what it is
pacioli is a household bookkeeping app. Bring in your bank's CSV export, approve the entries that are true, and see where the money went and where you stand, in double-entry books that can also hold a sole trader, a company or a trust.
a studio-owned build
- Double-entry, to the cent
- pacioli keeps a household’s money the way Venice taught the world to in 1494. Every amount is written twice, once where it came from and once where it went, and the two sides must agree. Money is kept in whole cents, and an entry whose sides differ by even one cent is refused.
- A five-minute monthly close
- Bring the month in: a CommBank NetBank export, any CSV with a date, an amount and a description, a Beancount ledger or a JSON file, and on the web a spreadsheet or a PDF or photo of a statement, which Claude reads only after you allow it.
- Nothing reaches the books until you approve it
- Every row arrives with a suggested category you can change. Importing the same file twice skips the rows already there.
- Where you stand
- What you own less what you owe at each close, where the year’s money went, a budget, the year your savings could let you stop working, your investments against their targets, and an estimate of an Australian individual tax return.
- A book for what it is for
- Say once what a book is for, home finances, a sole trader, or a company or trust, and pacioli shows the screens that book needs. A short lesson sits beside every screen, in plain words.
- Syncs with åsecond
- åsecond is the studio’s AI-native brain and data store. Link pacioli to it and Vitals learns which days you spent more or less than usual, as a band, and when you approved the books. Never an amount, a merchant or a category. Off until you link it.
pacioli explains; it doesn’t advise. It does not move money, place trades or give personal financial advice, and the tax figure is a planning estimate, not a return you can lodge. Your books are stored in Australia, and only the members of your household can read them.
the build
approval before the books
An imported statement is evidence to review, not permission to write the ledger.
how it works
CSV to staged entries
The current CSV parser reads decimal strings into whole cents, normalizes dates, reports malformed rows and constructs equal-and-opposite postings. The import view prepares entries for a review queue; posting requires a separate approval.
Repeatable identity and balancing
Each imported row receives an external identifier derived from its content and occurrence. This gives the staging layer a repeatable key for duplicate handling. The ledger core rejects journals whose postings do not balance; a parser test alone does not prove hosted approval or tenant isolation.
the design choice
Store amounts in whole cents, require balanced entries and hold imported rows for human approval.
limits
Imports can suggest categories, but the person keeps the decision. The current app reads Beancount; a current export path is not established. The süschef receipt connection is unwired.
what the studio contributed
- The CSV mapping, category suggestions, staging interaction, ledger views and explanatory product copy are studio-authored application work.
dependencies & boundaries
- Next.js and React provide the interface runtime; hosted database/auth services hold connected books.
- Model-assisted document reads use a third-party model. Bank CSV formats and Beancount are external interchange formats, not studio-owned standards.
the evidence
- Current parser tested
- Sixteen CSV parser tests pass, covering whole-cent parsing, dates, categories and balanced entry construction using invented rows.
- Ledger core tested
- The repository ledger self-test passes its balancing and CSV-to-journal checks. This is engineering evidence, not a screenshot of the current Next.js approval workflow.
- Current interface still pending
- The current app needs its build dependencies. The older single-file console is not presented here as the current interface or as evidence of current Beancount export.
next experiment
- Import a synthetic CSV with two transactions.
- Change a suggested category and approve the rows.
- Import the same CSV again and check duplicate handling.
- Attempt an unbalanced entry and confirm rejection before any ledger write.
Use invented data. This is a demonstration path, not a report of customer outcomes.
ask for a walkthrough →how it differs
YNAB
what YNAB does well
A budgeting app built on one clear habit: decide what each dollar is for before you spend it. It has goals, a shared subscription for a household, and a free trial. Its direct bank import covers the US, Canada, the UK and some European countries; Australian banks go in by file.
where pacioli differs
YNAB is a budget. pacioli keeps double-entry books, so the budget, the net position, the investments and the tax estimate all read the same ledger, and a company or trust can sit beside the household without mixing. Pick YNAB if the budgeting habit is what you are after and you want an app you can sign up for today.
Beancount and Fava
what Beancount and Fava does well
Free, open-source double-entry accounting kept in a plain text file, with Fava as a web interface for the reports. Nothing is hidden, everything can be scripted, and the books are a file you own outright.
where pacioli differs
pacioli keeps the same discipline without asking you to write ledger syntax: you approve rows from a bank export and it writes both sides. It reads a Beancount ledger in, and adds the monthly close, the budget, FIRE and tax views around it. Pick Beancount and Fava if you are happy editing a text file and want complete control, for free, today.
Firefly III
what Firefly III does well
A free, open-source personal finance manager you host yourself. It is a double-entry system with budgets, categories, tags, reports and tools for importing your data.
where pacioli differs
pacioli is run for you rather than on your own server, and it is built around an approval queue and a five-minute monthly close, with Australian tax and separate books for a sole trader, company or trust. Pick Firefly III if you want to run it yourself, pay nothing, and are comfortable looking after a server.
questions
how do I turn a CommBank CSV export into a budget?
In NetBank, open the account, choose Export and pick CSV. pacioli reads that file as it comes (and any CSV with a date, an amount and a description), suggests a category for each row and holds the rows for you to approve. What you approve feeds the budget and the month's close. pacioli is in early access and not open to the public yet; write to tomspanx@entrees.live to ask about it.
is there an app to categorise my spending in australia?
pacioli gives every imported row a suggested category you can change, and nothing counts until you approve it. It was made in Australia: it reads the CommBank export as it comes, and its tax estimate follows the Australian individual return. A household elsewhere can use it too, in one currency, and the Australia-only parts say so. It is not open to the public yet.
what is a good alternative to YNAB in australia?
YNAB’s direct bank import does not cover Australian banks, so in Australia a file goes in either way. pacioli is built around that file: the CommBank CSV, any CSV, or on the web a spreadsheet or a statement read for you. Where YNAB is a budget, pacioli keeps double-entry books, with the budget as one view of them. If you want the budgeting habit in an app you can use today, YNAB is the better pick; pacioli is in early access and not open yet.
is there a double entry bookkeeping app for my household?
That is what pacioli is. Every amount goes in twice, once where it came from and once where it went, money is kept in whole cents, and an entry out by a single cent is refused. You don’t need to write the journals yourself: approve rows from a bank file and pacioli writes both sides. A short lesson beside each screen explains debits and credits when you want it. Early access only, for now.
can one app hold my personal finances, my company and my family trust?
pacioli keeps a household, a sole trader, an Australian company and a discretionary trust in one place, each as its own book on the same double-entry ledger, so they never blur. Say once what a book is for and it shows what that book needs: spending, budget, FIRE and tax for the household; the ledger, planner, structure, tax and a board pack for a company or trust. The tax figures are planning estimates, not returns you can lodge and not tax advice.
can I use pacioli yet?
Not yet. pacioli is in early access: not open to the public and not on the App Store. Write to tomspanx@entrees.live to ask. Its privacy policy is already public at entrees.studio/privacy/pacioli.
where it stands
status early access
in early access. to ask about it, write to the studio at tomspanx@entrees.live.
open the books pacioli-sigma.vercel.app