Re: revision control
My ledger file is versioned by my backup system (SpiderOak), but I don't use a VCS with ledger because I don't need any of the branching/merging features. On Thu, Aug 11, 2011 at 1:58 AM, Russell Adams rlad...@adamsinfoserv.comwrote: Michael, I use Bazaar (heresy among all these Git users...), and have a decentralized workflow with my accountant. We each have a repo we sync against a master repository. It works great. Being careful about your workflow can minimize time spent merging. I also have a pre-commit hook that dumps account balances to a text file that is included in the repo, so we can monitor balance changes over time. Thanks. On Thu, Jul 28, 2011 at 07:38:55PM -0700, Michael Farnbach wrote: Hello, I'm exploring revision control, anyone have any history putting their ledger in a revision control system? Do you keep different working copies (different people or just different computers) that you merge together later? Do you make milestones out of statements you reconcile, or monthly? Many thanks, I look forward to hearing your stories. --Michael -- Russell Adamsrlad...@adamsinfoserv.com PGP Key ID: 0x1160DCB3 http://www.adamsinfoserv.com/ Fingerprint:1723 D8CA 4280 1EC9 557F 66E8 1154 E018 1160 DCB3
Re: How do most of you prepare your input files?
I use Vim. With a few named buffers to paste in common account names I find it perfectly suitable. On Tue, Jul 26, 2011 at 4:17 PM, enderw88 ender...@gmail.com wrote: Is the emacs mode the most popular? Any other methods have advantages over that?
Re: How do most of you prepare your input files?
I think someone made a Vim syntax file for Ledger, but I'm not sure if there's anything more complicated available. On Tue, Jul 26, 2011 at 5:05 PM, Doug Philips douglas.phil...@gmail.comwrote: On Tue, Jul 26, 2011 at 16:47, Craig Earls ender...@gmail.com wrote: Doe VIM actually support the format in some way or so you just manually enter everything? I do not know if VIM has any support or not. So far I've been manually entering everything. It was faster than using ^C^A in Emacs and then having to clean it up. Oh, and the ledger.el that came with ledger v2.6 (via MacPorts) did not work with Emacs app I have (v23.2) in that the reconcile buffer never actually marked up anything. Since v2.6 is dead and not being maintained anyway, I didn't bother to report it. -Doug
Re: Bank of America OFX
I used my utility to import a whole year's data into ledger. Is there a particular problem it doesn't address for you? Maybe I could improve it to handle your situation. -Brian On Thu, Feb 3, 2011 at 2:01 PM, Kolomona hap...@gmail.com wrote: Thanks Brian, I saw that you had a BoA conversion. I don't think it would work for me as I am trying to import all of my data from 2010. There doesn't seem to be an easy way of doing that with their printable text format. I may try it. On Feb 2, 7:41 pm, Brian Cottingham spiffyt...@gmail.com wrote: I don't know about parsing BoA's OFX files, but I made a parser for their Printable Text Format files, which spits out ledger-formatted data: https://github.com/spiffytech/ledger_tools
Re: Bank of America OFX
I don't know about parsing BoA's OFX files, but I made a parser for their Printable Text Format files, which spits out ledger-formatted data: https://github.com/spiffytech/ledger_tools -Brian On Wed, Feb 2, 2011 at 7:32 PM, Kolomona hap...@gmail.com wrote: Hi Everybody, I'm having a problem reading Bank of America's OFX file. Here's the result of ledger -f 3day.ofx print Error: week.ofx, line 1: Invalid date string: OFX Error: week.ofx, line 2: Line begins with whitespace Error: week.ofx, line 3: Line begins with whitespace etc. I found out about Ledger on FLOSS Weekly. I successfully compiled and installed it on Ubuntu Hardy In order to get libofx to be seen by the compiler I had to ./configure CPPFLAGS=-I/usr/include/libofx Here is the output of my ledger -v Ledger 2.6.3, the command-line accounting tool Copyright (c) 2003-2009, John Wiegley. All rights reserved. This program is made available under the terms of the BSD Public License. See LICENSE file included with the distribution for details and disclaimer. (modules: gmp, pcre, xml, ofx) Here is what the OFX file looks like OFXHEADER:100 DATA:OFXSGML VERSION:102 SECURITY:NONE ENCODING:USASCII CHARSET:1252 COMPRESSION:NONE OLDFILEUID:NONE NEWFILEUID:NONE OFX SIGNONMSGSRSV1 SONRS STATUS CODE0 SEVERITYINFO /STATUS DTSERVER20110202154659[-08:PST] LANGUAGEENG /SONRS /SIGNONMSGSRSV1 BANKMSGSRSV1 STMTTRNRS TRNUID1005 STATUS CODE0 SEVERITYINFO /STATUS STMTRS CURDEFUSD BANKACCTFROM BANKID7 ACCTID ACCTTYPECHECKING /BANKACCTFROM BANKTRANLIST DTSTART77[-08:PST] DTEND70[-08:PST] STMTTRN TRNTYPEDEBIT DTPOSTED2011013131[-08:PST] TRNAMT-20.55 FITIDDDA70094818201101311 NAMEA AAA A 01/29 PU /STMTTRN STMTTRN TRNTYPEDEBIT DTPOSTED2011013131[-08:PST] TRNAMT-8.35 FITIDDDA70094818201101312 NAMEAA AA AAA 01/29 /STMTTRN STMTTRN TRNTYPECREDIT DTPOSTED2011020101[-08:PST] TRNAMT2111.25 FITIDDDA70094818201102011 NAMEDEPOSIT 0201WA353P000750278187 /STMTTRN STMTTRN TRNTYPEDEBIT DTPOSTED2011020101[-08:PST] TRNAMT-1700.00 FITIDDDA70094818201102012 NAMEAA AAA /STMTTRN STMTTRN TRNTYPEDEBIT DTPOSTED2011020101[-08:PST] TRNAMT-16.47 FITIDDDA70094818201102013 NAME A A AA 02/01 /STMTTRN /BANKTRANLIST LEDGERBAL BALAMT399.92 DTASOF20110202154700[-08:PST] /LEDGERBAL /STMTRS /STMTTRNRS /BANKMSGSRSV1 /OFX Any advice?
