Re: When to use tags and when to create separate account?

[Martin Michlmayr]

* Martin Blais  [2018-04-22 17:31]:
> You can achieve the same thing already with a group-by on the (account,
> meta) pair:
> 
> plugin "beancount.plugins.auto"
> 
> 2018-04-22 * "Income from ABC"
> customer: "ABC"
> Assets:Bank100.00 EUR
> Income:Business:Hosting   -100.00 EUR
> 
> 2018-04-22 * "Income from CDE"
> customer: "CDE"
> Assets:Bank150.00 EUR
> Income:Business:Hosting   -150.00 EUR
> 
> 
> ;; bean-query
> /home/blais/r/q/beancount-data/user/michlmayr/groupby.beancount
> ;; "select account, entry_meta('customer'), sum(position) where account ~
> 'Income' group by 1, 2"
> ;; account ent sum_positio
> ;; --- --- ---
> ;; Income:Business:Hosting ABC -100.00 EUR
> ;; Income:Business:Hosting CDE -150.00 EUR

Given this example, is where a way to limit the query where sum(position)
is < 125?

-- 
Martin Michlmayr
https://www.cyrius.com/

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Re: When to use tags and when to create separate account?

[Martin Blais]

On Sun, Apr 22, 2018 at 5:43 PM, Martin Michlmayr  wrote:

> * Martin Blais  [2018-04-22 17:31]:
> > You can achieve the same thing already with a group-by on the (account,
> > meta) pair:
>
> Doh, I should have thought of that.  That's a good example of why BQL
> is a great idea.
>

The most relevant insight in this whole thing is IMHO the fact that you can
reduce all these accounting tasks to a single query on a single table (a
join of transaction fields and postings fields). I started with the SQL
thing not really knowing how far it would take us, but it turns out it
pretty much can do it all, and you can factor out the reporting rendering
code into two functions: one to render journals (generic, just a table),
and one to render trees of accounts (implies a hierarchy from one
particular column). Actual pivot tables (e.g., expenses by month) can be a
post-processing of a group-by query with two columns (e.g., account,
month-of-date, rendering sum(postings) in the cells).

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Re: When to use tags and when to create separate account?

[mployby]

Thank you for all your replies guys! I will stick to separate accounts for 
now, but will sure play with group-by feature.

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Re: When to use tags and when to create separate account?

[Martin Michlmayr]

* Martin Blais  [2018-04-22 17:31]:
> You can achieve the same thing already with a group-by on the (account,
> meta) pair:

Doh, I should have thought of that.  That's a good example of why BQL
is a great idea.
-- 
Martin Michlmayr
http://www.cyrius.com/

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Re: When to use tags and when to create separate account?

[Martin Blais]

On Sun, Apr 22, 2018 at 8:30 AM, Martin Michlmayr <t...@cyrius.com> wrote:

> * mplo...@gmail.com <mplo...@gmail.com> [2018-04-21 05:37]:
> > As the title says i wonder when to use tags and when to create
> > separate account?
>
> There is no right or wrong.  Some people like to put a lot of
> information into their account names while others prefer simple account
> names.  My general impression is that professional accounts prefer a
> simple chart of accouts, though.
>
> > Or should i use same accounts
> >
> > Income:Business:
> > Expenses:Business:Ads
> > Expenses:Business:Hosting
> >
> > and just use tags #ECOM1 and #ECOM2 ?
>

It's an arbitrary choice.
The true question is about how you want to query it.
Consider this: Beancount essentially produces a single table of postings
whose fields are always joined with the fields of the transaction which
contains them.
e.g.

   

It all boils down to how you want to aggregate them.
You can aggregate them by account name.
You can aggregate them by tag.
You can aggregate them by combinations of those (and other fields as well).

The default reports (balance sheet, income statement) use the account names
to produce aggregations, so that's one consideration, but it doesn't matter
much, as in a future version of Beancount, the reports will be produced by
queries as well (more easily customizable in that way).



Personally, I like simple account names so I'd go with that plus tags.
>
> Ledger has an interesting concept called pivot which allows you to do
> both.  It allows you to make metadata information to become part of
> the account name.
>
> e.g.:
>
> 2018-04-22 * Income from ABC
> Assets:Bank100.00 EUR
> Income:Business:Hosting   -100.00 EUR
> ; Customer: ABC
>
> 2018-04-22 * Income from CDE
> Assets:Bank150.00 EUR
> Income:Business:Hosting   -150.00 EUR
> ; Customer: CDE
>
> Normal balance:
>
> ledger -f a bal income
>  -250.00 EUR  Income:Business:Hosting
>
> Balance with --pivot:
>
> ledger -f a bal income --pivot Customer
>  -250.00 EUR  Customer
>  -100.00 EURABC:Income:Business:Hosting
>  -150.00 EURCDE:Income:Business:Hosting
> 
>  -250.00 EUR
>
> The same would be easy to do with a beancount plugin.  I don't know if
> anyone has done it already.  If not, I intend to create one in the
> near future.
>

You can achieve the same thing already with a group-by on the (account,
meta) pair:


plugin "beancount.plugins.auto"

2018-04-22 * "Income from ABC"
customer: "ABC"
Assets:Bank100.00 EUR
Income:Business:Hosting   -100.00 EUR

2018-04-22 * "Income from CDE"
customer: "CDE"
Assets:Bank150.00 EUR
Income:Business:Hosting   -150.00 EUR


;; bean-query
/home/blais/r/q/beancount-data/user/michlmayr/groupby.beancount
;; "select account, entry_meta('customer'), sum(position) where account ~
'Income' group by 1, 2"
;; account ent sum_positio
;; --- --- ---
;; Income:Business:Hosting ABC -100.00 EUR
;; Income:Business:Hosting CDE -150.00 EUR

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Re: When to use tags and when to create separate account?

[Justus Pendleton]

On Saturday, April 21, 2018 at 7:37:28 PM UTC+7, mpl...@gmail.com wrote:
>
> As the title says i wonder when to use tags and when to create separate 
> account?
>

I don't know if there's really any set best practice. I use tags for 
(relatively) short lived things. For instance, if I'm on a vacation, it all 
goes to Expenses:Vacation but I'll tag each vacation separately #iceland 
#hongkong etc. Or if I'm trying to get any kind of "cross-account" view on 
something. Say I'm doing a home remodel. I would tag everything as #remodel 
even if various expenses might come from multiple accounts (Expense:Tax, 
Expense:Legal, Expense:etc).

In your case since it is more of an on-going thing I would create sub 
accounts as you've done. But that's just me.

One good thing about plaintext accounting is that it is (somewhat) easy to 
massively restructure everything if you ever change your mind.

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