Three months in and I’m paralyzed. Started with a 30-account chart, now sitting at 180 (can’t delete anything in case I need it later). Built a Fava dashboard with 8 custom reports—opened it once. Wrote a CSV importer, got it working 80%, and just… stopped. Now I’m reading threads about Git workflows for accounting, Plaid integrations, tax optimization, and I have no idea which matters. I can spend 2 hours on data entry or 2 hours on “infrastructure”—which actually moves the needle? Is there a recommended order, or am I overthinking this?
Importers. Three months manual entry (15 hours/month). Built a CSV importer one weekend, got it 90% working. Reconciliation dropped to 30 minutes. That one thing unlocked everything else—suddenly had energy to actually organize accounts, fix chart of accounts, write useful reports instead of giving up. Importers saved me 10x the time.
Built 8 custom reports month one, 30 hours, used it twice. System felt “too complex” so I stopped for six months. Nuked it all and restarted with just bank import + basic P&L. One week to redo. Don’t over-engineer. Make it boring first, dashboards later when you know what you need.
Don’t build fancy custom reports initially.
Yep. I see new users do 15 custom queries, everything optimized. 90% abandon within 6 months. The ones still going? Started with 5 accounts, one import rule, nothing fancy. Boring works.
if i can only do ONE thing this week—chart of accounts, importer setup, or git—what first? or does it matter?