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Show HN: ExpenseOwl – Simple, self-hosted expense tracker
31–40 of 91 posts
Re: Show HN: ExpenseOwl – Simple, self-hosted expense tracker
#32I built my own similar tool for my wife and I, with the same goal of making entering transactions as fast as possible, and one thing I found useful was predictive form filling. Some categories have the same thing logged over and over (like for the "Gas" category I always made the title "Gas") so when you select the "Gas" category it prefills the title field with the most common transaction title for that category. Al…
Another approach might be to build an app that parses the SMS trails that card transactions generate to reduce the need for manually entering transactions.
Re: Show HN: ExpenseOwl – Simple, self-hosted expense tracker
#33I built my own similar tool for my wife and I, with the same goal of making entering transactions as fast as possible, and one thing I found useful was predictive form filling. Some categories have the same thing logged over and over (like for the "Gas" category I always made the title "Gas") so when you select the "Gas" category it prefills the title field with the most common transaction title for that category. Al…
Wouldn’t importing a credit card statement eliminate the need for manual entries?
I don’t use an expense tracking tool - apologies if my question may is missing context.
Re: Show HN: ExpenseOwl – Simple, self-hosted expense tracker
#34I've been building something similar for calorie tracking as well. A lot of the apps I've tried don't let me add meals quickly enough (repeat meals from the past, or new ones) or let me enter calorie formulae, and there's a bunch of unnecessary features like goal-setting.
I'm glad that something like this exists!
Re: Show HN: ExpenseOwl – Simple, self-hosted expense tracker
#35I've been building something similar for calorie tracking as well. A lot of the apps I've tried don't let me add meals quickly enough (repeat meals from the past, or new ones) or let me enter calorie formulae, and there's a bunch of unnecessary features like goal-setting. I'm glad that something like this exists!
thank you! look forward to your calorie tracker app!!
Re: Show HN: ExpenseOwl – Simple, self-hosted expense tracker
#36I built my own similar tool for my wife and I, with the same goal of making entering transactions as fast as possible, and one thing I found useful was predictive form filling. Some categories have the same thing logged over and over (like for the "Gas" category I always made the title "Gas") so when you select the "Gas" category it prefills the title field with the most common transaction title for that category. Al…
Wouldn’t importing a credit card statement eliminate the need for manual entries? I don’t use an expense tracking tool - apologies if my question may is missing context.
Easier said then done. Most softwares Ive used that attempted this did so poorly. However it is getting better.
Re: Show HN: ExpenseOwl – Simple, self-hosted expense tracker
#37I built my own similar tool for my wife and I, with the same goal of making entering transactions as fast as possible, and one thing I found useful was predictive form filling. Some categories have the same thing logged over and over (like for the "Gas" category I always made the title "Gas") so when you select the "Gas" category it prefills the title field with the most common transaction title for that category. Al…
Another approach might be to build an app that parses the SMS trails that card transactions generate to reduce the need for manually entering transactions.
.. What are these sms trails? Ive never heard of this.
Re: Show HN: ExpenseOwl – Simple, self-hosted expense tracker
#38I built my own similar tool for my wife and I, with the same goal of making entering transactions as fast as possible, and one thing I found useful was predictive form filling. Some categories have the same thing logged over and over (like for the "Gas" category I always made the title "Gas") so when you select the "Gas" category it prefills the title field with the most common transaction title for that category. Al…
I can't find the library right this second but there's a JavaScript library that takes human date descriptions, like "last Friday" and creates a date object. Depending on users' typing speed that might be another convenience factor thing.
These sound great in theory but as an app user I have found their implementation can range from deeply irritating to downright broken. Anti-use cases off the top of my head might be (this was from a calendar/reminder app):
- I write myself an appointment on Monday to remind myself to plan a meal for next Friday, so the app silently moves the Monday app to Friday without telling me just because the words "next Friday" appeared in the event title
- I want to quickly note an appointment for a specific time including an address in the title, when the street number is something like 10A - the app aggressively decides (again without warning me) that I want the appointment to be at 10 a.m. instead of the time I originally suggested when creating the event
In the case of that particular app, I just turned off the "natural language" feature globally - shame because it could have been useful if it was less aggressive in its interpretations and silent modifications of my previous choices, but the app developers told me other users are happy with it so there is no reason to fix it.
Re: Show HN: ExpenseOwl – Simple, self-hosted expense tracker
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
Another approach might be to build an app that parses the SMS trails that card transactions generate to reduce the need for manually entering transactions.
.. What are these sms trails? Ive never heard of this.
Notification for transactions being parsed or scrapped for data
Re: Show HN: ExpenseOwl – Simple, self-hosted expense tracker
#40Generally looks like a promising idea even in a deeply-competitive space, however the "selling point" of having pie charts to summarize your monthly spending does absolutely nothing for me - I know, banks etc use them in their marketing of "modern" online tools too, so they look kind of cool, but in practice for decision making about personal finance I find them absolutely useless. What I need to know on a regular basis, during a given month and at the end of the month, is: how much have I spent in general, compared with how much I planned to spend? Am I overspending in a particular category that I need to correct to keep my monthly budget on track, e.g. a fixed allowance for eating out per month, have I spent it all by week three or can I afford to have one more fancy dinner with my wife or with friends and still stay within my budget? Ninjinka's tips sound pretty positive about making the UI friction-free for keeping transactions up to date, because it's my responsibility to put good data in; however if the reporting/charts doesn't tell me anything actionable in an easy to read format then there's no point.