As an avid, daily Quicken user, yes, seamless integration with financial institutions is my #1 requirement. I am not willing to manually navigate a dozen banks' broken UIs to find their "download CSV" option, hope it works, download a bunch of files to my computer, and then hope that they can be imported into my application--and then repeat every day when I update.

I have in the past switched physical banks purely because their integration was either terrible or not working and I refused to go the "download CSV" route.

Unfortunately some banks are starting to drop support for applications directly connecting to them, and moving to an unacceptable model where intermediaries like Intuit's servers have to do the communication and store your credentials. This has been getting noticeably shittier in the last couple of years.

My #2 requirement (a close second) is that the application must be running on my local PC. I will never accept a cloud-based web-app or something I have to host on a VPS and access through some dinky HTML/JS UI.

For that very reason I tried selfhosting Actual Finance[1] but it is more of a budgeting app than a networth tracking app.

I ended up coding a small exporter[2] since I already had some stack in place that queries SimpleFI[3], which essentially allows querying balance and transaction information for most US-based banks (read only); most similar to plaid but a lot more developer-friendly afaik.

[1] https://actualbudget.com/

[2] https://github.com/eduser25/simplefin-bridge-exporter

[3] https://beta-bridge.simplefin.org/

For now only a standard csv file is supported with these columns: Date, Symbol, Quantity, Activity Type, Unit Price, Currency, and Fee. Supported activity types: BUY SELL DIVIDEND INTEREST DEPOSIT WITHDRAWAL TRANSFER_IN TRANSFER_OUT CONVERSION_IN CONVERSION_OUT FEE TAX Example CSV format: date,symbol,quantity,activityType,unitPrice,currency,fee 2024-01-01T15:02:36.329Z,MSFT,1,DIVIDEND,57.5,USD,0 2023-12-15T15:02:36.329Z,MSFT,30,BUY,368.6046511627907,USD,0 2023-08-11T14:55:30.863Z,$CASH-USD,600.03,DEPOSIT,1,USD,0

I don't know about Wealthfolio, but the import QFX/OFX/CSV/etc. into GnuCash has ways to reconcile that with transactions you've manually recorded/edited, which can be much richer than the bank or CC knows. (GnuCash also has a way to import via network access, but I haven't tried it.)

(Example of richness: splitting am Amazon CC charge into the multiple expense accounts for the items that went into the order, and also accounting for the CC rewards and the Gift Card balance that contributed.)

I tried taking a break from GnuCash for maybe year, and going to a spreadsheet, and found: (1) it was still substantial work to maintain an accurate view of balances, and (2) I was missing a lot of information I found I needed in practice.

That's the core question. This is 99% of the value that any such tool provides.

An open source project that had import flows for all the major banks & brokers into a well-defined unified format? Tremendous impact.

A graphing tool that only imports a standardized CSV? I can do that in my spreadsheet in minutes.

The Spreadsheet-based workflow works very well for me as well. I have a feeling a very large % of people manage their personal finances on a spreadsheet. And it's private, not cloud based, backupable, and password protected.

An tool (maybe AI) that processes PDF statements and outputs the structured importable positions & transactions would be appealing to me. No live online link to be compromised, or at lease a simpler fetch statement PDF scrape (vs maintain scrape of broker sites).

I really feel like there should be a tool that wraps Woob[0] finance and provides something similar to Plaid, but self-hosted. There are some great finance apps that could then potentially integrate it to improve automation.

Woob does a great job of providing a good API for automating the web, and sure, not everything works, but it's a good start. Unfortunately, it seems it's not very well known still.

[0] https://woob.tech/

I have found https://teller.io to be really good for this. They are more affordable than Plaid too at the lower end of scale.

I have also seen some apps use https://www.simplefin.org/

I just assumed it uses Plaid.

That's what I was wondering. It's a ton of work, but would love the auto importing / screen scraping features that Mint.com had. For a local desktop tool it even has the potential to support every possible service because they can't do IP blocking on end-users (versus the server-to-server model that Mint.com had, caused many services to IP block Mint's servers).

Unfortunately, depending on an open-source tool to do this is a double edged sword if it had these features, because we would be opening the risk of supply-chain attacks -- malicious actors getting commits into the repository code which cause the program to send your data elsewhere -- or worse, deplete accounts' funds.

it's open source... so all of them?

