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

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

#91

Post by ValentineC »

jbverschoor wrote: post #59

Manager is free for desktop / paid for cloud https://manager.io It has all the things you need, and the interface is pretty good.

I'm a huge fan of Manager too. It does the manual task of balancing the books very well, and exports everything as TSV so it's easy to port out if it no longer fulfills one's needs.

I'm a bit concerned that it stores attachments (receipts, invoices, etc) as blobs in its SQLite database, but users on its forum [1] seem to keep large databases without any problem.

Since it's one SQLite file per business, it's also easy to automate file backups on my end.

[1] https://forum.manager.io/

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

#93

Post by mftrhu »

nunodonato wrote: post #82
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…

hi! i'm using org-mode for my projects, tasks and general info & planning. Didnt occur to me to use it for finances as well. Will take a look :)

I recently moved my ledger entries to an org-mode file - attaching metadata and things like file links are much easier inside org - chunking them by date and using org-babel to tangle them out.

It pretty much works as expected, except for the fact that (at least on my emacs) tangling ledger blocks is much slower than other languages (18+ seconds for 151 blocks, vs <1 s for a comparable amount of elisp).

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

#94

Post by markhalonen »

I've found a net worth tracker to be awesome, and wish I'd started using it earlier. Every month I actually look forward to logging my new net worth that takes into account all my assets and liabilities. I view myself as a business, and net worth is a KPI. This is the app I use https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/wealthplus-net-worth/id93353...

For invoices, time-tracking etc., I use Freshbooks Cloud which is great.

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

#96

Post by lawn »

TomK32 wrote: post #64
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 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).

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

#97

Post by kfriede »

I've used Simple https://www.simple.com/ as my primary checking for years and love it. I create "Goals" as buffer money pockets for things like "Savings", "Investment", and "Credit Card Buffer", and then use their expenses feature to automatically deduct certain bill amounts every payday. Their features are open enough to where you should be able to flex it to your needs. For example the "Goals" also has an auto-fill, but I just use them manually since I don't usually have a set amount I'm trying to save, just a certain percent per payday.

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

#98

Post by sridca »

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 Google Sheets as well to track stuff like finances, calories, workout stats. And I too have wondered about a nicer way of inputting data.

Have you looked into Google Forms? I really wish it supported custom types like list of items from named ranges. A custom UI app (in Haskell/reflex!) is what I may end up writing too.

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

#100

Post by DBYCZ »

thibaut_barrere wrote: post #40

I'm a freelance myself (since 2005). I ultimately scratched my own itch and created an app specifically for this: https://www.wisecashhq.com I built it pretty much for what you describe: to plan my future (it computes your runway & "time wealth"), adjust working hours as needed, "make time" for other topics, negotiate based on data etc. The goal is not to "track all expenses", but rather to make a reasonable forecast…

Wow this is really cool, well done!
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