Plain Text Accounting

### accounting **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).
### … with text **Ledger** and the other **Ledger-likes** inspired by it are minimalist software tools for efficient double-entry accounting. This site introduces them and their way of doing things. 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** instead - 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 simplicity makes them easy to understand and rely on.
### questions ? **who is this for ?**\ Techies, power users, and do-it-yourself-ers, at least for now. If you need a rich GUI and lots of structure, you may prefer a more traditional GUI tool. **what are the alternatives ?**\ GNUCash, Grisbi, KMyMoney or other FOSS tools, proprietary tools like Quicken/Quickbooks, online tools like Xero, spreadsheets, paper accounting. **why is this better than QuickBooks ?**\ Your data remains accessible. No yearly fees. Free software you can fix and port. Cross platform. Scriptable. Efficient. **how do I communicate with my accountant ?**\ Clean up text reports by hand, print them as PDF, export CSV reports to a spreadsheet.. **what if my accountant only uses QuickBooks ?**\ You'll need a new accountant, or a duplicate set of books in QuickBooks, or to pioneer *ledger -> QuickBooks exporting. **can I use this to do my taxes ?**\ You can use this to track and report the data needed for tax reporting. Fill out and submit tax forms with another tool, or by hand.
### Ledger-likes | |-----------------------------------------------|---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------:|--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|------------------------------------------------------------------------------: | | Code, committers | Mail list | IRC, size | [Ledger](http://ledger-cli.org) | [C++](https://github.com/ledger/ledger) 101 | [ledger-cli](http://list.ledger-cli.org/) | [#ledger](http://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=ledger&randomnick=1) 70 | [hledger](http://hledger.org) | [Haskell](http://code.hledger.org) 30 | [hledger](http://list.hledger.org/) | [#hledger](http://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=hledger&randomnick=1) 20 | [Beancount](http://furius.ca/beancount) | [Python](http://bitbucket.org/blais/beancount/) 8 | [beancount](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/beancount) | [#beancount](http://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=beancount&randomnick=1) 1 | Abandon | [Scala](https://github.com/hrj/abandon) 5 | | | Ledger in Go | [Go](https://github.com/howeyc/ledger) 2 | | | Inactive: | | |-----------------------------------------------|----------------------------------------------------- | cl-ledger | [Common Lisp](https://github.com/ledger/cl-ledger) | ledger.pl | [Perl](https://github.com/dimonf/ledger.pl) | [Penny](http://massysett.github.io/penny/) | [Haskell](https://github.com/massysett/penny) | [UMM](http://hackage.haskell.org/package/UMM) | Haskell ### related tools - [hledger-diff](http://hackage.haskell.org/package/hledger-diff) report differing transactions between two journals - [hledger-interest](http://hackage.haskell.org/package/hledger-interest) generate *ledger interest transactions - [hledger-irr](http://hackage.haskell.org/package/hledger-irr) calculate an account's internal rate of return over time ##### data import - [icsvledger](https://launchpad.net/csv2ledger) CSV to journal converter - [ledger-autosync](https://gitlab.com/egh/ledger-autosync) convert OFX to journal, deduplication, bank download - [reckon](https://github.com/cantino/reckon) smart interactive/non-interactive CSV to journal converter ##### editing - [ledger-mode](http://ledger-cli.org/3.0/doc/ledger-mode.html) for Emacs - [vim-ledger](https://github.com/ledger/vim-ledger) for VIM - [language-ledger](https://atom.io/packages/language-ledger) for Atom - [ledger](https://atom.io/packages/ledger) for Atom - [sublime-ledger-syntax](https://github.com/moeffju/sublime-ledger-syntax) for Sublime Text/TextMate - [Ledger.tmbundle](https://github.com/lifepillar/Ledger.tmbundle) for TextMate ##### time tracking - [org2tc](https://github.com/jwiegley/org2tc) org to timeclock converter - [taskwarrior](http://taskwarrior.org) todo list manager, some *ledger integration for time reporting - [tim](https://github.com/MatthiasKauer/tim) time tracking tool using hledger for reports ##### UI, console - [hledger-iadd](https://github.com/hpdeifel/hledger-iadd) curses UI for data entry - [hledger-ui](http://hackage.haskell.org/package/hledger-ui) curses UI for browsing ##### UI, GUI - [ledgerhelpers](https://github.com/Rudd-O/ledgerhelpers) GUI tools and python library front end for Ledger ##### UI, web - [fava](https://github.com/aumayr/beancount-web) web UI for browsing beancount data - [hledger-api](https://github.com/simonmichael/hledger/tree/master/hledger-api) JSON API for *ledger data, can also serve static files - [hledger-web](http://hackage.haskell.org/package/hledger-web) web UI for browsing, data entry - [ledger-dashboard](https://github.com/Ikke/ledger-dashboard) web UI for browsing, data entry - [ledger-web](https://github.com/slashdotdash/node-ledger-web) web UI for browsing - sandstorm.io web app hosting, eg for [hledger-web](https://apps.sandstorm.io/app/8x12h6p0x0nrzk73hfq6zh2jxtgyzzcty7qsatkg7jfg2mzw5n90)
### docs - [Ledger manuals](http://ledger-cli.org/docs.html) - [Ledger wiki](https://github.com/ledger/ledger/wiki) - ["Getting Started With Ledger" book](https://github.com/rolfschr/GSWL-book) - [hledger docs](http://hledger.org), [more docs](http://hledger.org/more-docs.html) - [Beancount docs](http://furius.ca/beancount/doc/index) - [\@LedgerTips](https://twitter.com/LedgerTips) ### common tasks ##### data entry ##### reconciling ##### reporting ##### forecasting ##### budgetting ##### shared expenses ##### tax reporting ##### time tracking - [on integrating timelog and journal](https://github.com/anarcat/ledger-timetracking) ##### import and export #####
Send updates via the [github repo](https://github.com/simonmichael/plaintextaccounting) or [etherpad](https://oasis.sandstorm.io/shared/UAYLwagGI0a2pIMg9Hhv74K04nbuxanXiS5ZtBV6NF-)