7 ms·
> Some utility companies bill every 2 or 3 months. This makes monthly stats meaningless (why is September so high compared to August? did I spent too much or is
by eterps 2y ago
> Some utility companies bill every 2 or 3 months. This makes monthly stats meaningless (why is September so high compared to August? did I spent too much or is it the effect of the phone bill of the previous quarter?).
According to Claude 3.5, ledger/hledger handles that situation like this:
; Automatically allocate $60 quarterly phone bill across 3 months
~ monthly
Expenses:Phone $20
Liabilities:Accrued $-20
; When actual bill comes
2023-09-15 Phone Company
Liabilities:Accrued $60
Assets:Bank $-60
This approach:
1. Accrues monthly portions ($20) to a liability account
2. When the real bill arrives, clears the accrued amount
- taviso 2y agoI think that's a miss for Claude, this doesn't look right at all. The accrual account is an okay solution, but the syntax is wrong! That syntax is only used for budgeting and forecasting. I think the solution is effective dates, there is an example pretty close to this scenario in the manual: https://ledger-cli.org/doc/ledger3.html#Effective-Dates https://ledger-cli.org/doc/ledger3.html#Effective-Dates
- eterps 2y agoThank you for pointing this out, will check your link instead.
- simonmic 2y agoI don't think it's terribly wrong. It will generate the desired entries (internally) and proper reports, if you add the appropriate option (--forecast=... for hledger, something else for Ledger). Or you could use it once to generate permanent journal entries, in your main journal or a forecast journal: hledger print --forecast='2024-11-01..+3 months' >>$LEDGER_FILE Effective dates are another solution, but IMHO a misfeature, I mention this for newcomers: https://hledger.org/hledger.html#secondary-dates https://hledger.org/hledger.html#secondary-dates