TxNotify - Email Notifications for your Bank Transactions

TxNotify is a simple python script that calls your bank using the same API as Quicken or Quickbooks and sends you an email with the transactions that have happened since the last time it checked.

Backstory

I used to use ING Direct heavily for banking. One of my favorite things about it was that I'd get an email notification on every transaction. It was noisy as hell, but I had great, passive insight into where my money was going.

When I switched banks to a more traditional bank that didn't provide email notifications, I immediately felt the loss of not having a hold on where my money was going. So I wrote this script to do the job for me.

Installation

TxNotify has no dependencies outside of the standard library. To use, you'll need to:

1. Clone the code.
2. Copy the settings.template.py file to settings.py in src.
3. Fill out the settings file, including all of your banking information. Please heed the numerous warnings within.
   • You'll need to pull a lot of esoteric information about how to connect to your bank. GNUCash has a great resource for those settings. I can't promise it will work for you, however.
4. Run it once, and see if it works.
5. If it does, you'll want to set up a cron script to run this regularly from a machine that is always or near-always on. I have it set to run every 30 minutes.

What it Looks Like

Every time the script detects new transactions, it'll send you an email of the format:

Subject: [2012-05-10 09:00AM] New Bank Transactions

[2012-05-09] 469216     NETFLIX COM           -7.99
[2012-05-09] DEPOSIT                          1000.00
[2012-05-09] 441289     VALVE SOFTWARE        -19.99
[2012-05-09] 440213     WNYC                  -160.00

Thanks

TxNotify graciously makes use of:

• fixofx - a python library to canonicalize the various formats used for financial data streams. From the now-defunct wesabe.
• MailGun - for easily sending emails