#plaintextaccounting — Public Fediverse posts

Hi @simonmic,
thanks for clarifying, so cleaned up, without header and simpler names.

Just the + sign with liabilities:vat looks odd:

; I am renting out for a monthly fee, receive payments and owe the VAT to the tax authorities.

2026-04-01 rent april per contract
assets:receivable:customer 20 €
equity:customer

2026-04-03 rent april payment
assets:bank:customer 20 €
assets:receivable:customer

2026-04-08 rent april billing/tax
assets:bank:customer -20 €
liabilities:vat:customer 3,19 €
revenues:customer 18,81 €

; #hledger #plaintextaccounting

#fedihelp wanted for #hledger #plaintextaccounting: when I sell a product to a customer, does accountng like that make sense or would you do otherwise?

; https://hledger.org/5-minute-quick-start.html#:~:text=type
account assets:bank ; type:C
account assets:cash ; type:C

account equity:conversion ; type:V

commodity 1.000,00 €
decimal-mark ,

account tax:e25:eue:42 ; type:L ; VAT 19%
account tax:e25:eue:12 ; type:R ; buniness revenue net

2026-05-10 rent may sale
liabilities:busi:prod_a:cust_23 23 €
equity:busi:prod_a:cust_23

2026-05-11 rent may payment
asset:bank:giro:busi:prod_a:cust_23 23 €
liabilities:busi:prod_a:cust_23

2026-05-12 rent may billing/tax
asset:bank:giro:busi:prod_a:cust_23 -23 €
tax:e25:eue:42:busi:prod_a:cust_23 3,67 €
tax:e25:eue:12:busi:prod_a:cust_23

Envelope budgeting: planning ahead for known expenses by regularly putting money into pre-determined categories, or envelopes. This week I show how I’m doing that in plain text accounting, specifically, Beancount.

Medium (includes blog link) https://medium.com/@miscellaneplans/ptpl-206-plain-text-accounting-envelope-budgeting-in-beancount-8a5b49b3281b
Blog https://ellanew.com/2026/05/04/ptpl-206-beancount-envelope-budgeting
#plainTextAccounting #budgeting #plainText

Constat réel :
Il n'existe pas de logiciel de compta open source / libre en France, pour les petites structures soumises à la TVA.

Oui Dolibarr, mais soyons réalistes, c'est compliqué pour les petites structures / indé.

Quoi d'autre ?

Faites moi mentir j'adorerais ça

#comptabilité #erp #plaintextaccounting #pta #gnu #opensource

Constat réel :
Il n'existe pas de logiciel de compta open source / libre en France, pour les petites structures soumises à la TVA.

Oui Dolibarr, mais soyons réalistes, c'est compliqué pour les petites structures / indé.

Quoi d'autre ?

Faites moi mentir j'adorerais ça

#comptabilité #erp #plaintextaccounting #pta #gnu #opensource

Constat réel :
Il n'existe pas de logiciel de compta open source / libre en France, pour les petites structures soumises à la TVA.

Oui Dolibarr, mais soyons réalistes, c'est compliqué pour les petites structures / indé.

Quoi d'autre ?

Faites moi mentir j'adorerais ça

#comptabilité #erp #plaintextaccounting #pta #gnu #opensource

Constat réel :
Il n'existe pas de logiciel de compta open source / libre en France, pour les petites structures soumises à la TVA.

Oui Dolibarr, mais soyons réalistes, c'est compliqué pour les petites structures / indé.

Quoi d'autre ?

Faites moi mentir j'adorerais ça

#comptabilité #erp #plaintextaccounting #pta #gnu #opensource

Constat réel :
Il n'existe pas de logiciel de compta open source / libre en France, pour les petites structures soumises à la TVA.

Oui Dolibarr, mais soyons réalistes, c'est compliqué pour les petites structures / indé.

Quoi d'autre ?

Faites moi mentir j'adorerais ça

#comptabilité #erp #plaintextaccounting #pta #gnu #opensource

G'day all. I'm pleased to announce hledger 2.0 preview release 2, with many refinements to lot tracking, based on user testing.

(And also hledger 1.52.1, which adds hledger 2-compatible G and U account types to hledger 1.)

- https://github.com/simonmichael/hledger/releases/tag/1.99.2
- https://hledger.org/relnotes.html#2026-04-28-hledger-1992
- https://hledger.org/install

Release contributors: Simon Michael, Joshua Chapman.

