org-mode combined with beancount.el

[Jonathan Goldman]

I got emacs to work with the beancount.el file. It nicely color-codes everything. However, if I activate org mode the colors disappear. I suspect this is incorrect behavior and there must be something I'm doing wrong. Any suggestions of what might not be working?

(Apologies if this is a really basic question...I'm totally new to beancount and while I have used emacs, I have never used org mode). 

Also, I was using Mint for a few years, then Quicken for the last 3 years and I'm trying to migrate entirely to beancount and its a lot to migrate and for someone who is not a software engineer. I can write some python but it seems to be a daunting task to complete the migration and figure out all the CSV import scripts. I'll keep chipping away, but wondering if there are meetups/1:1 help or other mechanisms one might suggest to get going? 

One approach is to do everything manually for now and focus only on big items (e.g. don't worry about automating the import of data from credit card transactions). Then, later, as I get more import scripts going add all detailed data and historical data. That is you could enter current bank balance, current stock holdings, and then just go from there manually so there is useful data now. Then I can add this past year stock buy/sells and dividend information as that will help me with tax info. 

 

[tinot...@gmail.com]

Hi,

I cannot help you on emacs, I'm using VisualCode in all my machines with the beancount plugin... If you didn't try, I recommend you!

For the years of transactions:

I had the same problem as you, I loved beancount from the beginning but with thousands of transactions in several banks, with different reports, etc... was just... A nightmare.

What I did? Basically starting from today! I took all my assets and started with:

2019-01-01 * "Open balance"
   Equity:Balance-Init

   Assets:Bank:AABB 12345.00 USD

Later, each week-end I had some hours, I was using a combination of spreadsheets and CSV exported from each account/broker/etc to get the transactions in beancount mode, and I was adding to the file... modifying the initial Equity:Balance-Init entry ;-)

The main problem with lot of people I know that they where starting with beancount (that apply to other systems) is that they want to have **everything** translated with a "magic" command: "get beancount from xxx, yyy, zzz" and that doesn't exist, at least, I don't know how to do it.

The advice: Start with last past week translations, and go back slowly as soon as you have some time to spend.

For reference, I have 8000 lines (not transactions, lines of code) written in my ledgers from 2017 until now and took me... around 40, 50 hours of work.

Regards

[Martin Blais]

+1
Start using it on a subset of accounts, figure out if you like it.
If you do, worry about converting all the past later.

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[Stefan Monnier]

> I got Emacs to work with the beancount.el file. It nicely color-codes

> everything. However, if I activate org mode the colors disappear. I suspect
> this is incorrect behavior and there must be something I'm doing wrong.

No, it's expected behavior.

> Any suggestions of what might not be working?

Yes: Org-mode. The new beancount-mode is now a major mode rather than
a minor mode, so you can't combine it with another major mode (like
Org-mode). You can activate `outline-minor-mode` which will provide
similar support for hiding/showing the structure based on your
`** Foo` headings, but it's only a subset of what Org-mode provides
of course.

If there's some other functionality of Org-mode which you miss, let us
know,


Stefan

[Jonathan Goldman]

Thanks for explaining that. I didn’t realize it’s not a minor mode anymore.

[Jonathan Goldman]

Thanks everyone for the quick replies and explaining the org-mode issue.

I’ll give it a try next few weeks. And thank you to Martin and all the contributors for creating an amazing tool and maintaining it. Very excited about it and eager to make progress.