I don’t know - I really don’t like having those credentials in third parties hands - but I just do this stuff quarterly

I've used ofxtools to download things locally. It basically supports the old Quicken/QuickBooks interfaces which many US banks, brokerages, and credit cards support. It's pretty clumsy though.

Oh hey, thanks! Working hard to make PL a little better every day :)

Just wanted to say thanks for bringing this up! So far it is a really interesting tool for me, as someone too lazy to find a proper financial planner

ProjectionLab is great, it's been fun to watch it grow over the last few years!

As someone who has used it, would you say the lifetime option is worth $800? That seems really steep. It wouldn’t pay itself off over monthly for over 7 years.

Is it specifically for the north American financial market / system?

another lifetime subscriber here, highly recommend!

I used to use Beancount religiously (before some job and health difficulties left me less capable of tracking my finances as closely.) My biggest complaint was always that I didn't have something like autocomplete/syntax highlighting to cut down on the manual-ness of data entry.

Most of the aforementioned difficulties are behind me, and Paisa looks like an awesome way to help ease me back into Beancount. Thank you! I'm going to try it out soon!

Looks interesting, thanks for sharing. One comment: I didn't find any mention of "open source" or AGPL on paisa.fyi, which is kind of a big deal to me, and I assume others too. Maybe you should add it there?

Like the idea of using text files as storage as it lets me use git to track changes - nice! Will check it out too.

I posted before an Ask HN submission if there were an app that essentially acted as a frontend to Google Sheets, where I could enter information into a mobile or desktop app and have it sync to Sheets but it seems like no such solution exists. I might just have to build it myself.

Once Mint.com has closed I started to dig for alternatives and found Monarch Money. Couldn't be happier to pay for the service. New features come out pretty often, and I believe they work on the better support for tracking investments.

I have been using Empower (previously Personal Capital) for almost 10 years now and have been happy enough

Not really: Ever since Mint's shut down, there have been replacements pouring out of the woodwork. It's a low-hanging-fruit (Due to aggregators like Plaid), saturated marked. Note that the OP's program is a bit different in that it's local, and seems to focus on individual investments vice online account aggregation.

How does this compare to Simplifi, Empower, etc?

I think the problem is you have 20+ accounts. Why don't you consolidate?

My company is an online lender - we use plaid so that users may instantly link their bank account. They have an alternative of verifying with micro-deposits, but that does take 2 days and the company gets less information on the user, so there are more manual verifications the user must do (provide paystub and id etc).

Plaid Cons:

- The end user must type their bank account credentials into a third party platform that uses their banks logo. It is terrible for general population cyber security because this is the exact type of you thing you should never do in general. However I do not know of any data leaks or info sec issues from Plaid specifically. As far as I know Plaid is totally safe with this information. Im sure they will be hacked eventually though - everyone is.

- Plaid shows the permission you are granting but the user can not make it more restrictive. For example the company with the plaid integration can choose from 1 to all off these functionalities (they all increase api cost though): KYC Verification, PII from the account, one time current balance, ongoing current balance check, all transactions for previous 2-24 months. The vendor chooses what they want to get and the end user can take it or leave it, they cant pick and choose.

Plaid Pros:

- instantly verify bank account instead of waiting 1-2 days for Micro Deposits to hit account then come back to the app to verify. This is just better flow for the user, who often wants the loan asap. It is better for company too, because there is more conversion.

- balance checks, transaction history - these are useful for us to not overdraw accounts when pulling a payment, and verify income. Budgeting apps use these to auto import values of course.

- many banks have been forced to move to OAuth because of plaid. Having worked at a Top 10 US bank, I do not believe that any other than maybe Capital One would have OAuth today if it were not for Plaid pushing them

- There is really no other feasible option to get this data (other than competitors with same exact strategy so no difference). This is the customer's data that is valuable to them! They should be able to share it with trusted partners if it gives them value.

Yes, but the fault lies with the banks who do not allow their own customers access to their data. Plaid, Intuit, and other private companies scrape financial institutions unless they provide more secure methods to obtain customer data, and most of them do not do this.

So the state of the art to connect to banks... is Selenium with stealth modifications.

I own a business which does the same work as Plaid, Intuit, et al.

