Pocket Toolbox Update: Import Your Records and Keep Their Meaning
I’ve been putting my own financial history into Pocket Toolbox and that exposed something a basic income-and-expense importer misses. money coming in isn’t always earnings, and money going out isn’t always spending. So I fixed that. And discovered other little kinks that got updated as well.
Business funding, debt payments, reimbursements, and crypto transactions need their own treatment.
Pocket Toolbox 0.2.3 beta adds tools for importing that history while keeping those differences visible.
Import from CSV or Excel
You can now bring income and expense records into Finance from CSV, TSV, or XLSX files.
The importer lets you:
- Choose the worksheet and header row.
- Match your columns to dates, descriptions, amounts, and categories.
- Choose date and number formats.
- Use signed amounts or separate debit and credit columns.
- Exclude rows that shouldn’t be imported.
- Review the results before saving.
It checks for invalid entries, recognizes previously imported records through stable IDs, and flags possible duplicates.
A private Finance snapshot is saved before the import. The database changes are saved together, so a failed import doesn’t leave half the file entered.
More than income and expenses
There’s also a prepared statement importer for records that need more context.
A reviewed JSON file can contain:
- Ordinary income and expenses.
- Business capital contributions.
- Historical debt payments.
- Advances linked to their reimbursements.
- Investment cash movements.
- Source details that need further review.
Funding stays separate from sales. A reimbursement doesn’t become work income. An old debt payment doesn’t invent a remaining debt balance.
Crypto purchases and sale proceeds can be recorded as investment cash movements without pretending the entire sale was profit. Missing quantities, ownership details, fees, and cost basis remain unresolved.
PDFs and screenshots aren’t imported directly. Their contents first need to be extracted, checked, and prepared in the supported format. I used my own history to work through that process.
Keep the evidence
Sometimes a statement contains internal provider movements, cancellations, refunds, or descriptions that don’t explain what actually happened.
Those details can now be retained as review records without automatically counting them as additional income or spending.
Enter R at the importer’s file-selection prompt to read saved statement records. They’re also included in full-table exports.
Historical accounts with unknown opening balances are clearly labeled. Their movement totals don’t establish how much money is available now.
Privacy stays local
The import tools process files locally. They don’t upload financial records to GitHub or send them to an analytics service.
The public repository contains the program and generic defaults. Your records belong to your installation.
If you choose to give a statement to an outside service for help preparing it, that is a separate sharing decision.
Updating the public version
These instructions assume you installed the public version in the default folder.
Run each command separately. Wait for it to finish before running the next one.
1. Download the latest changes:
git -C "$HOME/pocket-toolbox" pull --ff-only
2. Run the installer again:
bash "$HOME/pocket-toolbox/install.sh"
3. Open Pocket Toolbox:
pocket
Open Budget and debts → Finance → 21 for imports.
Using the earlier original-menu setup?
If you followed my earlier instructions using the pocket-security-update folder, use these commands instead.
1. Download the update:
git -C "$HOME/pocket-security-update" pull --ff-only
2. Apply the local update:
python "$HOME/pocket-security-update/finance/install_security.py"
3. Open Finance:
finance
The import option is 23 in that setup.
Still a beta
166 automated tests passed, including checks for repeat imports, failed-import rollback, and restoring the pre-import snapshot. More testing across phones and real statement formats is still needed.
This update builds on the finance manager, trading records, visual dashboards, journal, books, notes, project tools, and encrypted backups already in the toolbox.
Free and open source under the MIT License. No subscription or advertising built into the toolbox. Download it, customize it, and keep your own copy.
If something breaks, report the steps and error message. Remove private financial details before posting screenshots or sample files.
— @yayogerardo, writer, researcher, analyst, anarchist, autonomist, Humanoid 🃏™️
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