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Plain Text Accounting, a Guide to Ledger and Friends

150 pointsby nottwoabout 9 years ago

10 comments

aumayrabout 9 years ago
For displaying the results&#x2F;reports generated by Beancount [1] I created fava [2], a web-based interface with charts, tree-tables and tree-maps, including reports like Balance Sheet and Income&#x2F;Expenses.<p>It supports filters (time, tags, account and payee) and you can find a demo here: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;fava.pythonanywhere.com" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;fava.pythonanywhere.com</a><p>[1] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;furius.ca&#x2F;beancount&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;furius.ca&#x2F;beancount&#x2F;</a> [2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;aumayr&#x2F;fava" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;aumayr&#x2F;fava</a>
habermanabout 9 years ago
Anyone who is into Ledger-like double-entry accounting and looking for a project to hack on, check out my very-early-and-rough project &quot;DoubleBook&quot;: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;haberman&#x2F;dblbook" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;haberman&#x2F;dblbook</a><p>The idea is to run the app in a web browser using IndexedDB. It&#x27;s written in React and all client-side, so I&#x27;m hoping this could run in a web browser or as a native app. It could also run purely client-side as a Chrome App so you don&#x27;t have to trust a server.<p>I&#x27;ve put a ton of work into the data layer, which is pretty functional, but I&#x27;m a backend guy and not very fast at writing UI&#x27;s. If anyone is interested in helping me on the UI I&#x27;d love that. (Fair warning: since I&#x27;m a Googler by day I released this as a Google Open Source project, and to contribute to it you&#x27;d have to sign the Google CLA. I understand if some people might not be into that).<p>It even has a (very rough) importer from Ledger format.
claudiusabout 9 years ago
Does anybody have a suggestion for an Android&#x2F;Sailfish OS app which supports this? Ideally I’d like to run something like hledger-web on my home server and have a little app on my phone which lets me do data entry during the day, either directly talking to the server and&#x2F;or caching the results until a connection can be made again.
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phungeabout 9 years ago
This is an incredible resource, +1. I started using ledger heavily about a year ago and it&#x27;s been a game changer.<p>Personal accounting is about data capture; if you don&#x27;t gather good data, you end up with garbage in garbage out analysis. Having a simple, non-propretary file format enables so many things. The data capture side (OFX&#x2F;QIF&#x2F;CSV files, bank websites, etc. etc.) is still clunky and painful but that&#x27;s a hard problem to solve.
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zomgabout 9 years ago
i find these plain text accounting projects very interesting but what i need is something more akin to what YNAB provides, which is budgeting.
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jhallenworldabout 9 years ago
I&#x27;ve just started to take a look at LedgerSMB (perl), ERPNext (python), and Odoo (python). These are backed by Postgresql or MariaDb. Anyone have any experience with these for a small business?<p>For personal finance or very small businesses there is GnuCash.
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luxpirabout 9 years ago
Great resource, thanks for sharing. My business accounts aren&#x27;t <i>too</i> complicated but there are a few quirks which seem to stop me from migrating over from Freeagent, namely:<p>. Client + invoice integration<p>. Invoice preparation, with translated templates<p>. Multiple currency invoicing, with auto-calculated gain&#x2F;loss<p>. Cashflow reports<p>. P+L, balance sheet<p>. UK tax calculations for self-assessment and for corporation tax<p>There&#x27;s a chance I could replicate some of this in Ledger, but that&#x27;s got time, energy and potential mistakes written all over it.<p>The accountant I work with charges more than average (from what I can tell - I pay £1k per year all-in, more or less, rarely have to lift a finger) but a) includes me on their own Freeagent [0] license (&#x27;saving&#x27; £300 pa) and b) is very tax efficient.<p>Knowing what I now know after years of working with accountants, however, there&#x27;s an outside chance I could be as efficient without the associated costs. But then a contact of mine pays £500 a year for their accountant to submit official accounts and has to do his book-keeping manually, with no real cashflow oversight. Plus with ever-changing regulations and the ability to more easily sell or obtain credit for the business, it really makes sense to work with an accountant, as far as I can tell.<p>Anyone else wrestled with this before? I take it some of you might have, as this CLI accounting approach seems to appeal to us DIY&#x27;ers.<p>This year I do intend to get serious about accounting and my approach to finances. First I&#x27;m going to read <i>Financial Intelligence for Entrepreneurs</i> [1], as previously recommended on HN and elsewhere, to get a handle on what I <i>ought</i> to be looking at on a regular basis. Then I&#x27;m going to start to follow my new YNAB [2] account closely, although the use of that is unfortunately complicated by one of my accounts not importing statements automatically (the import option in the web application is not visible, despite the docs mentioning one) and so I may have to manually add all transactions which... I&#x27;m not keen on doing.<p>I found a spreadsheet that does what YNAB does, but without the bells and whistles, and with manual data-entry, I&#x27;ll pay for the modestly priced online offer if it turns out to be simple enough to use.<p>Overall, it&#x27;s not that things are in bad shape, but they could be better and I&#x27;d like to know what to focus on to ensure stability and growth.<p>So yes, interested in DIY accounts, but not able&#x2F;willing to contribute to improving them just yet.<p>--<p>[0] - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;lukespear.co.uk&#x2F;2011&#x2F;07&#x2F;online-accounting-for-freelancers-and-small-businesses" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;lukespear.co.uk&#x2F;2011&#x2F;07&#x2F;online-accounting-for-freela...</a><p>[1] - <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;dp&#x2F;1422119157&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;dp&#x2F;1422119157&#x2F;</a><p>[2] - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;You_Need_a_Budget" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;You_Need_a_Budget</a>
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FunnyLookinHatabout 9 years ago
Another shameless plug: easy web-based accounting that is free to install locally, or pay someone to host it for you. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;beansbooks.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;beansbooks.com&#x2F;</a>
IgorPartolaabout 9 years ago
Shameless plug: if you do prefer something that the rest of your family can use try my app: Family Fortune <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;family-fortune.ridgebit.com" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;family-fortune.ridgebit.com</a>
legulereabout 9 years ago
Sorry, but personal accounting shouldn&#x27;t need a guide. Everyone writing personal accounting software seems to nerd off on accounting stuff making it unusable. You should nerd off on other stuff instead: photographing receipts would be an awesome way to data entry for instance.
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