If you call Fidelity with a security issue the first question they ask you is, did you share your password with anyone (and if you did, you're to blame).

There is an example within the app. On the import screen, navigate to the top right corner and click on "How to Import CSV" for further instructions.

Activity > Upload-Icon (top right) > Drop CSV

>> Fidelity's CSV exports don't seem to be particularly cooperative AFAICT

Not to mention, Fidelity's site seems broken over half the typical days, especially with products like Basket Trades. Baskets broken. No cost basis. No quotes...not even during market hours. Insane.

There is a standard, called OFX[1], but support among financial institution is spotty, unfortunately.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Financial_Exchange

Fidelity supports ofx downloads which makes the process easier than clicking buttons in a browser. OFX is very detailed, and ofx to cab conversion is solved I think.

> They don't include stock symbols

even better than stock symbols would be if the whole world could agree to use ISINs (or even WKNs)

That's why I like Portfolio Performance. It includes access to historical quotes.

Actual Budget is basically an open source clone of YNAB. The UI isn't quite as polished IMHO.

Importing CSV might look easy, but banks, at least in the country that I live in does not have a standard. One might end up spending more time cleaning up the data.

> Speaking practically, I don't see a need or reason for this. I can just login to my bank and brokerage accounts and check live data on the spot.

First mentioned and most prominent feature is "Accounts Aggregation" on the landing page. If you don't have multiple accounts, it makes sense you don't see any need for this. But you should also realize that it's fairly common to have multiple accounts, for various of reasons.

wealthfolio.app to check for new app versions. yahoo.com to fetch ticker symbols and quotes

I have similar information in a spreadsheet (that I am also turning into an app), and what it can help with long term is to put downturns in the market in perspective and keep you from overreacting to them.

When you look at a log chart of your net worth over several decades, things like the dot-com bubble and the Great Recession look like blips. It makes it easier to look at a bear market and think, "this too shall pass".

Of course it also helps you see your progress towards a goal and give you information on how long it will likely take to get there.

This is true for some banks (mostly large), but not all. Your big banks like Citi and Chase offer OAuth for this kind of thing (as they should), but smaller banks still don't and will require a username and password.

I don't know how Plaid handles that, but you don't have the nice, permission scoped, revokable tokens like you do with OAuth.

My primary bank has a checkbox for "third party access" and they pay out how you need to check it when you give a service your username and password so they can access your account. Same username and password, not a new one. It drives me insane how they don't offer OAuth.

