Welcome to our final Community Newsletter for 2024! Itâs been so much fun sharing stories about what members of the Lunch Money community have built, and we look forward to doing even more of it next year.
One feature that differentiates Lunch Money from other budgeting platforms is the multi-currency support, which allows you to manage your finances no matter where you live, work, or bank. Unfortunately, not every financial institution plays nicely with Plaid, the bank syncing service that Lunch Money relies on.
While a number of our community members have built open-source tools for importing transactions from different banks around the world, many require technical know-how to set up.
Amr, one of our community members, has built a tool that allows users to sync their transactions to Lunch Money through a simple, one-time setup with their UK & EU-based banks. He explains how it works and what led him to create Lunch Flow.
Our December Spotlight is on Amr from London by way of Egypt!
Q: How did you come to start using Lunch Money?
While working remotely from Egypt, I managed finances in two currencies: EGP for daily expenses and USD for my salary and subscriptions. Staying organized was a priority, especially with big milestones on the horizon. I started with Google Sheets and custom formulas, but as things got more complex, it became unsustainable.
After testing several budgeting apps, I found Lunch Money stood out because of its built-in multi-currency support. It wasnât a workaroundâit was thoughtfully designed, which made a big difference.
Although it was missing a few features, like a mobile app and some reporting tools, its robust API was a game-changer. It let me customize what I needed and automate tasks, opening up possibilities I hadnât considered before.
Q: What gave you the idea of creating Lunch Flow?
When I started using Lunch Money, it didnât have native support for Egyptian banks. To work around this, I built scripts to import transaction PDFs (before that feature was added) or scrape data from my banks.
Later, when I moved to the UK and started working in fintech, I discovered open banking APIs through the revised Payment Services Directive (PSD2). This standard made it much easier to access accounts from multiple banks without the cumbersome process of connecting to each one individually.
At the time, I was navigating a lot of budgeting challenges in a new country (and saving less than I was used to back in Egypt đ). I also noticed many others in the Lunch Money community were dealing with similar issues and asking for integrations. Thatâs when I realized I could create a streamlined solution not just for myself, but for the entire community.
Q: You certainly dove in with both feet! What prompted you to offer Lunch Flow in this way?
When I explored the existing options, I realized most were too technical or had overly complex setups, making them inaccessible to many users. While I could have built a quick script for myself, that approach wouldnât have been easy to share or maintain, and I likely wouldnât have continued improving it over time.
I wanted to strike a balance between creating something easy and reliable for Lunch Money users and making it sustainable for myself. Thatâs why Lunch Flow couldnât be freeâit needs to cover the costs of bank integrations, infrastructure, and support, while motivating continuous improvements.
That said, Iâve kept the pricing as affordable as possibleâitâs less than the cost of a cup of coffee each month. Paired with Lunch Moneyâs pay-what-you-want annual plans, I hope itâs great value. Plus, thereâs a free 7-day trial so users can see how well it integrates with their bank accounts before committing.
Q: Lunch Flow requires Lunch Money users to provide their API token as part of its setup. What does Lunch Flow do with that token, and how can users be confident it wonât be exposed?
Lunch Flow takes data security very seriously:
- Encryption: Your API token is encrypted at rest and only accessed by the services that need it to perform imports.
- Limited Scope: Lunch Flow doesnât store any transaction data and never edits your existing transactions in Lunch Moneyâit only adds new ones.
- Human Access: For added peace of mind, unless required for a specific support ticket, we donât look at individual account data or transactions. No human is ever looking at your data without your explicit permission and need for assistance.
- Privacy: We have a public privacy policy that outlines exactly how your data is handled. These measures ensure your data stays private and secure while providing seamless bank integrations.
Q: Did you learn anything about Lunch Money or Lunch Money users you didnât know when you started this project?
I learned that Lunch Money has a very supportive and engaged communityâthere are so many smart, helpful users who are eager to share their knowledge and experiences.
Building Lunch Flow also gave me a newfound appreciation for all indie hackers and how much work is happening behind the scenes (learning so much about legal and taxes has been fun, highly recommended đ ).
Q: Lunch Flow is making huge strides as a third-party app for Lunch Money! Whatâs next for you?
I have several ideas in the pipeline:
- Google Sheets Integration: Syncing data from Lunch Money or banks supported by Lunch Flow to Google sheets, enabling more data transformations, advanced analytics or custom dashboards.
- Transaction Enrichment: Automatically clean up payee names, removing inconsistencies and making them more readable without requiring manually configured rules or complex regexes.
- Expanding Coverage: Looking for markets where reliable financial API aggregators are already available, such as Australia, or enabling more integrations for different account types, like investment and trading accounts in Europe.
Q: Is there anything youâd like to ask the LM user community for? Itâs been 12 weeks since I shared the first version. Iâm very grateful to the users who have already tried and subscribed to Lunch Flow. As a solo founder, I canât tackle everything at once, so Iâd love to hear more about what Lunch Money users are looking for and what they would find most valuable. Iâm always happy to get feedback and suggestions from users on our feedback board.
If you have friends or colleagues who could benefit from Lunch Flow, please help spread the word!
Finally, if you like Lunch Flow, weâd love to feature your testimonial on our websiteâyour support helps us grow!
Thank you, Amr, for the effort youâve put into building Lunch Flow! We really appreciate the dedication youâve shown to this project and we keep hearing how much itâs helping Lunch Money users in Europe stay on top of their finances.
Want to dive deeper into Lunch Flow? Weâve got you covered:
- See a demo of Lunch Flow in action
- Sign up for a free Lunch Flow trial
- Learn more about Amr
- Join the conversation in the Lunch Flow Channel in the Lunch Money Discord
Recap of the Lunch Money x Vancouver community meetup
Earlier this month, Jen hosted our second-ever community meetup in Vancouver! Sixteen Lunch Money enthusiasts gathered in Z-Space, an indie creative co-working space in the heart of downtown (shoutout to Lunch Money user, Wesley, for hooking us up!). Attendees had a fun evening of geeking out over favorite Lunch Money hacks, feature wishlists, and learning about our exciting plans for 2025.
During a Q&A session, one attendee expressed her desire for Sankey diagrams. While we couldnât promise this on our roadmap, we did mention that this is possible using our developer APIâs existing endpoints. No more than a week later, we received a project submission from Aneesh, another attendee from the event. He had created a way to generate Sankey diagrams from Lunch Money transactions!
We love seeing community interactions like this, especially when they involve our developer API! Click here to give Lunch Sankey a try.
Are you interested in a meetup in your city? Let us know where you are based and weâll see if we can make it happen in the future!
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Do you have a community story?
Weâd love to feature more members of our community in this newsletter. Have you developed an app, plug-in or tool that you want to share? Please reach out to jp@lunchmoney.app!
Even if you arenât a developer, if you have ideas on how we can make it easier for users to take advantage of contributions from the developer community, Iâd love to hear from you.
