Does anyone have a good workflow for recording personal finances with this type of tool? My problem is that recording every single transaction becomes tedious, so I end up not doing it and the ledger gets out of sync, making it even more tedious to catch back up in a vicious cycle. I'm considering not tracking individual payments and instead just the total monthly changes so I at least have an up-to-date net worth calculation
GnuCash
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Re: GnuCash
#32Does anyone have a good workflow for recording personal finances with this type of tool? My problem is that recording every single transaction becomes tedious, so I end up not doing it and the ledger gets out of sync, making it even more tedious to catch back up in a vicious cycle. I'm considering not tracking individual payments and instead just the total monthly changes so I at least have an up-to-date net worth ca…
If you get out of sync just put in fake transactions to get it to balance and start again.
Re: GnuCash
#33I'm an avid user of GnuCash. Last I checked, their mobile app was basically abandoned (around 2018), and it had no way to use a SQL DB, even though the desktop can use SQLite3, MySQL, and Postgres [1]. So there was no easy way to use desktop AND mobile in a shared way.
So, I made a small companion app called gnucash-helper [2]. It's a Python/Flask web app for doing the very basics of GnuCash, i.e. entering transactions, looking at their history, and checking balances.
If you want to try it out, there's a demo of it on https://demo.checkyour.finance. The container it runs in is destroyed every 30 minutes, but that's enough time to play with it. It's very simple, but it does everything I need, to the point that I no longer have to open the desktop program.
Your feedback is most welcome. I should say right now, though: it's more like beta software at this point. I haven't built the Docker container in a while, so the one on Docker Hub may or may not work. If anyone has any interest in contributing ideas or code to this, I would love to hear about it.
Edit:
A couple things I forgot to mention:
- The backend for this is a .gnucash file that is saved in the sqlite file format. You can add your own into an S3 bucket, and this will write to it using Python's boto3 library.
- There's no way as of yet to download the GnuCash file directly from the web app, but I would like to add that in the future.
- The heart of this app is the Piecash Python library [3]. It lets you use Python to alter GnuCash files.
References:
[1]: https://www.gnucash.org/docs/v4/C/gnucash-guide/basics-files...
Re: GnuCash
#34Does anyone have a good workflow for recording personal finances with this type of tool? My problem is that recording every single transaction becomes tedious, so I end up not doing it and the ledger gets out of sync, making it even more tedious to catch back up in a vicious cycle. I'm considering not tracking individual payments and instead just the total monthly changes so I at least have an up-to-date net worth ca…
My workflow:
1. Lots of scheduled transactions. Rent, cable bill, paychecks, car insurance premiums, quarterly estimated tax payments, etc. Any transaction you can expect and guess at can be a scheduled transaction. This really cuts down on the catch-up work.
2. Transaction import. A lot of what's left after #1 is the random unpredictable expenses go on a credit card, and most of those support OFX or quicken format data downloads. As you import that data, it should be able to match up official records with what you had written down, and if different "update and record."
3. Monthly reconciliation. At the end of the month, review all the statements you get with your records using the reconcile window. If I'm lazy, I can skip liabilities and investments for a month as long as my main checking account is correct and CC payments for next month reflect their most recent billing statements.
Re: GnuCash
#35I once wrote about using GnuCash as a freelance solo developer at https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/using-gnucash-as-a-freelancer... . I started using it in 2017 and still use it today. It's still really solid and makes filing quarterly taxes not too painful. In my opinion it's one of the best tools out there if you like your privacy and don't want to link your bank accounts to a third party service.
Same here. Compared to the extractive noise of the intuit alternative, GnuCash just works to log transactions and generate statements necessary to file taxes and etc.
Re: GnuCash
#36With two busy working (and shopping) adults, a teenager, and a little kid, online shopping, cash, cards, etc, I think I would need to hire a data entry clerk to use something like this.
I do essentially the same thing with a spreadsheet.
Re: GnuCash
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, it’s a lot of work. I used to manually budget with Google Spreadsheets but eventually threw in the towel and gave into Mint. I still have to go in and manually change certain categories or add tags, but it’s way less work than what I was doing before.
I use Money for Excel. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/blog/2020/06/1... I found it easier to manage personal finances in a spreadsheet.
Interesting, feels like they picked up on startups like Tiller ( https://www.tillerhq.com/ )
Re: GnuCash
#38GnuCash only imports ancient quicken formats. The new Quicken formats (since about 2015) are not importable. I'd love to, but I can't restart a 32-year quicken file, so they got me. Plus I think the UI for GnuCash isn't as smooth as quicken (w.r.t. categories and accounts, they all blend together in a weird way, IMHO).
I was going to say that maybe getting off a product owned by Intuit would be enough motivation but apparently Quicken has not been owned by Intuit since 2016! I had the same reaction as I did when I discovered that RAM pickups are no longer owned by Dodge.
Dodge hasn’t been an independent entity since 1928 and Dodge and RAM are still part of Stellantis (the thing that Chrysler morphed into). RAM truck VINs still to this day use the same Dodge manufacturing code and RAM trucks supply chain didn’t change, so this just seems like an internal rebranding.
It’s not like Mazda or Volvo with Ford or something.
Re: GnuCash
#39Without a way to easily import data directly from my banks/credit cards, using GnuCash (or Firefly III, a great alternative that's also worth checking out) just takes way more time than its worth. (OFX was not as straightforward to obtain or use as one would hope). Mint is so much easier to use - it automatically pulls and categorizes transactions from pretty much any institution imaginable without no user effort needed. I stopped using Mint after a brief stint because of data privacy and security. No matter how many security claims they made, I just couldn't justify giving them my bank passwords in plain text. I suppose it doesn't matter as much for credit cards, but for my checking/savings accounts, a compromise would actually jeopardize my money. Apparently some of the big US banks are starting to roll out authentication APIs (e.g OAUTH) so it may be worth another look.
It does seem like there's still room for a FOSS/selfhosted Mint clone that gracefully and automatically handles data import (I wouldn't even mind having to enter my banking passwords each time I want to update, to avoid storing them)
Re: GnuCash
#40Without a way to easily import data directly from my banks/credit cards, using GnuCash (or Firefly III, a great alternative that's also worth checking out) just takes way more time than its worth. (OFX was not as straightforward to obtain or use as one would hope). Mint is so much easier to use - it automatically pulls and categorizes transactions from pretty much any institution imaginable without no user effort nee…
A Mint clone would require that banks facilitate much more open access. Being centralized is a good position for Mint because all the financial institution has to do is trust Intuit.