8 ms·

This comes up on the homepage consistently about every 6 months or so. I am not sure why. Every time it does, it's obvious it has devoted fans and bitter enemi

This comes up on the homepage consistently about every 6 months or so. I am not sure why. Every time it does, it's obvious it has devoted fans and bitter enemies. The biggest problem with it as far as I can tell is the requirement for manual entry. Given Europe and the UK have had Open Banking for years now, and a universe of apps automatically pulling, categorising and reporting transactions (including many incumbent banking apps) - I'm curios if this is a US-only phenomenon - why would people use decade-old software instead of the latest in banking technology? Any users from Europe or UK? Previous threads: - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31219754 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31219754 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20109545 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20109545 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23237445 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23237445

tommyage 4y ago
I have a fully working setup. In order to be useful for my personal budget management though I need some program to scan receipts and invoices via camera or pdf, to be honest. Nonetheless. I am from germany and I successfully integrated sync with multiple bank accounts via aquafinance. I can pull down and automatically categorize transactions and even issue transfers. There are more reasons i did not fully commit yet: I have no automatic backup configured. I do not have an designated desktop-pc yet. Having all this important data on a mobile device is insecure imo. I have no _real_ usecase to apply double-checked accounting (hopefully this is the correct term). Nonetheless, it's great. If one had a tax-guy I guess it is even more beneficial.
- tommyage 4y ago
  I want to note that there are no licenses fees or paid software in use.
- Maledictus 4y ago
  What is aquafinance? Can you say which banks work for you?
  - tommyage 4y ago
    Sorry for the late reply. I missspelled the library. Probably there is also a missunderstanding due to "lost in translation". Here is the link: https://aquamaniac.de/rdm/ https://aquamaniac.de/rdm/ I integrated all my accounts of Kreissparkasse and DKB. Works flawlessly. I also tried all alternatives to connect to these institutions. I wouls recommed this setup.
NoboruWataya 4y ago
> Given Europe and the UK have had Open Banking for years now, and a universe of apps automatically pulling, categorising and reporting transactions (including many incumbent banking apps) - I'm curios if this is a US-only phenomenon - why would people use decade-old software instead of the latest in banking technology? Any users from Europe or UK? Maybe the situation is better on the continent, but from living in Ireland and the UK I don't believe this is a solved problem here. Open Banking allows third parties to connect with your bank accounts with your consent but I'm not aware of any (reputable) service that simply gives you an API into your own bank accounts. Would be happy to be corrected on that. That said, I wouldn't call the entry process entirely manual. GnuCash supports importing transactions in a broad range of formats, including OFX, QIF and CSV with user-defined rules. Yes, you still need to log into your bank/credit card/etc and download statements for import, but personally I don't mind doing that. My workflow is that I spend about half an hour every week logging my transactions in GnuCash. Sometimes I skip a week or two. Yesterday I had to enter a full month of transactions and it took me about an hour (complicated by the fact that I had lots of business expenses).
- carderne 4y ago
  Starling gives you API access to your own account. I use it to do a semi-automatic ingest into beancount.
- francis-io 4y ago
  theres some third parties that give you an API directly I believe. Firefly III lists salt edge and nordigen. https://docs.firefly-iii.org/data-importer/ https://docs.firefly-iii.org/data-importer/
- lesquivemeau 4y ago
  I live in france and my bank lets me download all (or a custom range of) my accounting history and my credit card history as either OFX, QIF or CSV. That's pretty neat and i can import it into Gnu Cash right away.
  - stakkur 4y ago
takeda 4y ago
Frankly this seem like a big deal when I first started using GnuCash after using Quicken for many years. But after a while it doesn't bother me that much. The process also is not entirely manual. The banks export their transactions in certain formats and looks like GnuCash supports all of them. So really the difference is between having Qucken log in to my bank directly vs me logging in and just downloading a file with transactions.
Karrot_Kream 4y ago
Why not import from CSVs? I use hledger and I import CSVs all the time to do my transactions. Without it, I think it would be impossible for me to stay on top of my finances. GNUCash does support CSV imports IIRC.
mcjiggerlog 4y ago
> The biggest problem with it as far as I can tell is the requirement for manual entry. Gnucash support automated importing from a whole bunch of sources like CSV and OFX/QFX. Open banking is a great initiative but I currently haven't found any product or tool that actually lets me use it that can actually successfully connect to my accounts. Also, what differentiates GnuCash from many other tools is that it is full double entry accounting, which gives far more security in terms of knowing that you are not misreporting or missing anything.
sidpatil 4y ago
> The biggest problem with it as far as I can tell is the requirement for manual entry. GnuCash isn't restricted to manual entry. It supports OFX [1], which you can set up to automatically pull transaction data from your bank. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Financial_Exchange https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Financial_Exchange
