12,126 results (0.015 seconds)
[0] http://www.ledger-cli.org/3.0/doc/ledger3.html#Time-Keeping
* I can keep arbitrary asset, liability, and expense categories in a tree-like structure.
* I can split up transactions between different accounts. This is useful because I can split a dinner bill between my credit card and cash. It is also useful because I can split items from a large Amazon order into their respective categories.
* The ledger file is a very simple text file, so I can keep it in version control.
* I haven't taken advantage of the report features yet, but they look very flexible. You can add up any accounts you want based on regular expressions.
* You can have "virtual" accounts that can be used for budgets. For example, you can set aside arbitrary chunks of your savings account for different purposes and keep track of them separately, even though they all actually reside in your savings account at your bank.
I will take a look a hinance to see how it could be useful for me!
It also has a web UI, so you can use that to add transactions if you don't like using a text editor.
Another cool real-world Haskell app is Silk.[1] Looking at the site, there's no mention of Haskell and no obvious way to tell that that is the implementation language. And that's the beauty of it! :-)
Did I get everything correct? Do you think recommending hledger as a "real world Haskell program" is a good strategy?
I'm an on-again, off-again contributor to GnuCash but I really like ledger too, and especially hledger because just knowing it's Haskell puts my mind at ease about several things.
What you described about source control is really interesting because there are a lot of parallels between Git's commits and double-entry accounting's journal entries. There are some really close correspondences--like Git's revert and a reverting journal entry (i.e. the opposite movements of money to the transaction being reverted). Of course in accounting the master branch really is the one 'true' view of the world but it's interesting to think in terms of the Git analogy and imagine divergent branches which could be e.g. explorations of different scenarios for your business.
Afaik no one has ever implemented such a system....
Now that I'm using ledger I would never, ever go back to GnuCash. It's not that GnuCash is bad -- it isn't. But when I started doing actual accounting (especially with foreign currencies), I could never get anything to balance in ledger. After working at it I finally understood why -- I was doing it all wrong! Being a complete neophyte I had no idea what the difference was between LIFO, FIFO and average cost or how I could represent it in my accounting. GnuCash would say "You made this much capital gains" and I just accepted it. With ledger I would look at the reports and go, "Hey... what the heck... why isn't that number zero???".
There are some other big, big wins with ledger. The first is that you are working with a text file. As a programmer, this is massive. Why do I need a stupid GUI? A nice descriptive DSL is waaaaay more convenient. Ledger itself is just a reporting tool that takes the data that you enter into the file and answers questions that you give it (which forces you to think of appropriate questions, which in turn showed me what I didn't understand...) I actually use vim (there is a vim mode as well), but emacs org mode is unbelievably fantastic (I'm a converted emacs user) and probably worth learning emacs for. The mixture of ledger and org mode is probably the best possible interface for an accounting program.
The other really big win is that you can put your accounting in source control. I can not express to you the amount of ass-saving this has brought me. Every time I make a change into the ledger I commit the change to git. Real accountants (which I hire to take my amateur stuff and do real accounting with) aren't supposed to change things in their ledger. It's kind of a law or something ;-) They can only add things (including notations). I do the same thing with ledger and git. I can find out what the ledger said at any given date. And I have incredibly readable diffs.
This last point is so incredibly important that I could not ever possibly think of using GnuCash again. This is not to say that ledger isn't without its faults. There are also some competing programs that were inspired by ledger which are worth checking out (bean-counter is one and there is a haskel implementation whose name I forget -- hledger???). There are also some things you can not do in ledger. There is no integrated payroll calculator, or invoice tracker, or anything like that. However, since the DSL is pretty easy to generate, it's quite easy to write scripts to do pretty much everything you might want to do. For my company (me and my wife), it is perfect. I don't think I would want to power a large corporation on it. I believe the Software Freedom Conservency still does their accounting on ledger, though.
Hope that helps :-)
The basic file format is the same, but there are differences - with a little care you can keep a file that works with both. Abandon and beancount's file formats are more different.
I'm happy to answer questions here or on #hledger. I've been using and growing hledger steadily since 2007; I just released 0.24 and we are thinking about a 1.0 one of these months.
