
Plain Text Accounting, a Guide to Ledger and Friends - nottwo
http://plaintextaccounting.org/
======
aumayr
For displaying the results/reports generated by Beancount [1] I created fava
[2], a web-based interface with charts, tree-tables and tree-maps, including
reports like Balance Sheet and Income/Expenses.

It supports filters (time, tags, account and payee) and you can find a demo
here: [http://fava.pythonanywhere.com](http://fava.pythonanywhere.com)

[1] [http://furius.ca/beancount/](http://furius.ca/beancount/) [2]
[https://github.com/aumayr/fava](https://github.com/aumayr/fava)

------
haberman
Anyone who is into Ledger-like double-entry accounting and looking for a
project to hack on, check out my very-early-and-rough project "DoubleBook":
[https://github.com/haberman/dblbook](https://github.com/haberman/dblbook)

The idea is to run the app in a web browser using IndexedDB. It's written in
React and all client-side, so I'm hoping this could run in a web browser or as
a native app. It could also run purely client-side as a Chrome App so you
don't have to trust a server.

I've put a ton of work into the data layer, which is pretty functional, but
I'm a backend guy and not very fast at writing UI's. If anyone is interested
in helping me on the UI I'd love that. (Fair warning: since I'm a Googler by
day I released this as a Google Open Source project, and to contribute to it
you'd have to sign the Google CLA. I understand if some people might not be
into that).

It even has a (very rough) importer from Ledger format.

------
claudius
Does anybody have a suggestion for an Android/Sailfish OS app which supports
this? Ideally I’d like to run something like hledger-web on my home server and
have a little app on my phone which lets me do data entry during the day,
either directly talking to the server and/or caching the results until a
connection can be made again.

~~~
alexjj
There's no "nice" app where you click on drop downs or type in amounts and
then it appends it to your ledger file.

Generally, and it's been discussed a lot on the mailing list/irc, people end
up finding just writing down transactions in a text file works best. e.g.
google keep, or simplenote, or Notes app etc.

I keep my ledger file on dropbox, so I can edit it directly.

I've not tried hledger-web on my phone to see what it looks like, but that has
an add transaction function. So you could just go to your site and edit it.
Obviously want some security to prevent others accessing it, e.g. VPN to home
network.

------
phunge
This is an incredible resource, +1. I started using ledger heavily about a
year ago and it's been a game changer.

Personal accounting is about data capture; if you don't gather good data, you
end up with garbage in garbage out analysis. Having a simple, non-propretary
file format enables so many things. The data capture side (OFX/QIF/CSV files,
bank websites, etc. etc.) is still clunky and painful but that's a hard
problem to solve.

~~~
pge
Data capture is the issue. I have tried ledger but always go back to other
apps because they can automatically capture all the data from my credit card,
brokerage, etc.

------
zomg
i find these plain text accounting projects very interesting but what i need
is something more akin to what YNAB provides, which is budgeting.

~~~
nucleardog
It's very much a "what works for me", but any accounting system that supports
an account hierarchy (which ledger seems to) can have some form of budgeting
"bolted on".

At my bank, I have a "Chequing" and "Savings" account (that's their use,
anyway). I use GnuCash for Android as kind of an additional data layer on top
of my bank accounts.

In GnuCash I have a Savings and Chequing account I manage, but I've got a
whole separate hierarchy of "bank accounts" called "Budget". Under that I
build a whole tree of "Bills", "Planned Purchases", "Car", "Credit Card
Payment", etc. When I get paid I transfer the appropriate amounts into the
various "budget" accounts to plan for my bills and such. The displayed amount
for my "Savings" account is actually "money that is not allocated to anything
right now". (The true total is Savings+Budget.)

If I pick something up on my credit card (e.g., buying something online), that
expense gets logged against my credit card right away and I can just transfer
some money from Savings/Chequing/Budget into my "Credit Card Payment" budget
item.

It doesn't really provide me any forecasting, and I can't really set up
"future bills", but once I move the money into the budget accounts it's
essentially "spent", so it serves the purpose just as well.

(As an added benefit, I've set up the expense accounts to more or less mirror
my budget accounts, with some additional ones for the unbudgetted day-to-day.
I can always get an accurate picture of "how much have I spent on <x> since I
started tracking", which is interesting.)

~~~
smichael
Here's how I do YNAB-ish budgeting, I think it's similar to what you said
except using virtual subaccounts instead of a parallel hierarchy:
[https://gist.github.com/simonmichael/a1addcb652da4e78b183](https://gist.github.com/simonmichael/a1addcb652da4e78b183)

------
jhallenworld
I've just started to take a look at LedgerSMB (perl), ERPNext (python), and
Odoo (python). These are backed by Postgresql or MariaDb. Anyone have any
experience with these for a small business?