- slavoingilizov 4y ago
  I understand, but that's still somewhat manual (compared to an API and a client pulling data from it without user involvement)
  - sgt 4y ago
    For a small business, is that a bad thing? It helps to spend 2 minutes reviewing the numbers.
    - koheripbal 4y ago
      Not at all. For a small business, closing the monthly books is already a manual effort, so initiating an OFX transfer is trivial compared to everything else. More importantly, can it invoice customers via email with a template?
      - sgt 4y ago
        Apparently it cannot. But you can export to PDF and then send using an old fashioned email client.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
- thisiscorrect 4y ago
  When I tried GnuCash, I was bitten by the fact that, although it supports OFX, many OFX servers don't support it. I found in some cases the server expected the client to support QFX, Quick's extension of OFX. In other cases, these servers seemed explicitly only to support Quicken as a client, e.g. by expecting requests to their servers would be proxied through Quicken and arise form Intuit IP addresses.
isbvhodnvemrwvn 4y ago
To use these APIs in Europe you need a license, and I'm not willing to pull my banking data via third parties. Never mention the apps which want me to give them my full credentials. I would be willing to use a script which I can audit and run myself, but nobody offers that for my bank.
- anfogoat 4y ago
  I was excited when my bank first announced Open Banking; I could use it to replace my embarrassing, then Selenium based mess with something more sane. Then Open Banking went into production and I learned I need a business entity and a whole host of other bs to make use of it without relying on some third party bottom feeder. I don't know what I was thinking. This is Europe and there is very little chance a good idea won't be ruined with some sort of bureaucracy, licensing requirements, utterly vapid credentialism, or as a last resort, some other form of obtuse gatekeeping.
- slavoingilizov 4y ago
  AFAIK, none of this is true. Banks are required by law to provide open APIs with solid authentication mechanisms, apps usually access them via aggregators and never request your banking credentials.
  - acatton 4y ago
    Yes, but no. The law is PSD2, but there are so many requirements that it's impossible for a private person to access it. First of all you need to generate a certificate which needs to be signed by a financial authority. Then you use client-based certificates to connect to these APIs. [1] [1] https://support.n26.com/en-eu/security/open-banking-psd2/psd2-open-banking-for-third-party-providers https://support.n26.com/en-eu/security/open-banking-psd2/psd...
  - isbvhodnvemrwvn 4y ago
    The aggregators are third parties I mentioned. You can't easily obtain a license to use those APIs yourself, even if only to access your own data. The apps which don't have a deal with these aggregators request you to provide credentials (now fortunately most of them are defunct due to MFA)
whalesalad 4y ago
If GNU is involved it’s going to be a polarizing discussion.
- lorealpnis 4y ago
  Could you provide explanation on why GNU is polarizing?
  - chrisseaton 4y ago
    GNU are pretty hard libertarians. I think libertarianism has become a lot less fashionable during the 2010s, and many people I think started to see it as actively deranged over the last 5 years or so, with more moderate liberal ideas of free speech and responsibility to others around you being more mainstream now. GNU are also very hard on principals. Again, I think society started leaning quite a bit more pragmatic over the past 10 years. In the tech industry you can see this trend for example GCC to LLVM, LibreOffice to just using Google Docs, GPL to MIT, etc.
    - orlp 4y ago
      https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/third-party-ideas.en.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/third-party-ideas.en.html "The Free Software Movement does not endorse Libertarianism".
      - chrisseaton 4y ago
        If you write a list of philosophical ideas that are relevant to you that mentions libertarianism more than other philosophies, and you find that you have to explicitly say you don't endorse libertarianism, then that's a good indication that many people see you as a libertarian.
    - nequo 4y ago
      Interesting. GNU to me has always seemed socialist if anything. It requires sharing derived code for free. MIT by contrast lets you do whatever you want, and that seems more like the libertarian approach to me.
leonhard 4y ago
Do you have suggestions for similar software that uses the EU/UK Open Banking APIs? Would really be interested.
wdb 4y ago
Love to find some nice and well working open-source solution for categorising transactions. Each bank appears to categorise differently
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
wodenokoto 4y ago
I think this time it is because someone posted a tool for converting exports from a Singaporean bank into a format that can be read by gnu cash. There’s a karma train on HN that you can collect when a related post can be made.
toastercat 4y ago
> The biggest problem with it as far as I can tell is the requirement for manual entry. That's a problem? I'm still using YNAB Classic, and prefer manually entering my transaction data over my time using Mint years ago (which imported my accounts). IMO, it has made me more conscious of my spending.
fatcow 4y ago
There's also a heavily worked-on upgrade to the importer. Just saying the developers are users too, and want an easier time for data entry. https://github.com/Gnucash/gnucash/pull/1371 https://github.com/Gnucash/gnucash/pull/1371

