splitnab

splitnab is a CLI tool to help facilitate my workflow between Splitwise and YNAB.

It performs an import of transactions from your Splitwise account (for a specified friend) to your YNAB budget.

Splitwise-YNAB Workflow

I only use this integration for one-to-one Splitwise lending-loaning scenarios. This integration treats your Splitwise balance as an actual account balance to help categorize expenses, but you need to be careful about treating these items as reimbursed before they actually are. If you are not mindful, you may be relying on money that has not yet been returned to you.

Example scenario:

1. I lend Ingrid $15.00 for "Dining Out" (total charge: $30 on credit card)
2. Ingrid lends me $10.00 for "Household Goods"
3. Ingrid e-transfers me $5.00 and settles up on Splitwise

And this is what the transactions will be:

Account	Transaction	Category	Inflow	Outflow
Splitwise	Dining Out	Dining Out	$15.00
Credit Card	Dining Out	Dining Out		$30.00
Splitwise	Household Goods	Household Goods		$10.00
Splitwise	Settle up	Transfer to Bank Account		$5.00
Bank Account	Settle up	Transfer to Bank Account	$5.00

When the program is run, transactions in the YNAB Splitwise account are created for every transaction in Splitwise. I can then categorize each transaction into a budget category which allows actual spending to be tracked. Then, the settle up transaction from Splitwise can be made as a transfer to your bank account (or wherever).

Getting Started

Prerequisites

• .NET 5.0 SDK

Configuration

You will need to register an application with the Splitwise API and obtain a personal access token from YNAB.

1. Register your application with Splitwise here
   • Save the consumer key and consumer secret for later
2. Obtain a personal access token from YNAB here and generate a new token
   • Save the personal access token for later

Rename (or create) the appsettings_template.json to appsettings.json in the same directory as the program and populate with the following contents:

{
    "Splitwise": {
        "ConsumerKey": "<your consumer key>",
        "ConsumerSecret": "<your consumer secret>",
        "FriendEmail": "<your friend's account email>",
        "TransactionsDatedAfter": "<transactions after this date will be imported, format: yyyy-mm-dd>"
    },
    "YNAB": {
        "PersonalAccessToken": "<your personal access token>",
        "BudgetName": "<the name of the budget you wish to import to>",
        "SplitwiseAccountName": "<your account name you use to track splitwise>"
    }
}

Running the Tool

Run the program in the Splitnab project and your transactions from Splitwise will be imported to your YNAB budget. This can be automated with a cron job or similar.

At this point the YNAB transactions can be categorized and approved.