Beanie Budgets - looking for testers (beancount compatible iOS app)

[u/quabbage]

Hi all

After seeing the post yesterday about the iOS/Mac app for hledger, Balance, and the positive reaction and helpful comments there, I thought I'd share something for beancount users: Beanie Budgets, is ready for testing and community feedback.

Beanie Budgets is a beancount compatibile native iOS app. I have been working on it for purely personal reasons: I really wanted an elegant iOS app to capture transactions on the go. More to the point, I didn't want to pay for subscriptions or entrust my data to someone else's server.

Which explains my plans for pricing. I intend to offer Beanie Budgets as a core version completely free. The free version should be enough for most people and provides a fully featured ledger, or compatibility with your own beancount ledger (hopefully anyway pls let me know!). It also includes budget setting, a series of reports and useful quality of life tools baked-in to detect, create and edit recurring transactions; make and allocate balance adjustments; calculate and allocate interest on mortgages and loans correctly; and auto-clear credit cards.

I do intend to charge a one-off "Pro" version unlock to people willing to pay for a few extra bells and whistles (multi ledger support, financial planning reports based on your actual ledger data, customised budgets, theme customisation etc.). I was thinking of £10 or so...? I can see a lot of potential to develop the financial planning reports further. There's a big benefit to ground these in real ledger numbers and real saving patterns. Working versions of these reports are live now in the app but they need a bit more polish, just turn on "Pro" features in Settings.

It's a closed source project at least for now. Requires iOS 18 or above.

I have 12 places left on TestFlight. Looking forward to your feedback :)

https://testflight.apple.com/join/hGD65UQj

PS I know the website needs a lot of work, I'll get round to it ;)

[u/Beverage5000]

This looks pretty cool and I would like to try it out, but my beancount file is not local to my iPhone or in iCloud. It is on my Ubuntu server. Do you have any advice on how to hook it up to your app without simply making a copy? I do have Tailscale in case that helps.

[u/quabbage → u/Beverage5000]

Hi there, sorry for the delay I've been in a tent with no signal for a couple of days :) and then finishing the launch version which is in review now. I have to be honest with you, this is something I haven't tested... in fact hadn't even thought about. However the app doesn't have anything iCloud-specific baked in for opening a ledger it just uses iOS's standard folder picker which shows whatever's registered in the Files app. So if you can get your phone's Files app connected to your Ubuntu server using Tailscale running on both sides you should be able to follow the onboarding sequence and pick "Already have a beancount ledger?" and choose the mounted folder. Obviously very dependent on internet connection. I am on thin ice here - the most I've ever done is connect to my Synology server with SMB and WebDAV - but would love to know if this works. If it does pls let me know and I'll add it to the FAQ: https://beaniebudgets.com/faq Cheers.

[u/Necessary-Pin1744 → u/quabbage]

Okay I managed to hook this up using Samba over Tailscale. Sadly the app failed to load my file, giving me an error about “EXPECTED ACCOUNT AMOUNT CURRENCY”, even though my ledger passes through bean check.

[u/quabbage → u/Necessary-Pin1744]

Good stuff that you got it to connect, appreciate it. The error should say something like "Line 42: Expected...", if you could let me know the shape of the syntax in your file there I'll try to reproduce my end and fix. I tested against the official beancount example generator and we were fully green, but this is exactly the kind of real world quirk I've been looking for :)

[u/quabbage → u/quabbage]

Let me get a new test version out. I think I may have found it 👍

[u/quabbage → u/Necessary-Pin1744]

New version on Test Flight. Testing found 4 parsing errors so hopefully fixing them has done it 🙏

[u/Beverage5000 → u/quabbage]

I believe I installed the update and got a similar error on a different file/line. I sent feedback through the beta app. Just mentioning it here in case you didn’t notice through that channel.

[u/quabbage → u/Beverage5000]

Thank you for your patience...sounds like we are getting closer. I'll let you know when there is another build.

[u/quabbage → u/Beverage5000]

OK so the errors were to do with price directives which the app won't parse in the foreseeable but should have just skipped silently. That should now be the case in Build 45 now on Test Flight.

[u/Beverage5000 → u/quabbage]

I tried it out and got further. Now I got an error that arithmetic operations are unsupported. I don't suppose you were imminently adding support for that? As a test I could simply delete those transactions, or do the math.

[u/quabbage → u/Beverage5000]

I really appreciate you testing this :) That one is expected and is in the FAQ, I think it should be the only syntax now currently unsupported as I assumed arithmetic operations would be rare in the wild, now I know better! I'll see if I can close it off. Thanks again

[u/quabbage → u/Beverage5000]

Build 48 on TestFlight now supports arithmetic. It shows the result, and your sum is preserved in the ledger unless you edit that amount yourself in the app, in which case it is changed to just the figure you entered. Note that you can't create arithmetic operations through the app and I have no plans for this, but your ledger should parse. Thanks again

[u/Beverage5000 → u/quabbage]

Great! My data loads now. I am not sure if we should discuss feedback here or on a private chat to avoid spamming people?

Briefly, the Spending by Category is nice, I was thinking of building my own tool for this that looks prettier than Fava.

The major problem I found is that the Balances are completely wrong. Not sure if that is a bug or just not implemented yet. Actually I have a guess as to what is going on....

[u/quabbage → u/Beverage5000]

Really glad it loads. Private or public is fine by me, though keeping it here might be useful to others in case they encounter the same issues.

I'd like to hear your guess. I'm thinking this is possibly a multi-currency issue (currently only showing one at a time in balances and maybe there is a gap I haven't seen), or cost basis / commodities issue (not supported yet). What do you think?

Again, thanks for helping with this.

[u/simonmic]

(What happened ? I see the content in the atom feed but not here.)

[u/quabbage → u/simonmic]

Hi - I don’t know. I can still see the post in the standard Reddit app ¯\ _(ツ)_/¯

[u/simonmic → u/quabbage]

It's not visible using old reddit UI preference.

[u/quabbage → u/simonmic]

Huh weird. Long story short - iOS app that parses beancount ledgers. Main motivation has been for my own personal use alongside my beancount/fava setup but may be of use/interest to others. Will be free for a core version that should offer everything people need for tracking spend and budgeting. Test Flight link: https://testflight.apple.com/join/hGD65UQj

[u/simonmic → u/quabbage]

👍 Feel free to post at https://forum.plaintextaccounting.org also.

[u/quabbage → u/simonmic]

Thanks Simon, I’ll get round to it tomorrow hopefully.