tommyage 4y ago

I have a fully working setup. In order to be useful for my personal budget management though I need some program to scan receipts and invoices via camera or pdf, to be honest. Nonetheless. I am from germany and I successfully integrated sync with multiple bank accounts via aquafinance. I can pull down and automatically categorize transactions and even issue transfers. There are more reasons i did not fully commit yet: I have no automatic backup configured. I do not have an designated desktop-pc yet. Having all this important data on a mobile device is insecure imo. I have no _real_ usecase to apply double-checked accounting (hopefully this is the correct term). Nonetheless, it's great. If one had a tax-guy I guess it is even more beneficial.

tommyage 4y ago
I want to note that there are no licenses fees or paid software in use.
Maledictus 4y ago
What is aquafinance? Can you say which banks work for you?
- tommyage 4y ago
  Sorry for the late reply. I missspelled the library. Probably there is also a missunderstanding due to "lost in translation". Here is the link: https://aquamaniac.de/rdm/ https://aquamaniac.de/rdm/ I integrated all my accounts of Kreissparkasse and DKB. Works flawlessly. I also tried all alternatives to connect to these institutions. I wouls recommed this setup.

NoboruWataya 4y ago

> Given Europe and the UK have had Open Banking for years now, and a universe of apps automatically pulling, categorising and reporting transactions (including many incumbent banking apps) - I'm curios if this is a US-only phenomenon - why would people use decade-old software instead of the latest in banking technology? Any users from Europe or UK? Maybe the situation is better on the continent, but from living in Ireland and the UK I don't believe this is a solved problem here. Open Banking allows third parties to connect with your bank accounts with your consent but I'm not aware of any (reputable) service that simply gives you an API into your own bank accounts. Would be happy to be corrected on that. That said, I wouldn't call the entry process entirely manual. GnuCash supports importing transactions in a broad range of formats, including OFX, QIF and CSV with user-defined rules. Yes, you still need to log into your bank/credit card/etc and download statements for import, but personally I don't mind doing that. My workflow is that I spend about half an hour every week logging my transactions in GnuCash. Sometimes I skip a week or two. Yesterday I had to enter a full month of transactions and it took me about an hour (complicated by the fact that I had lots of business expenses).

carderne 4y ago
Starling gives you API access to your own account. I use it to do a semi-automatic ingest into beancount.
francis-io 4y ago
theres some third parties that give you an API directly I believe. Firefly III lists salt edge and nordigen. https://docs.firefly-iii.org/data-importer/ https://docs.firefly-iii.org/data-importer/
lesquivemeau 4y ago
I live in france and my bank lets me download all (or a custom range of) my accounting history and my credit card history as either OFX, QIF or CSV. That's pretty neat and i can import it into Gnu Cash right away.
- stakkur 4y ago

takeda 4y ago

Frankly this seem like a big deal when I first started using GnuCash after using Quicken for many years. But after a while it doesn't bother me that much. The process also is not entirely manual. The banks export their transactions in certain formats and looks like GnuCash supports all of them. So really the difference is between having Qucken log in to my bank directly vs me logging in and just downloading a file with transactions.

Karrot_Kream 4y ago

Why not import from CSVs? I use hledger and I import CSVs all the time to do my transactions. Without it, I think it would be impossible for me to stay on top of my finances. GNUCash does support CSV imports IIRC.

mcjiggerlog 4y ago

> The biggest problem with it as far as I can tell is the requirement for manual entry. Gnucash support automated importing from a whole bunch of sources like CSV and OFX/QFX. Open banking is a great initiative but I currently haven't found any product or tool that actually lets me use it that can actually successfully connect to my accounts. Also, what differentiates GnuCash from many other tools is that it is full double entry accounting, which gives far more security in terms of knowing that you are not misreporting or missing anything.

