from Hacker News

Show HN: HoneyMoney – 100% more Bees than any other personal finance software

by iabdulin on 4/22/18, 9:24 PM with 99 comments

  • by reacharavindh on 4/23/18, 9:31 AM

    As nice as the tool and the insights it provides, the pain point is manually entering all the transactions. It is 2018, and we still dont have a easy way of exporting our transactions from the bank in a standard way. Every bank wants to use their own way of exporting it.

    I was seriously considering using Plaid API[1] to build an app that would download my transactions automatically, categorise it, and prompt me to only verify entries it classified with low-confidence. But, Plaid API at the time did not support all my bank accounts, which made the effort moot.

    Another concern of mine is exporting such personal data to a 3rd party. Ideally, an open source tool that strictly runs on my laptop would be the best!

    [1] - https://plaid.com

  • by chvid on 4/23/18, 8:07 AM

    This is great copy writing / presentation. The non slick design comes across as being personal, cheerful and nerdy. I think it works very well for what you are trying to sell.

  • by josefresco on 4/23/18, 11:49 AM

    I use Mint but generally, am not trilled with it.

    1. I have a hard time managing my bank account AND my main credit card. Mint seems to think me paying off my credit card bill is another expense, however Mint already tracked the CC charges so basically Mint thinks I run a massive loss every month (yes I've tried fixing this, multiple times)

    2. Other than reviewing your newest transactions, and the occasional useful bill/fee reminder, I don't find much use for the app in regards to financial planning or analysis.

    3. I don't like how Mint is basically used to slurp up my data, and sell me credit cards - it's obvious now how little they care about making it truly useful. The app has been in existence for years and barely nudges forward besides new UI.

    The thought of manually tracking my expenses however is too much work. I find it hard enough launching the Mint app regularly to allow it to download my latest transactions.

  • by Flimm on 4/23/18, 8:37 AM

    I used to love YNAB, but once I started needing real support for multiple currencies, I had to stop using it. I haven't found a daily driver replacement since, and I've tried around 10 apps. I even started writing my own, although it's not done. Does HoneyMoney support multiple currencies?

  • by ff_ on 4/23/18, 7:22 AM

    Oh wow this is super cool. IME the hardest part of using this kind of accounting software is to keep using it over time, because entering transactions is super boring, and it's hard to build the habit.

    Right now, since all my expenses come from one bank account, I export the data from the bank and use a bunch of excel sheets to keep track of stuff, but of course is a quite limited system.

    I was wondering if HoneyMoney has some kind of import system? In this way I could just dump the exports in there like once a month.

  • by FuckOffNeemo on 4/23/18, 8:29 AM

    YNAB4's desktop software has been my GOTO buggering (budgeting... I'll leave the typo in for laughs...) suite for years. Unfortunate it is no longer sold and they opted for a subscription model but it can still be found via nefarious methods.

    I'll give this a look over and see how it works. Personally I like YNAB's process of allowing manual transactions to be added but supporting other file exports from banks like .OFX files to allow you to easily reconcile your accounts and transactions. Though it's unfortunate that only their subscription model supports live feeds from your bands.

    All the same, I'll give your product a crack and see how it goes.

    PS. I enjoy how your websites presented though depending on your intended market audience, I feel it may be just a little too jovial?

  • by pwenzel on 4/23/18, 1:31 PM

    I have tried so many apps to get my financial shit together, but I always end up returning to my Google Spreadsheet-based system. One worksheet for each pay period. No tracking of transactions. Just columns for who's owed what and how much I'll have left after everyone is paid.

    Things aren't always perfect, but I have a groove and that's what matters.

  • by newscracker on 4/24/18, 5:29 AM

    There's no privacy policy on this site (I did a custom Google search on the site to check if I'd somehow missed it). So my serious question is why anyone should trust this platform even for a trial. It's 2018, and it's unforgivable for a site, especially one that stores financial information, not to have a clear privacy policy and commitment.

    @Ildar, if you see this comment, this is the first thing you should address before anything else (and also state how any policy you put affects past data collected).

  • by spking on 4/23/18, 6:32 AM

    Probably the cutest illustrations I've seen on an app marketing site in a long while. It's refreshing to see some whimsy and personality.

  • by huhtenberg on 4/23/18, 7:09 AM

    Not to nitpick:

    > 100% more Bees than any other personal finance software

    100% over a zero is still a zero.

  • by TomK32 on 4/23/18, 6:35 AM

    By coincidence I've started my own accounting software last month using ruby on rails. Previously I've been using GnuCash and then move to hledger (hard to beat simple text files) but I've always been missing something that reminds me to type in new transactions (I really don't like automatic imports). I like that honeymoney got envelopes, something I was struggling to use with hledger.

    Is honeymoney double accounting, I mean internally?

    Anyways, keep up the good work, great to see competition in the market for get-rich-slow-schemes :D

  • by BOOSTERHIDROGEN on 4/23/18, 6:09 AM

    I already use a ynab this year maybe next year if this can convinced me

  • by figurant on 4/23/18, 3:50 PM

    wow, HM's on HN :) good to see it here. I've been personally using HM for about 5 yrs now and can say that satisfies all my need. No ocr for receipts, but hey, who's got that the proper way? As for me I do not need such detalisation to follow, for a food purchases I just use categories and subcats.

  • by staticelf on 4/23/18, 12:15 PM

    Interesting tool.

    I would maybe use this tool if it had some kind of api. I want to be able to have my bot post financial data to my account in HoneyMoney automatically, is this possible?

    I haven't found any info regarding this. If someone with an account know of such an api I would sign up.

  • by 10dpd on 4/23/18, 7:18 AM

    These are the kinds of tools that Open Banking in the UK promised, however I've as yet been unable to find a simple API reference or tutorial that outlines a way to get started.

  • by Bedon292 on 4/23/18, 1:16 PM

    Really need a way to import at least a csv of historical data. I know its pitch is tracking manually makes you more aware, but let me bring in history to start at least. Then we get more use out of it right away. I have years upon years of data, and starting from square one seems like a waste of that data.

    Totally love the calendar though, that is a nice way to visualize things.

  • by jyriand on 4/23/18, 9:59 AM

    Is the rounding of planned expenses a feature or a bug? I entered 3.80 euros as an expense, but in the calendar it shows 4 euros. If I enter 3.30, it shows 3 euros.

  • by mcjiggerlog on 4/23/18, 7:50 AM

    This looks like a good start but honestly it looks like it needs the help of a good designer.

    For a more polished alternative, check out https://www.pocketsmith.com/ - I've been a customer for a while now and, as far as I can tell, can do everything HoneyMoney can.

  • by utterly on 4/24/18, 3:32 AM

    Given the boring nature of data entry, this is a prime use case for gamification!

  • by ouid on 4/23/18, 6:51 AM

    so twice as many?

  • by Angostura on 4/23/18, 9:14 AM

    You apparently either have zero bees, or only have twice as many bees as the others.

    Is this what you meant to say?