Question on file organization.

[mpl...@gmail.com]

I am reading right now recommendations on file organization.  (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1P5At-z1sP8rgwYLHso5sEy3u4rMnIUDDgob9Y_BYuWE/edit#heading=h.3rnrqkmm822f)
and have a question

When you have multiple banks should they be split into separate sections?
* Banking 1
* Banking 2
etc

Same for credit cards, i have 4 of them. 2 are actively used. So it should be
* Credit Card 1
* Credit Card 2
* Credit Card 3
* Credit Card 4

Also i have several different sources of income so they also should be split as well?
* Income 1
* Income 2
* Income 3

I know one can organize it any way he wants, i just want to understand best practices.
The sample file generated by beancount is great start, but it has only 1 bank account, 1 credit card and 1 income source - it will be great to see example with multiple items.

[Martin Blais]

Personally I keep everything in one giant file, hierarchically organized with org-mode in Emacs.

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[mpl...@gmail.com]

Martin, yes, i understand on single file. I meant categories.

In sample beancount ledger it has following line for banking category:

* Banking

So i wonder if each Banking account should be separate in it's own category, like this:

* Banking Chase
...
...
...

* Banking BofA
...
...
...

etc

On Tuesday, April 10, 2018 at 9:51:27 PM UTC-4, Martin Blais wrote:

Personally I keep everything in one giant file, hierarchically organized with org-mode in Emacs.

On Tue, Apr 10, 2018 at 9:46 PM, <mpl...@gmail.com> wrote:

I am reading right now recommendations on file organization.  (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1P5At-z1sP8rgwYLHso5sEy3u4rMnIUDDgob9Y_BYuWE/edit#heading=h.3rnrqkmm822f)
and have a question

When you have multiple banks should they be split into separate sections?
* Banking 1
* Banking 2
etc

Same for credit cards, i have 4 of them. 2 are actively used. So it should be
* Credit Card 1
* Credit Card 2
* Credit Card 3
* Credit Card 4

Also i have several different sources of income so they also should be split as well?
* Income 1
* Income 2
* Income 3

I know one can organize it any way he wants, i just want to understand best practices.
The sample file generated by beancount is great start, but it has only 1 bank account, 1 credit card and 1 income source - it will be great to see example with multiple items.

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[Martin Michlmayr]

* mpl...@gmail.com <mpl...@gmail.com> [2018-04-11 11:34]:

> So i wonder if each Banking account should be separate in it's own
> category, like this:

It's up to you how you organize things.

In your case:

> * Banking Chase
> * Banking BofA

You could use something like:

Assets:Checking:Chase
Assets:Checking:BofA

And if you also have savings accounts:

Assets:Savings:Chase
Assets:Savings:BofA

--
Martin Michlmayr
http://www.cyrius.com/

[Martin Michlmayr]

* mpl...@gmail.com <mpl...@gmail.com> [2018-04-10 18:46]:

> Also i have several different sources of income so they also should be
> split as well?
> * Income 1
> * Income 2
> * Income 3

It depends and is a personal choice.

I only split based on the income type, e.g.

Income:Employment:Salary
Income:Employment:Bonus
Income:Gifts

If I had 2 employers, I would not put this into the account name.
I would use tags:

2018-04-11 * Salary from company A #companyA
Assets:Checking:Chase 1000.00 USD
Income:Employment:Salary -1000.00 USD

2018-04-12 * Salary from company B #companyB
Assets:Checking:Chase 1000.00 USD
Income:Employment:Salary -1000.00 USD

However, other people would do it differently. For example, Martin
Blais would probably add the employer name to the name of the income
account.

[Jason Chu]

I use subsections. My file looks something like this:

# Options

# Commodities

# Equity Accounts

# Assets

# Canada Banking

## Institution1

### Account1

### Account2

## Institution2

### Account3

# US Banking

...

# Investing

...

# Liabilities

## Account4

## Account5

# Expenses

# Employment

# Income

# Prices

I should probably move around some sections, but it's nice to have the hierarchy.

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[Martin Michlmayr]

* Jason Chu <xen...@gmail.com> [2018-04-11 19:55]:

> I use subsections. My file looks something like this:

Oh, the question was about how to split the file into sections, not
how to name account names? Sorry if I understood.

Personally, I use one file for each bank account (plus one file for
all other transactions), but it seems I'm in the minority.

[Martin Blais]

On Wed, Apr 11, 2018 at 2:34 PM, <mpl...@gmail.com> wrote:

Martin, yes, i understand on single file. I meant categories.

I see.

What I find works best for me is to put the accounts that I update together (from the automated importing scripts) in the same section.

My high-level file organization is similar to Jason's.

As long as it makes it easy for you to find and add new transactions in the file any organization should work.

Some transactions (e.g., transfers) could belong to two of these sections; I just choose one arbitrarily. 

You could choose a rule if you'd like to have those appear more predictably (e.g., "always put on the side of the deposit").

Overall I would say don't worry about it too much, it's normal and okay if there's a mild presence of some chaos.

Beancount sweeps it up and should be able to list the journals and statements you want neatly.

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[mpl...@gmail.com]

Guys, thank you for all your replies! Now i understand better. Beancount has a great community :)

[Justus Pendleton]

I have a separate file for account opening and closure. I also have separate files for balance statements and the price database.

Everything else goes in a file called transactions.bean.

I don't organise anything in there except by date; new transactions get added to the end regardless of what account they are in.

I expect the UI (fava) or queries/reports to show me any kind of structure.

[Metin Akat]

I have separate files for:

* One giant "archive-main" which holds stuff older than 2-3 years and I periodically move stuff there. I don't want to open huge files with my text editor

* One "current-general" file which holds everything that doesn't go in other files

* "property" where I put stuff like furniture, electronics etc

* "investments"

* One file per car I own(ed) which I don't merge with archive as I consult it later for things. I also can send it to the new owner when I sell him my old car (+ some generated reports for the car like gas economy etc)

* "accounts" (opening, closing and balances) I use this for backwards compatibility with ledger-cli. I have a separate "root" file for ledger with different includes. Though I haven't used it recently and I might just abandon this arrangement

* "prices" same as above

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