Another approach might be to build an app that parses the SMS trails that card transactions generate to reduce the need for manually entering transactions.
This is exactly what I did for my DIY solution, it's quite amazing how far you can get with some SMS parsing.
Initially I was still missing quite a lot of transactions, as there isn't a SMS for non-CC payments, but then I realized I could just grab the information from the 2FA confirmation, as it had all the important details.
I'm not so good on the frontend, so I'm still using redash to build charts, dashboards and alerts, but it's fine for keeping an overview.
Long-term I would still like to switch to parsing the statement PDF from the bank, especially since there's an option to receive them automatically at the end of the month, but I'm dragging my feet on that one, as parsing tables from PDF is surprisingly difficult. Even though the actual text is embedded in the PDF, getting it in the correct layout has proven impossible so far. Or maybe I'm just missing some piece of the puzzle?
Some banks allow setting up alerts for transactions of more than a threshold. It's possible to set this threshold to a very low value thus getting all transactions logged as texts.
I am not sure how this system handles US tips though; the notification may come in before the tips are added and the CC transaction is finalized.
Initially I was still missing quite a lot of transactions, as there isn't a SMS for non-CC payments, but then I realized I could just grab the information from the 2FA confirmation, as it had all the important details.
I'm not so good on the frontend, so I'm still using redash to build charts, dashboards and alerts, but it's fine for keeping an overview.
Long-term I would still like to switch to parsing the statement PDF from the bank, especially since there's an option to receive them automatically at the end of the month, but I'm dragging my feet on that one, as parsing tables from PDF is surprisingly difficult. Even though the actual text is embedded in the PDF, getting it in the correct layout has proven impossible so far. Or maybe I'm just missing some piece of the puzzle?