I guess I've always meant to do the automation but have never gotten to it as I haven't seen enough actual success stories with it for basically the reasons you just posted (I don't typically read the mailing list). I've been through too many "works for me" recomendations (for other technologies) that don't work to trust it at face value, so I would have to spend significant effort to test and validate all these different experiences. I am also in the US with some credit unions etc. and I couldn't even get them to connect with Mint even though I had friends that could do the same. Lesson learned there was just to take ownership of it and no one will do it for you.
These days I just don't generate enough "1 USD coffee" transactions to make me motivated to automate them, part of which I credit to painfully hand entering all these transactions :) It also forces me to look at each transaction to know if any are fraudulent. For a beginner to beancount or just someone thats financially unsophisticated I think its valuable to do it by hand. But all that said, yes I would like to automate the tedious parts. I'll try to do a little bit more investigation, but I would like to see a "Do it this way" kind of guide that isn't just "works for me" with a reasoned explanation of all the problems, gotchas, etc. in detail so I know what I'm getting into and where something may or may not work. On Friday, December 31, 2021 at 6:30:49 AM UTC-5 redst...@gmail.com wrote: > > I agree with Blais that there really isn't a better solution to all of >> this. I think there is a misconception that because it is conceivable that >> all of your transactions can be automated (and they are for individual >> banks & institutions) that it should be easy to automate or that there is >> already a solution. It sucks to have to do it all manually, but the pain of >> entering hundreds of "Expenses:Coffee 3.00 USD" transactions now makes me >> think twice about it! (or to just use cash and book them all in a single >> pad entry :P) It also has really made me appreciate the complexity of some >> financial instruments, which in my case has made me less afraid of them >> since I know that I can keep track of them all as I want to start doing >> crazy things to make money :) > > > Indeed, close to all of your transactions can be automated close to all of > the time. ofx rarely breaks and is indeed highly automatable. csv may take > longer to develop and might occasionally break. Getting it from 95% to 100% > is usually not worth it in my experience. But getting it to to the 95% > point is extremely valuable, and the point of the 5-minute ledger update. > > PS: I haven't entered "hundreds of 'Expenses:Coffee 3.00 USD' > transactions" or similar in at least half a decade. Nobody needs to do this. > > > I really can't imagine having to do all of the importers myself and >> maintain them since the banks are always changing and no two are alike. I >> think its just easier to do by hand as of now since I know after working a >> few hours I will have a product, rather than spending a few hours >> automating and it just sucks at the end anyways. I would definitely pay >> someone to provide up to date importers and a UI for quickly categorizing >> them (since the banks never get this right for my purposes). >> > > With the ingest frameworks available (including mine), the average user > should be able to recoup their cost in say 2-5 import cycles. If you're > like me and like to import several times a month, there's a tremendous ROI > in automating. And no, it's extremely far from "just sucking at the end > anyways". > > A whole bunch of people have shared importers. A pypi-like system to list, > install, and manage importers would be awesome. Without that, most users > need to put in some time up front to find the importers they need. > > Of course, all this depends on where you live and whom you bank with. My > personal experience is as a user in the US. > > I'm curious as to where your impressions above come from, given mine is > far from it. Perhaps if you could share whom you bank with and what > specific problems you've had writing importers, that would help. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Beancount" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to beancount+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/beancount/70dcf5ce-d53c-4557-bcbe-ecb08539894bn%40googlegroups.com.
