Plain text accounting means doing accounting with plain text data formats and scriptable software, in the style of Ledger, hledger, beancount, and co. This site collects FAQs and a directory for the PTA community's tools, docs and practices. It is maintained by Simon Michael (hledger project leader, Ledger contributor, PTA researcher & fan), and contributors like you. Got feedback ? Join us in #plaintextaccounting.
Accounting is tracking the flow of valuable commodities, such as money or time. It clarifies activity, priorities, obligations, opportunities. It can reduce stress and even be enjoyable.
Double-entry bookkeeping is a process for doing this reliably. For every movement of value (a transaction), both the source and destination are recorded. Simple arithmetic invariants help prevent errors.
In traditional double-entry bookkeeping, value at any point in time is tracked in various accounts, classified as asset (owned), liability (owed) or equity (invested). Two more classifications track changes during some period: revenues (inflows) and expenses (outflows).
Transactions consist of debits (increases to asset or expense accounts, or decreases to liability or equity accounts) or credits (decreases to asset or expense accounts, or increases to liability or equity accounts).
In 2003, John Wiegley invented Ledger: a plain text data format and command-line reporting tool for efficient double-entry-style accounting. This idea went viral among software developers and technical folk, and we now have 5+ actively-developed Ledger-likes such as hledger and Beancount, with 40+ add-on tools and an active community. This site was created in 2016 to introduce our tools, documentation, and practices.
Accounting data is valuable; we want to know that it will be accessible for ever - even without software. We want to know when it changes, and revision-control it. We want to search and manipulate it efficiently. So, we store it as human-readable plain text.
We simplify debits and credits by using signed numbers - positive for inflows to an account, negative for outflows from an account.
We define arbitrary account hierarchy to suit our needs. This scales smoothly from simple to complex scenarios, and from high-level overview to fine detail.
Ledger-likes are, at least in part, command-line tools. This makes them efficient to use and very scriptable and flexible.
Ledger-likes also, at their core, tend towards functional operation: they read the input data without changing it, and output a report. This simple model makes them easy to understand and rely on.
+In 2003, John Wiegley invented Ledger: a command-line reporting tool and a plain text data format and for efficient double-entry-style accounting. Ledger's ideas appealed to many software developers and technical folk. In 2007 and 2008 it was joined by hledger and Beancount respectively, and as of 2019 there are more than a dozen Ledger-likes, many add-on tools and an active community. This site was started in 2016 to help keep track of it all.
Accounting is tracking the flow of valuable commodities, such as money or time. It clarifies activity, priorities, obligations, opportunities. It can reduce stress and even be enjoyable.
Double-entry bookkeeping is a process for keeping accounting records reliably. For every movement of value (a transaction), both the source and destination are recorded. Simple arithmetic invariants help prevent errors.
Value at any point in time is tracked in various accounts, classified as asset (owned), liability (owed) or equity (invested). Two more classifications track changes during some period: revenues (inflows) and expenses (outflows).
Transactions consist of debits (increases to asset or expense accounts, or decreases to liability or equity accounts) or credits (decreases to asset or expense accounts, or increases to liability or equity accounts).
Accounting data is valuable; we want to know that it will be accessible for ever - even without software. We want to know when it changes, and revision-control it. We want to search and manipulate it efficiently. So, we store it as human-readable plain text.
We simplify debits and credits by using signed numbers - positive for inflows to an account, negative for outflows from an account.
We define arbitrary account hierarchy to suit our needs. This scales smoothly from simple to complex scenarios, and from high-level overview to fine detail.
Ledger-likes are, at least in part, command-line tools. This makes them efficient to use and very scriptable and flexible.
Ledger-likes also, at their core, tend towards functional operation: they read the input data without changing it, and output a report. This simple model makes them easy to understand and rely on.
Those who are comfortable on the command line and who understand the value of storing information in plain text. If you need a complete GUI providing lots of guidance, you may prefer to use something else.
diff --git a/index.md b/index.md index 1118fcc..d1102e2 100644 --- a/index.md +++ b/index.md @@ -35,6 +35,7 @@ body { } h1 { text-align:center; + margin-top:10%; margin-bottom:5%; } h2 { @@ -78,7 +79,7 @@ h5 { [{title="send pull requests, bug reports, blog posts, star us, tweet with #plaintextaccounting tag"}](https://github.com/plaintextaccounting/plaintextaccounting.github.io)