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

Ask HN: As a freelancer, what's the best app to track finances?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 138 posts

Re: Ask HN: As a freelancer, what's the best app to track finances?

#111

Post by thibaut_barrere »

nunodonato wrote: post #81
thibaut_barrere wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are suggesting free or 1$/mo, then know it's not sustainable for me, at least in current conditions.

this is the challenge with a global marketplace, where prices are set based on where the developers live, but are paid by people living in different economic conditions :) I use Buxfer at the moment, which has a simple paid plan at 4.99, and a more complete one at 9.99 (with advanced features). I think offering more than one plan is a good idea, to catch different users at different price points. Unless your price is…

Thanks for your input! Indeed the global aspect if this makes this challenging...

In some places, too low a price will send the wrong signal too.

It's probably easier to target a single large country, for many reasons!

Re: Ask HN: As a freelancer, what's the best app to track finances?

#112

Post by TeMPOraL »

dig1 wrote: post #80

I'm running a company on ledger-cli [1], emacs and org-mode [2]. Sure, there are some additional scripts that will pull banking logs or do repetitive tasks, but these are basic building blocks. Tried GnuCash few times - first time I failed because I didn't know how to work with double-entry accounting [3]. Second time failed because GnuCash isn't flexible with currencies (maybe things got better now). All these tools…

Can I ask you some questions about how you manage invoices in org-mode? I'm in the process of turning my bunch of elisp hacks into a proper org-mode based invoice generator, and would love to learn more about your workflow.

(My e-mail is in my profile.)

Re: Ask HN: As a freelancer, what's the best app to track finances?

#114

Post by chrislck »

nunodonato wrote: post #76
jen729w wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes to GnuCash, but for none of the reasons OP wants. GnuCash is, let’s be honest, crap. Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate it, it’s totally free, but it’s crap. However , it forces you to learn how to do proper double-entry bookkeeping. You’ll get it wrong a bunch of times before you get it right. You’ll Google stuff and be frustrated that you can’t find an answer. You’ll just learn, somehow. But then... ...one day so…

I'm fine with speculative transactions, I actually did a draft webapp to do that. I used Gnucash for years too. what I really miss is a more visual way to understand the flow of money and make predictions. Like, seeing a chart where those predictions make a dent in things. Last time I checked, gnucash sucked in charts :p

There's work pending to improve Charts :P and a responsive devteam who fixes bugs, and a passionate user community who keeps pushing the envelope :)

Re: Ask HN: As a freelancer, what's the best app to track finances?

#115

Post by war1025 »

dig1 wrote: post #80

I'm running a company on ledger-cli [1], emacs and org-mode [2]. Sure, there are some additional scripts that will pull banking logs or do repetitive tasks, but these are basic building blocks. Tried GnuCash few times - first time I failed because I didn't know how to work with double-entry accounting [3]. Second time failed because GnuCash isn't flexible with currencies (maybe things got better now). All these tools…

I kept track of all my personal expenses in ledger for I think 4 years. And then I had twins (plus a 2 year old) and my free time to keep it up to date went out the window.

I learned a heck of a lot about our spending habits during that time though. Super useful and nice that I could look back on cumulative effects of things over time and mix and match the queries different ways to answer different questions.

One of the main things I learned is that cars are really expensive. I brought up the numbers one time to some co-workers and they all insisted they spent nothing near that on their cars, even though I lived closest to the office and had the oldest car in the group.

Re: Ask HN: As a freelancer, what's the best app to track finances?

#116

Post by war1025 »

mitul_45 wrote: post #66

Not a freelancer, but I wanted to track my everyday finances since long. I tried lot of different tools but in the end ended up using simple Google sheet with some formulas. The only issue with this approach is – adding expenses is pain. When I am shopping for something, opening Google Sheet (on phone) and adding an expense/income is too cumbersome. So I built a UI for it – https://github.com/mitul45/expense-manager…

I use ledger myself, but the issue I always run into is my wife is much less likely to keep track of what she buys and let me know so I can record it. Where that gets especially tricky is when she goes someplace and leaves a tip. Resolving tips is a real pain in the butt, especially since it comes through in the checking account at the original price and is then later processed at the tip-included price. Matching those up is a real bear.

Re: Ask HN: As a freelancer, what's the best app to track finances?

#117

Post by have_faith »

thibaut_barrere wrote: post #108
have_faith wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea sounds great but the landing page could be so much more informative. Ignoring the testimonials and the looping video that's hard to discern concrete information from you are left with very little in the way of information to justify the expense. That's not to say the product isn't worth what you charge, it most likely is, just that I believe it's doing itself a disservice in convincing me to use the trial. I…

It's useful feedback, thanks! There is actually a lot more detail right under each of those sections (see the "learn more" link). For some reason it's not underlined, so I guess I have to fix this! Example link: https://www.wisecashhq.com/help/setting-up-a-recurring-trans... This is, by the way, and git-backed knowledge based & source is available here: https://github.com/wisecash/wisecash-support

I saw those pages, but they read like tutorials for people already sold into the idea and just needed help implementing some of the features. What I thought was really missing was selling the benefits of those features before trying to explain to someone the steps needed to use them. I think that's where the gap is on the landing page. As currently it goes from Short Definition of Feature -> Tutorial on How to Use Feature. I think what potential users really need to more content about why the feature is beneficial to them and a very succinct overview on how it works.

Good luck!

Re: Ask HN: As a freelancer, what's the best app to track finances?

#118

Post by LikeAnElephant »

justusthane wrote: post #107

It doesn't really have forecasting capability and isn't targeted at business, but just for personal budgeting and finance tracking, I love YNAB, and it works fine for variable income. It has actually changed my life (coming from no budgeting ;) There's a public API too, so you could probably build forecasting and more detailed reporting on top of it.

Can't second this enough. YNAB was really difficult to "get" at first, but it has removed nearly all the stress I used to feel about money.

Re: Ask HN: As a freelancer, what's the best app to track finances?

#119

Post by bogmom »

YES. Thank you for thinking of developing something to address this.

1. Most banking apps segment spending, but they don't perform analysis in an actionable way.

2. Most banking apps allow you to automatically budget for goals, but they don't help you actually structure your budget; usually they relegate customers to siphoning money automatically, at best.

Solution

1. Create an app that not only performs both actions above, but also adds in a platform that caps/limits spending by category in order to reach monthly goals.

e.g. monthly rent is x. App suggests/limits spending on y + z.

e.g. planning for baby requires $x. App suggests/allocates n per week while limiting spending on y + z.

e.g. finances are unstable. App performs analysis of income patterns to determine safe threshold for discretionary spending or whether discretionary spending is even feasible.

Probably an app like this would need to have some sort of AI that not only leans on spending analysis algorithms but also can adapt to predictive behavior and set boundaries for the user.

(Does anything like this exist??)

Re: Ask HN: As a freelancer, what's the best app to track finances?

#120

Post by hypersoar »

lawn wrote: post #96
TomK32 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have problem with double entry, in fact the webapp I wrote is using it as well. The reason why I disliked GnuCash was the lack of an undo together with a frickly date entry. I recommend reading up on https://plaintextaccounting.org/ for those who like double entry but with text files

Just been switching to beancount from ynab. Apart from minor annoyances it's so much more powerful. If you're up for some programming and customization it's hard to beat (your choice between beancount/ledger/hledger matters less).

Are you trying to import YNAB's budgeting philosphy into Beancount? If so, how? I've considered the same transition but was unsure how to handle having budgetary categories dissociated from physical accounts.
Post reply on HN