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"User-friendly" accounting software (such as QuickBooks) tends to obscure the fundamental simplicity of double-entry accounting. If you want to actually unders

by tc 16y ago

"User-friendly" accounting software (such as QuickBooks) tends to obscure the fundamental simplicity of double-entry accounting. If you want to actually understand your books, use something simple and powerful like John Wiegley's ledger: https://github.com/jwiegley/ledger/ https://github.com/jwiegley/ledger/

tectonic 16y ago
If you use Ledger, check out my command-line version of Mint for Ledger called Reckon. http://blog.andrewcantino.com/post/1503439483/command-line-accounting-with-ledger-and-reckon http://blog.andrewcantino.com/post/1503439483/command-line-a...
- narcissus 16y ago
  By coincidence, did you know that the company that distributes Quicken / QuickBooks in Australia is called Reckon?
zdw 16y ago
I wish I could vote this up twice. Ledger is awesome and strips away all the crap that gets in the way of actually seeing the data. There are also haskell and python implementations out there if that's more up your hacking alley.
- philips 16y ago
  The haskell implementation has a web command that presents a nice html page with summaries of every account along with the ability to filter by date or account. It is a nice way of quickly analyzing the current state of affairs.
- duck 16y ago
  Anyone know of a good Ruby clone?
  - martinkl 16y ago
    I wrote a Ruby gem for accounting stuff a while ago: https://github.com/ept/invoicing https://github.com/ept/invoicing --- it's unmaintained at the moment, but it does a lot of things right, so anyone interested in taking it over would be most welcome to do so.
- cwp 16y ago
  My favourite feature is this: like the article, ledger completely ignores any the concept of debits and credits. Negative numbers FTW!
  - praptak 16y ago
    I find this strange. Last time I had some interaction with a ledger negative credit and positive debit were different beasts. Granted, their contribution towards the balance was the same, nevertheless they were different things. In particular a correction of an erroneous debit entry was stored as a negative debit, not positive credit. Representing both with the same number seems a bit suspicious to me.
- speleding 16y ago
  Thanks zdw! Your comment made me try out ledger and I'm loving it after a day or two. Everything else I tried before seemed to eventually "get in the way" of how I'd like to do things. Only downside is that the documentation is a bit lacking for version 3.0. I'm going to be using this for my business in parallel with what I have and I'll switch over if I continue to like it. There is probably a business case here for turning this into a commercial product with more importing / reporting.
Adaptive 16y ago
I recently became aware of ledger when Wiegley was interview on the floss podcast: http://castroller.com/Podcasts/FlossWeekly/2140974-FLOSS%20Weekly%20150%20Ledger http://castroller.com/Podcasts/FlossWeekly/2140974-FLOSS%20W... Worth a listen both from a general open source development perspective as well as for an overview of the system itself.
icefox 16y ago
Been using ledger for over a year now and it was exactly what I was looking for. I have used various things in the past, but they never imported everything or didn't work for some edge case and eventually stopped using them. Being able to quickly write scripts on top of it for import, analysis, graphs, price and budget predication etc makes me a happy camper. Not to mention being text the files get saved in git for even more possible analysis :)
gnosis 16y ago
How does ledger compare to gnucash?
- nas 16y ago
  Quite different, basically no gui. I like ledger better. I have my personal and two different business accounts using ledger. I use git to VC the data files. I've done quite a bit of scripting to make the system more convenient (automate billing, tracking inventory, converting between cash-based and accrual reporting). Ledger is really quite simple. The core of it could be implemented pretty easily (witness the number of "ledger" clones). I have my own somewhat compatible ledger program written in Python. It's crude otherwise I would release code.
  - follower 16y ago
    > It's crude otherwise I would release code. Everything starts out crude--release it anyway! Seriously.
johnzabroski 16y ago
I have to say, I hated the blog post, but being pointed out this plus that Reckon code somebody else posted, has made it worth reading and criticizing.
abalashov 16y ago
We've been extremely happy with SQL Ledger - http://www.sql-ledger.com/ http://www.sql-ledger.com/ It's open-source and it's PostgreSQL-backed, so it's easy to automate various bookkeeping phenomena by attaching triggers to SQL Ledger table changes that propagate elsewhere, or vice versa. Its interface is very web 1.0-ish, and in virtue of that, very fast and responsive. It's definitely rather low-level in the sense that it's easy to shoot yourself in the foot with it. It's like programming in C instead of C# or Java. It requires understanding double-entry accounting and GAAP at a fairly erudite fundamental level, because unlike QuickBooks, there are no glossy splash screens or inline thought balloons to teach you Accounting 101. It's also lacking in many high-level features such as a payroll module, and has fairly rudimentary stubs for many others. It is, however, quite good at managing parts, assembles and inventory if tangible goods are your thing. It's a little more problematic for a service company; outside of AR and AP, I tend to think of it as little more than just a general ledger. That may not be giving it enough credit, though; it does have quite a lot of features. Nevertheless, it is a great tool for a startup comfortable with using home-grown open-source solutions.

