> Keep in mind I am a noob with beancount so take my input accordignly. > Rigth now with beancount I feel I am always figthing and I am in a "want > to solve this ASAP" mood so everything that is not a straigth > forward solution
Being in similar position at some point, I started putting together https://github.com/Evernight/lazy-beancount/ (and the linked guide). Instead of building from bare bones you may take a different approach and throw in a bunch of stuff right away with some examples and recipes. That's something I would be happy to find when I was just starting with Beancount, but apparently that's not the best approach for everyone. In any case, may simplify some things or give you more ideas. A little warning: it's still more like a set of tools for power/technical users or those willing to invest in learning Beancount+Python ecosystem. I figured trying to replace some other more user-friendly (but less capable) tools out there would take much more work and generally not in the direction I'd like to focus on right now. At this point I solved a bunch of use-cases for myself (even more than I expected initially) and tried to do it in a manner that's composable, extensible and usable by others. I think once you get into a certain mindset and learn Beancount's concept and syntax, you can do a lot. But I'd also try to start with big common cases and keeping in mind that getting comfortable with all the new concepts will take time and effort in any case. > "[email protected]" wrote: > If you want to create custom reports or dashboards, or automate a lot using the Beancount ecosystem, you would need to be very comfortable with Python. On another (positive) note, with that I would respectfully disagree! I think with correct usage of syntax, tags, etc, and the fava-dashboards plugin at this point you don't really need to dig deeply into Python. Rather into SQL (BQL) and some JS even. That's unless you want to do something really custom and specific. > without having to specify "@ 0.6 EUR" in every transaction, I want beancount to take the price directive. Without asking deeper about specific use-case and goals, that sounds similar to what https://github.com/Evernight/beancount-lazy-plugins?tab=readme-ov-file#currency_convert does. I wrote (LLM generated, honestly) it for different purposes but even if it doesn't work for yours, you can probably take it as a reference. On Sunday, November 9, 2025 at 5:49:11 PM UTC [email protected] wrote: > Sorry for not being clear. My end goal for using beancount is that I > want to know future income/expenses and plan accordingly. This is, be > able to answer: How much MONEY will I have at X date? Will I have enough > money in the bank to pay Y? When would I have saved enough to buy Z? > > Makes sense. In terms of reporting, the closest “standard” report that > will help with that is usually called a “Cashflow report”, which is > different from a “Net Profit” report. I’d recommend spending a few minutes > with AI to dig in and understand these better. > > > On Mon, 27 Oct 2025 02:05:09 -0700 (PDT) "[email protected]" wrote: > > So money flows from Assets:Bank to Liabilities:Mortgage and > Expenses:Interest. There’s > > nothing you should have to do: your net profit and net worth should all > compute > > correctly as expected. > > Which confused me, maybe I didn't hunderstand what redst was telling me > or I didn't explain correctly. Now, what I am doing, is using "plugin > "beancount_reds_plugins.rename_accounts.rename_accounts" to rename > mortage pricipal to an expense in fava. > > This works great and now my Net Profit reflects correctly. if there is > another way towhat money I really have available (Income - Expenses - > Lean payments on > Liabilities) I am all ears > > If you rename a Liability account into an Expense account, that would > have a lot of unintended effects on your ledger and reporting. It breaks > the bookeeping paradigm a bit. For example, now your ledger says you had a > huge negative expense the year you bought your house. That said, doing it > with my plugin above is a great way to experiment as it’s trivially > revertible. > > See this thread > <https://groups.google.com/g/beancount/c/fTlSnQRPayo/m/f53cF1RLBgAJ> on > how to generate a Cashflow report and fine tune it to your needs. > > Which resources do you recommend? Is the book tracking your finances > with python worth it? I know some programming, but I haven't touch > python in ages. As I told: I don't want to spend hours to accomplish my > financial tracking goals, but also the reason to use beancount was it > extensibility if it will let me say, automate getting my bank statements > and create dashboards with the info I need... it will be worth it. > > If you want to create custom reports or dashboards, or automate a lot > using the Beancount ecosystem, you would need to be very comfortable with > Python. What I’d suggest in getting started is to get your initial ledger > created, figure out the most important set of questions you want to ask of > your ledger, and then work through them (like you already seem to be > doing). You’ll gain a much better sense of what you need to go towards, in > a little bit. > > regarding milk I want to do this: > > 2025-11-07 * "Milk" > Expenses:Groceries 3 MILK @ 0.6 EUR > Liabilitios:Milk EUR > > without having to specify "@ 0.6 EUR" in every transaction, I want > beancount to take the price directive. > > Why? because I know how many liters I take everytime, but I don't > know if the price may have change. If I don't specify "@ 0.6 EUR" my > liabilities in fava will show I owe lot of milk and that they owe me > EUR. unless of course I select convert to EUR. > > I think you may be confounding the problem you’re trying to solve with the > solution. A solution in Beancount is subject to its syntax and such that > you must adhere to. But other than that, this is the straightforward part. > > The tricker part is the problem. I still can’t say I understand what > you’re trying to accomplish around milk. Writing down a problem statement > would help. Even better, spend a few minutes going back and forth with AI > on this, and that should help. > > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Beancount" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/beancount/347d59bf-7c4e-428d-8140-1ae215c58e80n%40googlegroups.com.
