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Firefly III: A free and open-source finance manager

firefly-iii.org

101–110 of 135 posts

Re: Firefly III: A free and open-source finance manager

#101
post #98
post #11

Looks good but the real problem, as for 90% of similar programs, is the volume of necessary data-entry. Paid-for options like YNAB, nowadays, can fetch transactions from many mainstream US/EU banks and credit providers. Without that sort of feature, it's a real drudge to keep up entering every single expense.

This depends on how you look at financing and budgeting (duh). But Firefly III was originally designed (by me) to lower your running expenses. It doesn't feature a lot cool budget automation because that leads to more charts but less money. The original idea was to make it hard (or at least with some friction) to create transactions. This also excluded any way of importing data. That way you feel your transactions tw…

Nice, came here to says thanks for the explanation! I was following Firefly III since a couple of years, already installed a test version on a local VM. I set up auto-pull for 2 of my 6 bank accounts, this did not work well (some transactions were missing, e.g. credit cards). I haven't found the time to proceed deeper.

For my partner and me, I keep an OpenOffice spreadsheet were I enter all expenses, so we know who owes whom how much. Also, I scan all my receipts and they are automatically renamed and moved based on patterns (paperless-ng).

I agree to your argument, seeing all your expenses in this way helps keeping a connection to how much is spend. I yet need to combine my two systems with firefly.

Re: Firefly III: A free and open-source finance manager

#102
post #98
post #11

Looks good but the real problem, as for 90% of similar programs, is the volume of necessary data-entry. Paid-for options like YNAB, nowadays, can fetch transactions from many mainstream US/EU banks and credit providers. Without that sort of feature, it's a real drudge to keep up entering every single expense.

This depends on how you look at financing and budgeting (duh). But Firefly III was originally designed (by me) to lower your running expenses. It doesn't feature a lot cool budget automation because that leads to more charts but less money. The original idea was to make it hard (or at least with some friction) to create transactions. This also excluded any way of importing data. That way you feel your transactions tw…

To ask something that now seems obvious... in your experience, doesn't that friction just drive people away from the program? That seems to me the natural response.

Re: Firefly III: A free and open-source finance manager

#103
post #11

Looks good but the real problem, as for 90% of similar programs, is the volume of necessary data-entry. Paid-for options like YNAB, nowadays, can fetch transactions from many mainstream US/EU banks and credit providers. Without that sort of feature, it's a real drudge to keep up entering every single expense.

It would have been great if banks sent webhooks to my specific endpoint upon a new transaction. Otherwise, especially in India where Open (API Banking) doesn't seem around the horizon, server-hosted personal finance applications aren't scalable.

I've been using (and manual-entering transactions in) Firefly-III for over 2 years. It's a good, old piece of software, but isn't scalable to our "high-frequency / busy / real-time" banking needs.

I've experimented with hacks like reading from bank transaction mails, using Tasker (Android) to read transaction SMSs, but alas the setup is cumbersome and not reliable.

Re: Firefly III: A free and open-source finance manager

#104
post #11

Looks good but the real problem, as for 90% of similar programs, is the volume of necessary data-entry. Paid-for options like YNAB, nowadays, can fetch transactions from many mainstream US/EU banks and credit providers. Without that sort of feature, it's a real drudge to keep up entering every single expense.

I've been using firefly over two years now. Data entry has not been been a problem: * Run the data-importer as a separate container. Takes maybe 20 minutes to configure correctly if you already know docker and docker-compose. * Download the transactions as CSVs from each of my 5 or so credit card and bank accounts that get regular use. * Upload them through the data-importer. It lets you configure and save settings f…

I just never could bring myself to enter my bank password into Plaid.

Sure “everyone does it”, but most banks have disclaimers in their terms of service that if you lose money because your password was compromised through password sharing they aren’t liable for that loss.

I instead built a series of playwright scripts to automate signing into my bank accounts and downloading the CV, then importing (to lunch money, but I might take a look at this later as an option).

