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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

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 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 simple model makes them easy to understand and rely on.

questions ?

who is this for ?
Techies, power users, and do-it-yourself-ers, for now. If you need a complete GUI providing lots of guidance, you may prefer to use something else.

must I edit text and type cryptic commands ?
Not entirely! "Plain Text Accounting" is a broad description, referring mainly to the data format. We don't object to additional GUIs, and they are coming.

who is using it, and how ?
See Who's using Ledger? for some stories.

what are the alternatives ?
FOSS tools like GNUCash, Grisbi, KMyMoney. Proprietary tools like Quicken/Quickbooks, You Need A Budget. Online tools like Xero, FreeAgent. (There are many). Spreadsheets. Paper accounting. A bookkeeper.

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
Project, start date Code, committers Mail list, size IRC, size
Ledger
2003		 C++ 101 ledger-cli 650 #ledger 75
hledger
2007		 Haskell 30 hledger 75 #hledger 25
Beancount
2008		 Python 8 beancount 70 #beancount 5
Abandon
2013		 Scala 5
Ledger in Go
2013		 Go 2
Inactive:
uledger
2015		 Python
ledger.pl
2013		 Perl
Penny
2012		 Haskell
UMM
2009		 Haskell
cl-ledger
2007		 Common Lisp
sm-Ledger
2007		 Squeak Smalltalk

related tools

data import
  • bean-identify, bean-extract, bean-file - Beancount built-in tools
  • beancount-import CSV to beancount converter (curses)
  • gnucash2ledger.py GNUCash to *ledger conversion
  • icsvledger CSV to *ledger converter
  • ledger-autosync OFX download, OFX to *ledger conversion, deduplication
  • ledgerhub fetch prices, extract entries, convert various formats to beancount (? deprecated)
  • qb2ledger QuickBooks General Journal CSV to *ledger converter
  • reckon smart interactive/non-interactive CSV to *ledger converter
  • total_recall CSV to *ledger converter
editor support
time tracking
UI, console
  • bean-add interactive transaction entry
  • hledger add interactive transaction entry (built-in command)
  • ledger-add interactive transaction entry
  • ledger-plot interactive helper for making charts with GNUplot
  • ledger xact history-aware transaction generator (built-in command)
UI, curses
UI, GUI
  • ledgerhelpers GTK GUI tools + python library for driving Ledger
UI, web
API

discussion

##### mail lists/IRC

see above

##### stack exchange

ledger, hledger

##### hacker news

2009, 2013, 2014, 2014, 2015, 2016

##### reddit

/r/ledger

##### twitter

@LedgerTips, #ledgercli

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docs

concepts

comparisons

online books

presentations

videos

articles

blog posts

common tasks

choosing accounts
entering data
importing
reconciling
  • ledger-mode: C-c C-r
reporting
budgeting
forecasting
invoicing
multiple currencies
shared expenses
taxes
time tracking
non-profit accounting
exporting
API access
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