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The reason I continue to use Quicken rather than writing my own tool that I'm sure doesn't sell my data is that it allows me to relatively painlessly sync trans

The reason I continue to use Quicken rather than writing my own tool that I'm sure doesn't sell my data is that it allows me to relatively painlessly sync transactions from my bank. This is largely my bank's fault for not exposing some kind of API I can hook into, but nonetheless any budgeting app that doesn't sync transactions from most financial institutions is not a "solution". Just based on the single screenshot in the readme, it seems like the workflow needs work too. The information density in the screenshot looks painfully low to me.

Canadauni 7y ago
Have you looked into the plaid[0] free(test) tier? They hook into a bunch of different banks and the free tier exposes balance and transaction history. [0]:https://plaid.com/ https://plaid.com/
- lprd 7y ago
  Do you know if they work with EU banks? I'm in France and this looks really interesting...
  - bobblywobbles 7y ago
    Author of My Budget here. Can you send me a message on the Slack channel (https://join.slack.com/t/my-budget/shared_invite/enQtNjA0NDg1MTI2MzI2LTkxZmI0M2YzMGQ2YzlkMDc1YzkxMjU1M2EyZmI4MjlkYTY3MzgwNzVhMmY2MzJhNmM4OGE0Njc0NDZiMDVkY2U https://join.slack.com/t/my-budget/shared_invite/enQtNjA0NDg...) "zachary" and we can talk about more details.
- vlucas 7y ago
  If you have a free Plaid account, you might check out BudgetSheet: https://www.budgetsheet.net https://www.budgetsheet.net It imports live bank transactions into a Google Sheet for you to use however you want.
  - techsupporter 7y ago
    I really wish I could find a service that would do this for something other than Google Sheets (or like Tiller using a Google login even though they can write to Microsoft's OneDrive...for some reason). The last place I want to store a bunch of sensitive financial information is Mint. The second last is Google. To that end, I looked into using Plaid's API to craft my own but it's a bit daunting, especially with a couple of my financial institutions continually failing and having to be reauthenticated, so I don't envy these developers their tasks.
    - vlucas 7y ago
      Where else would you want this imported? What other products do you use that you would wank your bank transactions in that you trust?
- bobblywobbles 7y ago
  Their free tier is only 100 "imports". After that, you are looking to pay $500 USD/mo. for unlimited - which simply isn't an option for a free app.
procinct 7y ago
How does Quicken sync transactions without a bank API? Do you have to give it your bank credentials so it can scrape the site?
- bobblywobbles 7y ago
  Yes, that is one of the ways Quicken scrapes information. The "bank API" is actually OFX, it's a protocol banks use to send each other data. I'm currently working on trying to get OFX support in My Budget. (I'm the author of the Github project).
  - procinct 7y ago
    It seems insane that people would be okay with their bank credentials being stored in plaintext. I signed up for a budgeting service that claimed real time transaction sync and immediately unsubscribed when I realised it was planning to do so by scraping.
    - chiph 7y ago
      People give their passwords to Mint, and I totally don't understand that.
    - acct1771 7y ago
      The banks in the US won't cooperate, according to everyone I've heard stories from who are trying to break into, or have broken into, this space.
      - procinct 7y ago
        That’s still not a good reason to give your bank credentials and allow them to be stored in plain text. At that point if it’s your only option you just don’t do it.
    - 0xffff2 7y ago
      Quicken at least claims to store the credentials locally and encrypted. How well it does this I don't know of course, but I consider it infinitely better than any online service, which is why I still use it despite the fact that it manages the impressive feat of being so slow that a web-based service would probably be faster in terms of UI performance.
swsieber 7y ago
TillerHQ does syncing with a google spreadsheet.
bobblywobbles 7y ago
Author of My Budget. I'm currently working to get OFX supported, which is the "automatic API" that can scrape your transactions. Quicken uses this, falling back on screen scraping in case OFX isn't supported. There are a number of features that I'd still like to add (documented here: https://github.com/reZach/my-budget/wiki/FAQ#future-features https://github.com/reZach/my-budget/wiki/FAQ#future-features). Are there specific things you'd like to see that I can put on my roadmap?
- indemnity 7y ago
  OFX is a painful spec; hard to know what is and is not used by various banks. I spent a bit of time writing a simple streaming OFXv1 (SGML) parser in Rust, but I'm too ashamed to open-source it. The idea behind it was you read the OFX file byte by byte, using Nom to parse out tokens, and emit events when you hit SGML tags and element content (SAX-parser style). Then you have something over the top of that that accumulates state until it has a complete OFX data element, and then emits that. Advantage: Very low memory usage. Disadvantage: Probably overkill, since OFX files probably wouldn't be megabytes or gigabytes. It works for my bank feed, but who knows how many other banks! If you have any ideas on how to support this well in a non-hacky way that doesn't involve relying on a scripting language (all other existing implementations seem to be some form of scripting language :().
  - tekknolagi 7y ago
    Please open source it! I'm sure people would be delighted to contribute once you do.
  - kibibyte 7y ago
    > Probably overkill, since OFX files probably wouldn't be megabytes or gigabytes. Maybe not gigabytes, but if you wanted to pull transaction-level data from a relatively active brokerage account, you could end up with an OFX file of a couple of megabytes. I'm sure someone might appreciate the efficiency.
- 0xffff2 7y ago
  The one specific thing that stands out to me besides sync support is user-interface optimization. In Quicken I can see and edit my entire monthly budget on a single page, including adding/removing categories, seeing current spending/income for all categories, and editing spending/income targets. The screenshot in the readme prioritizes things I rarely care about (editing categories, individual transactions) instead of the things that I do care about (big picture view of my current/planned budget).
jeroenhd 7y ago
Depending on your bank you might be able to import transactions with the tool I use for my finances (https://firefly-iii.org/ https://firefly-iii.org/): it can import using the Spectre/Salt Edge API or through CSV files.
_bxg1 7y ago
There's a hack I worked out years ago where you set up a dummy email account and have your bank notify it by email every time there's a transaction over $0.01. Do a little HTML crawling and you've got a transactions database.
bobblywobbles 7y ago
There is now a wiki page on how to use the app. There is a link in the "Help" menu while using My Budget that takes you to this page: https://github.com/reZach/my-budget/wiki/New-user's-guide https://github.com/reZach/my-budget/wiki/New-user's-guide.