sidpatil 4y ago

> The biggest problem with it as far as I can tell is the requirement for manual entry. GnuCash isn't restricted to manual entry. It supports OFX [1], which you can set up to automatically pull transaction data from your bank. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Financial_Exchange https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Financial_Exchange

slavoingilizov 4y ago
I understand, but that's still somewhat manual (compared to an API and a client pulling data from it without user involvement)
- sgt 4y ago
  For a small business, is that a bad thing? It helps to spend 2 minutes reviewing the numbers.
  - koheripbal 4y ago
    Not at all. For a small business, closing the monthly books is already a manual effort, so initiating an OFX transfer is trivial compared to everything else. More importantly, can it invoice customers via email with a template?
    - sgt 4y ago
      Apparently it cannot. But you can export to PDF and then send using an old fashioned email client.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
thisiscorrect 4y ago
When I tried GnuCash, I was bitten by the fact that, although it supports OFX, many OFX servers don't support it. I found in some cases the server expected the client to support QFX, Quick's extension of OFX. In other cases, these servers seemed explicitly only to support Quicken as a client, e.g. by expecting requests to their servers would be proxied through Quicken and arise form Intuit IP addresses.

isbvhodnvemrwvn 4y ago

To use these APIs in Europe you need a license, and I'm not willing to pull my banking data via third parties. Never mention the apps which want me to give them my full credentials. I would be willing to use a script which I can audit and run myself, but nobody offers that for my bank.

anfogoat 4y ago
I was excited when my bank first announced Open Banking; I could use it to replace my embarrassing, then Selenium based mess with something more sane. Then Open Banking went into production and I learned I need a business entity and a whole host of other bs to make use of it without relying on some third party bottom feeder. I don't know what I was thinking. This is Europe and there is very little chance a good idea won't be ruined with some sort of bureaucracy, licensing requirements, utterly vapid credentialism, or as a last resort, some other form of obtuse gatekeeping.
slavoingilizov 4y ago
AFAIK, none of this is true. Banks are required by law to provide open APIs with solid authentication mechanisms, apps usually access them via aggregators and never request your banking credentials.
- acatton 4y ago
  Yes, but no. The law is PSD2, but there are so many requirements that it's impossible for a private person to access it. First of all you need to generate a certificate which needs to be signed by a financial authority. Then you use client-based certificates to connect to these APIs. [1] [1] https://support.n26.com/en-eu/security/open-banking-psd2/psd2-open-banking-for-third-party-providers https://support.n26.com/en-eu/security/open-banking-psd2/psd...
- isbvhodnvemrwvn 4y ago
  The aggregators are third parties I mentioned. You can't easily obtain a license to use those APIs yourself, even if only to access your own data. The apps which don't have a deal with these aggregators request you to provide credentials (now fortunately most of them are defunct due to MFA)

whalesalad 4y ago

If GNU is involved it’s going to be a polarizing discussion.

lorealpnis 4y ago
Could you provide explanation on why GNU is polarizing?
- chrisseaton 4y ago
  GNU are pretty hard libertarians. I think libertarianism has become a lot less fashionable during the 2010s, and many people I think started to see it as actively deranged over the last 5 years or so, with more moderate liberal ideas of free speech and responsibility to others around you being more mainstream now. GNU are also very hard on principals. Again, I think society started leaning quite a bit more pragmatic over the past 10 years. In the tech industry you can see this trend for example GCC to LLVM, LibreOffice to just using Google Docs, GPL to MIT, etc.
  - orlp 4y ago
    https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/third-party-ideas.en.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/third-party-ideas.en.html "The Free Software Movement does not endorse Libertarianism".
    - chrisseaton 4y ago
      If you write a list of philosophical ideas that are relevant to you that mentions libertarianism more than other philosophies, and you find that you have to explicitly say you don't endorse libertarianism, then that's a good indication that many people see you as a libertarian.
  - nequo 4y ago
    Interesting. GNU to me has always seemed socialist if anything. It requires sharing derived code for free. MIT by contrast lets you do whatever you want, and that seems more like the libertarian approach to me.

leonhard 4y ago

Do you have suggestions for similar software that uses the EU/UK Open Banking APIs? Would really be interested.

wdb 4y ago

Love to find some nice and well working open-source solution for categorising transactions. Each bank appears to categorise differently

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

wodenokoto 4y ago

I think this time it is because someone posted a tool for converting exports from a Singaporean bank into a format that can be read by gnu cash. There’s a karma train on HN that you can collect when a related post can be made.

toastercat 4y ago

> The biggest problem with it as far as I can tell is the requirement for manual entry. That's a problem? I'm still using YNAB Classic, and prefer manually entering my transaction data over my time using Mint years ago (which imported my accounts). IMO, it has made me more conscious of my spending.

fatcow 4y ago

There's also a heavily worked-on upgrade to the importer. Just saying the developers are users too, and want an easier time for data entry. https://github.com/Gnucash/gnucash/pull/1371 https://github.com/Gnucash/gnucash/pull/1371