Thank you, John & co.
Kent R. Spillner
I just wanted to take a minute to thank John and everyone else who
contributes to Ledger's development. I don't know anything about
accounting, never really got into personal finance, etc. My wife
recently started her own business and asked me to help manage her
books. I randomly stumbled across a mention of Ledger on some
Reddit thread when I was Googleing for open source Quickbooks clones
and I've been geeking out on plain text accounting ever since. I
can't remember the last time I got this excited about a single piece
of software! In addition to my wife's business I'm now trying to
manage all of our personal accounts as well.
Thank you all for creating such a wonderful tool, and for all of the
excellent documentation & blog posts, etc.
Best,
Kent
John Wiegley
> I just wanted to take a minute to thank John and everyone else who
> contributes to Ledger's development. I don't know anything about accounting,
> never really got into personal finance, etc. My wife recently started her
> own business and asked me to help manage her books. I randomly stumbled
> across a mention of Ledger on some Reddit thread when I was Googleing for
> open source Quickbooks clones and I've been geeking out on plain text
> accounting ever since. I can't remember the last time I got this excited
> about a single piece of software! In addition to my wife's business I'm now
> trying to manage all of our personal accounts as well.
for many years to come. :)
John
Scott Carpenter
Kyle Spaans
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Jimi Damon
+100
Completely agree with all the sentiments on here.
I've hated accounting over the years but then I realized it was
because I wasn't using something like ledger, and now I'm slowly
improving in accounting and I enjoy it.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/ledger-cli/CAHV1VBNzBLTmu15WqXSqAc0Cb1ZiotxKgu6Q0czAXeQdNGEXdg%40mail.gmail.com.
o1bigtenor
>
> +100
>
> Completely agree with all the sentiments on here. I've hated accounting over the years but then I realized it was because I wasn't using something like ledger, and now I'm slowly improving in accounting and I enjoy it.
>
doing my 'recordkeeping'.
Not sure I would go as far as to say I find the process 'enjoyable' -
- - - its still tedious - - - - if only there were some way to truly
automate the process!
(Likely a vastly more difficult enterprise - - - would need
intelligent OCR + a bunch of other automation to get that to fly.)
With thanks!!!!!!!!!
John Wiegley
o> Not sure I would go as far as to say I find the process 'enjoyable' - - - -
o> its still tedious - - - - if only there were some way to truly automate the
o> process!
I'm working on a Haskell project right now that fully automates downloading
data from my broker and converting it into full Ledger entries that look like
this:
2019-06-03 * (XXXXXXXXXXX) SELL TRADE
; Symbol: ZM
; Type: TRADE
(Expenses:TD:Fees) $0.10
Expenses:Capital:Short $655.31
Assets:TD:XXXXXXXXX:Equities -50 ZM {{$4,988.96}} [2019-05-24] @ $86.675
; CUSIP: 98980L101
; Instruction: Sell
; Instrument: Equity
; Subtype: SL
; XID: XXXXXXXXXXX
Assets:TD:XXXXXXXXX:Cash $4,333.65
Given how much fun it's been to write, I think I may extend to doing something
similar for my other institutions. That would be automatic as it gets!
John
o1bigtenor
like for stock brokers.
What about small business types that buy things like parts from
umpteen entities
and even more interesting (maybe boring) things?
When I look at a cashier's slip I can figure out what accounts things go into
- - - dunno how you'd be able to automate all of that - - - - well maybe but
that would mean having a complete copy of all the UAN and EAN (I think
that is what the US and the European bar code associations are) bar codes.
Might be a large assumption that one could make that an error free process.
I'm following this!
John Wiegley
o> into - - - dunno how you'd be able to automate all of that - - - - well
o> maybe but that would mean having a complete copy of all the UAN and EAN (I
o> think that is what the US and the European bar code associations are) bar
o> codes. Might be a large assumption that one could make that an error free
o> process.
You can also semi-automate. For example, I don't think that I can fully
automate the calculation of the Wash Sale Rule for capital loss transactions
followed by a repurchase of "the same equity or a substantially equivalent
instrument", since the government determines what equivalent means in that
context.
