I was seriously considering using Plaid API[1] to build an app that would download my transactions automatically, categorise it, and prompt me to only verify entries it classified with low-confidence. But, Plaid API at the time did not support all my bank accounts, which made the effort moot.
Another concern of mine is exporting such personal data to a 3rd party. Ideally, an open source tool that strictly runs on my laptop would be the best!
[1] - https://plaid.com
There're a lot of tools which will automatically import your transactions. HoneyMoney chooses the different way, trying to make tracking and planning a habit, promoting the idea that nobody can do this work for you.
It just tries to simplify the process and make it enjoyable.
Accounting is neither simple nor enjoyable, and a computer can easily do it for us. Why not figure out how to make the process automated but still form the habit of actively tracking one's finances?
I just learnt about PSD2. I live in Denmark. Unfortunately I don't see Danskebank to be a part of supported list on Tink.
I will look into how I can get an API for Danskebank account transactions.
What I want in contrast is a way of tracking complex expenses like supermarket receipts, maybe via OCR and automatic aggregation and categorization of items, even across different supermarkets. Preferably via app. That way I could check which items I should buy where and which items are the most demanding on my monthly budget. Any su
I don’t use any of their sheet templates. I just download the raw transactions with the Sheets API and munge then into my ledger-cli based analysis system.
The most promising thing seems to be the API standard developed by the "Berlin Group" https://www.berlin-group.org/psd2-access-to-bank-accounts with quite a lot of banks being a member.
I quite liked the bunq API to work with (https://doc.bunq.com), but I wasn't really happy with their 7.99€/month pricing. In the past they also required a fixed IP, which wasn't really great for hobby projects.
A decent wrapper around multiple bank APIs seems to be figo (http://docs.figo.io/v3/index.html), the API looks good but I'm not sure about the pricing.
They do offer CSV export, not even sure if that's in any standardised way.
Some of the more popular budgeting apps that are built on Plaid include Empower, Clarity Money, and Albert.
I particularly like to use HoneyDue, which is built for couples!
1. I have a hard time managing my bank account AND my main credit card. Mint seems to think me paying off my credit card bill is another expense, however Mint already tracked the CC charges so basically Mint thinks I run a massive loss every month (yes I've tried fixing this, multiple times)
2. Other than reviewing your newest transactions, and the occasional useful bill/fee reminder, I don't find much use for the app in regards to financial planning or analysis.
3. I don't like how Mint is basically used to slurp up my data, and sell me credit cards - it's obvious now how little they care about making it truly useful. The app has been in existence for years and barely nudges forward besides new UI.
The thought of manually tracking my expenses however is too much work. I find it hard enough launching the Mint app regularly to allow it to download my latest transactions.
Right now, since all my expenses come from one bank account, I export the data from the bank and use a bunch of excel sheets to keep track of stuff, but of course is a quite limited system.
I was wondering if HoneyMoney has some kind of import system? In this way I could just dump the exports in there like once a month.
Just do one transaction for "misc expenses" once a month or week and be done with it. Usually I do this by comparing the current and last balance and book the difference. If you feel like some transaction (rent, utilities, fuel for the car) did stand out you can still split out a separate transaction for it, but you don't have to.
Now I'm checking the accounts almost daily when adding purchases manually, it's been consistently accurate for months.
I'll give this a look over and see how it works. Personally I like YNAB's process of allowing manual transactions to be added but supporting other file exports from banks like .OFX files to allow you to easily reconcile your accounts and transactions. Though it's unfortunate that only their subscription model supports live feeds from your bands.
All the same, I'll give your product a crack and see how it goes.
PS. I enjoy how your websites presented though depending on your intended market audience, I feel it may be just a little too jovial?
Too jovial?
The app itself has fewer bees per square pixel than promo website. Check out the demo: https://demo.honeymoney.io
It's clear to see that the happy, carefree and cute design is what you were going for and you've nailed it! :)
Things aren't always perfect, but I have a groove and that's what matters.
@Ildar, if you see this comment, this is the first thing you should address before anything else (and also state how any policy you put affects past data collected).