Dropped my CSV into ChatGPT with the following prompt and the output file worked:

``` Modify this csv to match this format: Follow these steps to import your account activities from a CSV file:

Ensure your CSV file is in the correct format. Columns should include Date, Symbol, Quantity, Activity Type, Unit Price, Currency, and Fee. Click the 'Import' button and select your CSV file. Review the imported activities before confirming. Supported Activity Types:

BUY SELL DIVIDEND INTEREST DEPOSIT WITHDRAWAL TRANSFER_IN TRANSFER_OUT CONVERSION_IN CONVERSION_OUT FEE TAX Example CSV format:

date,symbol,quantity,activityType,unitPrice,currency,fee 2024-01-01T15:02:36.329Z,MSFT,1,DIVIDEND,57.5,USD,0 2023-12-15T15:02:36.329Z,MSFT,30,BUY,368.6046511627907,USD,0 2023-08-11T14:55:30.863Z,$CASH-USD,600.03,DEPOSIT,1,USD,0 ```

Except it couldn't find the symbol `BRK/B`, `BRK.B` or `BRKB`.

I would just switch brokerages. Not just for the csv issue, but their platform has taken a shitter since acquiring TDA.

I've done this in gnucash, but i don't know if it would be worthwhile for just that.

ActualBudget

@a-fadil Code review pls: https://github.com/afadil/wealthfolio/pull/46

You log your dividends/interest and you have a dashboard in Holding section -> Income Tab

Works for me. If the tickers is in Yahoo Finance, it should be supported.

https://www.splitwise.com/

I created https://github.com/VMelnalksnis/Gnomeshade for myself, transactions have separate transfers which are between accounts, and purchases, which allows to categorize your spending. This setup also allows to easily handle multiple currencies.

Any personal accounting software? Quicken, GNUCash, any Plain Text Accounting, etc.

I must be missing something in your requirements.

GnuCash may be a good option

Presumably the Canadian government has a concrete plan to implement Open Banking this year [1]. I have been told by an industry insider that if things go as planned, apps should start to support Canadian banks by next year.

[1] https://www.canada.ca/en/department-finance/programs/financi...

Its common for Canadians to have USD and CAD investments so that means the app will have to handle multiple currencies which is a useful feature for any investment app.

Data stored in SQLite file

I think this is the mindset that ruined the web.

Why are you posting an excerpt of the Readme without any additional comment?

One way to do it is to import a line with type deposit or transfer in with symbol=$CASH-USD(or other account currency)

Activity > Upload-Icon (top right) > Drop CSV

The app do a call to yahoo api to get symbol data using only the ticker symbol.

Looks like it uses yahoo_finance_api in rust. In theory that supports options, but no idea whether this tool handles that data properly, I didn't feel like searching that hard.

It's gonna take a lot to pry me away from my spreadsheets. They are simple and just work. Ages and ages ago I used MS Money but once they shut down I never migrated to the 'sunset edition,' just switched to excel. I keep trying things, but without local, automatic sync to my accounts, nothing is as simple and effective as a simple spreadsheet, for me.

Supports Crypto Assets as well.

GitHub page has a robust writeup of all technologies used [0]

[0] https://github.com/afadil/wealthfolio?tab=readme-ov-file#tec...

You do realize these prerequisites are steps to _build_ the application and that you can download the binary directly, right?

Right?

If I can specify the data location, I could just use syncthing or dropbox or whatever. Syncing directories is mostly a solved problem.

> This is what we need more often from our software, especially from software that works with sensitive data.

Storing sensitive data in local storage makes you vulnerable to XSS attacks and Man-in-the-Browser attacks. You're exposing your sensitive data to an attacker that injects a script to the website and to malicious browser extensions. All sensitive data stored in local storage must be encrypted using a key stored in the server or somewhere on your hard disk. Otherwise, you're not reducing your risk, but substituting one type of information disclosure vulnerability with another.

I built a similar tool to what OP shared, mainly for debts instead of investments, and I completely agree with you. My app only uses iCloud to sync and it keeps all sensitive data on the user's phone. Another benefit I want to share about this approach is it means that apps built local-only will never have the risk of one day going offline and being inaccessible due to the company closing down or turning off the server.

> Sync options can include locally/self hosted options or use something like iCloud that don't depend on a software vendor's running a service though.

Don't most sync options depend on a software vendor running a service? (Your VPS hosting company, your SaaS handling cross-device syncing, your cloud provider, et cetera.)

It appears that it does not use 0ver: https://0ver.org/

I developed, the app as a side project for my needs. Made the decision to move to another public repository to open sourced and not to keep the git history. App code is simple to read if you want to check security and privacy concerns.

Only if you assume that it is their first repository and that they performed the first commit after the first line of code.

Not sure why this is downvoted. I settled with spreadsheets after trying out lots of such trackers. The frustration in your comment, I can feel. A lots of similar comments also reflecting the same about spreadsheets.

Did you read OP's words?

> I developed this app for my own needs. Getting tired of SaaS app subscriptions and privacy concerns.

> Anonymize and aggregate the data, then sell it off to financial and marketing firms.

Horrible. Goes against the privacy oriented aspect of this app.

> Add ads to the site.

Oh great, more useless ads I have to block. Nothing like getting a crypto scam ad while viewing your portfolio performance. Horrible UX idea.

> Charge a subscription fee.

Yet another SaaS, centralization of data, and betrays the privacy oriented aspect

> Partner with banks as a white label financial planning tool.

Likely won’t work. Maybe small advisors would buy into it but at that level there are a plethora of tools available to them with real time aggregation available via Plaid or even old school scraping (doubtful in 2024 though).

How about this? Just charge one time fee for major versions of the app. Minor and patch versions are free. Keep the privacy oriented aspect and local to users machine.

Why must you always use the worst ways to monetize? Treat users with respect and you will have life long customers. Not everything needs to be a billion dollar unicorn pumped with VC funds.

I feel like there was an implied /s, but I’m guessing the downvoters disagree.