Did I misunderstand their “Import 8 different file formats” claim? Just upload the CSVs or whatever you get from the providers?
I could not convince my wife to use such a tool. We tried for 2 months YNAB, but she was pissed off. Now we have two separate accounts and I transfer every month X, so I can book it somewhere as X (usually crazy spending).
I rebuilt, the YNAB functionality in Google Sheets/Libreoffice Calc since I don’t need to enter it on-the-go, but enter it every couple of days. (Google Sheets on-the-go functionality would be possible via Google Forms and Libreoffice Calc via NextCloud/Collabora, it worked, but it was too much hassle to capture everything every time I spent something).
So I’m just checking every month if the accounts are even with the sheet’s amounts, cleared. Additionally, paying the monthly dues and enter it right away. I don’t need to import anything that way. The trading accounts, I just update as Buchgewinn/-verlust every month.
For some of the banks that support psd2 (like revolut) you can actually use truelayer (https://truelayer.com/) and that’s without cost.
I created a parser for the pdf from cembra that works well enough, but parsing pdfs is always tricky, see https://github.com/tarioch/beancounttools/blob/master/src/tariochbctools/importers/cembrastatement/importer.py
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That sounds familiar. I balance the main bank account once a month. End of the year I balance the accounts, including cash and investments. The difference is booked into “various purchases” (pretty small) respectively “Buchgewinn/-verlust”.
That way, it’s not only easy to maintain but I am also not distracted by daily swings in the portfolio.
I think they can’t provide E-Bill, because your monthly statement is not the amount to pay. The minimum to pay and not get a penalty is low. On the rest you will pay heavy interest. They don’t want you to pay all, it’s against their business model.
I would be surprised if any credit card provider willingly enabled ebill. The best thing I saw is autopay if your credit card is at the same bank as your account.
Swisscard offers E-Bill, at least for the cards I have.
And which amount do they give each month? The total outstanding? Or the minimum?
The total outstanding.
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That’s very practical. I already had to pay the 30 CHF fine once or twice for forgetting to pay…
Yes swisscards works very well.
Cembra/Cumulus has LSV and Debit Direct for the full amount.
Yes, I just never activated it. You need to print it out and send it to them per post. And you allow them to charge you whatever they think they should. But yeah, it would have been a smart choice to do it at the beginning.
How can I enable e bill with Swisscard? I have some CCs from them, paying invoice (without extra charges) would be nice.
Edit: oh I see, you mean you pay the swisscard invoice with e bill?
Iirc they do show up as an invoice provider in ebill interface. Then you need to provide your account number (not the card number)…
I have now tried to use it for the second time but as soon as I try to enter my ETFs in Euro it doesn’t work correctly anymore. So it is much too complicated.
Yeah iiuc GnuCash and beancount are similarly complicated. beancount does however have an automated currency converter plugin as long as you have the currency pair price of the day of the transaction.
You can write a Firefox/Chrome/IE plugin to read the page. It’s not that hard. It just has to generate a CSV that you can later use elsewhere. I might give it a try.
I use YNAB (youneedabudget), but it needs to be manually updated.
Haven’t found any better way yet.
Do
Do you know if there is a similar URL from Swisscanto for Swisscanto funds? I am looking to automate the parsing of their historical quotes from CSV, XML or JSON output.
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replying to the OP question:
beancount user here, converted from GnuCash converted from excel years back
pros:
- ledger source is human readable text
- great functionality, including csv ingestion
- absolute hack-ability as it natively supports python
- great standard UI (fava)
- at times extremely rewarding
- ultimate playground for data enthusiasts, as you build a fantastic data set over time
cons:
- huge learning curve. Especially if you start using it like me without relevant programming knowledge
- at times extremely frustrating