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Show HN: Paisa – Open-Source Personal Finance Manager

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Re: Show HN: Paisa – Open-Source Personal Finance Manager

#141

Post by salmaanp »

ananthakumaran wrote: post #65
robcohen wrote: post #12

This looks awesome. I love that it's built on ledger. I have been wanting to move away from Simplifi Money for some time for obvious reasons (owned by Intuit). It seems that the real moat is pulling the data in a consistent and correct way. Yes, you COULD try to find every single export option for every bank, but I think Plaid is really the only service that pulls this data somewhat correctly, due to the U.S. not hav…

I can try to improve import functionality, but Plaid etc is quite hard. I can't even figure out their pricing model from their page. So, as a free app I don't think it can support Plaid.

I would use this if there was an easy way to integrate it with plaid. (login once and keep data synced). This would be comparable to personal capital at that level.

Re: Show HN: Paisa – Open-Source Personal Finance Manager

#143

Post by robcohen »

phoenixy1 wrote: post #97
ananthakumaran wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can try to improve import functionality, but Plaid etc is quite hard. I can't even figure out their pricing model from their page. So, as a free app I don't think it can support Plaid.

[I work at Plaid] The pricing model is here: https://plaid.com/docs/account/billing/ but @jpeeler is right that for a free app like this aimed at an audience of engineers you could also set it up for your users to BYO Plaid API keys.

This is the precise option I was thinking might be possible. Is it even reasonable for an individual developer to use their own API keys for something like this? I assume because you suggested it, it is. Any limitations that are impractical for personal use?

Re: Show HN: Paisa – Open-Source Personal Finance Manager

#144

Post by robcohen »

malermeister wrote: post #131
robcohen wrote: post #12

This looks awesome. I love that it's built on ledger. I have been wanting to move away from Simplifi Money for some time for obvious reasons (owned by Intuit). It seems that the real moat is pulling the data in a consistent and correct way. Yes, you COULD try to find every single export option for every bank, but I think Plaid is really the only service that pulls this data somewhat correctly, due to the U.S. not hav…

I know this is only vaguely related, but as a European that's been looking for an open source budgeting solution, how does PSD2 help?

My understanding of PSD2 is that it requires banking transactions to be "machine-readable" whatever that means. So there's an actual legal requirement for making data accessible outside of the browser.

Re: Show HN: Paisa – Open-Source Personal Finance Manager

#145

Post by bbkane »

edoceo wrote: post #56

I want to know where my money goes. I like to look at stacked-area (or column) charts of the categories of spending. To make this work I have some software I made ~20 years ago that does double-entry book-keeping. At the end of the month, I import statements from financial service providers (eg: Wells Fargo, Chase, PayPal, Stripe, etc). Lots of stuff is repeat purchases (eg: Shell Gas) and my software automatically c…

I don't know about a service that does this, but you might be able to script the website logins with https://playwright.dev/

Re: Show HN: Paisa – Open-Source Personal Finance Manager

#146

Post by bbkane »

jonathankoren wrote: post #135
ananthakumaran wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately this is hosted on github pages and I can't get usage information without using 3rd party analytics.

Well then, I guess the two solutions are obvious.

I think he's happy with the solution he found...

Re: Show HN: Paisa – Open-Source Personal Finance Manager

#147

Post by debaserab2 »

robcohen wrote: post #143
phoenixy1 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[I work at Plaid] The pricing model is here: https://plaid.com/docs/account/billing/ but @jpeeler is right that for a free app like this aimed at an audience of engineers you could also set it up for your users to BYO Plaid API keys.

This is the precise option I was thinking might be possible. Is it even reasonable for an individual developer to use their own API keys for something like this? I assume because you suggested it, it is. Any limitations that are impractical for personal use?

I'm in the middle of going down this path right now. It kind of works, except for certain banking institutions require more rigor than just getting accepted into the developer platform.

The steps, as far as I can tell, look something like this:

1) Sign up for Plaid developer account

2) Request developer access (without it you can only play with sandbox data)

3) Request production access

4) Submit application information including a name, website URL, and logo

5) Add a legal company entity name and address to my plaid account

6) Sign an MSA contract (no idea what its about)

7) Fill out a security questionnaire.

I'm at step 3 currently but I'm not sure how much further I'm realistically going to get. I'm not sure I could reasonably fill the rest without stretching the truth quite a bit and it seems to get deep into legal territory that I'm not sure I'm comfortable with.

There's also apparently different API behaviors depending on the bank: https://plaid.com/docs/link/oauth/#institution-specific-beha...

I don't have a lot of hope that this is going to pan out. I'm considering just scraping Chase with a headless puppeteer script instead.

It's possible that this may be simpler for other banks though, I've only tried Chase since that's my primary bank.

Re: Show HN: Paisa – Open-Source Personal Finance Manager

#148

Post by hackernewds »

robcohen wrote: post #12

This looks awesome. I love that it's built on ledger. I have been wanting to move away from Simplifi Money for some time for obvious reasons (owned by Intuit). It seems that the real moat is pulling the data in a consistent and correct way. Yes, you COULD try to find every single export option for every bank, but I think Plaid is really the only service that pulls this data somewhat correctly, due to the U.S. not hav…

What is PSD2 and why is it important? Is it the basis for something like UPI in India?

Re: Show HN: Paisa – Open-Source Personal Finance Manager

#149

Post by debaserab2 »

phoenixy1 wrote: post #103
jpeeler wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You just need to have each person create their own Plaid account (which is probably the way you want it anyway). The free tier supports 100 institutions. Last time I looked at this, I thought it was stated that the free/sandbox tier is not guaranteed to have the same SLA as the production environment. But I can't find this in the documentation anywhere.

[I work at Plaid] I don't know if we explicitly write down in the docs that the free Development tier isn't guaranteed to have the same SLA as the production environment, but if you're not paying Plaid there is no SLA (I mean, the usual recourse for an SLA breach is a rebate, but you can't give a rebate to someone who isn't paying you in the first place). That said, in practice the differences between the free and pa…

Correct me if I'm wrong but some of the banks don't work in developer mode at all (at least, it doesn't seem to work with Chase).

Re: Show HN: Paisa – Open-Source Personal Finance Manager

#150

Post by ananthakumaran »

BeetleB wrote: post #134
waynesonfire wrote: post #82

i won't use any finance manager that doesn't employ the envelop method, like ynab. looking at the demo for 10 seconds it looks like a web based gnu cash.

This is based on ledger, which actually does allow envelope based budgeting via virtual accounts. No idea if Paisa handles virtual accounts well.

Paisa supports budgeting and the model is inspired by YNAB. It doesn't use virtual account, but uses periodic transaction which is simpler from data entry perspective, but achieves the same thing
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