#hledger #plaintextaccounting

I also have a Beancount repository that has every penny I've made for writing since the beginning. And almost every expense so I know exactly how much in the red I am for my relatively inexpensive hobby. :D

#PlainTextAccounting

G'day all. A poll:

Should hledger 2 always infer market prices from @/@@ transacted prices, like Ledger ? (and drop the --infer-market-prices flag)

- Yes, having this always on would be harmless and more useful
- No, having it always on, or changing it, would be harmful
- Other, see my reply

Or vote in the matrix poll: https://matrix.to/#/!6BCfAOV-btRKuqChph9Z_ppkIj8KttMoIL_rB4eU0Os/$JveSoLuLOWS_Mg10JDUJKnu33RAclZML03JQ4Lp46qY?via=asgard.chat&via=matrix.org&via=tchncs.de

#hledger #plaintextaccounting

Glad it has helped you! A few things that might help:
- other rust projects linked at plaintextaccounting.org
- https://hledger.org/SPEC-journal.html
- https://hledger.org/hledger.html#amounts (manual is a kind of spec)
- amountp and friends in Hledger.Read.Common

#hledger #plaintextaccounting #haskell

And, hledger 2.0 preview 1 (AKA 1.99.1), which adds

automated lot tracking and capital gains calculation,
improvements to `print`'s beancount output,
and a new policy for AI-assisted development.

This is the first hledger release to explore AI-assisted development, so please do check out the evolving AI policy/FAQ: https://hledger.org/AI.html

- https://github.com/simonmichael/hledger/releases/1.99.1
- https://hledger.org/relnotes.html#2026-03-28-hledger-1991

#plaintextaccounting #haskell

I'm pleased to announce a #hledger double release! First, hledger 1.52, with

more robust paging,
faster valuation,
commodity tags,
and cost basis annotations which are preserved and can be exported (examples provided).

- https://github.com/simonmichael/hledger/releases/1.52
- https://hledger.org/relnotes.html#2026-03-20-hledger-152
- https://hledger.org/install

#plaintextaccounting #haskell

@Bebef ahso - ich verwende client-seitig kein Excel oder ähnliches.
Hab eine selbstgebaute Pipeline, welche mit Hilfe von "mlr" die exportierten CSVs normalisiert und dann basierend auf teils generierten, teils manuell definierten Regeln mit "hledger import..." meine Journals generiert.

Ich sehe also die CSVs im plain-text.

#hledger #plaintextaccounting #miller

Support question for the #hledger #plaintextaccounting community:

Prefacing this by acknowledging that I know I'm probably trying to do something weird, but I’m just getting started so please be patient.

I’m trying to import a large CSV file and am running into unbalance transaction errors. For example:
> hledger: Error: /Users/cris/checking.csv:1751-1750:
> 1751 | 2025-03-21 Starting Balance
> | SBA $-100
>
> This transaction is unbalanced.
> The real postings' sum should be 0 but is: $-100

The line from the CSV file is:
> SBA,,03/21/2025,Starting Balance,,,,,$100,$0.00,Cleared

And the relevant rule from my import rules:
> fields account1, , date, description, , , account2, comment, amount-out, amount-in,

I can manually add the above transaction without issues, so I guess I need some clarity as to what I'm doing wrong with my import file.

Thanks!

This aside, I understand the wish to have your accounting be on a rock solid foundation - I feel the same. No software is perfect, but you can still achieve it: keep your data, and if you need extra assurance, your reports, in version control; use double entry bookkeeping; regularly reconcile with real world balances; and perhaps run extra correctness checks. (#plaintextaccounting FTW.)
It is now very hard to miss any mistake made by your software - you'll see and address it right away.

+1 for https://github.com/rustledger/rustledger; there's also

https://github.com/themoritz/turbobean

https://github.com/zhang-accounting/zhang

https://github.com/tackler-ng/tackler

https://github.com/tesujimath/limabean

(#plaintextaccounting in #rustlang)

Me! 👋

Don't Skip The Docs.
For emacs tips, start at https://hledger.org/editors.html#emacs.

Don't assume you need hledger-mode (ledger-mode also works well, I use it).

With flycheck-hledger (or a VCS precommit hook), don't feel you need maximal error checking - do what's most useful now, you can always do stricter checks manually.

Don't try for perfect accounts/files/workflow up front - expect evolution.