Re: Firefly III: A free and open-source finance manager

#105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a hugeeee LunchMoney fan. It's a solo dev and she does great! Hooked a few friends on it as well. This has been a lifesaver for insight into my financials and it's super flexible.

Bummer that it’s subscription only. I switched from a decade old spreadsheet to YNAB. Then it went subscription and online only. It relied on the Adobe Air runtime which stopped working in macOS several years ago (32-bit only). I haven’t looked at firefly yet, but I really want something that allows me to forecast expenses, and realize them as they occur and automatically adjust forecasts accordingly.

Meh - $100/year. I'm happy to support a small developer for a great product.

Re: Firefly III: A free and open-source finance manager

#106
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plaid does the opposite. It scrapes using your banks credentials.

Am I totally misremembering this, or is it a fairly recent change? I could've sworn several years ago it was perfectly possible to use your sign-in credentials, then immediately change them, because it basically needed an authorization token, but then worked fine. Now it doesn't. I work for a company with a Plaid integration and if the bank so much as requires any kind of 2FA, you just can't use it at all anymore.

I don’t know, but it almost certainly violates your bank’s terms of service to share your password with Plaid.

If Plaid is every compromised in a way that leads to a loss of your funds in your account (probably unlikely), your bank likely has no legal requirement to make you whole for that, if you shared your password with Plaid.

I just don’t think you should share your bank password with any external entity.

Re: Firefly III: A free and open-source finance manager

#107
post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This depends on how you look at financing and budgeting (duh). But Firefly III was originally designed (by me) to lower your running expenses. It doesn't feature a lot cool budget automation because that leads to more charts but less money. The original idea was to make it hard (or at least with some friction) to create transactions. This also excluded any way of importing data. That way you feel your transactions tw…

To ask something that now seems obvious... in your experience, doesn't that friction just drive people away from the program? That seems to me the natural response.

Firefly III is missing plenty of features (see below). I started Firefly III with a single user (me) and everything else is a bonus.

https://docs.firefly-iii.org/firefly-iii/about-firefly-iii/w...

I will admit that I caved under pressure and built the Firefly III Data Importer:

https://github.com/firefly-iii/data-importer

Re: Firefly III: A free and open-source finance manager

#108
post #11

Looks good but the real problem, as for 90% of similar programs, is the volume of necessary data-entry. Paid-for options like YNAB, nowadays, can fetch transactions from many mainstream US/EU banks and credit providers. Without that sort of feature, it's a real drudge to keep up entering every single expense.

What about cash transactions? I'm still searching for something that can efficiently OCR my receipts and extract a total and a store name automatically. (and in Japanese)

Re: Firefly III: A free and open-source finance manager

#109
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have a docker instal option. Granted it’s a bit of overkill but you can run it like desktop software.

I mean, a windows installer (or RPM) that doesn't require a background process so that more people can access the value of the software. Even Flatpak or something if we are talking Linux specific. Having Docker and other "enthusiast" methods of running software makes it less accessible. Having a web-stack as the goto method of writing software doesn't make sense if it limits the audience that would gain value from it…

"a web application that comes with a Windows installer, macOS traditional installation and a Linux RPM".

I'm curious; how do you implement this (I assume you do not use Electron)?

Wouldn't a PWA (installed PWA) make the web app integrate the way you say with desktop icons, separate window, drag & drop etc?

Re: Firefly III: A free and open-source finance manager

#110
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Am I totally misremembering this, or is it a fairly recent change? I could've sworn several years ago it was perfectly possible to use your sign-in credentials, then immediately change them, because it basically needed an authorization token, but then worked fine. Now it doesn't. I work for a company with a Plaid integration and if the bank so much as requires any kind of 2FA, you just can't use it at all anymore.

I don’t know, but it almost certainly violates your bank’s terms of service to share your password with Plaid. If Plaid is every compromised in a way that leads to a loss of your funds in your account (probably unlikely), your bank likely has no legal requirement to make you whole for that, if you shared your password with Plaid. I just don’t think you should share your bank password with any external entity.

Very good point. Plaid will surely send you a $50 class action settlement check to make you whole for having $100k drained.
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