How to split expenses on a regular basis

[freak...@gmail.com]

Hi,

I'm new to beancount and currently assessing whether I can switch from ledger-cli in order to make use of the web interface fava.

I'm interested in ways on how to split expenses in beancount: I share a household with my partner and for many expenses I'd like to register only half the debit as a personal expense whereas the other half should be registered as an asset (something that my partner owes me).

I currently use ledger-cli and make heavy of the following automatic transaction to split transactions with my partner:

= tag("With") =~ "Susa"
    $account                                    -0.5
    Assets:Receivable:Susa                       0.5

Shared expenses are then recorded like this:

2019/05/22 * Bakery
    Expenses:Food                          10.00 EUR ; With: Susa
    Assets:Cash

This results in a credit of 5.00 EUR to Expenses:Food and Assets:Receivable:Susa each. I find this quite comfortable and want to know if there is something similar in beancount. (I've already learned that there are no automatic transactions in beancount)

I skimmed the documentation of beancount for sharing expenses and what I found seems to involve "special" accounts (e.g. Expenses:Food:Fred & Expenses:Food:Susa) in order to split transactions using a plugin ("beancount.plugins.split_expenses") -- is this correct?

Does the mentioned plugin work in way like the automatic transaction in ledger-cli does, i.e. does running beancount automatically split the written amount in the journal file or does the workflow involve running a command that results in hard-coded input text that replaces the original input data?

More generally: How do beancount users normally record regular shared expenses?

Thanks and regards,

Fred

[Michael Budde]

Hi Fred

I use a solution similar to yours for sharing expenses with my partner in ledger-cli. For beancount I have made a (very simple) plugin that does pretty much the same. I have attached the plugin which you might find useful. It is used like this:

plugin "bc_plugins.split_expenses" "Assets:Receivable"

2019/05/22 * Bakery
    Expenses:Food                          10.00 EUR
        split: "Susa"
    Assets:Cash

The plugin transforms the transaction into the following:

2019/05/22 * Bakery
    Expenses:Food                           5.00 EUR
    Assets:Receivable:Susa                  5.00 EUR
    Assets:Cash

Regards,

Michael

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[Zhuoyun Wei]

I do this for shared expenses:


2019-01-01 * "Rent"
Liabilities:Bank:CreditCards -8000.00 CNY
Expenses:Household:Rent 8000.00 / 2 CNY
Equity:ARAP:JohnDoe 8000.00 / 2 CNY


With some importer and editor tricks, you can somehow automate this.


--
Zhuoyun Wei

On Wed, May 22, 2019, at 11:43, freak...@gmail.com wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> I'm new to beancount and currently assessing whether I can switch from
> ledger-cli in order to make use of the web interface fava.
>
> I'm interested in ways on how to split expenses in beancount: I share a
> household with my partner and for many expenses I'd like to register
> only half the debit as a personal expense whereas the other half should
> be registered as an asset (something that my partner owes me).
>
> I currently use ledger-cli and make heavy of the following automatic
> transaction to split transactions with my partner:
> `
> = tag("With") =~ "Susa"
> $account -0.5
> Assets:Receivable:Susa 0.5
> `
>
> Shared expenses are then recorded like this:
> `
> 2019/05/22 * Bakery
> Expenses:Food 10.00 EUR ; With: Susa
> Assets:Cash
> `
>
> This results in a credit of 5.00 EUR to Expenses:Food and
> Assets:Receivable:Susa each. I find this quite comfortable and want to
> know if there is something similar in beancount. (I've already learned
> that there are no automatic transactions in beancount)
>
> I skimmed the documentation of beancount for sharing expenses and what

> I found <http://furius.ca/beancount/doc/shared> seems to involve

> "special" accounts (e.g. Expenses:Food:Fred & Expenses:Food:Susa) in
> order to split transactions using a plugin
> ("beancount.plugins.split_expenses") -- is this correct?
>
> Does the mentioned plugin work in way like the automatic transaction in
> ledger-cli does, i.e. does running beancount automatically split the
> written amount in the journal file or does the workflow involve running
> a command that results in hard-coded input text that replaces the
> original input data?
>
> More generally: How do beancount users normally record regular shared expenses?
>
> Thanks and regards,
> Fred
>

> --
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> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send
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> To view this discussion on the web visit

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[freak...@gmail.com]

Hi Michael,

your plugin seems to fit the bill -- I'll try it out, thank you very much!

Regards,

Frederik

[Martin Blais]

Hi Fred,

Here's something I wrote not too long ago - that I  haven't published anywhere yet - which is related:

How We Share Expenses

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1MjSpGoJVdgyg8rhKD9otSKo4iSD2VkSYELMWDBbsBiU/edit?usp=sharing

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[Martin Blais]

There's also this older one:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1FRcJqUfeAMQO6KjG94w6rF7VajMGJaFplmF1Wu0rCHY/edit#heading=h.yshh8f17jbdb

[john8...@gmail.com]

Hi Martin,

Thanks for sharing this document.

You describe using the `beancount.plugins.divert_expenses` plugin to split expenses in tagged transactions, but the plugin only appears to rename accounts rather than split postings.

There's the `beancount.plugins.split_expenses` plugin, but to my understanding it operates on a whole ledger and does not filter transactions by tags.

Additionally, in your example expenses are split 40/60, which as far as I can tell neither plugin can do at the moment.

Perhaps I've missed something...

Could you clarify at which point the transactions are split in your system?

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