In search of Budget software that can pull from US banks reddit / selfhosted ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Parking-Advantage-49 · 2023-11-02 20:43 So I'm a Mint user, have been for years because it was easy and I didn't mind the ads because I could share it with my SO. Mint announced that they will be shutting down and moving to Credit Karma but it appears that the budget piece (the piece that I use the most) will be going away. I've been meaning to migrate to a selfhosted option for a while but haven't had the urgency until now. Some background and requirements for me: 1. I'm running Docker/Compose on a Linux Server with a cert and reverse proxy so I've already got the https taken care of for remote access/security. 2. it has to be easy enough that my wife will use it. Since Mint is going away this is not as big a deal since we'll have to use the same thing but worth mentioning. 3. I am in the US and have a Wells Fargo account, a credit union, and a Chase and CapitalOne credit cards I would like to be able to pull data directly from into said budgeting solution. I would like to spend my time actually budgeting and not importing CSV transactions if possible. I've read some other posts here but haven't seen anything about US banks so that is one reason why I wanted to start a new post. 4. I would prefer a free solution if possible but a minimal fee would be acceptable if I could get transactions pulled from my banks. I've played around with Actual Budget and really like it. It seems that they have a gocardless integration but that only can pull European banks. I'm sure I could get to a place with downloading and importing CSVs from the 4 accounts wouldn't take too much time but it's a deal breaker with the Wife as she won't do it. I don't mind clicking a button every time but I need to be able to pull from my banks. I've tried Firefly-III but haven't got it work just yet in Docker, it seems cumbersome and I don't have an opinion yet for the interface. Like I've said, I've done some searching and it seems there are products out that that fit some or all my requirements except for the US bank piece. What am I missing? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- tankerkiller125real · 2023-11-02 20:58 I did a lot of searching and I too couldn't find anything already existing. I debated building it myself (with Plaid as the bank puller API) but I just don't have the time, and at least for me it wasn't important enough. For anything in the US though, more than likely a Plaid integration is what will be needed though. They seem to be the only company that has an API for pulling banking information. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Minituff · 2023-11-02 21:49 Looking for something similar too honestly. Currently I run a docker [container](https://github.com/Minituff/Finance-utils) I build that aggregates all the Banks CSVs into 1 so that I can import the transactions in my spreadsheet. But I am looking for a better solution. Honestly some type of self hosted Plaid app would be great. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ZombieLinux · 2023-11-02 22:45 There is a plaid to firefly integration floating on the gits somewhere. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ZombieLinux · 2023-11-02 22:47 I know quicken has some known methods to pull data from banks. It’s been years since I messed with it (with gnucash) but I was never able to make it work. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Minituff · 2023-11-02 22:47 Their simplifi project? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ZombieLinux · 2023-11-02 23:15 I was more referring to the QFX "standard" and how opaque it is to debug. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- onsinnigwk · 2023-11-03 02:22 That's dope, I'm definitely interested! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- dysguak · 2023-11-03 02:25 Sounds interesting, I'll check it out! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Parking-Advantage-49 · 2023-11-03 02:40 I've seen some posts about the firefly/plaid integration before. I'll have to get firefly running and see if I can get it to work. The docker setup is not straightforward like it was for Actual. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Parking-Advantage-49 · 2023-11-03 02:42 agreed, a self hosted Plaid would be awesome. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Parking-Advantage-49 · 2023-11-03 02:44 my wife uses quickbooks for work and that product could, in theory, pull from the banks but it doesn't work well and it also depends on the bank. She ends up downloading and importing the CSV because it's more reliable. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- oddie121 · 2023-11-03 02:52 Wait what? Arg :( guess I'm in the same boat. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ZombieLinux · 2023-11-03 02:59 I’m working on it too. Gotta get authelia up and running first. