I am looking for a self hosted solution (without a horrible subscription cost, sub is okay, but should stay well clear of three digits/year), and there are SO MANY out there, it’d take years to test them all! Maybe some recommendations ?

Features that are a must-have for me:

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  • “Red Arrow Right”. Curse you YNAB for removing what to me was THE defining feature of the classic version of that software just out of spite, and asking for it gets a lot of hate and negative backlash. If you don’t know it, it was a feature that let you ‘borrow’ from next months budget in a category - to me, it always made sense that if you have a budget for regular expenses, say restaurants that you allocate X per month, then if you have a dinner on the 31st and it’s more than you saved, that budget is just in the red next month. I have never been happy with any budgeting solution that lacked that feature (in an accessible way, without having to overhaul your budget and get out a calculator).
  • Ability to define CSV imports for different banks. My banks export data in different formats, and I can’t be changing the import format back and forth manually all the time. Some apps I’ve seen only allow you to have a global import configuration, and that just didn’t work for me.
  • Be able to be used conveniently on both desktop PC as well as phones (both Android and iPhone). Don’t care if it’s an app or a responsive web app as long as I can do everything or near everything with it on any platform.
  • Ability to export your data.

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I’ll happily take suggestions, as well as warnings against things you tried and would not recommend or know do not support what I am looking for.

  • Vininski@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    Actual budget is the closest thing to YNAB4 that I’ve tried so far. The API enables you to import bank transactions automatically as well so it’s actually more convenient. Responsive enough as a web app on mobile but lacking the depth of reports and overall slickness of YNAB currently.

  • XxNerdAtHeartxX@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    Actual does all of that. (at least, I believe it does #2, but I think budgeting should be a manual process anyways)

    Firefly III is okay, but it doesn’t follow Envelope Budgeting, and if you are used to YNAB, then Actual is basically a drop in replacement. It even has a YNAB4 importer

  • DVoltaire@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    I just installed Firefly iii and ActualBudget to try them both out. Is there no way to have ActualBudget auto-categorize imports? I see that the QIF/OFX/QFX don’t have categories but the CSV does from the bank, so I tried that one and the import has no option for selecting category. Firefly iii picked up the categories instantly from the import. I do like the clean look of Actual, but might have to go with Firefly iii so as to not have to categorize every single transaction manually.