I'd like to use Ledger to track the finances of a two-person household,
recording transactions to both aggregate household accounts and individual
ownership stakes.
Two questions:
- Is there a preferred way to do this?
- Supposing I do this using tags to identify "shadow accounts," how
would you recommend processing shadow account tags?
By "shadow account," I mean a pair of non-real accounts that is established
for each real account, corresponding to the ownership stakes of the two
people in the household. The shadow accounts have the property that the sum
of the postings to each pair of shadow accounts equals the total posting to
the corresponding real account.
To illustrate, suppose a household that consists of two people: APL and NPL.
- APL works at the local metropolitan transportation authority
- NPL works at a glass factory
- APL and NPL share an apartment, a checking account, and a credit card
We want to track APL & NPL's total household earnings and expenses as well
as their individual ownership stakes in their assets and liabilities. We
can do this with shadow accounts implemented with virtual postings. Here's
an example journal file for APL & NPL:
2017-01-06 (#1) MTA
Assets:Cash:Checking $1000.00
Income:Salary
[APL:Assets:Cash:Checking] $1000.00
[APL:Income:Salary] $-1000.00
[NPL:Assets:Cash:Checking] $0.00
[NPL:Income:Salary] $0.00
2017-01-10 (#2) Landlord
Expenses:Rent $960.00
Assets:Cash:Checking
[APL:Expenses:Rent] $480.00
[APL:Assets:Cash:Checking] $-480.00
[NPL:Expenses:Rent] $480.00
[NPL:Assets:Cash:Checking] $-480.00
2017-01-13 (#3) Glass Factory
Assets:Cash:Checking $1200.00
Income:Salary
[APL:Assets:Cash:Checking] $0.00
[APL:Income:Salary] $0.00
[NPL:Assets:Cash:Checking] $1200.00
[NPL:Income:Salary] $-1200.00
2017-01-15 (#4) Pacific Gas & Electric
Expenses:Utilities $85.00
Liabilities:Credit:Visa
[APL:Expenses:Utilities] $42.50
[APL:Liabilities:Credit:Visa] $-42.50
[NPL:Expenses:Utilities] $42.50
[NPL:Liabilities:Credit:Visa] $-42.50
To clarify each transaction:
1. APL earns $1,000 from the MTA and deposits his earnings to the
couple's checking account
2. APL & NPL contribute equally to their rent payment of $960
3. NPL earns $1,200 from the glass factory and deposits her earnings to
the couple's checking account
4. APL & NPL pay their gas bill of $85 with their credit card, each
recording equal contributions
The journal gives us APL & NPL's household balance sheet:
$ ledger bal --real
$1240.00 Assets:Cash:Checking
$1045.00 Expenses
$960.00 Rent
$85.00 Utilities
$-2200.00 Income:Salary
$-85.00 Liabilities:Credit:Visa
--------------------
0
Using shadow accounts allows us to view APL's and NPL's individual
ownership stakes in each of their accounts.
$ ledger bal ^APL
0 APL
$520.00 Assets:Cash:Checking
$522.50 Expenses
$480.00 Rent
$42.50 Utilities
$-1000.00 Income:Salary
$-42.50 Liabilities:Credit:Visa
--------------------
0
$ ledger bal NPL
0 NPL
$720.00 Assets:Cash:Checking
$522.50 Expenses
$480.00 Rent
$42.50 Utilities
$-1200.00 Income:Salary
$-42.50 Liabilities:Credit:Visa
--------------------
0
Note that adding APL and NPL's balance sheets yields the household balance
sheet.
The reason for the second of my original two questions (i.e., how do you
process shadow account tags?) is that recording shadow accounts with
virtual postings in every transaction is a tedious process, and I'd like
instead to use tag-value pairs to record shadow account information.
Instead of recording the journal entries listed above, I'd like to record
the following, where the value of the *Shadow* tag holds the ownership
weights necessary to derive the shadow account postings:
2017-01-06 (#1) MTA
; Shadow: APL 100/NPL 0
Assets:Cash:Checking $1000.00
Income:Salary
2017-01-10 (#2) Landlord
; Shadow: APL 50/NPL 50
Expenses:Rent $960.00
Assets:Cash:Checking
2017-01-13 (#3) Glass Factory
; Shadow: APL 0/NPL 100
Assets:Cash:Checking $1200.00
Income:Salary
2017-01-15 (#4) Pacific Gas & Electric
; Shadow: APL 50/NPL 50
Expenses:Utilities $85.00
Liabilities:Credit:Visa
The result is an informationally equivalent journal file with two postings
per transaction instead of six.
Elaborating on my original questions:
- Is there a better (and more widely accepted) way to do this?
- If not, how would you recommend processing the Shadow tags?
Being new to Ledger, my first thought to processing Shadow tags is to write
a Python script that generates a "cooked" journal file that includes the
shadow account virtual postings based on the Shadow tag-value pairs; Ledger
could then read the cooked journal instead. Alternatively, maybe there's
some facility in Ledger itself that could achieve this.
APL
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