On 2026-05-18, at 18:10, Alan <[email protected]> wrote: > I have a fairly substantial accumulation of Ledger data going back to 2002. I > rely on it for budgeting (it was invaluable when I > was figuring out if I could afford to retire), for reconciling bank and > credit card account statements, and -- crucially -- for keeping > track of revenue and expenses for my wife's small business, for tax filing > purposes. It has been working well for me, and > occasionally over the years I have invested some effort in writing helper > scripts where needed. > > So I was thinking that everything was all fine. Except recently it dawned on > me that I'm not going to live forever. My (young) > wife will likely survive me, and then she'll need to do something to cope > with finances that I've been taking care of all these > years. > > Her level of comfort with using computers is at the level of using web apps > (e.g., GMail, Google Docs and Sheets, though > currently at a quite basic level). I don't think she'll be persuaded to learn > how to edit a plain text file and run commands from a > Unix shell; to say nothing of learning how to wield Ledger commands and > options themselves. Or, at least, she'll not want to > continue to do things that way forever. > > Maybe I could set up some spreadsheets for tracking of her business finances? > Though that might be overly simplistic. > > Or maybe she could use something like Quicken? > > How can I set things up to ease that transition, especially when it > (hopefully) won't happen for still quite a few more years now?
That's an excellent question. Frankly, I would probably use an LLM tool to create a GUI front-end to your Ledger setup (including the scripts). Example: this is an (unfinished, but working as a PoC/MVP) app I "vibe-coded" for a friend: https://github.com/mbork/bank-statement-analyzer#. Note that it even has a Windows installer (and I don't even know how it works!). Also, it's not really "vibe-coded" in the usual sense of the word - while I have /no idea/ how the GUI parts work, all the logic is either written or at least reviewed in detail by me. It took me about 32 hours over several weeks. Given that I used that project to learn a bit of Python and spent considerable time actually /writing/ it /myself/ under Claude's guidance, and that it is probably overtested (100+ tests for a relatively simple tool), that time could be driven down considerably if the goal were to write it faster. Hth, -- Marcin Borkowski https://mbork.pl -- --- 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 visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/ledger-cli/87pl2s59h3.fsf%40mbork.pl.