Don't limit yourself with an ancient hledger version - get the latest.

#hledger #plaintextaccounting

@platymew That is a pretty big space ... maybe too much for a video to cover. Are you thinking mobile apps or web or desktop or plain text accounting? Or all of the above? Or you didn't know #plaintextaccounting was a thing?

@platymew @msdropbear42 Oh I'd love to make videos about #hledger and #plaintextAccounting, has been on my TODO list for a long time, but I just have to prioritise other stuff. But I'll get there eventually 👍

@alerque

Hi Caleb, I'm so excited to find that I'm not the only person interested in the breakdown of #beancount or other #plaintextaccounting

My current progress: Given this receipt

https://github.com/Endle/beanbeaver/blob/master/demo/receipt_groups/tnt_20251202/receipt_20260217_200222.jpg

It generates such beancount output:

https://github.com/Endle/beanbeaver/blob/master/demo/receipt_groups/tnt_20251202/2025-12-02_t_t_supermarket_32_70.beancount

If you are a user of my HLedger Formatter VSCode extension, you might like my just-released `hledger-fmt` CLI tool! It allows you to do the same format/sort as you can with the VSCode extension, but in your CLI. I am using this a lot in my codex skills to keep the journals consistently formatted.

https://www.npmjs.com/package/@iiatlas/hledger-fmt

https://github.com/iiAtlas/hledger-formatter/blob/main/packages/cli/README.md

#hledger #plaintextaccounting #opensource

After bouncing around ideas and several experiments, I've decided to launch a new project with the goal of creating CLI tooling that facilitates receipt handling for #plaintextaccounting workflows. LLM based OCR and data extraction has improved to the point that I believe it will be possible to make bulk data extraction useful. If you have ideas, want to contribute, or just want to follow along jump in:

https://codeberg.org/plaintextaccounting/acceptarium

#hledger #ledgercli #beancount #llm #ocr

@nobodyinperson @musicmatze Is there somewhere you'd like to start collaborating on a project related to this? I just did some tests with local ollama and the glm-ocr model and there is some promise here, but getting a full workflow together for ingesting scans, handling intermediate artifacts, extracting bits using a multi-modal LLM or any other tooling, then generating CSV or ledger transactions or whatever is a lot of moving parts. Any other #plaintextaccounting folks want to tag along?

(I'm curious if anybody knows who the guy in the top-hat is at @0:25 in that video—my brain wants to say it's Jason Scott of archive.org fame or Collin Dean of #plaintextaccounting fame, but it could also just be Random Dude in a Top Hat…much like all bald guys look alike to the untrained eye, it might be that all top-hat-wearing guys look alike to my untrained eye)

@musicmatze What works surprisingly well is having a local @ollama do the OCR, and other stuff, including writing #plainTextAccounting transactions. I haven't had time to implement that fully though.

https://youtu.be/treF7oFLLmk?si=txA4iy0zcpxub_H_&t=119

To be clear, #ActualBudget was REALLY getting good when I left - felt like jumping ship right as it hit its stride

They've added custom reports with Excel-style formulas, a burndown chart, and the UI keeps improving. Genuinely great #opensource budgeting software

But as a #SoftwareEngineer, the scriptability of #beancount is a huge win. I can pipe data through #fzf for fuzzy account selection, write #Python scripts that understand my finances, and build weird custom tools that would be impossible in a GUI app

Sometimes you just need to "grep" your money

#plainTextAccounting #CLI #devTools #personalFinance #fava #budgeting

To be clear, #ActualBudget was REALLY getting good when I left - felt like jumping ship right as it hit its stride

They've added custom reports with Excel-style formulas, a burndown chart, and the UI keeps improving. Genuinely great #opensource budgeting software

But as a #SoftwareEngineer, the scriptability of #beancount is a huge win. I can pipe data through #fzf for fuzzy account selection, write #Python scripts that understand my finances, and build weird custom tools that would be impossible in a GUI app

Sometimes you just need to "grep" your money

#plainTextAccounting #CLI #devTools #personalFinance #fava #budgeting

Made the switch from #ActualBudget to #beancount for my personal finances

The ecosystem is nice
- #fava, #beangulp for imports, #beanahead for recurring transactions, #favaCustomDashboards for charts, and #favaInvestor for portfolio tracking

Also went overboard with custom stuff:
- PDF importers with #ML payee/account prediction
- Custom linters for validation
- Forked #favaEnvelope for envelope budgeting
- #Makefile with 28 targets for price fetching to #FIRE calcs

