Jonathan, Are you looking to only import investment account information, or bank/credit card transactions as well? If it's the latter, I've built a utility that does the following:
- Reads a config file containing accounts to process - For each account, use ofxtools <https://github.com/csingley/ofxtools> to download the account transaction data - Use the smart importer <https://github.com/beancount/smart_importer> hook to remove duplicates and auto-assign expense categories based on previous transactions - Writes all new transactions to your beancount file, with a tag denoting the transaction download timestamp - Email a daily report with all new transactions I've been using it daily for almost a year and it works great for my use, but has some specific customization code for my Chase credit card accounts. I'd be open to cleaning up the code and publishing it on GitHub if your interested in collaborating. Regards, Eric On Wednesday, June 24, 2020 at 11:41:46 PM UTC-6 [email protected] wrote: > Hi Jonathan, > > Q1 > > I would say whenever you have both (or more) sides of a transactions then > it's the best to import all legs. The thing is that in most cases you don't > have them. On thing that I also do quite often is, that if I can import > both sides of a transaction form two different sources (e.g. two different > banks), then I use the transaction ids of each bank to add them to the same > transaction, so I know that I have it imported from both sides. > > > Q2 > > Not sure if you've come across smart importer > https://github.com/beancount/smart_importer, this is a wrapper around > your importer that uses existing transactions to guess what the missing > other leg could be. For me this works extremely well. > > I use it together with the web ui fava https://github.com/beancount/fava > > when you then run an importer you get basically the list of all your > transactions and you can still modify if the smart importer guess wrong. > > What I also started doing more and more (and also works quite nicely), is > to actually not even have a file to import but instead directly use an > available api (e.g. truelayer, revolut, transferwise, interactive brokers, > ...), you can see some examples in my beancounttools > https://github.com/tarioch/beancounttools > > > Q3 > > There were some enhancements done for hooks: > https://github.com/beancount/beancount/issues/458 > > > Regards, > > Patrick > > > > On 25.06.2020 07:15, Jonathan Goldman wrote: > > Hi, > > I have done a bunch of exploration of beancount over the last few months > and really like its capabilities and now ready to get serious about getting > it working for me. So far this is what I have done: > > > - Used the sample files to familiarize myself with the commands and > beancount's capabilities. > - Created accounts and manually entered some real data for my personal > finances. > - Tried this <https://github.com/jbms/beancount-import> > sem-auto-categorization web-based import tool. It's good but I think I'll > mostly go the manual route. > - Tried various import methods > - Tried importing a quicken file...have had some trouble with this. > - Tried a csv2ofx <https://github.com/reubano/csv2ofx> tool > - Used reds_importers > > <https://github.com/redstreet/beancount_reds_importers/blob/master/README.md> > for Vanguard. This has worked successfully. This generates output that > has > two-sided. > - Wrote my own csv importer for my bank that is based on this csv > > <https://gist.github.com/mterwill/7fdcc573dc1aa158648aacd4e33786e8#file-importers-chase-py> > > importer.. (I'm not a software engineer by training so this took me > some > time but I'm very happy with this now and understand the code much > more). > This generates output that is only one-sided. > > My own conclusion is that I want go the route suggested by Martin and > effectively have my own importers for each source and with text-based > editor with auto-completion do the categorization. For the brokerages there > are a limited number of accounts/categories you can have so doing the > two-sided entry can be done here so it is auto-categorization if you will. > (e.g. dividends from account xyz always go to this income account, etc). > For credit cards and banks it rarely helps as there are so many expense > categories. Perhaps a subset (e.g. interest income from the bank can be > autocategorized or mortgage payment of specific amount) can be automated. > > *Q1. Is doing two-side entry for brokerages and single-side for > banks/credit cards a good approach the general practice that most here > use? * > *Q2. Is there other import approaches to consider? I think I'm finding > this the hardest part to get going on and that is why other tools like > Quicken/Mint/GnuCash are easier to get going. So not sure how, but perhaps > data collection and import is something already solved that is not > beancount specific?* > > I also noticed that Martin mentioned this in the import documentation > <https://docs.google.com/document/d/11EwQdujzEo2cxqaF5PgxCEZXWfKKQCYSMfdJowp_1S8/edit#> > : > >> A list of things I’d really want to add, beyond fortifying what’s already >> there: >> >> - >> >> A generic, configurable CSV importer which you can instantiate. I >> plan to play with this a bit and build a sniffer that could automatically >> figure out the role of each column. >> - >> >> A hook to allow you to register a callback for post-processing >> transactions that works across all importers. >> >> > *Q3. Is there any update/development on these two items?* > > thanks, > Jonathan > > > -- > 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 [email protected]. > To view this discussion on the web visit > https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/beancount/b2b52ac6-b019-4375-adcb-e3f7e6ab0c3bo%40googlegroups.com > > <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/beancount/b2b52ac6-b019-4375-adcb-e3f7e6ab0c3bo%40googlegroups.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer> > . > > -- 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 [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/beancount/0cf02c31-ad63-4dbd-bcaa-0df89855a85dn%40googlegroups.com.