While nobody can guarantee anything in life, we still expect reasonable policies and protections to be available. Otherwise why would anyone even worry or talk about the Cambridge Analytica scandal? Take this unrealistic example: would you not feel you're being scammed if you bought a flight ticket but the airline had no policy about baggage loss or delays (essentially anything that could affect you, the paying customer, negatively)? It's quite obvious that the airline cannot guarantee that your bags won't get lost or that there won't be delays in the flight times.
Fairly impressive overall, +1.
> 100% more Bees than any other personal finance software
100% over a zero is still a zero.
Is honeymoney double accounting, I mean internally?
Anyways, keep up the good work, great to see competition in the market for get-rich-slow-schemes :D
I tried to make some sense of an hledger thing with a web interface, and couldn't wrap my head around what it wanted me to do. :(
firefly, thanks for the tip, didn't know that one. But just look and scroll that screenshot... https://firefly-iii.org/static/screenshots/4.7.0/account.png My personal data goes back to 2012 and I'm all set to import that into my own app very soon.
Envelopes are used for splitting money by purpose: for planned expenses, for unplanned expenses, for goals, for funds.
No, it's not double accounting internally.
I would maybe use this tool if it had some kind of api. I want to be able to have my bot post financial data to my account in HoneyMoney automatically, is this possible?
I haven't found any info regarding this. If someone with an account know of such an api I would sign up.
- Barclays: https://developer.barclays.com/documentation/dc72e132-2951-4...
- Santander: https://developer.santander.co.uk/sanuk/external/open-bankin...
- List of others: https://openbanking.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/DZ/pages/19104...
Totally love the calendar though, that is a nice way to visualize things.
Though I advice to not enter cents anyways. They don't really matter. What matters is the habit to pay a regular attention to your money. Not entering cents saves some time.
For a more polished alternative, check out https://www.pocketsmith.com/ - I've been a customer for a while now and, as far as I can tell, can do everything HoneyMoney can.
Is this what you meant to say?
All the recurring transactions are planned once, and then you just confirm them with the real amount.
Basically, we're talking about 15–20 minutes per week for increasing your awareness about money and to keep your financial life under control.
This is work, nobody will do it for you. You just need to decide if it's worth it to you personally or not.
Paying the credit card bill of $X from your bank account should be offset by the crediting of $X to your credit card.
Spend $100 on your credit card, Pay $100 to your credit card from bank, Credit card has +$100 credit
The only net spending here is the original $100. The line item of the $100 coming from your bank should not be counted as additional expense, since it should be offset by the line item credit on the credit card.
Fwiw, Mint seems to handle this fine for me.
I'm not seeing the "credit" applied to my card, just the expenses. I thought that Mint was supposed to "ignore" CC bill payments - however something just still isn't right and it makes Mint almost completely useless to me.
Manually tracking expenses seems harder than it actually is. For example, I just collect all the receipts for 3-4 days, and then spend 5 minutes to enter them in batch.
All the recurring transactions are planned once, and then you just confirm them with the real amount. 2 clicks: select — confirm.
Basically, we're talking about 15–20 minutes per week for increasing your awareness about money and to keep your financial life under control.
This is work, nobody will do it for you. You just need to decide if it's worth it to you personally or not.
There's an import from CSV for historical data. Here's the demo: https://demo.honeymoney.io/app/my/import
The thing is that Excel is not designed to help you with manual tracking. HoneyMoney is. For example, you can plan all recurring transactions and then you just confirm them as they happen. Or you can combine multiple transactions into one. Those things simplify the process a lot.
"Accounting" can be enjoyable. Some people do enjoy the level of control they get from doing their personal finances.
For example, you spend $120 at a restaurant last night. Today you enter that expense into HoneyMoney, and have a chance to see how this expense changed your situation, and think for a moment a second time about it, was it worth it or better not go there again. Computer won't do it for you.
That being said, if you put in the time and effort I think personal software is amazing: It does what you want it to do, not what someone else wanted it to do. Development priorities are magically aligned with your needs!
I'll take that over a proprietary API or an untrusted 3rd party wrapper.
