Not affiliated in any way with Actual Budget, but I can’t recommend it enough. It’s the FOSS version of YNAB pretty much so if you’re a fan of envelope budgeting it’s a great tool. I’d even say it has quite a few other strengths compared to YNAB (free bank syncing in the EU with more banks supported for example), and you can always be sure that your financial data stays within your reach.
The number one thing that most of these don’t do well for me is the connection with banks. You mentioned that there is bank syncing, how well does that work? Can I say, just click my bank and do an oauth connection, and it will store it? I really loved Mint, and essentially want it to be done the same way
The number one thing that most of these don’t do well for me is the connection with banks.
A bit of an anecdote, but i was a long-time user of Mint, which integrated with all my banks and credit cards, which was nice.
When I decided to selfhost, I was disappointed that bank syncing wasn’t a thing, or it had these roundabout ways of working, or they simply didn’t support the banks and credit cards i use.
So… I ended up wity Money Manager EX.
Once i did the initial importing of my records, everything since has been manually entered.
Now, this might seem tedious depending on how many transactions and accounts you manage, but it’s really not.
Depending on how often you update your records, you can do an easy export/import of your transactions from your bank (usually a csv export). Doing this once a month isn’t terrible.
I just manually enter all my transactions. Yes, more work, but also less frustration and it makes me feel more in touch with my spending.
Even not having to worry about the hassle of syncing not working, or having to fix things like that is a huge weight off my shoulders.
Anyway, just wanted to share my experience because bank syncing shouldn’t be a make-or-break thing.
In the US it has integration with SimpleFIN. SimpleFIN isn’t free but it’s pretty cheap ($1.50/mo) and supports most banks out there, even my obscure local credit union. It works pretty well, though sometimes the banks fuck with stuff and seem hell bent on breaking any kind of API access, but SimpleFIN support was really responsive for me to get it fixed when it happened. I do also have to reauthenticate my bank every day when I want to sync, but that’s also just the banks being assholes and isn’t too bad to do.
How well do you find it works? I’m not afraid of the fee, but I don’t want to spend time setting it up and paying the fee to only find out that it won’t do most things
Worked really well for me, just put in an API key to actual budget and it pulls all the info from simple fin. Only thing that doesn’t pull for me it categories of the transactions so you have to manually set them up in actual but it does allow for rules.
Has worked really well for me. Like I mentioned I’ve had a couple instances where the banks change their login flow and I had to open a support ticket to get it fixed, but they (SimpleFIN) were very responsive in working on it when I opened a support request and had it fixed within a couple days. Two of my accounts also have to be re-authenticated every time I wanna pull data into Actual, but that’s also the banks’ fault and it’s not that big of a deal to do.
As for integration with Actual is basically flawless and just works. Setup is super easy, just paste in a token from SimpleFIN and boom you see all the accounts you have linked and can attach them to accounts in Actual. Sync is rock solid too, I don’t have any issues with it messing up transactions with duplicates etc.
Does SimpleFIN use OAuth to log into bank accounts, or do you need to enter your bank’s username and password?
Unrelated to this post, but do you know if SimpleFIN supports investment accounts? If it does, it seems like an easy way to let me write a script to help rebalance my investment accounts. I might look into it.
It varies by bank but for all mine you have to use the username and password unfortunately. My understanding is that it’s just how the underlying bank APIs work in general, because that’s what I have to do when I link accounts for my banks elsewhere too, not just in SimpleFIN. I don’t think they actually store your credentials though, I think it proxies it to the bank login and then caches a token. You can probably ask their support about the details if you’re concerned, they have been pretty responsive to me and willing to answer technical questions.
It does support investment accounts, I have my retirement and investment accounts in there. It supports just about every account I have, actually, credit cards included which is super handy. I think it’s all read-only access through, so you can only use it to import data not make new transactions.
If you’re in the EU you can do bank syncing for free with GoCardless integration. If you’re in the US you need to go with SimpleFIN which costs a small sum and is in a more experimental phase than the GoCardless integration I think. Either way, GoCardless has been working great for me. Actually far better than YNAB which didn’t even support my bank. It’s literally just set up and forget.
Because the actual export, transform and loading of multiple banks and accounts data is cumbersome its holding me back.
So curious to read about GoCardless.
But is that also for consumer?
And is it this: https://gocardless.com/pricing/
Yes, it works a treat in the EU (due to PSD2, which mandates open banking) and U.K. (which is copy/pasting PSD2 to ensure their banks aren’t left behind).
I’m syncing with Handelsbanken UK, American Express, Lloyds, Monzo and Starling, all in the UK. Works a treat except most of the banks actually rate limit you to a couple of syncs per day.
Yes. You can read about on Actual Budgets documentation. It’s free for personal use. You just generate an API token. https://actualbudget.org/docs/advanced/bank-sync/gocardless/
The man who originally invented this tech is a really good guy, can’t recommend it enough!
I’ve literally just switched to Actual (3 days in) after living out of a homemade Excel YNAB clone for years and years. Overall it’s great and the bank syncing really works (except with a weird issue around starting date and starting balance).
I love that it’s open source, E2E encrypted, self-hostable and the data lives in a SQLite database.
If I haven’t found any major snags, I’ll of course become a supporter in a couple of weeks.
Yeah, I think it’s fantastic as well. The SimpleFIN syncinc works fantastically, and I’m happy enough that I cancelled my TillerHQ subscription, which lapses this month. There’s still a little work to do to clean up some of my older data, but once I get it all rolling nicely, I’ll definitely send the developers a substantial portion of what I was paying for Tiller (like $100/year). I’ve only used it for a couple months, and I plan to play with it a bit in the next month or two as I’m preparing EOY stuff.
Looks interesting. Marked it for exploration. Too many cool projects to explore and not enough time!
I’ve been using it for almost a year now and it works great. I used to just use a spread sheet to track my bills paychecks and due dates but this made it much nicer
