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I really don't know for whom this is for. For Normal People: Double Entry even though may sound simple, it is quite a difficult concept to grasp. For the sake

I really don't know for whom this is for. For Normal People: Double Entry even though may sound simple, it is quite a difficult concept to grasp. For the sake of double entry we use counter entries that take months to grasp. For example - Amortization, Allowance etc. More over double entry method strives for standardization of entries. Having a plaintext non-autocompleting solution without accounting for only handful fixed type transactions....I just could wrap my head around it. Moreover with online connected mobile solutions that are most of the time free why bother using this when the steep learning curve doesn't yield any marginal benefit. For Accountant: Excel is god and whatever accounting software the org is using is an acceptable solution --- Even though the FAQs and the previous discussion has addressed this exact same issue. I really don't know what type of people would use plain text command line solutions except for the sake of using plain text command line solutions.

smichael 5y ago
It is a good question to ask. You say the FAQ has addressed it... I guess it was not convincing ? (If you remember where, please point me to it..) PTA tools, some of them at least, can scale well from beginner-level single entry accounting, or even zero entry "accounting" (just a list of dated event descriptions), to fully general double entry accounting that can model any financial event. I always encourage people to start out simple. What usually happens is they learn and become more interested and more sophisticated as time goes on. So I would say one group of people this appeals to is people who want to get their hands dirty with Double Entry Bookkeeping, with the support of a lively and enthusiastic community, in order to understand it better. Another is people who are expert with text editors, scripting and programming and want an accounting system where they can bring these skills and insights to bear. Another is people who want total control and privacy of their financial records. Another is people who want their financial data to be accessible and usable for a very long time (even without software, if it came to that).
- rambambram 5y ago
  Good reasons indeed. I'm not a user of this PTA, but a couple of months ago I decided to write my own simple bookkeeping software. I reckoned: if I have to learn double entry bookkeeping one way or another, I want to do that step-by-step with my own software. Just something running locally now. I also build in some (as I call 'm) Semi-Automatic Shortcuts, which let me enter standard recurring entries. Click-click-done. And the best thing: I now understand what this whole double entry bookkeeping thing is. Even for using of-the-shelf software from a third party, you need to learn the idea and skills behind double entry bookkeeping. The software is not going to fix that for you. P.S. If anybody is interested in a simple locally deployed PHP-script to do bookkeeping, send me a message. There's also a simple timetracker, a balance sheet, profit/loss statement, etc. You need a local server and MySQL database to run it. I guess in it's essence it's applicable worldwide, but if you're from The Netherlands, it's ready to do taxes for you.
djhworld 5y ago
For beancount there is an Emacs mode which supports auto-complete, and visual tricks like collapsing to make the file easier to navigate. Granted using Emacs isn't exactly for everyone, but there are a bunch of tools out there to make editing the text file much easier
Lio 5y ago
I've used Ledger for a number of years because I'm comfortable using plain text files. I just send CSV exports and reports to my accountant. I'm an independent software developer working on my own. I guess it's useful for people like me.
- anyfactor 5y ago
  How are you generating the reports? Are they in PDF?
  - Lio 5y ago
    I use plain text to begin with and then run them through pandoc with html template. And either send them as word or pdf files. It’s not particularly sophisticated but it works and it’s simple enough to live with.
speleding 5y ago
Well, my company has been using Ledger CLI for a decade. It has a few large advantages over off-the-shelf accounting packages, the primary one is that it allows us to extend the "Everything is code" approach to everything from ops to accounting. - For example, instead of someone needing to remember passwords to five different current accounts and credit card sites, there are ruby scripts that download the data, convert them into journal entries and get committed to git. (Commercial packages can read your credit card data too, but there will always be a data source you need that they don't support) - The scripts get committed and version controlled, but the ledger files themselves go into git as well. So you can bi-sect, revert, merge. All the tools git gives you that are an order more powerful than what an accounting package will have. - As an organisation grows it will run into weird business specific processes, e.g. some tax or reporting requirement that your off-the-shelf package cannot do. If it's all just plain text files and code then the reporting requirement is one more ruby script away. (I've been a consultant in a previous life and you wouldn't believe the man hours that get lost in accounting departments with people doing these manual chores) - Filling out quarterly tax statement is again just a single script. Took a bit of time to get it to work but now saves a lot of man hours each time. There is a disadvantage: your average accountant won't know what ledger is or how to use it. But we have yet another little script that converts the ledger output to Excel for use in audits, etc.
- anyfactor 5y ago
  Ledger CLI in a company in this day and age? I forgot to mention I studied accounting in uni and after investing/wasting my time into understanding CLI and terminal application I have come to the conclusion that they are simply not for me. Specially if you are not using Linux in all your applications and even that is another issue. I digress... I am just incredibly intrigued by your organization's practice. Who are the people that are interacting with accounting system? I know it requires a more than capable IT person to feel comfortable using a CLI. So, do you not have assistants or accounts professionals whose main job or one of their main is to do accounting? Or is it all IT or programmers that are interacting with this system. How large is your organization. That is a question also. How long did the organization ran for to settle on understanding the basic requirements from the accounting software to commit to creating a CLI solution? How are you outputting reports that are well formatted? Audit usually requires a walkthrough process of accounting. I couldn't imagine any auditor not being surprised to see a CLI based software and let alone attempting to understand these. I have thought about creating my own CLI solution that just appended to my workbook. But it is just not scalable and simple modularity requires going down the codebase which is not something I imagine doing on the weekends. And that is why the barrage of questions. With CLI applications (not even custom GUI application) the layer of complexities for the sake of simplicity means that the person using it has a ton of highly specific needs that is not the standardized and they also have a very different definition of the word "simple".
teitoklien 5y ago
I use ledger for my transactions , daily I found it simpler than the other applications , considering i spend most of my time in text editor or cli . Moreover having to deal with multiple currencies in ledger is just so simple. Its command line parameters make it very similar to me like other tools , grep , awk , xsv , etc. Over the years, I’ve kept extending it to calculate and generate invoices for my clients and email it to them with a payment link automatically. Also combined with gnuplot its a very minimal and excellent tool for visualising my finances in any way I want to. My plan is overtime to combine it with streamlit.io to make interact-able projection tools for myself to tinker with my finances. And its community is super fun too ! Ledger and Hledger are some of my favourite tools.

