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4

I currently use financeworks.intuit.com to keep track of transactions/balances in my bank, brokerage, and credit card accounts. My favorite feature: it automatically pulls transactions/balances without my having to log in to each separately.

Is there any free/open source Unix/Linux software (eg, gnucash???) that does the same thing? Notes:

  • I get financeworks.intuit.com for free, but I dislike them having all my usernames/passwords.

  • It works with many of my banks/brokers/credit cards, but not all of them.

  • It sometimes works w/ a given bank/broker/card for a while and then stops working (perhaps because my "remember me" cookie gets wiped out and the bank/broker/card site asks me a security question that financeworks can't answer).

Surely, Unix hackers can do better. Notes:

  • The software would ideally use OFX, which lets third party apps read my bank/broker/card transaction/balance data, but not my more sensitive data.

  • A list of my banks/brokers/cards (software should ideally work w/ all of them, or at least all minus 3 or 4):

    • Credit cards

      • usbank.com
      • etrade.com
      • compassbank.com
      • capitalone.com
      • nationalcity.com
      • nmefcu.org
      • fswb.com
      • fiacardservices.com
      • paypal.com
      • citibank.com

    • Banks

      • ingdirect.com
      • compassbank.com
      • frostbank.com
      • nmefcu.org
      • bofa.com

    • Brokers

      • vanguard.com
      • forex.com
      • nadex.com
      • saxobank.com
      • gftforex.com

I notice that at least 2-3 of my credit card sites redirect to managemycreditcard.com, so if the software can interface w/ this site, it should suffice.

Side question: how many banks/brokers/cards are using OFX? Is it relatively new or fairly widespread?

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4  
Not that it's any of my business, but that's a lot of accounts. – fideli Apr 5 '11 at 23:05
1  
Yes, and each of them serves a specific purpose. What I wouldn't give to deal with fewer financial institutions! – barrycarter Apr 6 '11 at 0:39

4 Answers

up vote 6 down vote

Gnucash uses aqbanking, so I'd suggest looking at aqbanking to see if it will do what you want. It seems to be actively developed (as of 26.2.2011), but the main page is in German and my German is a bit rusty...

You might also try asking on the gnucash-users list.

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up vote 2 down vote

As far as I can tell there are no "out-of-the-box" solutions for this. Nor will Moneydance or GnuCash give you the full solution you are looking for. I imaging people don't write a well-known, open-source, tool that will do this for fear of the negative uses it could have, and the resulting liability. You can roll-you-own using the following obscure tools that approximate a solution:

First download the bank's CSV information:

http://baruch.ev-en.org/proj/gnucash.html

That guy did it with a perl script that you can modify.

Then convert the result to OFX for use elsewhere:

http://allmybrain.com/2009/02/04/converting-financial-csv-data-to-ofx-or-qif-import-files/

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up vote 1 down vote

Moneydance is a commercial application that is cross-platform.

Written in Java, they run and are supported on Windows, Mac and Linux.

They integrate with many financial institutions and for those that it cannot, you can import a locally downloaded file.

I have used it for several years on my Mac, but have no company affiliation.

I'm not sure if by saying "Unix" software you meant FOSS of some kind, but good luck in any case.

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Yes, FOSS. I've written iMacros macros that will log into my sites and download/save the QFX (or OFX or QIF) files for later processing. However, this is ugly. I want a clean consistent way to access all of my financial information. – barrycarter Apr 7 '11 at 1:37
1  
Please edit the question then? "Unix" is not synonymous with FOSS. – sdg Apr 7 '11 at 12:27
Done, although a lot of Unix/Linux/FreeBSD stuff is FOSS. – barrycarter Apr 7 '11 at 12:41
Thanks (title too?), agree that much of the *x ecosystem is FOSS of one kind or another, but particularly in this case, when there is a commercial version that runs on Linux, the FOSS requirement/distinction is important. Good luck finding a FOSS package! – sdg Apr 7 '11 at 13:30
Done. The moneydance financial institution list makes me wonder where I can get the OFX info to connect myself. Once I have that, I wouldn't need the software. I know about ofxhome.com, but, in many cases, I'm not sure how to cruft the right packet. – barrycarter Apr 7 '11 at 16:16
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up vote 0 down vote

Buxfer is a personal-finance web app which you might like. It's not open-source. But at least none of your complaints about financeworks.intuit.com apply to Buxfer.

Buxfer offers a piece of software you can download to your own PC, called Firebux. This macro-recording software provides automation that helps you download statements and upload them to Buxfer. So you never have to give Buxfer any of your bank or brokerage usernames or passwords.

Buxfer and Firebux are both free of charge.

Wesabe, another personal-finance web app, also used to offer data-uploader software, but Wesabe has now gone out of business.

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