> Date: Sat, 31 Aug 2019 20:59:16 +0200
> From: Martin Michlmayr <[email protected]>
>
> * Taylor R Campbell <[email protected]> [2019-08-14 21:04]:
> > ; hand-written ledger entry
> > account Liabilities:Bank:Cheque:123
> > 2017-01-31 Landlord
> > Expenses:Rent $750.00
> > Liabilities:Bank:Cheque:123
> >
> > ; automatically generated by bank2ledger script
> > 2017-02-25 Bank statement
> > Liabilities:Bank:Cheque:123 $750.00
> > Assets:Bank
>
> This works fine for personal accounts where you can do whatever works
> best for you instead of following official accounting practices.
>
> This won't work for a business, however. Cheques are treated as
> immediate cash expenses: when you write a check, the money immediately
> gets deducted (in your books), even though in reality it only gets
> deducted from your bank account when the person deposits the check.
Can you expand on the distinction you're drawing here?
If you mean that you need the account tree Assets:Bank to reflect your
current bank balance, you could name it Assets:Bank:Cheque:123
instead, so that `ledger balance --depth 2 Assets:Bank' will report
the balance with outstanding cheques deducted.
2017-01-01 Opening Balances
Assets:Bank:Balance $10,000.00
Equity:Opening Balances
; hand-written when you write the cheque
account Assets:Bank:Cheque:123
2017-01-31 Landlord
Expenses:Rent $750.00
Assets:Bank:Cheque:123
; Show the available balance:
;
; % ledger balance --depth 2 Assets:Bank
; $9,250.00 Assets:Bank
;
; Show the balance of the last bank statement together with the
; outstanding cheques:
;
; % ledger balance Assets:Bank
; $9,250.00 Assets:Bank
; $10,100.00 Balance
; $-750.00 Cheque:123
; --------------------
; $9,250.00
; automatically generated by bank2ledger
2017-02-25 Bank statement
Assets:Bank:Cheque:123 $750.00
Assets:Bank:Balance
; % ledger balance --depth 2 Assets:Bank
; $9,250.00 Assets:Bank
; % ledger balance Assets:Bank
; $9,250.00 Assets:Bank
But then you have an `asset' account with negative balance, until the
cheque clears. It's not obvious to me whether it's better to label
this as an asset so it stays in `Assets:Bank', or whether to label it
as a liabilitiy since it's negative. Either way `ledger balance bank'
reports the available balance in this system.
But maybe I misunderstood what your objection to this system is.
> That's (one reason) why businesses do bank reconciliations at the end
> of the month where they compare their books with their actual bank
> balances and account for the differences (undeposited checks get added
> to the balance from your book to match the bank balance).
That seems to be what I was describing with automatically ingesting
the bank's statement using a bank2ledger script? After ingesting the
bank statement, running `ledger balance bank' will show all of the
outstanding cheques as line items and the total will sum to what you
have available in the bank.
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