by tc 16y ago

tectonic 16y ago

If you use Ledger, check out my command-line version of Mint for Ledger called Reckon. http://blog.andrewcantino.com/post/1503439483/command-line-accounting-with-ledger-and-reckon http://blog.andrewcantino.com/post/1503439483/command-line-a...

narcissus 16y ago
By coincidence, did you know that the company that distributes Quicken / QuickBooks in Australia is called Reckon?

zdw 16y ago

I wish I could vote this up twice. Ledger is awesome and strips away all the crap that gets in the way of actually seeing the data. There are also haskell and python implementations out there if that's more up your hacking alley.

philips 16y ago
The haskell implementation has a web command that presents a nice html page with summaries of every account along with the ability to filter by date or account. It is a nice way of quickly analyzing the current state of affairs.
duck 16y ago
Anyone know of a good Ruby clone?
- martinkl 16y ago
  I wrote a Ruby gem for accounting stuff a while ago: https://github.com/ept/invoicing https://github.com/ept/invoicing --- it's unmaintained at the moment, but it does a lot of things right, so anyone interested in taking it over would be most welcome to do so.
cwp 16y ago
My favourite feature is this: like the article, ledger completely ignores any the concept of debits and credits. Negative numbers FTW!
- praptak 16y ago
  I find this strange. Last time I had some interaction with a ledger negative credit and positive debit were different beasts. Granted, their contribution towards the balance was the same, nevertheless they were different things. In particular a correction of an erroneous debit entry was stored as a negative debit, not positive credit. Representing both with the same number seems a bit suspicious to me.
speleding 16y ago
Thanks zdw! Your comment made me try out ledger and I'm loving it after a day or two. Everything else I tried before seemed to eventually "get in the way" of how I'd like to do things. Only downside is that the documentation is a bit lacking for version 3.0. I'm going to be using this for my business in parallel with what I have and I'll switch over if I continue to like it. There is probably a business case here for turning this into a commercial product with more importing / reporting.

Adaptive 16y ago

I recently became aware of ledger when Wiegley was interview on the floss podcast: http://castroller.com/Podcasts/FlossWeekly/2140974-FLOSS%20Weekly%20150%20Ledger http://castroller.com/Podcasts/FlossWeekly/2140974-FLOSS%20W... Worth a listen both from a general open source development perspective as well as for an overview of the system itself.

icefox 16y ago

Been using ledger for over a year now and it was exactly what I was looking for. I have used various things in the past, but they never imported everything or didn't work for some edge case and eventually stopped using them. Being able to quickly write scripts on top of it for import, analysis, graphs, price and budget predication etc makes me a happy camper. Not to mention being text the files get saved in git for even more possible analysis :)

gnosis 16y ago

How does ledger compare to gnucash?

nas 16y ago
Quite different, basically no gui. I like ledger better. I have my personal and two different business accounts using ledger. I use git to VC the data files. I've done quite a bit of scripting to make the system more convenient (automate billing, tracking inventory, converting between cash-based and accrual reporting). Ledger is really quite simple. The core of it could be implemented pretty easily (witness the number of "ledger" clones). I have my own somewhat compatible ledger program written in Python. It's crude otherwise I would release code.
- follower 16y ago
  > It's crude otherwise I would release code. Everything starts out crude--release it anyway! Seriously.

johnzabroski 16y ago

I have to say, I hated the blog post, but being pointed out this plus that Reckon code somebody else posted, has made it worth reading and criticizing.

abalashov 16y ago

We've been extremely happy with SQL Ledger - http://www.sql-ledger.com/ http://www.sql-ledger.com/ It's open-source and it's PostgreSQL-backed, so it's easy to automate various bookkeeping phenomena by attaching triggers to SQL Ledger table changes that propagate elsewhere, or vice versa. Its interface is very web 1.0-ish, and in virtue of that, very fast and responsive. It's definitely rather low-level in the sense that it's easy to shoot yourself in the foot with it. It's like programming in C instead of C# or Java. It requires understanding double-entry accounting and GAAP at a fairly erudite fundamental level, because unlike QuickBooks, there are no glossy splash screens or inline thought balloons to teach you Accounting 101. It's also lacking in many high-level features such as a payroll module, and has fairly rudimentary stubs for many others. It is, however, quite good at managing parts, assembles and inventory if tangible goods are your thing. It's a little more problematic for a service company; outside of AR and AP, I tend to think of it as little more than just a general ledger. That may not be giving it enough credit, though; it does have quite a lot of features. Nevertheless, it is a great tool for a startup comfortable with using home-grown open-source solutions.