6.8 KiB
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 Ledger-likes
Ledger and the other Ledger-likes which followed 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 by using signed numbers instead of debits and credits - 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 to rely on.
why ?
why we exist
who are we for
alternatives
why is this better than QuickBooks ?
what if my accountant only uses QuickBooks ?
can I use this to do my taxes ?
Ledger-likes
| Ledger | C++. The original. | |
| hledger | Haskell | |
| Beancount | Python | |
| Abandon | Scala | |
| Ledger in Go | Go |
Inactive:
related tools
- fava web UI for browsing beancount data
- hledger-api JSON API for *ledger data, can also serve static files
- hledger-diff report differing transactions between two journals
- hledger-iadd curses UI for data entry
- hledger-interest generate *ledger interest transactions
- hledger-irr calculate an account's internal rate of return over time
- hledger-ui curses UI for browsing
- hledger-web web UI for browsing and data entry
- icsvledger CSV to journal converter
- ledger-autosync convert OFX to journal, deduplication, bank download
- ledger-dashboard web UI for browsing
- ledger-web web UI for browsing
- ledgerhelpers GUI tools and python library front end for Ledger
- org2tc org to timeclock converter
- reckon smart interactive/non-interactive CSV to journal converter
- sandstorm.io web app hosting, eg for hledger-web
- taskwarrior todo list manager, some *ledger integration for time reporting
- tim time tracking tool using hledger for reports
docs
discussion
common tasks
data entry
reconciling
reporting
forecasting
budgetting
shared expenses
time tracking
- https://github.com/anarcat/ledger-timetracking on integrating timelog and journal
Send updates via the [github repo](https://github.com/simonmichael/plaintextaccounting) or [etherpad](https://oasis.sandstorm.io/shared/UAYLwagGI0a2pIMg9Hhv74K04nbuxanXiS5ZtBV6NF-)