For personal finance or very small businesses there is GnuCash.

~~~
imroot
I like Odoo, but, there doesn't seem to be enough glue in the Open Source
release to do things like billing for services in a sane and coherent manner.

The UI for LedgerSMB is just horrible. I don't think it's really been updated
since 1999.

I really haven't messed with ERPNext, mainly because I can't get it to install
correctly.

It's my opinion that there really are not a lot of good, truly open source
ERP/Accounting systems for businesses out there.

~~~
rushabh
> I really haven't messed with ERPNext, mainly because I can't get it to
> install correctly.

Please post any issues, tracebacks on the forum. Install is pretty
straightforward and works well for most people
[https://github.com/frappe/bench](https://github.com/frappe/bench)

Edit: You can also use the VM
[https://erpnext.com/download](https://erpnext.com/download)

------
luxpir
Great resource, thanks for sharing. My business accounts aren't _too_
complicated but there are a few quirks which seem to stop me from migrating
over from Freeagent, namely:

. Client + invoice integration

. Invoice preparation, with translated templates

. Multiple currency invoicing, with auto-calculated gain/loss

. Cashflow reports

. P+L, balance sheet

. UK tax calculations for self-assessment and for corporation tax

There's a chance I could replicate some of this in Ledger, but that's got
time, energy and potential mistakes written all over it.

The accountant I work with charges more than average (from what I can tell - I
pay £1k per year all-in, more or less, rarely have to lift a finger) but a)
includes me on their own Freeagent [0] license ('saving' £300 pa) and b) is
very tax efficient.

Knowing what I now know after years of working with accountants, however,
there's an outside chance I could be as efficient without the associated
costs. But then a contact of mine pays £500 a year for their accountant to
submit official accounts and has to do his book-keeping manually, with no real
cashflow oversight. Plus with ever-changing regulations and the ability to
more easily sell or obtain credit for the business, it really makes sense to
work with an accountant, as far as I can tell.

Anyone else wrestled with this before? I take it some of you might have, as
this CLI accounting approach seems to appeal to us DIY'ers.

This year I do intend to get serious about accounting and my approach to
finances. First I'm going to read _Financial Intelligence for Entrepreneurs_
[1], as previously recommended on HN and elsewhere, to get a handle on what I
_ought_ to be looking at on a regular basis. Then I'm going to start to follow
my new YNAB [2] account closely, although the use of that is unfortunately
complicated by one of my accounts not importing statements automatically (the
import option in the web application is not visible, despite the docs
mentioning one) and so I may have to manually add all transactions which...
I'm not keen on doing.

I found a spreadsheet that does what YNAB does, but without the bells and
whistles, and with manual data-entry, I'll pay for the modestly priced online
offer if it turns out to be simple enough to use.

Overall, it's not that things are in bad shape, but they could be better and
I'd like to know what to focus on to ensure stability and growth.

So yes, interested in DIY accounts, but not able/willing to contribute to
improving them just yet.

\--

[0] - [https://lukespear.co.uk/2011/07/online-accounting-for-
freela...](https://lukespear.co.uk/2011/07/online-accounting-for-freelancers-
and-small-businesses)

[1] -
[http://www.amazon.com/dp/1422119157/](http://www.amazon.com/dp/1422119157/)

[2] -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_Need_a_Budget](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_Need_a_Budget)

~~~
pyvpx
I am wrestling with it now, because I cant justify spending 150EUR/month _and_
1500EUR at year end to keep books and file returns. I have but six to ten
invoices a year, and only myself as an employee; but such an animal doesn't
seem very interesting to every relevant tax and accounting professional I've
inquired with in Berlin. Perhaps it is the "English" premium, but at those
costs I'm stuck spending more time than I care, at possibly greater risk than
I am aware of, trying to do my own paperwork and books. In a system I mostly
grok from (translated!) blog posts!

~~~
matt4077
I have British friends in Berlin who run a bar and they pay around 800€/year.
I don't know what your business is like, but I'd imagine a Bar is on the
complicated side of things (lots of small transactions, changing personell
etc).

You probably don't even need to do double-entry bookkeeping. If you look at
your files from the last years, it should be pretty easy to figure out how to
handle the different transactions. It only gets complicated when you start
hiring people (as employees, not contractors) or have debt/investments.

Your accountant should at least let you do the monthly stuff yourself (usually
very easy: just add the VAT you charged) and then do the yearly accounting for
much cheaper, as long as you can get him/her the data in an easy=to-process
format.

------
FunnyLookinHat
Another shameless plug: easy web-based accounting that is free to install
locally, or pay someone to host it for you.
[https://beansbooks.com/](https://beansbooks.com/)

------
IgorPartola
Shameless plug: if you do prefer something that the rest of your family can
use try my app: Family Fortune [https://family-
fortune.ridgebit.com](https://family-fortune.ridgebit.com)

------
legulere
Sorry, but personal accounting shouldn't need a guide. Everyone writing
personal accounting software seems to nerd off on accounting stuff making it
unusable. You should nerd off on other stuff instead: photographing receipts
would be an awesome way to data entry for instance.

~~~
massysett
You've got a great idea for your next project. These folks will continue to
spend their free time as they wish.

