Is hledger suitable for this?

[Kev Lau]

Hi,

I have a small business but we have several locations. I really like the ledger application and was wondering if hledger would be any good for cloud-like ledger? I would like everyone to make inputs from multiple locations and I would review the final report(dont want others reading the report)

Is there anyway to protect user access into hledger(besides .htaccess)?

How do you maintain multiple accounts  in multiple regions?

Regards
Kevin

[Nelo-Thara Wallus]

I'd have each location maintain their own ledger-file (with strict and exact
requirements to ease the reports) and have them share them with you via your
cloud (I assume you are using something like ownCloud or SeaShare internally).
Then you can point ledger to these files (`ledger -f
/path/to/{location1,location2,location3,...}`) and generate your reports.

This way every location can check their own book keeping while not being able
to access the others and you are still able to make a report for the whole
company.


The second idea is probably not accomplishable for a company, but I'll write
it down:

With e.g. gitolite you can restrict access to certain branches, so you'd give
every location access to their own branch (location1, location2, location3,
...) and restrict the received pushes with a post-receive hook to only updates
(no forced push, no tampering with the history, ...).
Then you can pull all branches
`git pull --all`
and merge them into a new branch (or your master branch):
`git checkout master && git merge location1 location2 location3 ...`

Now you have all ledgers in one place and you can run your report - you can
even tag the current state with your quarter or accounting year, you have
access to all changes in the history and guaranteed that nobody (well, aside
from yourself and your sysad) can tamper with your books - since it is all in
the git history.

The (huge) drawback would be that the accountants would need to have at least
a basic understanding of git and you'd need gitolite or something similar that
allows to restrict access.

However there shouldn't be any conflicts or the like since the history can
only progress and can't be amended.

Imho that would be the best approach but - as said - it'd require to teach
your accountants to learn at least a bit of git (but if you use git-annex it
boils down to `git annex add . && git annex sync`).

Cheers

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[Kev Lau]

Hi Nelo,
Thanks for your feedback.
I think first option is more feasible.
Is it possible to have the ledger file have auto-complete feature on owncloud?
So then they could just get int via the web interface, open the text editor and fill in.

The point about strict and exact requirements is very important. Otherwise it will be a mess. 

[Nelo-Thara Wallus]

I don't think the ownCloud text editor has any sort of completion engine, so
that would be near impossible - unless theres a plugin that allows that kind
of stuff.

Getting the requirements tight without proper software will be near
impossible. Maybe a cronjob that runs `ledger balance --pedantic` on every
locations' file and if fails it mails the output to the accountant? That would
be a rather small script and at least solve the requirements problem.
That doesn't prevent them from making errors but at least automatically
notifies them (and keeps bugging them if they're not fixed).

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[Kev Lau]

Hi Nelo-Thara,

Yes I do think for the strict requirement I do need a software. Any recommendations?

Otherwise I just have to ensure everyone has a fixed template(ie. on top of every ledger file there is a fixed template that has to be followed).

Auto-completion would be great as it would make the mundane task of putting repetitive entries fast. I will look to see if owncloud has this feature( I think there might be)

Best Regards

On Monday, July 27, 2015 at 1:44:20 PM UTC+8, Kev Lau wrote:

[Kev Lau]

Hello Nelo-Thara,

Not sure if you have heard of this but there is something called C9 which can edit in emacs format.
I think if I run ledger-mode on emacs it will solve the problem.

Tried doing this before?

Regards
Kevin

[Kev Lau]

C9 = cloud9

On Monday, July 27, 2015 at 1:44:20 PM UTC+8, Kev Lau wrote:

[Nelo-Thara Wallus]

Hi,

tbh I have no great experience with emacs (I'm using vim) but that might work.
But it looks good so far (especially that you can share the files to
contributors with read/write and read-only access).

I'd love to hear how it worked out.

Cheers