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Beancount: Double-entry accounting from text files

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Re: Beancount: Double-entry accounting from text files

#71

Post by darcys22 »

CGamesPlay wrote: post #51
darcys22 wrote: post #47

Shameless self plug: ive been building a similar open source command line accounting system https://github.com/darcys22/godbledger Its heavily inspired by both ledger and beancount but my biggest issue with them is that text files arnt great for double entry bookkeeping. Having a relational database is the better option which is what GoDBLedger has. After a certain point a business cant keep track of its transactions…

You’re spot-on about this. Even for my personal finance, I have to apply classification rules at import time and I can’t bulk edit transactions to reclassify them after the fact. As a result I am looking for a replacement, although a requirement for me is some sort of fava equivalent.

Thats pretty much what I've been working on.

https://youtu.be/19moSl4YFeI

Re: Beancount: Double-entry accounting from text files

#72

Post by OJFord »

haberman wrote: post #61
balves wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://github.com/redstreet/beancount_reds_importers/tree/m... https://github.com/jbms/beancount-import https://beancount.github.io/docs/importing_external_data.htm... Support for OFX is generally great, CSV is also great. There are some proof of concept things floating around too for PDF.

Do you find that all of your financial institutions offer reliable OFX/CSV feeds? I'm asking because I've generally come to the conclusion that PDF is the only universal data format that every institution will offer.

Not GP, but in my experience they offer CSV with the most helpful columns for programmatic use omitted; present only in the PDF.

Of course I've submitted requests pointing it out/requesting it, but to be honest I can only assume it's deliberate.

Re: Beancount: Double-entry accounting from text files

#73

Post by darcys22 »

hiq wrote: post #57
CGamesPlay wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re spot-on about this. Even for my personal finance, I have to apply classification rules at import time and I can’t bulk edit transactions to reclassify them after the fact. As a result I am looking for a replacement, although a requirement for me is some sort of fava equivalent.

> I can’t bulk edit transactions to reclassify them after the fact. If you store your transactions in a plaintext format, why don't you use CLI tools? I just renamed a bunch of accounts using sed for instance, in a hledger journal.

UPDATE transactions SET account = "Income" WHERE account = "Expense";

Re: Beancount: Double-entry accounting from text files

#74

Post by darcys22 »

BeetleB wrote: post #52
darcys22 wrote: post #47

Shameless self plug: ive been building a similar open source command line accounting system https://github.com/darcys22/godbledger Its heavily inspired by both ledger and beancount but my biggest issue with them is that text files arnt great for double entry bookkeeping. Having a relational database is the better option which is what GoDBLedger has. After a certain point a business cant keep track of its transactions…

My ledger file has over $20K entries. Although I'm cheating: I actually input transactions into another SW and simply convert its format to Ledger.

Interesting! Whats the other software?

I actually love ledger, and GoDBLedger can read in ledger files for this reason. I hate to throw negative feedback at other open source systems because the ultimate goal is to automate the financial process and we are really all working together to achieve that.

Re: Beancount: Double-entry accounting from text files

#75

Post by [deleted] »

barrucadu wrote: post #64
BeetleB wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Beancounts budgeting system is fairly poor. It can't handle envelope budgeting, which is the only useful budgeting system I've found so far.

For envelope budgeting, I just make subaccounts of my bank accounts for specific purposes.

[deleted]

Re: Beancount: Double-entry accounting from text files

#76

Post by mongol »

darcys22 wrote: post #47

Shameless self plug: ive been building a similar open source command line accounting system https://github.com/darcys22/godbledger Its heavily inspired by both ledger and beancount but my biggest issue with them is that text files arnt great for double entry bookkeeping. Having a relational database is the better option which is what GoDBLedger has. After a certain point a business cant keep track of its transactions…

I have also written a ledger using sqlite and go. It is not open source (yet) because somewhere in the git history may be traces of personal details. But at some point I think I will open it.

The way it works now is that I generate a directory structure from my bank account transactions. In each directory I put a text file thay describes my accounting transactions. The program parses this and inserts it into the database. From there it can generate reports.

Re: Beancount: Double-entry accounting from text files

#77

Post by navaati »

BeetleB wrote: post #31
howeyc wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just create a "Budget" account and a report that does "Budget" vs "Expenses"

Beancounts budgeting system is fairly poor. It can't handle envelope budgeting, which is the only useful budgeting system I've found so far.

It's not great, but what I do is create a fake expense far into the future...

Re: Beancount: Double-entry accounting from text files

#78

Post by addcninblue »

fangpenlin wrote: post #66
raymondh wrote: post #58

Accountant here: Recommend using Beancount with version control on your data so that you can take snapshots at various points in time. The notion behind "accountants don't user erasers" is that like a blockchain, you're creating a trail of evidence. If all of the data is mutable all of the time, its evidentiary value is low (for example, the IRS gives more weight to "contemporary" evidence than to records constructed…

I really enjoy using Beancount + Git for managing the accounting book for my own startup company, but I found it a bit tedious to add entries periodically. I wonder why nobody build a service make it like GitHub but for Beancount and automate lots of stuff. I then decided to make a service for it a while back. Shameless self-promoting here, yesterday I just launched the service in very early stage of open beta: https…

I've considered building something like this as well! I think something cool would be to integrate "predictions" or modeling with this. For example, for people with consistent salaries, this can be used to model financial goals, etc. Thoughts are welcome!

Re: Beancount: Double-entry accounting from text files

#79

Post by fangpenlin »

addcninblue wrote: post #78
fangpenlin wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really enjoy using Beancount + Git for managing the accounting book for my own startup company, but I found it a bit tedious to add entries periodically. I wonder why nobody build a service make it like GitHub but for Beancount and automate lots of stuff. I then decided to make a service for it a while back. Shameless self-promoting here, yesterday I just launched the service in very early stage of open beta: https…

I've considered building something like this as well! I think something cool would be to integrate "predictions" or modeling with this. For example, for people with consistent salaries, this can be used to model financial goals, etc. Thoughts are welcome!

Yeah, so for BeanHub, when you push a commit, the system will capture the accounting book into SQL database. Taking from there, I can imagine there are many data prediction model can be applied to the ingested data. I am also thinking to support "CI job" feature (run a task when you push a new commit), not for building software but for your accounting book. So even if it's not supported by the system officially, it's still possible to build your prediction model.

Re: Beancount: Double-entry accounting from text files

#80

Post by pests »

stirfish wrote: post #49
chana_masala wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...and? How is that directly relevant?

We gather our own data without any conflicts. Sorry, I thought that was apparent.

It just seems like an out-of-context statement.

The entire thread was about accounting, then a sub-thread on family accounting, then you pop in to just say 'I do my accounting solo, as does my wife" which may be on-topic, but just not relevant.

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