Budgetly

Set category budgets, log expenses, and visualize spending limits. Use when tracking grocery costs, monitoring subscriptions, or forecasting spend.

BudgetLy v2.0.0 — a personal finance toolkit for recording expenses, categorizing spending, checking balances, analyzing trends, forecasting budgets, and generating reports from the command line.

Why BudgetLy?

• Full-featured personal finance tracker with 12 specialized commands
• No external dependencies, accounts, or API keys needed — your data stays local
• All entries are timestamped and stored in plain-text log files
• Export to JSON, CSV, or TXT for analysis in spreadsheets or other tools
• Built-in search, statistics, and health-check utilities
• Works on any system with Bash

Commands

Command	Usage	Description
record	budgetly record <input>	Record a financial transaction or expense entry
categorize	budgetly categorize <input>	Categorize a transaction (e.g., food, transport, rent)
balance	budgetly balance <input>	Log or check account balance information
trend	budgetly trend <input>	Log trend data for spending pattern analysis
forecast	budgetly forecast <input>	Record a budget forecast or projection
export-report	budgetly export-report <input>	Generate and log an export report entry
budget-check	budgetly budget-check <input>	Check budget limits and log the result
summary	budgetly summary <input>	Log a financial summary (daily, weekly, monthly)
alert	budgetly alert <input>	Set or log a budget alert (overspend warnings, etc.)
history	budgetly history <input>	Log or view financial history entries
compare	budgetly compare <input>	Compare spending across periods or categories
tax-note	budgetly tax-note <input>	Record tax-related notes and deductions
stats	budgetly stats	Show summary statistics across all log files
export	budgetly export <fmt>	Export all data (json, csv, or txt)
search	budgetly search <term>	Search across all log files for a keyword
recent	budgetly recent	Show the 20 most recent history entries
status	budgetly status	Health check — version, entry count, disk usage
help	budgetly help	Show the help message with all commands
version	budgetly version	Print the current version

All entry commands (record, categorize, balance, trend, forecast, export-report, budget-check, summary, alert, history, compare, tax-note) work the same way:

• With arguments: saves a timestamped entry to <command>.log and logs to history.log
• Without arguments: displays the 20 most recent entries from that command's log

Data Storage

All data is stored in ~/.local/share/budgetly/:

• record.log, categorize.log, balance.log, etc. — one log file per command
• history.log — unified activity log across all commands
• export.json / export.csv / export.txt — generated export files

Each entry is stored as YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM|<value> (pipe-delimited timestamp and content).

Requirements

• Bash (with set -euo pipefail)
• Standard Unix utilities: date, wc, du, grep, head, tail, cat
• No external dependencies, no Python, no API keys

When to Use

1. Daily expense logging — Use budgetly record "Lunch at cafe ¥45" to maintain a running log of daily expenses and review them later with budgetly record (no args shows recent entries).
2. Category-based spending analysis — Use budgetly categorize "food: ¥2,300 this month" to organize expenses by category and then search with budgetly search "food" to analyze patterns.
3. Monthly budget forecasting — Use budgetly forecast "April budget: rent ¥3000, food ¥2500, transport ¥800" to plan ahead and compare actuals later with budgetly compare.
4. Tax preparation — Use budgetly tax-note "Home office deduction: ¥1,200/month, receipts in folder Q1-2026" to keep tax-related notes organized and export them with budgetly export csv.
5. Spending alerts and limits — Use budgetly alert "Entertainment budget exceeded: ¥1,500/¥1,000 limit" to log overspend warnings and review alerts with budgetly alert.

Examples

# Record daily expenses
budgetly record "Coffee ¥15, lunch ¥42, groceries ¥128"
budgetly record "Monthly rent ¥3,500"

# Categorize spending
budgetly categorize "transport: Uber ¥30, subway ¥8, gas ¥200"
budgetly categorize "subscriptions: Netflix ¥45, Spotify ¥15, iCloud ¥6"

# Check and log balance
budgetly balance "Checking account: ¥15,230 as of March 18"

# Analyze spending trends
budgetly trend "Food spending up 15% vs last month"

# Forecast next month
budgetly forecast "April projection: total ¥8,500 (down from ¥9,200 in March)"

# Set budget alerts
budgetly alert "Warning: dining out already at 80% of monthly limit"

# Log tax-related items
budgetly tax-note "Charitable donation ¥500 to Red Cross, receipt #RC-2026-0318"

# Compare periods
budgetly compare "Q1 vs Q4: food +12%, transport -8%, entertainment -20%"

# View summary statistics
budgetly stats

# Search for specific entries
budgetly search "groceries"

# Export everything to JSON
budgetly export json

# Check system status
budgetly status

# View recent activity
budgetly recent

Configuration

Data directory: ~/.local/share/budgetly/ (hardcoded, no environment variable override).

Output

All commands print results to stdout. Redirect output to a file if needed:

budgetly stats > my-finance-stats.txt
budgetly export csv

Note: This is an original, independent implementation by BytesAgain. Not affiliated with or derived from any third-party project.

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