smichael 5y ago

It is a good question to ask. You say the FAQ has addressed it... I guess it was not convincing ? (If you remember where, please point me to it..) PTA tools, some of them at least, can scale well from beginner-level single entry accounting, or even zero entry "accounting" (just a list of dated event descriptions), to fully general double entry accounting that can model any financial event. I always encourage people to start out simple. What usually happens is they learn and become more interested and more sophisticated as time goes on. So I would say one group of people this appeals to is people who want to get their hands dirty with Double Entry Bookkeeping, with the support of a lively and enthusiastic community, in order to understand it better. Another is people who are expert with text editors, scripting and programming and want an accounting system where they can bring these skills and insights to bear. Another is people who want total control and privacy of their financial records. Another is people who want their financial data to be accessible and usable for a very long time (even without software, if it came to that).

rambambram 5y ago
Good reasons indeed. I'm not a user of this PTA, but a couple of months ago I decided to write my own simple bookkeeping software. I reckoned: if I have to learn double entry bookkeeping one way or another, I want to do that step-by-step with my own software. Just something running locally now. I also build in some (as I call 'm) Semi-Automatic Shortcuts, which let me enter standard recurring entries. Click-click-done. And the best thing: I now understand what this whole double entry bookkeeping thing is. Even for using of-the-shelf software from a third party, you need to learn the idea and skills behind double entry bookkeeping. The software is not going to fix that for you. P.S. If anybody is interested in a simple locally deployed PHP-script to do bookkeeping, send me a message. There's also a simple timetracker, a balance sheet, profit/loss statement, etc. You need a local server and MySQL database to run it. I guess in it's essence it's applicable worldwide, but if you're from The Netherlands, it's ready to do taxes for you.

