On Sat, Apr 11, 2020 at 11:39 AM Kent R. Spillner <[email protected]> wrote: > > How complicated are your spending patterns? > > > > Thinking about John's wash sale example, I bet I could semi-automatically > categorize most of my retail transactions by first extracting a map of > Payee=>Account from my existing Ledger data. Then when I download a CSV file > of new transactions from my bank or credit card company I could look up the > vendor in that map and reuse the corresponding account for the new Ledger > entry. > > > > I bet that would automatically cover 80% of my normal spending. e.g. Shell > is always Expenses:Car:Fuel, McDonalds is always Expenses:Food:Dining Out > while Whole Foods is always Expenses:Food:Groceries, Office Max is always > Expenses:Office Supplies, etc. > Hmmmmmmm - - - - many years ago when I started running a ledger it was a paper 36 column ledger. When moved to a spreadsheet I got to using 252 or 253 columns (only had 255 columns available). Ran that until I started with ledger - - - - that was when I switched to using the GIFI codes - - - except there just wasn't enough granularity in that so I added 6 digits to the 4 already present in the GIFI listing. It was an eight page document (the list of accounts with explanations but most listings only use one line per account number) when I started - - - said document is around 40 pages now. This way I get to understand what I've spent my money on fairly accurately. If you think of detailed cost accounting - - - - that's what I think I'd doing. This level of detail enables me to understand what each piece of equipment costs to operate in a time frame - - - meaning I get early warning when its time to consider replacing items or even that its time for repair. I do understand that most small companies don't work at this level of detail but - - - I do. I have vendors that might supply a few hundred different items so knowing the vendor is not anywhere close enough for any kind of reckoning. Safe to say that the spending patterns are not 'simple'.
Sorta related to your question - - - - there is an account for eating out, its split into for business and for personal reasons. Likely only about 10 to 15 vendors in that one and its hard to tell from the vendor if that was is business or personal. That gets marked on the invoice. Regards -- --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Ledger" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/ledger-cli/CAPpdf59Di%2B1f-sJWSM2ghwyRNp2fLu-4o%3D_h9eEbU8oeXkkm9w%40mail.gmail.com.
