Integration with Open Financial Exchange

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Open Financial Exchange (OFX) has been around for a very long time and is 
therefore supported from MANY financial institutions (it's what Quicken was 
built upon). Many banks still carry this legacy API around providing a great 
interface for obtaining recent transactions. 

More information can be found here: 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Financial_Exchange

A quick and easy way to add support for users to post bank account transactions 
to their ledger would be providing integration with OFX. Users can easily find 
the information they need through a directory: 
http://www.ofxhome.com/index.php/home/directory

The idea behind this is that a user can 'add' a bank account to their ledger. 
This would require filling out all applicable details required to initiate an 
OFX session with a bank. This information would be saved (except for the 
password which should be required whenever a request is initiated) and used for 
future transactions. A user would request the recent transactions and be given 
the opportunity to import them into Bkper.

This feature is what makes institutions like Mint very popular. While not as 
inclusive as Mint, it would still be a very powerful tool for users using Bkper 
as a double entry system to keep track of their assets (by reducing the effort 
required to manually search and transcribe transactions). It would be a good 
tool for Bkper.

Original issue reported on code.google.com by jmgil...@google.com on 8 Oct 2014 at 2:39

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Original comment by kris...@nimbustecnologia.com.br on 6 Nov 2014 at 8:57

• Changed state: Started

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As a first iteration on it we added support to import OFX file manually. For 
that you should attach an .ofx file on the web and click record.

Original comment by kris...@nimbustecnologia.com.br on 8 Nov 2014 at 12:08

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If the account number or full institution name can be found on account 
description, than this account will be used  on the import. Otherwise no 
account will be defined. For both cases the discovery method runs.

Original comment by kris...@nimbustecnologia.com.br on 11 Nov 2014 at 3:10

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We just released Inbox feature. Now you can bind a Google Drive folder to your 
ledger. OFX files saved to this folder will be imported into the ledger. Learn 
more:

http://about.bkper.com/guide_inbox.html

Original comment by krishnacaldas on 1 Dec 2014 at 10:22

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Mint and most of other financial control systems actually don't connect 
straight to OFX services. They usually uses aggregators API's like Yodlee or 
Intuit's services. 

The security issues around those kind of services are controversial. They 
usually uses non standard techniques such screen scrapping, accessing the 
user's online bank account on behalf of user, parsing html, and providing bank 
feeds.

We only use secure and standard methods of accessing user's data, such OAuth, 
so, we decided NOT to use this kind of strategy to get users data.

To minimize the effort to insert bank data into bkper ledgers, we are investing 
in a ways that users can quickly save OFX files to a folder and get them 
imported into the ledgers. For first iterations, we provided connection to a 
Drive folder and email, putting all connections together in a feature we called 
"Ledger Inbox" (http://about.bkper.com/guide_inbox.html). Depending on how 
things go, we can also consider connect to a Drop Box folder.

As soon as we go, we will add more processors to other kind of files, based on 
users needs.

We will also continue to research standard and secure ways for the user to 
insert data, and, if we any financial institution provides connections under, 
for example, OAuth2 protocol, we will consider it, otherwise, any techniques 
that can expose the user to a minimal risk will be avoided.

I will close this issue now and other needs, like reconciliation, duplications, 
file processors and so on, should be filled in each specific issue.

Original comment by m...@nimbustecnologia.com.br on 2 Dec 2014 at 2:42

• Changed state: Fixed

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I would highly recommend going against the policies that institutions like Mint 
hold. Intuit has a poor reputation for handling user data and it reflects on 
their products. Unfortunately the financial community is still reluctant to 
provide many gateways for third-parties which makes these types of tasks 
difficult.

The OFX idea is a step in the right direction. From here I think the direction 
should be focused on making it easier for a user to aggregate financial data 
without violating their security. A good example would be streamlining the 
mobile interface for inputting transactions easily.

Original comment by jmgil...@google.com on 2 Dec 2014 at 3:22

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The financial data aggregation is one of our main goal. We will continue to 
invest hard on make the data input easier for user, aways complying with 
highest security standards. 

One good tip is to connect a drive folder and take advantage of Google Drive 
scanning shortcut on Android:

https://support.google.com/drive/answer/3145835?hl=en

By keeping a drive scanning shortcut tied to the folder bound to your ledger 
you can scan a image and get it recorded to the Ledger in 3 touchs.

The OCR is not running for pdf's right now, but we are working on it, so we can 
start extracting data from images, like amount, and also predict some hashtags.

Original comment by m...@nimbustecnologia.com.br on 2 Dec 2014 at 3:40

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By the way,

We will continue to invest in streamlining transactions entry through our 
already running mobile apps (Android, iOS and Windows Phone)

:-)

Original comment by m...@nimbustecnologia.com.br on 2 Dec 2014 at 3:50