As others have said, run two separate accounts: business and private. Any time you transfer funds from your business to your private bank account or an invoice includes goods that are for private use, they would be classified as "Owner Drawings" and they reduce the business's equity. That is to say, they would go under the category of "Equity:Owner Drawings". It is your choice whether your private account includes goods paid for by the business but bank transfers should definitely be recorded. It would be recorded as FROM <business name> TO <bank account>. <business name> count either be a sub-category of income, loans or bank or just its own category.
Note that if your business is actually a company then you can't simply withdraw money/goods from it. It has to be classified as "Equity:Dividends" in the business account and in your private account it would be "Income:Dividends" and there are tax implications for doing this. On Thursday, August 27, 2020 at 1:14:31 PM UTC+8 Kent Spillner wrote: > Hey, Marcin- > > I'm sorry for not replying sooner! I meant to reply but then your message > got lost > in my inbox & I forgot about it until now. :( > > > I would like to separate these two areas in Ledger, too. Ideally, I'd > > like to be able to see a "private" report, a "business" report or > > a "total" report. > > I just started using ledger earlier this year to help my wife manage the > books for > her contracting business. Here's what I've come up with so far; works for > us, but > like you I'm interested in hearing if others have other tips for making > this easier: > > * In my top-level directory I have two files named 2019.ledger and > 2020.ledger, and > two directories named 2019/ and 2020/. 2019.ledger looks like this > (2020.ledger > looks similar): > > include 2019/business.ledger > include 2019/personal.ledger > > * 2019/business.ledger looks like this: > > include business-opening-balance.ledger > > 2019-01-01 * Secretary of State > Expense:<business name>:Articles of Incorporation $250.00 > Asset:<business name>:Checking > > 2019-01-15 * Client #1 > Asset:<business name>:Checking $1,000.00 > Income:<business name>:<client name>:<project name> > > 2019-01-15 * My Wife > Expense:<business name>:Payroll $500.00 > Asset:<business name>:Checking > > ... > > * 2019/business-opening-balance.ledger looks like this: > > 2019-01-01 * Opening balance > Asset:<business name>:Checking $0.00 > Equity:<business name>:Opening Balance:2019 > > > * 2019/personal.ledger looks like this: > > include personal-opening-balance.ledger > > 2019-01-15 * My Wife > Asset:Personal:Checking $500.00 > Income:<business name>:Salary > > ... > > * 2019/personal-opening-balance.ledger looks like this: > > 2019-01-01 * Opening balance > Asset:Personal:Checking $1,234.56 > Asset:Personal:Savings $9,876.54 > Equity:Personal:Opening Balance:2019 > > > Hopefully, that gives you some idea of how you can manage business & > personal finances > in separate files but still combine them to give a picture of your overall > finances. > If you want to see all of your 2019 balances you run: ledger -f > 2019.ledger balance. > If you want to see only your 2019 business balances you run: ledger -f > 2019/business.ledger balance. > > In my opinion, the two keystones that hold everything together are the > liberal use of > ledger's include directive, and the use of Personal or <business name> as > the 2nd-level > account name in all transactions. What I discovered through trial and > error is that > having that 2nd-level disambiguator is really useful when you need to > track the flow of > money from the business account to your personal account: Income:<biz>:... > => > Asset:<biz>:Checking => Expense:<biz>:Payroll => Income:<biz>:Salary => > Asset:Personal:Checking. > > Things that I don't like about this scheme are: 1) I have to manually > compare > Expense:<biz>:Payroll and Income:<biz>:Salary in balance reports to > confirm they > balance to zero, 2) I have to be extra diligent about entering payroll in > both the > business & personal ledger files without interruption or else I'll forget > where I left > off and then have to compare the two side-by-side in my text editor to > make sure I > didn't miss any transactions. For 1) I don't think you can avoid having to > manually > compare the two, because if you actually synthesize transactions that > balance > automatically then I think it makes your job harder at tax time when you > need to figure > out your total payroll expense for the year. If I'm wrong about that and > there is a > way to create transactions that balance automatically and have a way for > ledger to > report the total cost of one expense category I'd love to hear it! For 2) > I think > that's just the cost of trying to track business & personal expenses in > separate files, > and at this point I've built up enough scripting to help automate a lot of > my workflow > that it's not been a problem for me in a while. > > Hope that helps! I'm happy to answer questions you may have if I did a > poor job > explaining any parts of that, and I'd also love to hear other hints & tips > others > might have to improve it. > > Best, > Kent > > > -- --- 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/de702931-e7b2-4070-afb6-480a95c6966fn%40googlegroups.com.
