this post was submitted on 15 Aug 2023
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Recommendations for fetching paperless bills? (self.selfhosted)
submitted 1 year ago by davad to c/selfhosted
9 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

I've used filthis.com for years to automatically grab PDFs for credit card bills, mortgage statements, bank statements, and utility bills. It's taken a lot of the headache out of archiving financial records.

I just heard FileThis is shutting in the next couple of months. Does anyone have service they use for automatically downloading this kind of stuff? I'm open to paid, free, hosted, and self-hosted projects.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

All solutions that integrate with banking sites I’ve ever encountered were nothing more but ugly hacks, IMHO. I’m curious about FileThis, as I’d never heard if it before, and would also love a similar system.

Maybe a self-hosted document management system that can parse key info from credit card statement PDFs, such as the balance and due date? I somehow doubt that automated retrieval of statements is something that any commercial company, or open source project, can implement reliably. To this end, I’m not sure what’s worse; the financial industry, or the medical records industry. Both are stuck in the past and highly conservative.

[–] davad 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

For organizing and searching the files, I'm using paperless-ngx. It's worked pretty well for these and for scanned documents.

My issue is getting the PDFs without having to spend time every month manually downloading them.

All solutions that integrate with banking sites I’ve ever encountered were nothing more but ugly hacks, IMHO.

Yup. That's basically what FileThis provided. A maintained set of ugly hacks to pull the files for you automatically :D.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I seriously need to look into Paperless NGX. I’ve been hearing a lot about it.

[–] ech0 2 points 1 year ago

I use it as well. Its a game changer. I setup an email for it on my domain. Anything I forward to the email gets automatically processed, tagged and categorized.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I sign up for paperless bills, which every major company offers. In fact, they've all pestered me into going that route.

When i get an ebill, I'll save/file the PDF to a specific folder for that company.

It's pretty straightforward and takes a few seconds maybe a dozen times a month. I'm not sure I'd even want to invest time into automation, since i like to look over my bills and pay them as I file them.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Yeah, but you have to log in to the company's portal and click through their menus to get the PDFs. I wish eBill/eStatements would mean sending them over email, that would be easy to set up an automated way to grab them and file them.

Sending me an email notice that eBill is available is NOT useful at all, it's only a little more convenient than paper bills

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Hmm. Mine come as PDF attachments, so it's easy to open them, check them, pay them, and save them.

I think a few require logging in, which is a complete pain in the ass, I agree.

But yeah, both paper and e-bill aren't as convenient as some automated file method. Good luck!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

None of my mine come as PDF attachments, it's always "click here to see your statement" which goes through the login process to the company's portal. I get it, they think they're doing it for security. But email is no less secure than paper mail and they send paper statements in regular mail, so why not email?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

That sucks. I don't think it's a security thing, they want you to log into their website because they can track your interactions.

I do hope that you find a solution that meets your needs.