Re: bank accounts, reports vs. logbook
I think this is just one interpretation of many. What's real depends on context and point of view, and also our words are slippery. The friday night you purchase a movie ticket (that clears on monday) seems like the real date, but the day your cheque is cashed (and perhaps bounces) is more real as far as your bank and your account balance is concerned. As you look at other kinds of real-world accounting transactions you find more ambiguities. This comes down to the difference between cash- and accrual-basis accounting. In cash-basis accounting you record transactions based on when money actually leaves or enters your account. In accrual-basis accounting, you record transactions based on when you commit to spending or earning money (e.g., the day you write the check, or the day your employer's payperiod ends). If you're practicing accrual-basis accounting, it is logical to use the left date for the date you decided to spend money (since that's the date accrual-basis accounting cares about), and use the right date for the date the transaction clears. If you're practicing cash-basis accounting, it is logical to use the left-date for the date the transaction clears (since that's when you consider the money actually spent), and the right date for the date you wrote the check (if you record that at all; I'm not sure that date is important in cash-basis accounting). I prefer to use accrual-basis accounting, because it pairs very nicely and naturally with double-entry accounting, eliminating my need for virtual transactions while providing more information at the same time. See this thread[1] for info on how I use accrual-basis accounting in Ledger. Some people mix the two methods together, but choosing one to use as your primary accounting method can help clarify quantitatively which date should go where. [1]: http://groups.google.com/group/ledger-cli/browse_thread/thread/cb92be9afa95b691/c03c8cfc2b711315 -Brian P.S. - My understanding of accrual-basis accounting is limited, since most articles on the subject I've encountered expect practitioners to be businesses, and thus contain lots of scenarios, terms, and assumptions that are beyond be. If I'm incorrect, please let me know.
Re: bank accounts, reports vs. logbook
Multiplying all transactions by -1 will only tell you that /something/ doesn't match, but won't tell you what. I get the same information without the multiplication thing by looking at my ending bank statement balance compared with the ending balance Ledger reports. Finding out /where /a discrepancy is//requires comparing each transaction in Ledger and your bank statement, either by hand, or with an auxiliary program. When I reconcile Ledger against my bank statement, I run ledger -wcBU reg checking. I search my bank statement for each transaction, and when I find the transaction I store it's posting date (the date the transaction finished going through the system and became real). In Ledger you do this by saying spending date=posting date. By storing the posting date, I can run ledger -wBC --sort d --effective reg checking and see the transactions in roughly the order they will appear on my bank statement (my bank sorts by posting date). This makes it easy to compare a running balance: Starting at the beginning of the month, I make sure the balances on the statement and in Ledger match. I then run through each day of the month, and if the balances for any given day do not match, I know something's wrong, and about where that something is. If I get to the end of the month and all balances match, I know I'm reconciled! I do this whole process closer to weekly (with my bank's online transaction log) than monthly, so it doesn't build up. -Brian On 12/11/2010 04:36 AM, Łukasz Stelmach wrote: Hello. I'd like to ask everyone a question about keeping records for bank accounts. What is your way to keep track of your operations and check them agains bank generated monthly reports? I log every tranascation (cash or card) the day (week?) it happened. At the end of a month a get a report from my bank. I convert the CSV to ledger format and now I've got two (not including cash transactions) lists comprising more or less (I'd like to see how much more or less) the same events. What is the best way to compare/merge[*] them? Is there a way to to make ledger multiply transactions from one file by -1 to try to balance two files? [*] card transactions have better description in the file I create manuall, others, like banking expenses are only in the report.
Re: Automated Transaction Predicates
I'm also interested in this: I want to start applying an automatic savings policy to new paychecks, but don't want Ledger to retroactively apply it to old paychecks. -Brian On 09/27/2010 09:48 AM, Nexes wrote: Could someone give me an example of an automated transaction that will only take effect if the date is greater than some comparison date? I am trying to make an automated transaction for taxes, but it doesn't play nicely if you use the equity function (it applies taxes to the old stuff which is not what I want it to do).
Re: Reconciling and un-journaled transactions
No, I'm reconciling by hand. I step through my bank's transaction logs, one at a time, and make sure all of the transactions are in my journal, and that the running total in `ledger reg checking` matches my bank's running total. -Brian On Fri, Jul 23, 2010 at 1:49 PM, David Glasser glas...@davidglasser.netwrote: What do you mean by reconcile? Are you using something like the emacs reconcile mode that lets you check off unreconciled items interactively? On Fri, Jul 23, 2010 at 10:46 AM, spiffytech spiffyt...@gmail.com wrote: I'm pretty good about entering transactions into my journal, but sometimes an automatic bank withdrawl will occur that I didn't know about in advance. I might not notice this until the next time I reconcile, and then I have to step through my ledger and bank's transaction logs one line at a time until I find the culprit. Does anyone have a good way to deal with this? If I have my bank's transaction logs in a ledger-friendly format, is there a tool that will compare them? Or do I just need to suck it up and step through the transaction logs? -- glas...@davidglasser.net | langtonlabs.org | flickr.com/photos/glasser/
