Hi, I'm trying to get Ledger to automatically work out UK VAT (tax at 20%) on a sales invoice; it seems crazy for me to have to calculate and enter this by hand every time.
First I've tried using automated transaction amount multipliers: = expr true Liabilities:VAT 0.2 Assets:Accounts Receivable -1.2 08/07/2011 Invoice Income:Sales £1000 According to the doc http://ledger-cli.org/3.0/doc/ledger3.html#Amount-multipliers this should be equivalent to: 08/07/2011 Invoice Income:Sales £100 Liabilities:VAT £20 Assets:Accounts Receivable -£120 But instead I get an error: johnpc$ ledger -f test.ldg reg -E While parsing file "/home/john/Documents/test.ldg", line 6: While balancing transaction from "/home/john/Documents/test.ldg", lines 5-6: > 08/07/2011 Invoice > Income:Sales £100 Unbalanced remainder is: £100 Amount to balance against: £100 Error: Transaction does not balance johnpc$ With debug, it seems that the amount multipliers are being treated as simple values rather than £s, and so the transaction doesn't balance. johnpc$ ledger --debug textual.parse -f test.ldg reg -E 0ms [INFO] Ledger starting 2ms [INFO] Parsing file "/home/john/.ledgerrc" 3ms [INFO] Parsing file "/home/john/Documents/test.ldg" 4ms [DEBUG] line 2: Parsed account name Liabilities:VAT 4ms [DEBUG] line 2: post amount = 0.2 4ms [DEBUG] line 3: Parsed account name Assets:Accounts Receivable 4ms [DEBUG] line 3: post amount = -1.2 4ms [DEBUG] line 6: Parsed account name Income:Sales 5ms [DEBUG] line 6: post amount = £100 While parsing file "/home/john/Documents/test.ldg", line 6: While balancing transaction from "/home/john/Documents/test.ldg", lines 5-6: > 08/07/2011 Invoice > Income:Sales £100 Unbalanced remainder is: £100 Amount to balance against: £100 Error: Transaction does not balance 6ms [INFO] Ledger ended johnpc$ I've also tried value expressions which seem like they ought to be powerful enough to help me do this, but the docs don't explain it very clearly and I'm just stabbing in the dark. It feels like there's a value expression party that I've not been invited to. For example the value expression in here evaluates to zero: 08/07/2011 Invoice Income:Sales £100 Liabilities:VAT (amount * 0.2) Assets:Accounts Receivable johnpc$ ledger -f test.ldg reg -E 08/07/11 Invoice Income:Sales £100.00 > £100.00 Liabilities:VAT 0 > £100.00 Ass:Accounts Receivable £-100.00 > 0 johnpc$ When I first started reading about ledger; it seemed like exactly what I wanted. But now I'm nervous about switching my accounting system. Too much of it seems like a black art. I'm wondering if beancount or hlledger would be better at this sort of thing, or better documented? Any solutions or advice would be most welcome. Thanks in advance, John -- --- 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 ledger-cli+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.