Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Most banks don't have an API, and statements are (often) lagged, sometimes even by a week or a month depending on how archaic the systems are.
Show HN: ExpenseOwl – Simple, self-hosted expense tracker
51–60 of 91 posts
Re: Show HN: ExpenseOwl – Simple, self-hosted expense tracker
#52Aside: I built my own expense tracker [1] as well to categorise expenses using LLMs as I needed a quick way to log the entries. I’ve been meaning to export these to Actual budget for a detailed analysis but haven’t done that yet.
Re: Show HN: ExpenseOwl – Simple, self-hosted expense tracker
#53Generally 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 ba…
Don't most personal finance apps have this? You can set a budget for a category per day/week/month and see how much you spent and how much you have left to spend.
Re: Show HN: ExpenseOwl – Simple, self-hosted expense tracker
#54Generally 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 ba…
almost none such tools touch the problem of future planning or projection. it's kind of strange but perhaps it reflects culture. nothing beats making your own spreadsheets.
Re: Show HN: ExpenseOwl – Simple, self-hosted expense tracker
#55This is super cool! I was looking for something like this just a few days ago. Ended up going with Flow[1], an open source Android app, because I wanted something that I could enter data on from my phone and run completely locally there. I don't yet have Tailscale running, or some other solution to access my homelab on the go. But it's great to see more and more software designed to run on people's local networks. An…
Edit: ah, it's not available on web or desktop which is a shame (looks like you can build and run it but it's more so DIY and no UI optimizations for larger screens, they say on the README), I would do more serious personal finance work on a bigger screen rather than a phone. They could easily add these platforms as it's on Flutter, not sure why they haven't already.
Re: Show HN: ExpenseOwl – Simple, self-hosted expense tracker
#56I’m partly lucky because I live in Taiwan and almost any receipt here comes with itemised breakdown as a QR code, so I can scan that from my phone and pipe it off to a queue for ingestion
Didn’t want to use LLMs, but wanted automated categorisation of transactions, did that with some vector embeddings and Semantic Router (https://github.com/aurelio-labs/semantic-router).
… oh and it’s run off a RPi, yes the embeddings as well
Re: Show HN: ExpenseOwl – Simple, self-hosted expense tracker
#57Built my own expense tracker on top of Teable. I’m partly lucky because I live in Taiwan and almost any receipt here comes with itemised breakdown as a QR code, so I can scan that from my phone and pipe it off to a queue for ingestion Didn’t want to use LLMs, but wanted automated categorisation of transactions, did that with some vector embeddings and Semantic Router ( https://github.com/aurelio-labs/semantic-router…
Re: Show HN: ExpenseOwl – Simple, self-hosted expense tracker
#58Built my own expense tracker on top of Teable. I’m partly lucky because I live in Taiwan and almost any receipt here comes with itemised breakdown as a QR code, so I can scan that from my phone and pipe it off to a queue for ingestion Didn’t want to use LLMs, but wanted automated categorisation of transactions, did that with some vector embeddings and Semantic Router ( https://github.com/aurelio-labs/semantic-router…
Just curious, you didn’t use the e-invoice solution (載具)?
I might apply for the 載具 API at some point, but for now it works great
Re: Show HN: ExpenseOwl – Simple, self-hosted expense tracker
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
Most banks don't have an API, and statements are (often) lagged, sometimes even by a week or a month depending on how archaic the systems are.
Lots of providers exist for bank information, Plaid is one of them. That's what many of these auto import personal finance softwares use.
Re: Show HN: ExpenseOwl – Simple, self-hosted expense tracker
#60I like the simplicity. It’s just a quick add and then it’s in the pie chart. Think this could ever be integrated with bank spending automatically? I think that running locally would make you feel safe doing do.