#plainTextAccounting is great when you can just write #Python to solve your edge cases

#personalFinance #doubleEntryAccounting #CLI #fintech #devlife

Made the switch from #ActualBudget to #beancount for my personal finances

The ecosystem is nice
- #fava, #beangulp for imports, #beanahead for recurring transactions, #favaCustomDashboards for charts, and #favaInvestor for portfolio tracking

Also went overboard with custom stuff:
- PDF importers with #ML payee/account prediction
- Custom linters for validation
- Forked #favaEnvelope for envelope budgeting
- #Makefile with 28 targets for price fetching to #FIRE calcs

#plainTextAccounting is great when you can just write #Python to solve your edge cases

#personalFinance #doubleEntryAccounting #CLI #fintech #devlife

Made the switch from #ActualBudget to #beancount for my personal finances

The ecosystem is nice
- #fava, #beangulp for imports, #beanahead for recurring transactions, #favaCustomDashboards for charts, and #favaInvestor for portfolio tracking

Also went overboard with custom stuff:
- PDF importers with #ML payee/account prediction
- Custom linters for validation
- Forked #favaEnvelope for envelope budgeting
- #Makefile with 28 targets for price fetching to #FIRE calcs

#plainTextAccounting is great when you can just write #Python to solve your edge cases

#personalFinance #doubleEntryAccounting #CLI #fintech #devlife

Made the switch from #ActualBudget to #beancount for my personal finances

The ecosystem is nice
- #fava, #beangulp for imports, #beanahead for recurring transactions, #favaCustomDashboards for charts, and #favaInvestor for portfolio tracking

Also went overboard with custom stuff:
- PDF importers with #ML payee/account prediction
- Custom linters for validation
- Forked #favaEnvelope for envelope budgeting
- #Makefile with 28 targets for price fetching to #FIRE calcs

#plainTextAccounting is great when you can just write #Python to solve your edge cases

#personalFinance #doubleEntryAccounting #CLI #fintech #devlife

Made the switch from #ActualBudget to #beancount for my personal finances

The ecosystem is nice
- #fava, #beangulp for imports, #beanahead for recurring transactions, #favaCustomDashboards for charts, and #favaInvestor for portfolio tracking

Also went overboard with custom stuff:
- PDF importers with #ML payee/account prediction
- Custom linters for validation
- Forked #favaEnvelope for envelope budgeting
- #Makefile with 28 targets for price fetching to #FIRE calcs

#plainTextAccounting is great when you can just write #Python to solve your edge cases

#personalFinance #doubleEntryAccounting #CLI #fintech #devlife

Last night, I did monthly1 accounting for my publishing business. And since it was the beginning of the year, I figured it would be an easy2 task to finally stop regenerating my accounting data from source .xlsx and .csv files from 2002 and just close off each year into a final .beancount.

It did not go well2.

I really need to get to the commission, but I'm going to try fixing it for a few hours before giving up until 2027.

#PlainTextAccounting #Beancount

1. Two months, I skipped December because I couldn't find the energy. ↩︎

2. I didn't do it because it was easy, I did it because I thought it would be easy. ↩︎ ↩︎

@sushee @monospace

and just as (if not more) importantly, open standards.

It's one of the main reasons that just about all my data-files are #plaintext.
• My calendar? in remind(1) format
• My finances? In ledger(1) #plaintextaccounting format
• My todos? in todo.txt format and linked to my ~/.plan
• My notes? just text-file with a bit of light markdown

Tools may come and go, but the data is still accessible with any text-editor and mungable to other formats as needed.

any #beancount or #fava users here? i’ve been wrestling with a fava-envelope bug for days and unfortunately, i think i’ve hit the upper ceiling of my limited python ability 😭 this is the issue i’ve filed on the repo if anyone’s able to help: https://github.com/polarmutex/fava-envelope/issues/107 i’d be eternally grateful

the initial installation simply fails, what i’ve had success doing is building from source in a virtual environment (homebred-installed python). the plugin registers but doesn’t render any information

hopefully fosstodon gets this to the right people! thanks so much in advance 🙏

#fosstodon @fosstodon #OpenSource #PlainTextAccounting #python

Natürlich habe ich mich in das #beancount rabbit hole begeben... 😀 #plaintextaccounting

@driedmushroom @tea I have my own bespoke bash script, but it's basically a log of bought and drank. It's all stored in sqlite so i can do these queries.
My finances i track with #hledger. One could probably also track their tea using #plaintextaccounting.

hledger-1.51.2 fixes some regressions and brings some minor improvements.

