TinyExpenses

TinyExpenses is a minimal, personal finance tracker built with Flask. It supports multi-user setups, tracks expenses and income by category, and exposes a simple API for automation.

🚀 Getting Started

1. Install Dependencies (inside root dir)

pip install -r .

2. Set Up Your App Create a Python file wsgi.py with the following content (or modify according to your needs):

from tinyexpenses import create_app
app = create_app("tinyexpenses.config.ProductionHTTPSConfig")

Use Waitress and nginx for real production environment.

3. Set Environment Variables Before running the app, set the required variables:

export SECRET_KEY="your-very-secret-key"

You can generate secret key with:

python -c 'import secrets; print(secrets.token_hex())'

Changing the secret key invalidates all user API tokens.

4. Run directly (local-only)

flask run

📁 Create the Accounts Directory

TinyExpenses stores user configurations inside a folder (default: accounts/). Create it manually or point to a custom path using ACCOUNTS_DB_DIRECTORY_PATH envariomental path.

mkdir accounts

👤 Creating Users with the CLI

TinyExpenses comes with a built-in CLI to manage users.

python -m tinyexpenses.cli init-user accounts

You will be prompted to enter:

• Username
• Full name
• Password (with confirmation)

Example output:

✅ User 'alice' initialized at accounts/alice/config.toml

Reset a User’s Password

python -m tinyexpenses.cli reset-password accounts alice

Prompts for a new password with confirmation.

🧠 How It Works

Each user has a separate folder under accounts/, storing their config and data.

Yearly balances are updated automatically based on categories (Income or Expense).

You can add compensation/adjustments using negative amounts (e.g., -50.0).

✅ API (Optional Use)

You can automate expense tracking by sending JSON requests with your user’s API token.

PUT /api/v1/<username>/expenses/append
X-API-Key: your-api-key
Content-type: application/json

{
  "amount": 14.99,
  "title": "Dinner",
  "category": "Food",
  "date": "2025-08-02"
}

GET /api/v1/{{ username }}/expenses/view/balance HTTP/1.1
X-API-Key: (Here put your X-API key)