Who it's for
Built for money that lives in more than one place.
beatrax is for one person, or a two-person household, whose spending is spread across several banks, cards and payment processors — and who has given up reconciling it by hand.
You'll recognise yourself if
You bank in more than one place
A current account somewhere, a savings account somewhere else, a credit card from a third party, and PayPal in the middle of it. No single app shows you the whole picture, because no single institution has it.
Your card statement and your bank never line up
The bank shows one settlement. The card shows fifteen purchases. You have tried to match them by hand at least once, and you did not finish.
You're self-employed, or partly
Some spending is deductible and some isn't, and working out which at the end of the year means going through a shoebox of statements. Tagging as you go would have been easier.
You'd rather your finances weren't in someone's cloud
Not because you have something to hide, but because a full transaction history is about as personal as data gets, and an account you don't control is an account that can change its terms.
You share money with one other person
Two people, several accounts, and a recurring argument about where it went. Sync means you both see the same picture on your own devices.
You've outgrown a spreadsheet
The spreadsheet worked until it needed maintaining. beatrax does the parts you were doing by hand — matching, categorising, spotting the subscription that went up.
It assumes a little of you
beatrax is a desktop application you install, not a service you sign up for. That's the trade that keeps your data on your machine, and it means a few things are your job.
- You can install software — Download, install, open. No terminal required, but you are the administrator of your own data.
- You can export a statement — Log in to your bank, pick a date range, download the file. beatrax reads the formats European banks already offer; the setup wizard shows you where to click for each one.
- You keep your own backups — There is no server holding a copy for you. beatrax can produce an encrypted backup, but where it lives is your decision.
It's probably not for you if
- You bank in one place and like their app — If a single institution already shows you everything you care about, beatrax is solving a problem you don't have.
- You want someone else to hold your data — There is no hosted version, no web login, and no account recovery — because there is no account. If losing a laptop means losing your history, that is a real cost, and only you can weigh it.
- You need multi-user accounting — beatrax is a personal ledger, not bookkeeping software. It has no double-entry accounting, no VAT return, no invoicing and no accountant seat.
- You bank outside Europe — Import is built around CAMT.053, MT940 and the CSV shapes European banks export. Generic CSV import exists, but the further you are from that world, the more mapping you'll do yourself.