
Command Line Accounting With Ledger and Reckon - tectonic
http://blog.andrewcantino.com/blog/2013/02/16/command-line-accounting-with-ledger-and-reckon/
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networked
Looks like a nice set of programs, especially since being able to run your
accounting software over SSH has certain advantages. Does anyone here have
experience with using Ledger with multiple currencies? My current FOSS
accounting tool of choice, GnuCash [1], I chose in large part because of for
how well it works with multiple currencies.

[1] <http://www.gnucash.org/>

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archivator
Another happy gnucash user!

I have a few reports that I keep open (last month's expenses, this month's
expenses, etc), so my usage is generally 1) download transaction history in
OFX from Natwest, 2) import into gnucash, 3) put the unrecognized transactions
in the correct accounts (rarely if ever have to do that these days - the
bayesian matching works rather well) 4) inspect the reports.

I couldn't be happier!

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perlgeek
Gnucash can download the transaction history from my bank directly, so I guess
steps 1 and 2 could be folded together into one.

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jonasvp
Ledger is beautiful. I actually wrote a web frontend (Django) for our company.
It downloads the transaction history using aqbanking which implements the HBCI
protocol (a german standard for accessing banks). My colleague then assigns
accounts to each transaction.

It's given us a much better and more current view of where we are financially.
We can actually display our runway on our Geckoboard dashboard in the office!

Next step: use D3.js to create monthly reports you can really drill down
through.

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tectonic
Would you consider open sourcing the frontend?

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jonasvp
Hadn't thought about it yet, since it's pretty tied to our workflow. The web
interface itself is pretty basic CRUD.

Thinking about it now, it does tie together some interesting parts. I'll clean
it up a little and put it out there as soon as I have some time. If anyone's
interested in it at the state it's in now, just give me a shout.

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philips
I use hledger for the nice web ui: <http://demo.hledger.org/register>

I use ledger for all of my personal finances and it works great. However,
maintaing the config files for csv2ledger is a pain so I will check this out.

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markokocic
I can second that hledger i great. As a bonus, hledger-web makes it possible
to also modify data, making it usable alternative to command line tools.

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LVB
About 2 years ago I spent quite a bit of time wrestling with Ledger. I really
wanted to work out a command line based system for financial tracking. The one
part that totally tripped me up was trying to split up my accounts into
individual files. I could never get Ledger to properly handle transfers
between accounts, even after some lengthy discussions on the mailing list.

But this post has piqued my interest... Maybe worth another look.

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zdw
I had the same problem. My solution:

[https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/ledger-
cli/K7EgJQuEQ_M...](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/ledger-
cli/K7EgJQuEQ_M/WGzdFhtuqwIJ)

Basically, make a 3rd account, name it transfer, and have it be the "staging
area" that should always cancel out to zero. Works great for ledger files
generated from an outside source.

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LVB
That seems to be the only way to handle it. I did try something like that, but
I think my approach was a little clunkier. I like the idea of a "Transfers"
top level category that can go to zero...

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zdw
Reckon is pretty nice, if you want your hand held in the interactive way it
works. Unfortunately, it (and nearly all other CSV to ledger converters) can't
generate multiple entries per transaction, which is the only way to break out
tax, fees, etc.

To this end, I wrote and use a generic ruby CSV -> .erb template program that
is quite short and simple, keyed off of the header row:

<https://github.com/zdw/rubycsv>

Examples are given of bank/paypal/square/etc.

Ledger is awesome stuff - it's basically a multi-variable tree structured
calculator. I'm (ab)using it right now to calculate specs for a network rack.

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philips
The network rack stuff sounds interesting. Have an example? I am sure the
ledger google groups would be interested.

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lifeisstillgood
For my home accounts I wrote some python SQLite mash up that tracks different
bank accounts (no Bayesian analysis that is nice). Produces reports, google
pie charts etc.

For my business I use an online tool freeagnet. It is awkward to use and I
have not successfully downloaded my own data, but it took no training g to
use, takes a few minutes a week to keep up and it auto calcs taxes and so on

If you are running a business and have time to learn text file based double
entry program's that have limited tech support, you should be in the
accountancy industry.

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zrail
I've been using ledger for quite a long time too and have written quite a bit,
both prose and code, around it.

<http://bugsplat.info/ledger.html>

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tectonic
Let me know if you have any questions about using reckon.

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jacques_chester
I use a simple well-known SaaS accounting tool, but this is neat. I am
particularly impressed that ledger makes sure to follow double-entry
principles.

(Accountants of my acquaintance would quibble that this is book-keeping, not
accounting, but let's just leave them outside with this year's tax handbooks).

Does ledger allow you to annotate things such as stock accounting method?

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zrail
> Does ledger allow you to annotate things such as stock accounting method?

You can make annotations on transactions in various ways, but handling LIFO or
FIFO or whatever is kind of out of scope. It's been discussed at length on the
mailing list and the conclusion was that it would best be handled by an
external system that loads your ledger data.

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jacques_chester
Thanks.

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orofino
This is interesting, are there command lie tools for tracking your investments
and savings? I'm being a bit lazy here as I haven't looked for them myself,
but I've never been happy with the GUI applications for such tasks.

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tectonic
Ledger can do investment tracking too.

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ams6110
Pretty cool. I use ledger for doing the accounting for a youth organization.
I've used awk to create ledger entries from csv downloads, but will take a
look at reckon.

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motters
Also see <https://launchpad.net/fin>

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craftman
OMG Just have seen Ledger comes also with an emacs mode! Sold.

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zrail
The emacs mode is under pretty active development right now. I would suggest
joining the mailing list if you're interested in following along.

[https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!forum/ledger-
cl...](https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!forum/ledger-cli)

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haddr
+1 for "Small" plan on github :)

