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Show HN: Double-entry accounting based personal finance app

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Re: Show HN: Double-entry accounting based personal finance app

#11

Post by 5evOX5hTZ9mYa9E »

MortyWaves wrote: post #5
LorenDB wrote: post #4

I'm still holding out for something that can monitor my bank account and automatically register transactions instead of me having to manually enter them. https://maybe.co/ is working on a solution for American banks. I understand that Europeans already have protocols in place for this sort of thing. Why must the EU always get the nice things?

The EU/UK ones aren’t that nice. I am able to see an account I have with Bank A in Bank B’s app. That’s about as far as this ever went. I can’t apply to even access the APIs as an individual, it’s only open for vetted organisations.

https://gocardless.com offers a fairly generous free tier, and it can do transaction syncing with nearly every European bank

Re: Show HN: Double-entry accounting based personal finance app

#12

Post by threesevenths »

Question about data collection. On the App Store it says that no data is collected by the app. In your privacy policy on the site it states that you do collect data related to the work that the app does and among other things, device metrics. If you do collect data, would you mind updating your App Store listing to clearly indicate that you collect data. If you don’t collect anything, could that be clearly indicated in your privacy policy.

Thanks, app looks clean and useful.

Re: Show HN: Double-entry accounting based personal finance app

#14

Post by aswinmohanme »

sparklethunder wrote: post #7

I'm so confused. In your example, my income is negative. In what country does it make sense to have a negative income? > You cannot categorize your salary as income, as your net-worth would be wrong. Yes you can, it's called a split transaction. $1000 income: split into $700 to my savings and $300 to taxes. I don't see the point in tracking my tax withholding in this way though, so I'd rather just put in my net salar…

It's a characteristic of double-entry accounting. Everything is an account and transactions move money between accounts. When you receive money from your salary in your bank account, the money is being debited from an Income account. We show the debit with the negative sign.

> Yes you can, it's called a split transaction. $1000 income: split into $700 to my savings and $300 to taxes.

Even though this would work, the money is still in your bank account, which makes your savings account balance to be reported wrong.

Re: Show HN: Double-entry accounting based personal finance app

#15

Post by aswinmohanme »

threesevenths wrote: post #12

Question about data collection. On the App Store it says that no data is collected by the app. In your privacy policy on the site it states that you do collect data related to the work that the app does and among other things, device metrics. If you do collect data, would you mind updating your App Store listing to clearly indicate that you collect data. If you don’t collect anything, could that be clearly indicated…

Thanks. Updated the data-collection section.

Re: Show HN: Double-entry accounting based personal finance app

#16

Post by aswinmohanme »

LorenDB wrote: post #4

I'm still holding out for something that can monitor my bank account and automatically register transactions instead of me having to manually enter them. https://maybe.co/ is working on a solution for American banks. I understand that Europeans already have protocols in place for this sort of thing. Why must the EU always get the nice things?

Automated transaction reconciliation will be a major feature in the future versions of the app. I have yet to use an app that reliably does automatic transaction registration and the dream is to build one.

India does have a decent open-banking system, used by https://fold.money

Re: Show HN: Double-entry accounting based personal finance app

#17

Post by aswinmohanme »

apatheticonion wrote: post #2

Nit/general rant about finance management products: awesome idea but I do my finances on a computer with a keyboard, mouse, large screen and copy/paste capabilities that don't require a microscope. I could be wrong but it does not appear that this offers a desktop/web client which makes it DOA for me. It seems like so many finance applications target mobile devices which is a great place for reviewing data and making…

You are right about missing the web part. It's substantial space that we miss out on mobile. But mobile lets you enter transactions on the go, and is always there when you need it. A web version is planned in the future.

I started Paper to bring the beancount + automated parsing with python stack to everyone. Double-entry is an objectively better way to manage your finances, when we build an automatic reconciliation engine that automatically categorizes the bank transactions we'll have the best personal finance tracker app.

Re: Show HN: Double-entry accounting based personal finance app

#18

Post by aswinmohanme »

MortyWaves wrote: post #6
apatheticonion wrote: post #2

Nit/general rant about finance management products: awesome idea but I do my finances on a computer with a keyboard, mouse, large screen and copy/paste capabilities that don't require a microscope. I could be wrong but it does not appear that this offers a desktop/web client which makes it DOA for me. It seems like so many finance applications target mobile devices which is a great place for reviewing data and making…

What does your schema look like? Either out of paranoia or naivety I feel that this is actually not such a simple task. The variety of formats and tools out there plus things like “double entry accounting”, makes me think that the database design would also need to be thought about deeply.

We use a proper ledger to track the flow of money. It was sizable technical investment to get the schema right, but it has made the subsequent implementations of features easier.

Re: Show HN: Double-entry accounting based personal finance app

#19

Post by MortyWaves »

aswinmohanme wrote: post #18
MortyWaves wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does your schema look like? Either out of paranoia or naivety I feel that this is actually not such a simple task. The variety of formats and tools out there plus things like “double entry accounting”, makes me think that the database design would also need to be thought about deeply.

We use a proper ledger to track the flow of money. It was sizable technical investment to get the schema right, but it has made the subsequent implementations of features easier.

Yeah but what does a “proper ledger schema” look like??

Re: Show HN: Double-entry accounting based personal finance app

#20

Post by aswinmohanme »

MortyWaves wrote: post #19
aswinmohanme wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We use a proper ledger to track the flow of money. It was sizable technical investment to get the schema right, but it has made the subsequent implementations of features easier.

Yeah but what does a “proper ledger schema” look like??

My bad. The design is based on https://fragment.dev/docs#design-your-ledger. They have detailed docs about designing proper ledgers.
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