- https://github.com/simonmichael/hledger/releases/1.51.2
- https://hledger.org/relnotes.html#2026-01-08-hledger-1512
- https://hledger.org/install

#hledger is free, robust, friendly, multicurrency, double-entry, #plaintextaccounting software for unix, mac, windows, and the web.

If you handle your #plaintextaccounting using either #vim or #neovim based on either #ledgercli or #hledger then be sure to update your plugins! The vim-ledger plugin got some much needed love in the last 48 hours with a lot of rough edges smoothed over and a few new features.

https://github.com/ledger/vim-ledger/releases/tag/v1.3.0

If you're a #beancount peep then carry on as before. If you do #bookkeeping without PTA at all then what are you even waiting for? If you use #emacs then this post is in another castle.

One Number I Trust: Plain-Text Accounting for a Multi-Currency Household

https://lalitm.com/post/one-number-i-trust/

#HackerNews #PlainTextAccounting #MultiCurrencyHousehold #FinancialManagement #PersonalFinance #TrustInNumbers

This was a lot of work, so I'm putting it out there in case someone else finds it useful:

new docs describing #OpenCollective's #csv, and #hledger rules for converting it.

https://github.com/simonmichael/hledger/tree/master/examples/csv/other/opencollective

#plaintextaccounting

This was a lot of work, so I'm putting it out there in case someone else finds it useful:

new docs describing #OpenCollective's #csv, and #hledger rules for converting it.

https://github.com/simonmichael/hledger/tree/master/examples/csv/other/opencollective

#plaintextaccounting

@nobodyinperson @realestninja Second on both counts here; #plaintextaccounting is the only way to fly. Any of #beancount, #ledger, or #hledger are decent choices which some tradeoffs for each, but the latter is my choice as well having tried the other two.

🎄 Advent of Donations - Day 8 🎄

Today I've selected a project that has become essential to how I run my self-employment business: hledger.

It's a plain text accounting tool and I use it for all my accounting.

Learn more about Advent of Donations and hledger in my latest blog post update: https://britter.dev/blog/2025/12/01/advent-of-donations/#day-8---hledger

#AdventOfDonations #hledger #plaintextaccounting

Found in awk-pta's README, this great interview with Prof. Alfred Aho about the origins of AWK: https://a-z.readthedocs.io/en/latest/awk.html

"it was born from the necessity to meet a need. As a researcher at Bell Labs in the early 1970s, I found myself keeping track of budgets..."

"Some Wall Street financial houses used AWK when it first came out to balance their books because it was so easy to write data-processing programs in AWK..."

Plot twist ! Is AWK the original #plaintextaccounting tool ??

#awk #gawk

Found in awk-pta's README, this great interview with Prof. Alfred Aho about the origins of AWK: https://a-z.readthedocs.io/en/latest/awk.html

"it was born from the necessity to meet a need. As a researcher at Bell Labs in the early 1970s, I found myself keeping track of budgets..."

"Some Wall Street financial houses used AWK when it first came out to balance their books because it was so easy to write data-processing programs in AWK..."

Plot twist ! Is AWK the original #plaintextaccounting tool ??

#awk #gawk

Found in awk-pta's README, this great interview with Prof. Alfred Aho about the origins of AWK: https://a-z.readthedocs.io/en/latest/awk.html

"it was born from the necessity to meet a need. As a researcher at Bell Labs in the early 1970s, I found myself keeping track of budgets..."

"Some Wall Street financial houses used AWK when it first came out to balance their books because it was so easy to write data-processing programs in AWK..."

Plot twist ! Is AWK the original #plaintextaccounting tool ??

#awk #gawk

Found in awk-pta's README, this great interview with Prof. Alfred Aho about the origins of AWK: https://a-z.readthedocs.io/en/latest/awk.html

"it was born from the necessity to meet a need. As a researcher at Bell Labs in the early 1970s, I found myself keeping track of budgets..."

"Some Wall Street financial houses used AWK when it first came out to balance their books because it was so easy to write data-processing programs in AWK..."

Plot twist ! Is AWK the original #plaintextaccounting tool ??

#awk #gawk