Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Show HN: Paisa – Open-Source Personal Finance Manager

paisa.fyi

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 288 posts

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

#151

Post by phoenixy1 »

debaserab2 wrote: post #147
robcohen wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 informat…

[I work at Plaid]

I will say that while annoying (especially for Chase, which has the most paperwork-type requirements for developers) this process should be totally doable for solo developers. You can put your own name as the legal entity name if you don't have a company. The Master Services Agreement (MSA) sounds scary but is just the contract between you and Plaid -- the legalese laying out what you're paying for, what Plaid is providing, and the rights and obligations of both parties. And when it comes to the security questionnaire, fill it out as accurately as you can, but you don't need to stress over it -- Plaid doesn't expect a solo hobbyist to have the same security measures as, like, a publicly traded company.

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

#152

Post by debaserab2 »

phoenixy1 wrote: post #151
debaserab2 wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 informat…

[I work at Plaid] I will say that while annoying (especially for Chase, which has the most paperwork-type requirements for developers) this process should be totally doable for solo developers. You can put your own name as the legal entity name if you don't have a company. The Master Services Agreement (MSA) sounds scary but is just the contract between you and Plaid -- the legalese laying out what you're paying for,…

Thanks for the info -- this is really good to know. I'll keep pressing on as far as I can!

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

#153

Post by BeetleB »

ananthakumaran wrote: post #150
BeetleB wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Not trying to be argumentative, but every time I've heard someone claim they do envelope budgeting in ledger without virtual accounts, I've always found a flaw in their approach.[1] So let me give you the standard scenario:

I have two checking accounts, and a credit card. I budget $300/mo on groceries. Sometimes I buy groceries with my credit card, and sometimes using money from either of those two checking accounts.

Last month I spent $200. This month I'll spend $350. I should see that I have $50 left in the envelope. At the same time, I should see an accurate amount of money in my actual checking accounts/credit card (i.e. despite doing automatic transactions).

How do you do this with periodic transactions, and without a virtual account?

[1] Same goes for Beancount. The author was adamant one could do it without virtual accounts, but never showed a way to do it.

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

#155

Post by bakul »

ananthakumaran wrote: post #90
MenhirMike wrote: post #67

Has anyone compared this to YNAB4? (Not the cloud-only subscription-only YNAB, but the good one that was killed off in 2019) It's by far the best household bookkeeping tool I've ever used, but it won't ever get updates again (running it in a VM just so I can make sure I will always be able to run it), and it would be nice to have something that can track stocks and maybe even foreign currency - but for now, I would b…

OFX is unheard of in my country. I would look into it if someone could open a issue and attach a few sample OFX files.

Perhaps you can just use https://github.com/aclindsa/ofxgo - it seems to be a pretty good Go package (just eyeballing it, haven't use it).

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

#157

Post by john2x »

thuruv wrote: post #29
asdajksah2123 wrote: post #23

Here's something that always trips me up when I look into non professional software for double entry accounting (or more accurately, instructions around them). It's been a long time, so I may be getting it wrong, but I do have some introductory information of accounting. And according to that, in a transaction such as salary received, the accounting would look something like: Income: Salary - Credit Assets: Checking…

Thats correct with DE accounting. However I always assumed, the logic followed here is that the money has been "debited from" the INCOME account and "CREDITED to" Assets/Checkings.

Debit from employer's account, credited to your bank.

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

#158

Post by sailorganymede »

hackernewds wrote: post #148
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?

Payment Services Directive 2 and it’s basically legal stuff we gotta comply with to do payments. Can’t speak for India but it’s v much something in the UK

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

#159

Post by yonrg »

abdullahkhalids wrote: post #25
velcrovan wrote: post #5

I am probably the target audience for this kind of thing, but I’m having trouble seeing myself slog through hundreds of household transactions every month (or putting in the time to automate transaction imports from my credit union and credit cards). I’m happy to huck money at YNAB to do all this for me, on top of which they give me an app that my wife and I can both use to check the budget and enter transactions on…

GnuCash can import directly from your bank [1]. There are also some mobile apps [2], but they are not super well integrated with the desktop application - I think you have to manually export and import every time. [1] https://www.gnucash.org/docs/v5/C/gnucash-manual/tools-on-li... [2] https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/GnuCash_and_Mobile_Devices

To be precise, the wonderful aqbanking is doing the job for gnucash. I do not see why paisa could not use aqbanking as well

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

#160

Post by rambambram »

After building and using my own bookkeeping solution for my small business, one of the main takeaways for me before and after I built it was that bookkeeping software is only useful once you know the bookkeeping rules. Whatever software solution you use - whether that's some webapp, an Excel sheet, or some homegrown solution - you always need to know these rules. Even the simple rules for a small business take some time and understanding to get a grip on. I haven't seen bookkeeping software that is plug-and-play, so without knowing these rules as a user, if that's even possible!?

Knowing this for my own situation made me decide to opt for a homegrown software solution, because I had to learn these rules anyway. I felt more capable in my programming language of choice than in Excel, and I didn't want to pay for a SaaS solution, let alone learn another interface.

Post reply on HN