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These ledger formats have what feels to me an overly verbose multi-line structure for each transaction. For 20 years, I have been using a format that combines

These ledger formats have what feels to me an overly verbose multi-line structure for each transaction. For 20 years, I have been using a format that combines a diary and ledger. The 'to' and 'from' accounts are either bank/asset accounts (sav, cc, hl for home loan, ...) or spend categories (snack, shopping, clothes, ... ). Each year I finish 31 December with a `# Closing balances` section for each bank/investment/pension account, then start a new text file `2019.txt` with an `# Opening balances` section before 1 January's entry. Here is a typical day's format: # 2019-05-27 Mon 2.50 sav>lunch Cafe Nero - Coffee 100.00 sav>cc Transfer - Credit card repayment amt from>to forex: shop - desc [txn #] # Diary * <topic> - <what> * Times - Sleep 01:00-06:00 5h. Run 45m. Work 08:00-18:00 10h. * Work - Meeting with xxx on xxx. We agreed to xxx. * Friends - Lunch with xxx * Note - Running shoes are Asics GT-2000, size 48, model T500N. # Links * Hledger: Robust plain text accounting - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20012499 For the first 5 years, I was single and reconciled everything down to the cent, using an AWK script to generate totals to match against my bank statements. When I got married, all our accounts switched to joint ones. I didn't want to track my my partner's side of our spending. So these logs became more a personal diary than a fully reconciled ledger. Anything I want to remember long-term goes either there or secured in a password safe.

kd5bjo 7y ago
You reinvented the accounting daybook: Shops doing paper accounting never went through the hassle of double-entry accounts for each sale. Instead, each was a single line in the day’s journal, and closing for the day involved reconciling the till with the sales journal, and entering the entire day’s revenue as a single transaction in the master account book.
fiatjaf 7y ago
I agree. They are too verbose. One line is enough. I actually think personal logs are useful for all things, not only money. In my business we use a text-file with logs for all the events, money, business stuff that happens, and then there's a program that reads all the lines, parses them and turns them into a final "state" of the company with everything that is being done and so on. From that we generate dashboards, reports and stuff. This is the system we use: https://github.com/fiatjaf/journalstate https://github.com/fiatjaf/journalstate (but really the power is in the concept, not the implementation). I've also turned that into a TodoMVC app: https://journalstate-todomvc.alhur.es/ https://journalstate-todomvc.alhur.es/, so you can see it in action in a fancy, useless way.
smichael 7y ago
hledger has builtin support for four formats so far (journal, timeclock, timedot, csv). The current journal format can be quite light: 1/1 (food) 5 1/2 (car) 15 But I'll sometimes use csv for quick one-line entries: 1/1,food,5 1/2,car,15 Some hledger users have their own custom formats like you, and use a script to preprocess it. More format experiments are always welcome. An advantage of something like hledger over a home-grown script is more robust and versatile reporting.

kd5bjo 7y ago

You reinvented the accounting daybook: Shops doing paper accounting never went through the hassle of double-entry accounts for each sale. Instead, each was a single line in the day’s journal, and closing for the day involved reconciling the till with the sales journal, and entering the entire day’s revenue as a single transaction in the master account book.

fiatjaf 7y ago

I agree. They are too verbose. One line is enough. I actually think personal logs are useful for all things, not only money. In my business we use a text-file with logs for all the events, money, business stuff that happens, and then there's a program that reads all the lines, parses them and turns them into a final "state" of the company with everything that is being done and so on. From that we generate dashboards, reports and stuff. This is the system we use: https://github.com/fiatjaf/journalstate https://github.com/fiatjaf/journalstate (but really the power is in the concept, not the implementation). I've also turned that into a TodoMVC app: https://journalstate-todomvc.alhur.es/ https://journalstate-todomvc.alhur.es/, so you can see it in action in a fancy, useless way.

smichael 7y ago

hledger has builtin support for four formats so far (journal, timeclock, timedot, csv). The current journal format can be quite light: 1/1 (food) 5 1/2 (car) 15 But I'll sometimes use csv for quick one-line entries: 1/1,food,5 1/2,car,15 Some hledger users have their own custom formats like you, and use a script to preprocess it. More format experiments are always welcome. An advantage of something like hledger over a home-grown script is more robust and versatile reporting.