Show HN: ExpenseOwl – Simple, self-hosted expense tracker
13 comments
·February 7, 2025Ninjinka
import-base64
thank you! those are good thoughts!
websap
Checked out the readme and the screenshots and this looks quite polished.
I didn't see anyway to connect with my bank accounts and pull this information. Would you be open to adding an integration like this? Maybe through Stripe financial connections, or the Plaid APIs?
ahar083
Once third party integrations like those come into play, I feel that this may become less “simple” and more of a full time job for the maintainer.
(Tools with integrations like these are generally incredibly useful though, they tend to be paid and would need to run as a service)
import-base64
thank you! glad you like it! currently the intent is to be a simple and fast expense tracker, so there are no plans to integrate banks and auto-combing transactions.
sfRattan
This is super cool!
I was looking for something like this just a few days ago. Ended up going with Flow[1], an open source Android app, because I wanted something that I could enter data on from my phone and run completely locally there. I don't yet have Tailscale running, or some other solution to access my homelab on the go. But it's great to see more and more software designed to run on people's local networks. And from the screenshots ExpenseOwl is the next tool I'd try if Flow doesn't work out... Getting Tailscale or a similar solution up and running is also on the to-do list.
I know other people want direct integration with banking APIs, but for me it's actually a feature to have to enter everything manually. I'm deliberately working on better spending habits, and having a local set of data with me which is actually sometimes ahead of my bank in terms of cleared transactions is good. It means I build the habit of entering and categorizing each time I spend money, and it means I have to regularly reconcile accounts. It's only a hypothesis, but I suspect in the era of checkbooks the practical fact of having to keep up the books manually enforced better spending habits.
[1a]: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=mn.flow.flow
[1b]: Also, github: https://github.com/flow-mn/flow
N.B. There's another expense tracker on the Play store, also called "Flow", which AFAICT isn't open source.
ramon156
I'll give this a go So far Actual Budget is pretty good, although I wish the dashboard was a bit more extensive.
smcleod
Actual is cool but its lack of solid integration with the open banking standard (as is used in Australia and other countries) made it a bit annoying as its partnered integrations are pretty rough.
dugite-code
The open banking standard isn't actually all that open.
As a customer you cannot gain access, at least easily. You need to apply for accreditation as a third party financial services provider.
agent531c
Im curious what you dont like about the dashboard? Ive been using Actual since the day it went open sourced, and the Custom Reports really make the 'dashboard' whatever I want it to be.
Theres a couple tiny things I wish would be implemented that Ive suggested on Github, but the core is solid.
throwway120385
I wish I could figure out how to take pictures of receipts and OCR them into something like this.
I built my own similar tool for my wife and I, with the same goal of making entering transactions as fast as possible, and one thing I found useful was predictive form filling.
Some categories have the same thing logged over and over (like for the "Gas" category I always made the title "Gas") so when you select the "Gas" category it prefills the title field with the most common transaction title for that category. Also works in reverse, if you enter the transaction title first it will guess the category.
I also optimized the date picker. We budget month to month, so when you're in this month's budget, all you have to select is the day. No need to select month and year, as so many default date pickers do.
Just some tidbits in case they interest you as well!