Bill Block embeds a lightweight expense tracker directly inside SiYuan documents, for jotting down and reviewing spending right in your daily notes, monthly reviews, project budgets, or personal dashboard.
It is not a standalone finance app, and it is not a replacement for database views. It focuses on a narrower workflow: putting an editable, long-lived, multi-device bill block inside the note you are already writing, without creating a database or leaving the document. Every bill block shares one ledger, so adding, editing, or deleting an entry in any block updates the others instantly.
Insert from the slash menu /记账块 (also matches 记账, 账单, jizhang, expense, ledger) or the top-bar ¥ menu's "Insert Bill Block". Add as many as you like in any document. Each block carries four views, switched in place without interfering with each other:
- Flow: a quick-entry row (amount → category → project → note → date → Enter) above a date-grouped, reverse-chronological stream of all transactions, with inline edit and delete. A search button left of the "N entries" total filters the stream by any mix of keyword, category, amount range, and date range. Flow is the only view that may show a scrollbar — its height matches the Week view and the list scrolls inside the block instead of stretching it.
- Week: a Monday–Sunday seven-day board shaded by daily spending; click a day for details, click a cell's "+" or double-click an entry to record or edit in place. A category bar chart and a trend line chart sit below.
- Month: a full-month calendar board with the same logic as Week; each cell shows up to three entries directly, collapsing the rest into "+N".
- Stats: a horizontal category bar chart (with share, sortable by default / descending / ascending) and a trend line chart (by day / week / month / year, custom date range, multiple category series at once).
- One ledger, synced live across multiple blocks and views, with no SiYuan database required.
- Flow search: the Flow view supports multi-condition filtering — any mix of keyword (matching both project and note), category (all / a specific category / uncategorized), amount range, and date range — designed for "how much did I spend on X in total" lookbacks; filtering is instant and the popover stays open, with the entry count, total, and daily subtotals recomputed accordingly, and the search button highlighted while a filter is active.
- Standalone expense panel: open an enlarged ledger from the top-bar ¥ menu, shown in a SiYuan tab with roomier font size, line height, and width over the same ledger — handy for staying put, reviewing, and entering in bulk; the panel's own default week / month and sorting apply only within the panel and never touch the bill blocks in your documents.
- Follows SiYuan's theme: both embedded blocks and the standalone panel switch their palette live with SiYuan's light / dark theme, including automatic OS day/night switching.
- New ledgers start with no preset categories, so each user can build their own category system from scratch.
- The ledger lives in a standalone workspace file and syncs across devices via SiYuan's official cloud sync.
- Flow, Week, and Month views all carry a quick-entry row; amount and project are required, category / note / date are optional.
- Week / Month can pin a specific week or month as the block's default (stored in block attributes, restored on reload); a center anchor button jumps back after browsing other periods.
- The default-week picker supports typing "year + week number" or picking from a calendar, with the week's exact date range annotated inline.
- Week / Month cell entries show the project name by default; when a note exists, hovering the entry reveals it in a tooltip, and nothing shows when there is no note.
- Stats trend chart: total spending uses a neutral grey line while each category keeps its own color; with multiple lines, hovering a point highlights that line and fades the rest, and an enlarged hit area makes overlapping lines easy to target.
- The category bar chart shows every category by default; enable "Hide categories with no spending" in the category manager to show only categories with spending in the current period.
- Two-level category management: add, rename, recolor, drag-reorder, and delete (deleted categories' entries fall back to "Uncategorized"); a 10-color palette, a color picker, and
#RRGGBBhex input are all available. - A global hotkey
Option+Command+B(configurable in SiYuan settings) opens "Add bill" anywhere; the top-bar ¥ menu can also add one quickly. - When focus is inside a bill block or the standalone expense panel, press
Bto open Add Bill as well; text inputs do not trigger this shortcut. - Each view can export its current state to a PNG from the top-right corner; transient controls are hidden during export, and Desktop is preferred as the save location.
- Use
Cmd/Ctrl+Zto undo the previous ledger operation (up to 50 steps).
- The quick-entry row and inline forms save on Enter once amount and project are valid; press
Escor click Cancel to discard the current entry. - The default-week, default-month, and category-manager buttons all close their popover when their own button is clicked again.
- While editing inline, clicking outside the block (including across the iframe onto the SiYuan UI) or on blank space inside the block exits editing and restores the row.
- Week / Month cells are shaded by daily spending, with today and the selected day emphasized by an outline.
- Amounts use locale thousands separators and tabular figures for alignment.
The ledger is stored in the SiYuan workspace at:
/data/storage/bill-block/data.json
Before each write the previous good copy is backed up to data.json.bak in the same folder; if the file is corrupted or fails to load, writes are blocked to avoid overwriting existing data. Open blocks stay in sync via BroadcastChannel, and cross-device sync relies on SiYuan's official cloud sync.
Each block also stores its own default week / month in block attributes, restored next time it opens.
- Casual expense logging in daily, monthly, and yearly reviews.
- Budget and spending records inside project documents.
- One-off expense lists for trips, renovations, or events.
- A spending overview in a personal dashboard.
- Any note that benefits from keeping the ledger inline, without opening a separate finance app.
MIT
This plugin was made entirely through vibe coding. The tools and models used were roughly:
- Codex (GPT 5.5): 40%
- Claude Code (Fable 5): 20%
- Claude Code (Opus 4.8): 20%
- Antigravity (Gemini 3.5 Flash): 20%
(The figures above are estimates from the plugin's first release; it keeps being updated, always with the most capable models available at the time.)
Top-tier models are expensive and my study schedule is tight, so this work has not come easily. If you like this plugin or benefit from it, you are warmly invited to support its development. I will keep updating it and making the experience better.
Please leave your LianDi (ld246) username or any other social account with your payment, and I will add you to the plugin's sponsor list as a token of my gratitude. Your support is my greatest motivation to create!
 |
 |
|---|