How to Set Up Firefly III on Saplo (Budgeting and Finances Without a Banking App)

If you have accounts with two or three banks, you know the problem: to see your complete financial picture, you have to log in to several banking apps one by one and add up the numbers in your head or in a separate spreadsheet. A spreadsheet only solves the problem halfway, because you have to enter every transaction manually, and after a few months, the categories stop matching, the formulas break, and your household budget is no longer up to date. Firefly III is an open-source app for personal or business budgeting and finances, keeping accounts, categories, budgets, tags, and reports in one place. You can import CSV statements using the additional Data Importer app, which you host on your own Box instead of relying on someone else's banking app or a spreadsheet that is gradually falling apart. Below is a step-by-step guide to setting up Firefly III on Saplo.

Why Firefly III instead of a banking app and a spreadsheet

A banking app and a spreadsheet are free, but they have drawbacks that only become apparent after you have been using them for a while, not right from the start:

• a banking app shows only one bank, so when you have accounts with several institutions, you do not have one place that gives you a complete overview of your expenses, savings, and budget,
• a spreadsheet requires you to enter every transaction manually, and the longer you maintain it, the more likely you are to make a formula error or forget a category,
• the financial data in a banking app are controlled by the bank, not by the person entering them, and budget history from years ago usually cannot be exported from it in a usable form.

Firefly III has none of these limitations because it runs as a complete set of Docker containers on your own Box. It aggregates any number of accounts, compiles budgets and categories based on the transactions you enter, and keeps your data on your own server, not in someone else's cloud.

Requirements

To run Firefly III on Saplo, you need:

• a Box with Docker enabled (the engine turns it on automatically when you install from the catalog, and container nesting is required, which Saplo supports by default),
• at least 512 MB of free RAM on the Box and 2 GB of disk space, which means the Box S for $29 per year plan is enough,
• a domain or subdomain *.saploapp.pl included in the price of every plan, where the Firefly III panel will run,
• no separate database to set up manually. Firefly III gets its own empty database in Saplo's shared MySQL, and the engine passes the access details automatically.

You can find a full description of the application and its place in the catalog on the Firefly III on Saplo page.

Installation step by step

1. In the Saplo panel, go to Application Catalog and select Firefly III.
2. Select a Box with at least 512 MB of free RAM on which the application will run, along with a domain or subdomain under which the panel will be available.
3. Confirm the installation. The engine creates two containers: the application from the official image fireflyiii/core, exposed only on the Box's loopback interface and connected to nginx with free SSL, and a separate lightweight cron container (alpine), which once a night triggers the task responsible for recurring transactions and automated rules, in accordance with the official Firefly III documentation.
4. Once the containers start, the engine checks whether the application is actually running. The database schema migration on the first launch can sometimes take longer than the usual dozen seconds or so.
5. After the installation is complete, the Firefly III panel is available under the selected domain.

First-time setup

Firefly III does not automatically create an administrator account, as there is no built-in API for this when the container starts.

1. Go to your domain address and click Register. The first person to create an account automatically receives owner permissions.
2. In the Accounts section, add asset accounts, one for each bank account or cash account you want to track.
3. In the Categories and Budgets sections, set your own expense categories and monthly budget limits tailored to your finances.
4. You add transactions manually in the dashboard. Importing CSV files requires a separate Firefly III Data Importer application, which this recipe does not install. Simply running Firefly III does not enable CSV imports or automatic bank statement downloads.
5. Recurring transactions and automated rules, such as a fixed rent transfer, run automatically thanks to a separate cron container that triggers the relevant endpoint once a night, so you do not need to run anything manually.

Firefly III on Saplo versus a banking app and a spreadsheet

Frequently asked questions

Does Firefly III import bank statements automatically? No. In the described setup, you add transactions manually. Importing a CSV file also requires a separate Firefly III Data Importer, which the Saplo recipe does not install. See the official CSV import guide.

How many bank accounts can I add? There is no limit. The number of asset accounts in Firefly III is limited only by the resources available in your Box.

Do I need to set up a database myself? No, the engine creates an empty database in the shared MySQL on Saplo and automatically makes the data available to the container during installation.

Who gets administrator permissions? The first person who registers on the site immediately after installation automatically gets owner permissions, so it is worth creating an account as soon as installation is complete.

Do recurring transactions and automatic rules work on their own? Yes, thanks to a separate cron container that triggers the relevant application endpoint every night, exactly as recommended in the official Firefly III documentation.

Firefly III is one of more than 160 applications you can run on Saplo from the catalog. We explain how application hosting in a single Box works on a separate page.

If you're tired of switching between banking apps from several banks and manually filling in a spreadsheet, contact us and we'll help you choose the right Box and set up Firefly III.