djhworld 5y ago

For beancount there is an Emacs mode which supports auto-complete, and visual tricks like collapsing to make the file easier to navigate. Granted using Emacs isn't exactly for everyone, but there are a bunch of tools out there to make editing the text file much easier

Lio 5y ago

I've used Ledger for a number of years because I'm comfortable using plain text files. I just send CSV exports and reports to my accountant. I'm an independent software developer working on my own. I guess it's useful for people like me.

anyfactor 5y ago
How are you generating the reports? Are they in PDF?
- Lio 5y ago
  I use plain text to begin with and then run them through pandoc with html template. And either send them as word or pdf files. It’s not particularly sophisticated but it works and it’s simple enough to live with.

speleding 5y ago

Well, my company has been using Ledger CLI for a decade. It has a few large advantages over off-the-shelf accounting packages, the primary one is that it allows us to extend the "Everything is code" approach to everything from ops to accounting. - For example, instead of someone needing to remember passwords to five different current accounts and credit card sites, there are ruby scripts that download the data, convert them into journal entries and get committed to git. (Commercial packages can read your credit card data too, but there will always be a data source you need that they don't support) - The scripts get committed and version controlled, but the ledger files themselves go into git as well. So you can bi-sect, revert, merge. All the tools git gives you that are an order more powerful than what an accounting package will have. - As an organisation grows it will run into weird business specific processes, e.g. some tax or reporting requirement that your off-the-shelf package cannot do. If it's all just plain text files and code then the reporting requirement is one more ruby script away. (I've been a consultant in a previous life and you wouldn't believe the man hours that get lost in accounting departments with people doing these manual chores) - Filling out quarterly tax statement is again just a single script. Took a bit of time to get it to work but now saves a lot of man hours each time. There is a disadvantage: your average accountant won't know what ledger is or how to use it. But we have yet another little script that converts the ledger output to Excel for use in audits, etc.

anyfactor 5y ago
Ledger CLI in a company in this day and age? I forgot to mention I studied accounting in uni and after investing/wasting my time into understanding CLI and terminal application I have come to the conclusion that they are simply not for me. Specially if you are not using Linux in all your applications and even that is another issue. I digress... I am just incredibly intrigued by your organization's practice. Who are the people that are interacting with accounting system? I know it requires a more than capable IT person to feel comfortable using a CLI. So, do you not have assistants or accounts professionals whose main job or one of their main is to do accounting? Or is it all IT or programmers that are interacting with this system. How large is your organization. That is a question also. How long did the organization ran for to settle on understanding the basic requirements from the accounting software to commit to creating a CLI solution? How are you outputting reports that are well formatted? Audit usually requires a walkthrough process of accounting. I couldn't imagine any auditor not being surprised to see a CLI based software and let alone attempting to understand these. I have thought about creating my own CLI solution that just appended to my workbook. But it is just not scalable and simple modularity requires going down the codebase which is not something I imagine doing on the weekends. And that is why the barrage of questions. With CLI applications (not even custom GUI application) the layer of complexities for the sake of simplicity means that the person using it has a ton of highly specific needs that is not the standardized and they also have a very different definition of the word "simple".

teitoklien 5y ago

I use ledger for my transactions , daily I found it simpler than the other applications , considering i spend most of my time in text editor or cli . Moreover having to deal with multiple currencies in ledger is just so simple. Its command line parameters make it very similar to me like other tools , grep , awk , xsv , etc. Over the years, I’ve kept extending it to calculate and generate invoices for my clients and email it to them with a payment link automatically. Also combined with gnuplot its a very minimal and excellent tool for visualising my finances in any way I want to. My plan is overtime to combine it with streamlit.io to make interact-able projection tools for myself to tinker with my finances. And its community is super fun too ! Ledger and Hledger are some of my favourite tools.