I organize my physical bank accounts like this: <General accounting category (Assets, Liabilities )>:<Institution name>:<Subcategory (Checking, Savings)>:
So, for example, I have two bank accounts, a checking and a savings. This is what they look like: Assets:Schwab:Checking Assets:Amex:Savings I don't have any particular reason for this, except that looking at 'ledger bal -s' will give you the whole amount for the institution and also broken down by account type. On Thu, Mar 29, 2012 at 9:48 AM, Hsiu-Khuern Tang <[email protected]> wrote: > Dear ledger users, > > I have a basic question about how you organize your accounts. > > If I have two credit cards, is it better to distinguish them using the > account name, e.g., > > - Liabilities:CreditCard:BankOfAmerica > - Liabilities:CreditCard:Citibank > > or by using a metadata tag? If the latter, should I use the payee tag so > that I can use --by-payee? > > I can see the first method leading to lots of accounts, making the default > "ledger bal" output very long. > > > A related question is: if I transfer money from one bank account to another, > should the payee be the source bank, the target bank, or something else (such > as "transfer")? Example: > > 2012-03-10 Bank of America ; Or Citibank? Or something else? > Assets:Bank:BofA:Savings $20.00 > Assets:Bank:Citi:Savings $-20.00 > > Since this is a "symmetric" situation (one bank to another) it seems > unnatural to me to put either the source or the target bank as the payee. > > Thanks! > > -- > Best, > Hsiu-Khuern.
