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Hledger 1.50

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Re: Hledger 1.50

#21

Post by michaelsbradley »

lvass wrote: post #14
michaelsbradley wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I was asking for a book recommendation. I forgot to add a question mark, or should have phrased it as "I'm looking for...". My comment was generated with my brain and entered through my keyboard. I've been submitting and commenting on HN with this account since 2012.

LLM prompts tend to be generated like that, though. Here, your question prompted on chatgpt. You're welcome. https://chatgpt.com/share/68b9abc5-ae94-8007-b90e-cf210c3182...

It’s just asking a well-formed question, which has been a thing for a while in human history. Lol!

Seriously, the Hledger software looks great, more appealing to me than GNU Cash for various reasons and something I’d be more likely to recommend to others. And I’d like to have a book recommendation/s to go along with it. Learning personal finance through the school of hard knocks can be painful, and even if you learned it that way it may be difficult to communicate what you’ve learned effectively. I imagine someone somewhere sometime has written a nice book that would pair well with Hledger.

Thanks for the link. I have AI accounts and sling prompts all day long some days. In this case I’m looking for recommendations from fellow humans who participate on HN.

Re: Hledger 1.50

#22

Post by simonmic »

michaelsbradley wrote: post #5

Book (digital and/or print, free and/or paid) recommendations to learn proper and effective use of this kind of accounting to manage personal/family and self-employment finances. Best resource would assume competency in undergraduate-level math, but assume no financial competency beyond "you have a checking account, maybe a credit card, and are familiar with receiving income and making payments, and you understand th…

You said book, but I wouldn't rule out the docs on hledger.org (and perhaps plaintextaccounting.org); of which https://hledger.org/hledger-by-example.html is book-ish, and https://hledger.org/accounting.html leads to some good general accounting resources.

Also, again not what you asked for exactly, but the hledger chat room can be a very useful extra resource, to keep things moving along.

And here's one I found useful, though with more of a business flavour: "Accounting Savvy for Business Owners: A Guide to the Bare Essentials" by Philip B. Goodman CPA.

Re: Hledger 1.50

#23

Post by lvass »

seabass-labrax wrote: post #18

I used to use GnuCash, but a small yet constant irritation for me was how the entry's date (that is, the date when I authorized the transaction) wouldn't always match the clearing date of the transaction as reported by my bank in their statements. hledger, however, has support for adding 'posting dates' as specially formatted comments. What's really clever is how it automatically chooses which date to sort the report…

Is it like ledger's effective dates? https://ledger-cli.org/doc/ledger3.html#Effective-Dates

Re: Hledger 1.50

#24

Post by spiffytech »

To offer another option for a graphical FOSS budgeting app, I switched to https://actualbudget.org a few months back and it's great.

It's like YNAB, but with less magic. Plus sophisticated features like a rules engine for automatically filling envelopes and cleaning up spare funds at the end of the month.

I host it on Pikapods for cheap, and connect to my bank accounts with SimpleFINs.

I've tried a lot of budget apps, and this is the happiest I've been with one in a long time.

Re: Hledger 1.50

#25

Post by simonmic »

faustlast wrote: post #3

I’ve been a long-time user of (h)ledger. I use a custom script to generate a cost basis when computing capital gains for selling transactions. Are there any recent updates or tools that improve cost-basis tracking or capital gains handling in hledger?

https://plaintextaccounting.org/Investing-and-trading summarises the current options, and https://joyful.com/hledger+lot+tracking has design notes, some of them recent.

Re: Hledger 1.50

#26

Post by lvass »

michaelsbradley wrote: post #21
lvass wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LLM prompts tend to be generated like that, though. Here, your question prompted on chatgpt. You're welcome. https://chatgpt.com/share/68b9abc5-ae94-8007-b90e-cf210c3182...

It’s just asking a well-formed question, which has been a thing for a while in human history. Lol! Seriously, the Hledger software looks great, more appealing to me than GNU Cash for various reasons and something I’d be more likely to recommend to others. And I’d like to have a book recommendation/s to go along with it. Learning personal finance through the school of hard knocks can be painful, and even if you learne…

>I have AI accounts and sling prompts all day long some days

This wasn't hard to guess. Beware of your interactions with LLMs creeping in when talking to humans. Best of luck! And I suggest you take heed of Simon's advice.

Re: Hledger 1.50

#27

Post by brisketbbq »

spiffytech wrote: post #24

To offer another option for a graphical FOSS budgeting app, I switched to https://actualbudget.org a few months back and it's great. It's like YNAB, but with less magic. Plus sophisticated features like a rules engine for automatically filling envelopes and cleaning up spare funds at the end of the month. I host it on Pikapods for cheap, and connect to my bank accounts with SimpleFINs. I've tried a lot of budget apps…

hledger is not just a budgeting app, but an accounting app to track your finances, debits/credits, investments, etc.

Re: Hledger 1.50

#28

Post by [deleted] »

lvass wrote: post #26
michaelsbradley wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s just asking a well-formed question, which has been a thing for a while in human history. Lol! Seriously, the Hledger software looks great, more appealing to me than GNU Cash for various reasons and something I’d be more likely to recommend to others. And I’d like to have a book recommendation/s to go along with it. Learning personal finance through the school of hard knocks can be painful, and even if you learne…

>I have AI accounts and sling prompts all day long some days This wasn't hard to guess. Beware of your interactions with LLMs creeping in when talking to humans. Best of luck! And I suggest you take heed of Simon's advice.

[deleted]

Re: Hledger 1.50

#29

Post by michaelsbradley »

lvass wrote: post #26
michaelsbradley wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s just asking a well-formed question, which has been a thing for a while in human history. Lol! Seriously, the Hledger software looks great, more appealing to me than GNU Cash for various reasons and something I’d be more likely to recommend to others. And I’d like to have a book recommendation/s to go along with it. Learning personal finance through the school of hard knocks can be painful, and even if you learne…

>I have AI accounts and sling prompts all day long some days This wasn't hard to guess. Beware of your interactions with LLMs creeping in when talking to humans. Best of luck! And I suggest you take heed of Simon's advice.

Thank you, that’s very special advice, and I will treasure it always.

Re: Hledger 1.50

#30

Post by seabass-labrax »

lvass wrote: post #23
seabass-labrax wrote: post #18

I used to use GnuCash, but a small yet constant irritation for me was how the entry's date (that is, the date when I authorized the transaction) wouldn't always match the clearing date of the transaction as reported by my bank in their statements. hledger, however, has support for adding 'posting dates' as specially formatted comments. What's really clever is how it automatically chooses which date to sort the report…

Is it like ledger's effective dates? https://ledger-cli.org/doc/ledger3.html#Effective-Dates

Yes, it's very similar! However, hledger's posting dates are a little more flexible, as you can have anything from no additional dates to one date per individual posting (debit or credit) in the transaction. This might perhaps be useful if you have complex split transactions where a balance is settled by multiple payments.

Just recently I bought an item on sale for 15 Euros with a card in Sterling (my bank did the currency conversion). Pretty much immediately after paying, though, I exchanged it for a different item for 25 Euros, making up the difference in cash. The cash is obviously 'cleared' instantly but the card payment could clear later. That said, in this case it happened to clear the same day anyway so no special posting date was required.

  2025-08-10 Redacted
  Expenses: Redacted  13.03 GBP
  Expenses: Redacted     10 EUR
  Assets: Bank       -13.03 GBP
  Assets: Cash          -10 EUR
I suppose the main question is at what point these splits become complex enough to create a dedicated liabilities account specifically to track the payment of that one expense, à la accounts payable, which you can of course do with any plain text ledger.
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