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The biggest hurdle for me with these tools is CSV import - banks are so crappy with them. If only we had a universal banking API system that all these tools cou

The biggest hurdle for me with these tools is CSV import - banks are so crappy with them. If only we had a universal banking API system that all these tools could tap into. "Challenger" banks like Monzo and N26 and so on could unite behind a form of OAuth for banks that would kick ass.

P4wl0w 6y ago
If N26 is an important part of this I will not use it. They have a track record of handling security in a way that would cause nightmares for me if I had an account there. Edit: We could solve the CSV import/export issues with templates for each bank until there is a usable standard maybe.
Gasp0de 6y ago
I don't know about other areas, but in Europe there is such a standard (called FinTS) and there are libraries for every language. I actually once wrote a python tool that did something similar to this app.
- breakingcups 6y ago
  I thought that was Germany-only?
xupybd 6y ago
And an open standard for digital receipts. If I could get a record of what I purchased at the store it would be amazing.
os7borne 6y ago
I'm guessing the reason these universal API's don't exist is because there would be no business model and hence no billion dollar companies. However, Europe's PSD2 regulation was essentially launched to establish these open API's for banking
- cube00 6y ago
  I watched a bank CEO claim the security of their customer's data was the reason it was tightly controlled and API access was only available to their trusted partners for the purposes of running credit checks and other things that make the bank's own life easier. They also followed that up with a spiel about how open to competition they are.
mjs33 6y ago
So OFX? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Financial_Exchange https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Financial_Exchange
- quickthrower2 6y ago
  Yep OFX imports to YNAB classic work fine for me. QIF too and indeed CSV. Whatever code they use to import is pretty robust I guess.
inoda 6y ago
I feel ya. I wrote a script to reformat my bank's CSV export to make it easier to work with for OnTrack [0]. I imagine it wouldn't take too much work to write a script that reformats and combines multiple sources. 0: https://github.com/inoda/ontrack/blob/master/lib/csv_helper.rb https://github.com/inoda/ontrack/blob/master/lib/csv_helper....
reubano 6y ago
You may find https://github.com/reubano/csv2ofx https://github.com/reubano/csv2ofx useful. It coverts csv files to qif and ofx. It has built in support for numerous banks, and can be easily customized to parse unsupported csv formats.

P4wl0w 6y ago

If N26 is an important part of this I will not use it. They have a track record of handling security in a way that would cause nightmares for me if I had an account there. Edit: We could solve the CSV import/export issues with templates for each bank until there is a usable standard maybe.

Gasp0de 6y ago

I don't know about other areas, but in Europe there is such a standard (called FinTS) and there are libraries for every language. I actually once wrote a python tool that did something similar to this app.

breakingcups 6y ago
I thought that was Germany-only?

xupybd 6y ago

And an open standard for digital receipts. If I could get a record of what I purchased at the store it would be amazing.

os7borne 6y ago

I'm guessing the reason these universal API's don't exist is because there would be no business model and hence no billion dollar companies. However, Europe's PSD2 regulation was essentially launched to establish these open API's for banking

cube00 6y ago
I watched a bank CEO claim the security of their customer's data was the reason it was tightly controlled and API access was only available to their trusted partners for the purposes of running credit checks and other things that make the bank's own life easier. They also followed that up with a spiel about how open to competition they are.

mjs33 6y ago

So OFX? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Financial_Exchange https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Financial_Exchange

quickthrower2 6y ago
Yep OFX imports to YNAB classic work fine for me. QIF too and indeed CSV. Whatever code they use to import is pretty robust I guess.

inoda 6y ago

I feel ya. I wrote a script to reformat my bank's CSV export to make it easier to work with for OnTrack [0]. I imagine it wouldn't take too much work to write a script that reformats and combines multiple sources. 0: https://github.com/inoda/ontrack/blob/master/lib/csv_helper.rb https://github.com/inoda/ontrack/blob/master/lib/csv_helper....

reubano 6y ago

You may find https://github.com/reubano/csv2ofx https://github.com/reubano/csv2ofx useful. It coverts csv files to qif and ofx. It has built in support for numerous banks, and can be easily customized to parse unsupported csv formats.