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Plain Text Accounting, a guide to Ledger and friends

plaintextaccounting.org

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Re: Plain Text Accounting, a guide to Ledger and friends

#51

Post by djhworld »

account-5 wrote: post #35

As someone who "manages" there accounts in spreadsheets what would be the advantages? I'm already downloading CSVs from my accounts which I clean and import into a spreadsheet. Also can someone link to what the actual text file looks like? The format. I can't find a decent example, I just want to see this human readable format, thanks.

I think the biggest advantages are its just a text file, so you can use version control.

Additionally spreadsheets group logic and data - whilst this is very flexible csn get hairy if you are not disciplined.

Beancount files are just text, and the logic part comes from the beancount engine so there is a clean separation.

Re: Plain Text Accounting, a guide to Ledger and friends

#52

Post by account-5 »

djhworld wrote: post #51
account-5 wrote: post #35

As someone who "manages" there accounts in spreadsheets what would be the advantages? I'm already downloading CSVs from my accounts which I clean and import into a spreadsheet. Also can someone link to what the actual text file looks like? The format. I can't find a decent example, I just want to see this human readable format, thanks.

I think the biggest advantages are its just a text file, so you can use version control. Additionally spreadsheets group logic and data - whilst this is very flexible csn get hairy if you are not disciplined. Beancount files are just text, and the logic part comes from the beancount engine so there is a clean separation.

I fully appreciate text. I use plain text with minimal formatting for as much as I can. I tend to save my yearly spreadsheets as CSV for storage as after the year they are not live documents.

My system is obviously not fully tracking everything / double entry. It's just a log transactions on an account. I have a sheet for each account.

Re: Plain Text Accounting, a guide to Ledger and friends

#53

Post by account-5 »

simonmic wrote: post #38
account-5 wrote: post #35

As someone who "manages" there accounts in spreadsheets what would be the advantages? I'm already downloading CSVs from my accounts which I clean and import into a spreadsheet. Also can someone link to what the actual text file looks like? The format. I can't find a decent example, I just want to see this human readable format, thanks.

Spreadsheets have lots of strengths. I believe one of the difficulties is (a) managing an increasingly large number of transactions over time, with (b) an uncertain number of postings to (c) arbitrary accounts in a hierarchy. Though I haven't tried myself, I suspect modelling a full double-entry-bookkeeping General Journal in a spreadsheet just gets cumbersome. Secondly, while certain kinds of calculations and querie…

I suppose the biggest barrier for me would be learning double entry bookkeeping as I'm not doing that just now. I wouldn't know where to start. Currently the above makes no sense to me.

Re: Plain Text Accounting, a guide to Ledger and friends

#55

Post by globular-toast »

My ledger will be 10 years old this year. I don't use much cash, so data entry is handled by reading CSVs from my bank accounts and a machine learning thing I put together to "guess" what account the transaction is in (plus a fast auto-complete thing to correct the guess if it's wrong). I like that it's flexible enough to track all my assets if I choose to.

Re: Plain Text Accounting, a guide to Ledger and friends

#56

Post by jimnotgym »

>Most (not all) plain text accounting implementations use signed amounts instead of debits and credits. This makes them "double entry light" perhaps, but it has been a rather successful simplification, intuitive to most newcomers.

They shouldn't do themselves down. I am an accountant and I have used several large systems that do exactly this in the database. It is also by far the preferred way to export a trial balance or gl account from any system to excel. It is the norm in the industry and in no way an innovation of plain text accounting.

Re: Plain Text Accounting, a guide to Ledger and friends

#57

Post by hiq »

wsc981 wrote: post #5

Just looking through the docs of one of these apps called Ledger [0], it seems to me it’s a lot of work to keep everything up to date. I guess one could write tools to ease importing data from banks, brokers and the like. Currently I don’t do the full accounting stuff. I just keep track of my net worth using an Apple provided Numbers sheet. It’s easy and quick, just occasionally logging into all my accounts and then…

It looks like you don't feel like doing full accounting, in that case I'd say it's fine to stick to whatever you're doing. Accounting not done properly (e.g. with missing or incorrect transactions) is not (much) better than no accounting at all.

In my case, I grew frustrated with my approximations. Computing the difference between my balances at different points in time hides the details that would make it actionable, or give any insight about past choices. So in practice I would go through my past transactions, try to get an intuition of what happened. At this point, switching to proper accounting is just about scratching an itch and making this whole process more efficient.

Re: Plain Text Accounting, a guide to Ledger and friends

#58

Post by hiq »

account-5 wrote: post #53
simonmic wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spreadsheets have lots of strengths. I believe one of the difficulties is (a) managing an increasingly large number of transactions over time, with (b) an uncertain number of postings to (c) arbitrary accounts in a hierarchy. Though I haven't tried myself, I suspect modelling a full double-entry-bookkeeping General Journal in a spreadsheet just gets cumbersome. Secondly, while certain kinds of calculations and querie…

I suppose the biggest barrier for me would be learning double entry bookkeeping as I'm not doing that just now. I wouldn't know where to start. Currently the above makes no sense to me.

I'm not that familiar with the theory, in my case I just got started and now I'm used to it. Just to take the last example:

    2021-03-20 Sprouts
        expenses:food:groceries  $100
        assets:cash               $40
        assets:checking
This means you took 140 from your checking account, withdrew 40 that you now have in cash, and spent 100 in groceries. Does that still make no sense?

Re: Plain Text Accounting, a guide to Ledger and friends

#59

Post by shubhamkrm »

account-5 wrote: post #53
simonmic wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spreadsheets have lots of strengths. I believe one of the difficulties is (a) managing an increasingly large number of transactions over time, with (b) an uncertain number of postings to (c) arbitrary accounts in a hierarchy. Though I haven't tried myself, I suspect modelling a full double-entry-bookkeeping General Journal in a spreadsheet just gets cumbersome. Secondly, while certain kinds of calculations and querie…

I suppose the biggest barrier for me would be learning double entry bookkeeping as I'm not doing that just now. I wouldn't know where to start. Currently the above makes no sense to me.

I found the GNUCash manual to be an excellent introduction to double entry accounting for people with no accounting background. Even my ledger accounts are setup in the same way.

Re: Plain Text Accounting, a guide to Ledger and friends

#60

Post by hiq »

hardtoreason wrote: post #8

I've used the ledger-likes extensively, and they have two major problems: (1) One of the hard problems in personal finance is data capture and input validation. Programs like QuickBooks and Xero don't just hide the GL because they're being mean, they're doing it because even experienced bookkeepers make mistakes on the general ledger all the time. "Since it's a text file it's easy to read" solves exactly the wrong pr…

1. PTA in itself does not provide you all the tools to validate these, but it's low-level enough that you can implement any validation you want on top easily, if you're proficient with CLI tools. I don't think I would use it at the enterprise level simply because they're less commonly used, but for personal finances I find it sensible enough.

Which mistake do you think is more common with PTA than with other programs?

2. What exactly would not be sustainable with PTA which would be with other programs?

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