica is the only place I've heard charging for the functionality though). Check say https://ofx-prod-filist.intuit.com/qb2600/data/fidir.txt https://ofx-prod-filist.intuit.com/qb2600/data/fidir.txt to see if your bank is listed (that contains both direct and web connect banks, you'll figure out what the flags mean). Setup a cron or human cron to pull and save the raw OFX (QFX) query every day/week/month, and then run whatever reports/analytics you want from that. This way you'll have history to use with whatever program/scripts you move to, and can also straightforwardly integrate legacy banks that make you use the web interface (just at a much lower polling rate).

burkemw3 8y ago
How does web connect actually work? I've never found any description of the method
- mindslight 8y ago
  I don't exactly know. But I'm under the impression that it performs the standard website login flow via headless browsing, then uses the website's "download transactions as OFX" functionality. So similar problems as "screen scraping" but less error prone because if it successfully downloads the data, it is in a well-defined format.

__jal 8y ago

I used OFX for quite a while. Had a home-grown pile of scripts that did my budgeting/record keeping, and even reverse-engineered their payment submission system, and had nearly everything semi-automated to my personal satisfaction for a while. And then they revamped everything, sprinkled security (and "security") pixie-dust around, and I gave up after locking myself out repeatedly trying to jump through the new hoops.