Canadauni 7y ago

Have you looked into the plaid[0] free(test) tier? They hook into a bunch of different banks and the free tier exposes balance and transaction history. [0]:https://plaid.com/ https://plaid.com/

lprd 7y ago
Do you know if they work with EU banks? I'm in France and this looks really interesting...
- bobblywobbles 7y ago
  Author of My Budget here. Can you send me a message on the Slack channel (https://join.slack.com/t/my-budget/shared_invite/enQtNjA0NDg1MTI2MzI2LTkxZmI0M2YzMGQ2YzlkMDc1YzkxMjU1M2EyZmI4MjlkYTY3MzgwNzVhMmY2MzJhNmM4OGE0Njc0NDZiMDVkY2U https://join.slack.com/t/my-budget/shared_invite/enQtNjA0NDg...) "zachary" and we can talk about more details.
vlucas 7y ago
If you have a free Plaid account, you might check out BudgetSheet: https://www.budgetsheet.net https://www.budgetsheet.net It imports live bank transactions into a Google Sheet for you to use however you want.
- techsupporter 7y ago
  I really wish I could find a service that would do this for something other than Google Sheets (or like Tiller using a Google login even though they can write to Microsoft's OneDrive...for some reason). The last place I want to store a bunch of sensitive financial information is Mint. The second last is Google. To that end, I looked into using Plaid's API to craft my own but it's a bit daunting, especially with a couple of my financial institutions continually failing and having to be reauthenticated, so I don't envy these developers their tasks.
  - vlucas 7y ago
    Where else would you want this imported? What other products do you use that you would wank your bank transactions in that you trust?
bobblywobbles 7y ago
Their free tier is only 100 "imports". After that, you are looking to pay $500 USD/mo. for unlimited - which simply isn't an option for a free app.