However, I can maintain a small data file with wash sales from my broker
(which can also be downloaded as a tab-separated file), and then whenever my
code determines that a purchase is occurring, look to see whether there is an
applicable wash sale for that security on the given day.
Perhaps you don't need all of UAN/EAN, but there's a way to download what you
do need, so that you only maintain that.
The main idea here being: take whatever you do manually, and teach the
computer how to replicate as much of that activity as possible.
John
psionl0
I wish Ledger had been around when I was teaching bookkeeping. It takes all of the gobbledygook out of the subject and makes the subject crystal clear.
I don't mind the lack of automation in Ledger. Other bookkeeping packages only teach you how to use the package. Ledger teaches you how to do bookkeeping.
o1bigtenor
transactions - - - - oh well.
Thanks
Kent R. Spillner
How complicated are your spending patterns?
Thinking about John's wash sale example, I bet I could semi-automatically categorize most of my retail transactions by first extracting a map of Payee=>Account from my existing Ledger data. Then when I download a CSV file of new transactions from my bank or credit card company I could look up the vendor in that map and reuse the corresponding account for the new Ledger entry.
I bet that would automatically cover 80% of my normal spending. e.g. Shell is always Expenses:Car:Fuel, McDonalds is always Expenses:Food:Dining Out while Whole Foods is always Expenses:Food:Groceries, Office Max is always Expenses:Office Supplies, etc.
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o1bigtenor
>
> How complicated are your spending patterns?
>
>
>
> Thinking about John's wash sale example, I bet I could semi-automatically categorize most of my retail transactions by first extracting a map of Payee=>Account from my existing Ledger data. Then when I download a CSV file of new transactions from my bank or credit card company I could look up the vendor in that map and reuse the corresponding account for the new Ledger entry.
>
>
>
> I bet that would automatically cover 80% of my normal spending. e.g. Shell is always Expenses:Car:Fuel, McDonalds is always Expenses:Food:Dining Out while Whole Foods is always Expenses:Food:Groceries, Office Max is always Expenses:Office Supplies, etc.
>
a paper 36 column ledger.
When moved to a spreadsheet I got to using 252 or 253 columns (only
had 255 columns available).
Ran that until I started with ledger - - - - that was when I switched
to using the GIFI codes - - - except
there just wasn't enough granularity in that so I added 6 digits to
the 4 already present in the GIFI
listing. It was an eight page document (the list of accounts with
explanations but most listings only
use one line per account number) when I started - - - said document is
around 40 pages now. This
way I get to understand what I've spent my money on fairly accurately.
If you think of detailed cost
accounting - - - - that's what I think I'd doing. This level of detail
enables me to understand what each
piece of equipment costs to operate in a time frame - - - meaning I
get early warning when its time
to consider replacing items or even that its time for repair. I do
understand that most small companies
don't work at this level of detail but - - - I do. I have vendors that
might supply a few hundred different
items so knowing the vendor is not anywhere close enough for any kind
of reckoning. Safe to say that
the spending patterns are not 'simple'.
Sorta related to your question - - - - there is an account for eating
out, its split into for business and
for personal reasons. Likely only about 10 to 15 vendors in that one
and its hard to tell from the
vendor if that was is business or personal. That gets marked on the invoice.
Regards
John Wiegley
KRS> semi-automatically categorize most of my retail transactions by first
KRS> extracting a map of Payee=>Account from my existing Ledger data.
KRS> Then when I download a CSV file of new transactions from my bank or
KRS> credit card company I could look up the vendor in that map and reuse
KRS> the corresponding account for the new Ledger entry.
KRS> I bet that would automatically cover 80% of my normal spending. e.g.
KRS> Shell is always Expenses:Car:Fuel, McDonalds is always
KRS> Expenses:Food:Dining Out while Whole Foods is always
KRS> Expenses:Food:Groceries, Office Max is always Expenses:Office Supplies,
KRS> etc.
This is actually how the "ledger convert" command works. :)
John
Kent R. Spillner
Learn something new every day! I'll have to take "ledger convert" for a spin. :)
-----Original Message-----
From: "John Wiegley" <jwie...@gmail.com>
Sent: Saturday, April 11, 2020 20:19
To: "Kent R. Spillner" <kspi...@acm.org>
Cc: ledge...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: Thank you, John & co.
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