
Show HN: Personal finance with 'hledger' in Emacs - narendraj9
https://github.com/narendraj9/hledger-mode
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AdamGibbins
For people interested in plain text accounting like this there's an entire
site detected to the subject:
[http://plaintextaccounting.org/](http://plaintextaccounting.org/) and hledger
alternatives etc.

Personally, I use [http://furius.ca/beancount/](http://furius.ca/beancount/)
as I find it much more hackable (python) and stricter, additionally it's got
an amazing webui
[https://github.com/beancount/fava](https://github.com/beancount/fava)

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beardicus
Oooh. Thanks for that head's up. I thought hledger has the only web ui for
ledger, and it is lacking. fava looks pretty nice, and bonus for python.

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hectormalot
I like ledger. We use it for the accounting of a small side project (few 1000
a year turnover), to track our VAT and general cash in/out. It gives me a
sense of safety that our information is in plain text files (in git, backed up
on a remote).

This looks nice, might give it a try later today.

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narendraj9
This sounds cool. I have never used this for running a business.It would be
great if you share your experience in a blog post or something. :)

I have been using this setup for the past one year. I have added a lot of
things that I use almost regularly.

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ams6110
I used ledger to manage finances for a small nonprofit. It worked well, but we
eventually moved to Quickbooks because I didn't want to be the only one who
could do it. Amusingly, I found Quickbooks to be much more difficult to use.

~~~
narendraj9
I think the same thing can be done with hledger. What were the ledger features
that you found yourself to be using most frequently?

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shradha408
I've been using hledger for almost 9 months now and I must say that it's been
incredible. Never before have I been able to track and manage my personal
finance this efficiently.

The Reports look really comprehensive and crisp. I will definitely use it.
Thanks!

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cJ0th
If you have used gnuCash before what would you say makes hledger better?

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BeetleB
I used GnuCash years ago, then switched to KMyMoney. Now I use a hybrid of
KMyMoney and ledger. The former makes it easier to enter transactions. Then I
run a script that parses the KMyMoney file and creates a ledger output.

Better?

For me primarily: If you do envelope type budgeting, GnuCash does not support
it. ledger/hledger does with virtual transactions (although hledger
discourages it).

Other than that, I think there are other benefits. I could never remember the
ledger/hledger syntax, but they conveniently let you export to csv, and I use
Python scripts with pandas to extract what I want.

If there's _any_ calculation you would like to do, it's easier with these
tools. Say, for example, you want to calculate the effective rate of return
for all your investments combined. I don't think GnuCash will let you do that
across accounts, etc.

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bcheung
That's kind of cool. I was looking for something for small business but I
don't really like Quickbooks or Xero. Was debating writing my own. Does this
support double entry accounting with debits and credits?

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narendraj9
Yes, `hledger' is based on double entry bookkeeping. But we do not use the
Credit and Debit conventions. Instead we use negative numbers to imply
deduction in the balance of an account. Each journal entry must be balanced.

~~~
narendraj9
I actually want to write an Emacs Lisp port of hledger/ledger. Just for fun
sometime. I cannot do this in the near future though.

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jonSson99
any way to import existing data from ledger?

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narendraj9
hledger and ledger are mostly compatible. Can you share what problem you are
facing while using hledger?

You original journal file that you were using with ledger should just work
with hlegder.

