BeanHub - blog

Direct Connect: Pulling transactions as CSV files from banks via Plaid directly

Have you ever wondered if there’s a service that connects to all the major financial institutions and imports transactions as Beancount files for you automatically? It is the dream of many plaintext accounting book users. And yes, we made that possible with our BeanHub Connect features based on Plaid integration a while back. Please read our article BeanHub Connect - one giant leap with fully automatic bank transactions import from 12,000+ financial institutions in 17 countries for all Beancount users!

September 4, 2024

import

new-feature

New Manual Import feature making importing transactions fun and easier than ever

Last time, we introduced BeanHub Connect, which allows you to connect different banks and import transactions automatically through our open-source tool beanhub-import. Based on our experience, most transactions, such as your rent, internet service, server fees, and so on, are recurring. With automatic importing rules, it covers 80% of your transactions. However, no matter how hard you try, there’s always a limit to how much you can automate. For example, say you hang out for lunch with your friend Jane.

Now, you can secure your BeanHub account with multi-factor authentication

As we mentioned, security is the top priority when building BeanHub, and it’s undoubtedly also the top priority of most BeanHub users when choosing an account book solution. Many of you have been asking this for a while, and today, we are glad to inform you that the multi-factor authentication (MFA for short; some call it two-factor authentication or 2FA, and it depends on the number of factors) feature is available.

How BeanHub works part2, large-scale auditable Git repository system based on container layers

In the previous article, How BeanHub works part1, contains the danger of processing Beancount data with sandbox, we introduced how we use containers to process user-uploaded data securely. Today, we would like to introduce how we use a layer-based file system to facilitate a large-scale auditable Git repository system. Look inside the .git folder Have you ever wondered what’s inside the .git folder, what happens when you commit, and what happens when you perform a Git push?

BeanHub Connect - one giant leap with fully automatic bank transactions import from 12,000+ financial institutions in 17 countries for all Beancount users!

Importing data into your Beancount books is always hard. It is the biggest challenge all plain-text accounting book users face today, and that’s why we built BeanHub Import, open-sourced it, and made it part of the core features of BeanHub. Great news for all Beancount users today: we are glad to announce our new game-changing feature - BeanHub Connect. With BeanHub Connect, you can connect 12,000+ financial institutions in 17 countries and automatically import transactions into your Beancount books!

BeanHub Import - One small step closer to fully automating transaction importing

We all love plain-text accounting. It’s based on open-source tools, so you never need to worry about vendor lock-in. Beancount is among the most popular options, along with others, such as ledger or hledger. You can visit Plain Text Accounting to learn more. Unlike plain-text accounting, proprietary software users always worry about whether the company will shut down and the tool they use will no longer be supported. For example, the popular budgeting app Mint was shut down, and millions of its users were forced to migrate to Credit Karma instead.

How BeanHub works part1, contains the danger of processing Beancount data with sandbox

It has been more than two years since we launched BeanHub. Recently, we have been tirelessly releasing new features. Some of you may ask What were you busy with at the very beginning? Why wait until now to start adding new features? Well, we spent most of our time at the very beginning building the infrastructure to move faster later. We have adopted and developed many interesting technologies in-house. Sandbox is one of the technologies we explored and adopted.

Mass renaming accounts made way easier with new account features!

Have you ever made an account name in your Beancount files and regretted it, yet you found it too much effort to rename it because it’s already used everywhere in tons of transactions? While we enjoy the freedom of a plain-text-based accounting system such as Beancount gave us, it also means performing mass editing is difficult. A straightforward idea for renaming an account could be as easy as just using the search and replace, but it won’t work for renaming an account with a prefix shared with other accounts.

New open-sourced beanhub-cli tool for trying out BeanHub Forms locally

Not long ago, we announced the new BeanHub Forms feature, which allows you to define your own custom forms for making beancount data entry easier. As we use this feature daily, we soon realized that building a new custom form is not easy because you need to keep pushing new commits to BeanHub with your new form definition doc to try out the changes. It could be more efficient. We need a tool to try your form locally before pushing it to your BeanHub repository.

New API access feature for reading and writing Beancount data easily

There are countless accounting book software, most of which operate based on database queries. Unlike most accounting book software, plain-text accounting software such as Beancount operates based on text like this: 2023-08-28 * "BeanHub Pro Subscription" Expenses:Office:Supplies:SoftwareAsService 9.0 USD Assets:Bank:US:Mercury -9.0 USD Many software engineers, like myself, love using Beancount for bookkeeping because we get used to writing code and love open source. With the idea of accounting books as code, we can track the changes easily with Git.

New Access Token feature is now available

Security has always been a high-priority focus when we build BeanHub. We spent a tremendous amount of effort to ensure that BeanHub is secure. We will publish articles explaining the security measurements we adopt later, such as sandboxing. But today, we would like to introduce a new security feature of BeanHub — Access Tokens. In the past, BeanHub users could only access their BeanHub repository via HTTPS with their username and password as the credentials.

Automating Beancount data input with custom forms makes your life 10 times easier!

We are excited to announce a fantastic new feature for BeanHub, the custom forms. Like many of you, we use BeanHub to help ease the burden of maintaining our books daily. This feature will make your life 10 times easier when adding new entries. Generic entry forms In the past, we realized that adding a new transaction and other entries is the most common task we need to perform on a daily basis.

Blog

Direct Connect: Pulling transactions as CSV files from banks via Plaid directly

New Manual Import feature making importing transactions fun and easier than ever

Now, you can secure your BeanHub account with multi-factor authentication

How BeanHub works part2, large-scale auditable Git repository system based on container layers

BeanHub Connect - one giant leap with fully automatic bank transactions import from 12,000+ financial institutions in 17 countries for all Beancount users!

BeanHub Import - One small step closer to fully automating transaction importing

How BeanHub works part1, contains the danger of processing Beancount data with sandbox

Mass renaming accounts made way easier with new account features!

New open-sourced beanhub-cli tool for trying out BeanHub Forms locally

New API access feature for reading and writing Beancount data easily

New Access Token feature is now available

Automating Beancount data input with custom forms makes your life 10 times easier!

Got a question? Send us a message and we'll respond as soon as possible

Blog

Direct Connect: Pulling transactions as CSV files from banks via Plaid directly

New Manual Import feature making importing transactions fun and easier than ever

Now, you can secure your BeanHub account with multi-factor authentication

How BeanHub works part2, large-scale auditable Git repository system based on container layers

BeanHub Connect - one giant leap with fully automatic bank transactions import from 12,000+ financial institutions in 17 countries for all Beancount users!

BeanHub Import - One small step closer to fully automating transaction importing

How BeanHub works part1, contains the danger of processing Beancount data with sandbox

Mass renaming accounts made way easier with new account features!

New open-sourced beanhub-cli tool for trying out BeanHub Forms locally

New API access feature for reading and writing Beancount data easily

New Access Token feature is now available

Automating Beancount data input with custom forms makes your life 10 times easier!

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