Any of you guys use beancount to work with your CPA/tax professional?

[mpl...@gmail.com]

Guys hi,

I am using beancount for 7 months and i love it! I have all needed data in front of me and feel in control, but now i use it only as internal tool. Basically it's only for me. I have all my account together in 1 big file (2 companies, personal, etc) and it words good for my needs.

But data from my beancount is not utilized by my accounting, basically they enter/categorize all transactions themselves and than prepare tax return.

I was thinking why pay for work that i've already done and why not provide them with ready sheets. What discourages me a little is any time i hear that someone shares his "ledger" with CPA they are taking about quickbooks, xero, etc. But never plain text accounting tools.

Do any of you guys use beancount to work with your CPA/tax professional? If yes, any tips you can provide? Or do you use it more a internal tool too?

[Martin Blais]

So far what I've done is used bean-bake and provide a static browsable dump filtered to the year under consideration.

My accountant was pretty tech savvy and he was able to figure it out, including flipping the signs for income and liabilities.

Simpler than that would be to use the income statement to identify all the bits and pieces, and when asked for specific questions, to produce listings of transactions they require.

(To be fair, most of the work of an accountant is to deal with all the other stuff beyond bookkeeping, i.e. all the stuff you cannot automate. I think most accountant hire students or temp to do all the bookkeeping stuff than do it themselves.)

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[mpl...@gmail.com]

"Simpler than that would be to use the income statement to identify all the bits and pieces, and when asked for specific questions, to produce listings of transactions they require."

yes, that's what i am planning to do. I've asked what exactly CPA needs and he said profit/loss sheet, trial balance, balance sheet - i can generate and send him those.

As an alternative idea (i would like for him to be able to check/play with report if needed) i can make the tunnel so he can access/see what i see in FAVA on my "localhost".

"I think most accountant hire students or temp to do all the bookkeeping"

exactly, that's what they do.

[Martin Blais]

On Wed, Nov 14, 2018 at 4:58 PM <mpl...@gmail.com> wrote:

"Simpler than that would be to use the income statement to identify all the bits and pieces, and when asked for specific questions, to produce listings of transactions they require."

yes, that's what i am planning to do. I've asked what exactly CPA needs and he said profit/loss sheet, trial balance, balance sheet - i can generate and send him those.

About profit/loss, i.e., a list of trades and their cost basis, selling prices and commissions, isn't there by default.

I *have* solved this problem in the past, but I can't find it now.

I think there's part of the solution in this plugin:

https://bitbucket.org/blais/beancount/src/c552897a1c5dd204895fdf0b46bd02ac12304a2b/beancount/plugins/book_conversions.py#lines-351

But this plugin isn't really what's needed, it's for something else (converting prices to costs, you don't want to do that).

So looking into my messy gigantic TODO file, it looks like I've never completed this:

https://bitbucket.org/blais/beancount/src/c552897a1c5dd204895fdf0b46bd02ac12304a2b/TODO#lines-1721

It's annoying, because that's something I'd really like to have by default and I've coded it elsewhere many times (e.g., in my options trading code, in my wash sales reporting code).

I think what needs to happen is that the booking process itself (not a plugin) ought to insert metadata on reductions and then a simple sweep through the postings could be used to group by trade and issue a table of that, that can be filtered via SQL, something like that.

I have some forced time off coming up, I might do that. I really want this.

 

As an alternative idea (i would like for him to be able to check/play with report if needed) i can make the tunnel so he can access/see what i see in FAVA on my "localhost".

That'll be a huge PIA if you're behind a router.

Your CPA probably won't have much patience beyond a few errors.

Easiest is to bake to static files and put them on a server you own somewhere, behind a password, or just zip it and hand over a USB key.

Or just answer their questions by you pulling out all the info manually (unless you're trying to impress them).

"I think most accountant hire students or temp to do all the bookkeeping"

exactly, that's what they do.

On Tuesday, November 13, 2018 at 9:50:30 PM UTC-5, Martin Blais wrote:

So far what I've done is used bean-bake and provide a static browsable dump filtered to the year under consideration.

My accountant was pretty tech savvy and he was able to figure it out, including flipping the signs for income and liabilities.

Simpler than that would be to use the income statement to identify all the bits and pieces, and when asked for specific questions, to produce listings of transactions they require.

(To be fair, most of the work of an accountant is to deal with all the other stuff beyond bookkeeping, i.e. all the stuff you cannot automate. I think most accountant hire students or temp to do all the bookkeeping stuff than do it themselves.)

On Tue, Nov 13, 2018 at 7:34 PM <mpl...@gmail.com> wrote:

Guys hi,

I am using beancount for 7 months and i love it! I have all needed data in front of me and feel in control, but now i use it only as internal tool. Basically it's only for me. I have all my account together in 1 big file (2 companies, personal, etc) and it words good for my needs.

But data from my beancount is not utilized by my accounting, basically they enter/categorize all transactions themselves and than prepare tax return.

I was thinking why pay for work that i've already done and why not provide them with ready sheets. What discourages me a little is any time i hear that someone shares his "ledger" with CPA they are taking about quickbooks, xero, etc. But never plain text accounting tools.

Do any of you guys use beancount to work with your CPA/tax professional? If yes, any tips you can provide? Or do you use it more a internal tool too?

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[mpl...@gmail.com]

"About profit/loss, i.e., a list of trades and their cost basis, selling prices and commissions, isn't there by default."

- i've meant difference between profit and expenses, do not to have trades/stocks.

"Easiest is to bake to static files"

- i see now, will look into bean-bake, creating static easy access files sounds like ideal option.

"Or just answer their questions by you pulling out all the info manually (unless you're trying to impress them)."

- for sure not interested in impressive them, just want to give them all data they might need in easily accessible format.