[1] http://ledger-cli.org/
[2] https://github.com/howeyc/ledger
I'm so sick of Intuit, and I got burned badly when I bought into their 3-year obsolescence cycle. In case you're considering Quicken or Quickbooks, DO NOT BUY IN. They have designed multiple kill-switches into their software to disable key features after a time delay. Specifically, you will not be able to download transactions, import them from a file, or export them - after 3 years.
I got ledger, and within a day I had written the code to grab my transactions and import them. It's a little strange, but it won't ever become obsolete due to the capricious and profiteering whims of some company.
Ledger is great. It's for hackers.
The issuer^H^H^H^H^H^H ledger algorithm of bitcoin collects taxes^H^H^H^H^H transaction fees in that same currency.
CSV:
You download CSV data from your bank (manually, probably). Then you convert it to ledger journal format using one of a number of tools: CSV2Ledger, reckon, Ledger, hledger (both have CSV support built in by now), or something you write yourself. This data is "single-entry" and doesn't know about your chart of accounts, so you augment and translate it into more useful general journal entries. There are several approaches being explored:
- rule-based - you set up rules, matching patterns in the description, which assign accounts and balancing postings. Eg: CSV2Ledger, hledger (currently; eg http://hledger.org/manual#csv-files).
- history-based - the CSV description is matched against transactions already in the journal, and the most similar one is used as a template to flesh out the new transaction. Eg: Ledger (http://ledger-cli.org/3.0/doc/ledger3.html#The-_003csamp_003...).
- artificial intelligence - I seem to remember reckon does something else more clever ?
OFX:
- manual download - as above, but you download an OFX file. OFX records provide more structure than CSV but still need to be fleshed out. ledger-autosync does this, using history matching. It also skips transactions you've already saved to the journal, avoiding duplicates.
- automatic download - ledger-autosync can also handle the download, if your bank provides OFX Direct Connect. This is the most automated option at the moment, recommended. I pull transactions daily from Wells Fargo this way (though I'm going to quit one of these days since they charge too much for it).
GNUCash:
- In the distant past, ledger could read GNUCash files directly, so you could enter with GNUCash and report with ledger. This feature is long gone, but you might be able to get it working with an old Ledger version, and `print` into a journal file you can then use with modern *ledger.
Converting from other finance apps, eg mobile ones:
- As above, you might find adhoc ways to import from apps with nicer data entry. Eg use the iXpensit Pro app on iphone, export the CSV, convert that, add crazy automation duct tape until it's "smooth".
hledger web:
- hledger-web has an add form. It's not very good, but it's in your browser, and if you're really keen you could set it up to be accessible from your smartphone.
hledger add:
- hledger's built-in add command does assisted (history-based, tab completion etc.) interactive data entry on the console. Some folks may find that preferable to editing a text file.
Editor modes:
- for people used to text editors: ledger-mode provides some data entry conveniences for Emacs users, and there's vim-ledger, a ledger bundle for TextMate, etc.
HOWEVER...
If like me you're working on building discipline and insight into your finances, you may find nothing beats manual data entry for a while. You don't get the same awareness when everything is automated.
That said, hledger does have features Ledger doesn't (aside from being a haskell project, which I see as a significant long-term feature). Some of hledger's experiments have found their way back into Ledger, also.
Also by design, hledger is very compatible with a subset of Ledger, so that you can keep journal files that work with both.
Before that tried Gnucash, but that was just hassle to use, while pure ledger was not user friendly enough for me.
It uses ledger compatible transaction files which can you edit and inspect manually if needed, offers a bunch of additional functionality, and is a joy to use, bot the web and command line version.
I'm an experienced generalist developer/sysadmin/consultant/coach looking for some additional work and new challenges. I'm currently most skilled in haskell, html/css, javascript, php, python, zope, gnu/linux, code doctoring, debugging and mentoring. My hourly rate is $50 to $150, fixed bid or retainer are also possible. I lead http://hledger.org, http://zwiki.org, and others. Let's chat!
Simon Michael, http://joyful.com/services, simon@joyful.com.
I've been meaning to switch to ledger/hledger, which is command line based, but haven't switched yet.
I use ledger for all of my personal finances and it works great. However, maintaing the config files for csv2ledger is a pain so I will check this out.
What is Shake?