procinct 7y ago

How does Quicken sync transactions without a bank API? Do you have to give it your bank credentials so it can scrape the site?

bobblywobbles 7y ago
Yes, that is one of the ways Quicken scrapes information. The "bank API" is actually OFX, it's a protocol banks use to send each other data. I'm currently working on trying to get OFX support in My Budget. (I'm the author of the Github project).
- procinct 7y ago
  It seems insane that people would be okay with their bank credentials being stored in plaintext. I signed up for a budgeting service that claimed real time transaction sync and immediately unsubscribed when I realised it was planning to do so by scraping.
  - chiph 7y ago
    People give their passwords to Mint, and I totally don't understand that.
  - acct1771 7y ago
    The banks in the US won't cooperate, according to everyone I've heard stories from who are trying to break into, or have broken into, this space.
    - procinct 7y ago
      That’s still not a good reason to give your bank credentials and allow them to be stored in plain text. At that point if it’s your only option you just don’t do it.
  - 0xffff2 7y ago
    Quicken at least claims to store the credentials locally and encrypted. How well it does this I don't know of course, but I consider it infinitely better than any online service, which is why I still use it despite the fact that it manages the impressive feat of being so slow that a web-based service would probably be faster in terms of UI performance.

swsieber 7y ago

TillerHQ does syncing with a google spreadsheet.

bobblywobbles 7y ago

Author of My Budget. I'm currently working to get OFX supported, which is the "automatic API" that can scrape your transactions. Quicken uses this, falling back on screen scraping in case OFX isn't supported. There are a number of features that I'd still like to add (documented here: https://github.com/reZach/my-budget/wiki/FAQ#future-features https://github.com/reZach/my-budget/wiki/FAQ#future-features). Are there specific things you'd like to see that I can put on my roadmap?

indemnity 7y ago
OFX is a painful spec; hard to know what is and is not used by various banks. I spent a bit of time writing a simple streaming OFXv1 (SGML) parser in Rust, but I'm too ashamed to open-source it. The idea behind it was you read the OFX file byte by byte, using Nom to parse out tokens, and emit events when you hit SGML tags and element content (SAX-parser style). Then you have something over the top of that that accumulates state until it has a complete OFX data element, and then emits that. Advantage: Very low memory usage. Disadvantage: Probably overkill, since OFX files probably wouldn't be megabytes or gigabytes. It works for my bank feed, but who knows how many other banks! If you have any ideas on how to support this well in a non-hacky way that doesn't involve relying on a scripting language (all other existing implementations seem to be some form of scripting language :().
- tekknolagi 7y ago
  Please open source it! I'm sure people would be delighted to contribute once you do.
- kibibyte 7y ago
  > Probably overkill, since OFX files probably wouldn't be megabytes or gigabytes. Maybe not gigabytes, but if you wanted to pull transaction-level data from a relatively active brokerage account, you could end up with an OFX file of a couple of megabytes. I'm sure someone might appreciate the efficiency.
0xffff2 7y ago
The one specific thing that stands out to me besides sync support is user-interface optimization. In Quicken I can see and edit my entire monthly budget on a single page, including adding/removing categories, seeing current spending/income for all categories, and editing spending/income targets. The screenshot in the readme prioritizes things I rarely care about (editing categories, individual transactions) instead of the things that I do care about (big picture view of my current/planned budget).

jeroenhd 7y ago

Depending on your bank you might be able to import transactions with the tool I use for my finances (https://firefly-iii.org/ https://firefly-iii.org/): it can import using the Spectre/Salt Edge API or through CSV files.

_bxg1 7y ago

There's a hack I worked out years ago where you set up a dummy email account and have your bank notify it by email every time there's a transaction over $0.01. Do a little HTML crawling and you've got a transactions database.

bobblywobbles 7y ago

There is now a wiki page on how to use the app. There is a link in the "Help" menu while using My Budget that takes you to this page: https://github.com/reZach/my-budget/wiki/New-user's-guide https://github.com/reZach/my-budget/wiki/New-user's-guide.