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Self-Hosted Document & Budgeting Automation: Paperless-ngx, Firefly III, and n8n – Good Idea? (discuss.tchncs.de)

submitted 7 months ago by MIXEDUNIVERS@discuss.tchncs.de to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world

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Hi everyone, I’ve recently taken an interest in self-hosted solutions for document management and budgeting, specifically Paperless-ngx, Firefly III, and n8n. A bit about me: I run a Proxmox server with a freshly set up Docker LXC container. I’m still quite new to all this, but i am infected with the homelab fever.

After spending hours on Google, I’ve come across a few services that caught my eye:

Paperless-ngx: A tool for scanning and organizing all my receipts, invoices, and documents in a searchable database.

Firefly III: A budgeting app with lots of cool features. My goal is to use it to get a better overview of my finances.

n8n: To automate the process, because I know I’m lazy and won’t keep up with manual data entry for long.

My idea: I want to scan receipts and invoices, store them in Paperless-ngx, use OCR to extract the text, total amount, and maybe even individual items, and then pass that data to Firefly III via n8n.

My questions:

Does anyone have experience with these tools? Is this a good approach, or should I consider other software?

I’ve seen that n8n is getting a lot of hype, but also has some critical, glaring issues. Is it still a good choice for this kind of automation?

Are there any tutorials or blog posts out there that cover a similar setup? I haven’t found much online. Are there any additional Docker containers I should consider, like a dedicated AI container or a special database? I have only a weak Intel I5 7th Gen PC.

I’d love to hear your thoughts, experiences, or any concerns you might have about this project. If you know someone who has done something similar, or if there’s a hidden tutorial I’ve missed, please let me know!

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[–] eli@lemmy.world 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

or should I consider other software?

Unfortunately I had similar thoughts and plans that you outline here(receipt scanning into budgeting), but the amount of work involved was...too much for my liking.

I instead opted for a paid solution, which is Monarch: https://www.monarch.com/

It's $100 a year, but they have a promotion(they always run promotions), where you can do your first year for 50% off with code: NEWYEAR2026

So far my wife and I have been loving Monarch. We linked our bank accounts and other financial institutions(401k, brokerages, IRAs, etc.) and everything mostly "just works". There is an odd time or two where a bank account needs to be re-signed into to re-auth because token/api expired/changed, but again, the app works and does things well.

I'd suggest looking into it. I'm usually a huge proponent of self-hosting everything, but this is one of the few things I caved on...

[–] aurelian@lemmy.ml 1 points 7 months ago

Anything like monarch but for European banks?