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- -defron- · 2023-11-03 03:12 this is the one I've found: https://github.com/dvankley/firefly-plaid- connector-2 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- mb4x4 · 2023-11-03 04:24 Earlier this year I got FireflyIII going using docker compose, took a bit but wasn’t too bad. What eventually was the deal breaker though was the interface as something just doesn’t feel right, the flow feels jagged and cumbersome. I then found Actual and the setup was a breeze, currently use manually as a checkbook of sorts and I LOVE it. For many years I used Yodlee Moneycenter (now Money by Envestnet) which is a free aggregator similar to Mint but much cleaner, at least it used to be. It’s not self hosted obviously but it may be worth a look. Many large banks use a rebranded version of it for their portfolio offerings. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- senorsmile · 2023-11-03 04:46 Where did you see this announcement? I neither got an email nor do I see it on their site or blog. I too am curious about a self hosted solution. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- clarksonswimmer · 2023-11-03 06:50 https://www.tillerhq.com/how-tiller-works/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- tankerkiller125real · 2023-11-03 08:30 I hate spreadsheets with a passion. Plus I also work for an ERP company, so I'm used to dealing with actual accounting software. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Parking-Advantage-49 · 2023-11-03 12:46 I saw it on the Verge of all places, [https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/2/23943254/mint-intuit-shutting- down-credit-karma](https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/2/23943254/mint- intuit-shutting-down-credit-karma) I had to do some digging on the intuit website to find the blog post [https://mint.intuit.com/blog/mint-app-news/intuit-credit-karma- welcomes-minters/](https://mint.intuit.com/blog/mint-app-news/intuit- credit-karma-welcomes-minters/) I am a little peeved that I didn't get an email or any other notification either, Intuit has not been great in my experience. I have been on Mint since 2007 so pretty sad to see it go because it did what I needed for like 98% of the time. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Parking-Advantage-49 · 2023-11-03 12:48 yeah I really like the Actual interface. I'm going to see if I can get something rigged up to pull bank data and pulled into Actual if possible. I think that is the way to go. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Parking-Advantage-49 · 2023-11-03 12:54 this is interesting. I feel like this could be a stopgap in getting the data out of the banks and putting it in one spreadsheet or CSV. Then I'm sure a script could be run with a CRON job to import it on the daily or something. I'll look at it some more. I don't love that it's $80 a year but maybe that's the price of a working budget. To be continued... ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Parking-Advantage-49 · 2023-11-03 12:56 yeah Authelia is a bitch to setup for some things. I'm going to get a proof of concept running first before I add authelia. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- cougargriff · 2023-11-03 13:03 IMO. Check out authentik. Much easier to setup ---------------------------------------------------------------------- hand___banana · 2023-11-03 13:13 Yodlee, MX, Finicity, Trustly, all offer APIs for transaction and account aggregation. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- r3tryfail · 2023-11-03 13:17 Yes but once it's structured data you just present it anyway you want. Mint is just a spreadsheet ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Todd1561 · 2023-11-03 16:18 I have no idea what Mint alternatives may exist but just wanted to chime in and say if you like a solution but it doesn’t have great integration and you don’t want to manually import data look into using the Selenium web driver. It’s a utility to automate a web browser to integrate with websites originally meant for development testing. I’ve used it with great success to automate interactions with all sorts of websites. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- esgeeks · 2023-11-04 15:27 I think it is a version problem. But if you are looking for alternatives, Supremo is the way to go. The closest in functionality. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- -defron- · 2023-11-04 15:44 Most US banks used to support OFX: Open Financial Exchange and Quicken had their own proprietary fork of it called QFX that added some additional metadata on the transaction and stuff. Unfortunately based on my research the past couple of days, most big banks no longer support it in favor of aggregators T__T Just last year Discover Bank and JP Morgan Chase dropped OFX, and Chase now no longer has a way to automatically get QFX either, it has to be manually downloaded. Discover doesn't even support QFX, only CSV now. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ZombieLinux · 2023-11-04 16:22 That tracks with my experience. Shame there isn’t a unified standard like the rest of the developed world.