Inom Turdikulovledger
Ledger is a powerful, double-entry accounting system that is accessed from the UNIX command-line.
— ledger
I’m almost not used ledger-cli before. But I want to try to use it IRL.
Ledger offer double-entry accounting journal, where you track your transactions (plain text file). It’s use a standard bookkeeping approach.
Ledger transaction example:
2042/02/21 Shopping
Expenses:Food:Groceries $42.00
Assets:Checking -$42.00
In accounting every type of income or expense and every “place” which holds some value is “account” (sort of category).
Accounts examples:
- expenses;
- income;
- assets;
- liabilities;
- receivables;
- equity.
We track the flow of money from one account to another, amount of money figures twice, total balance of all accounts is always zero.
Journal example
; The opening balance (first transaction) sets up your initial financial state.
2041/12/31 * Opening Balance
Assets:Checking $1000.00
Equity:OpeningBalances
; The money comes from the employer and goes into the bank account.
2041/01/31 * Salary
Income:Salary -$1337
Assets:Checking $1337
; Groceries were paid using the bank account's electronic cash card
; so the money comes directly from the bank account.
2042/02/15 * Shopping
Expenses:Food:Groceries $42.00
Assets:Checking
; Although we know the cash sits in the wallet, everything in cash is
; considered as "lost" until recovered (see next transaction and later chapters).
2042/02/15 * ATM withdrawal
Expenses:Unknown $150.00
Assets:Checking
; Paying food with cash: Moving money from the Expenses:Unknown
; account to the food account.
2042/02/15 * Shopping
Expenses:Food:Groceries $23.00
Expenses:Unknown
; Ledger automatically reduces 'Expenses:Unknown' by $69.
2042/02/22 * Shopping
Expenses:Food:Groceries $23.00
Expenses:Clothing $46.00
Expenses:Unknown
; You can use positive (add money to an account) or negative
; (remove money from an account) amounts interchangeably.
2042/02/22 * Shopping
Expenses:Food:Groceries
Expenses:Unknown -$42.00
Quickstart
First install ledger, for me, it’s aviable in ArchLinux/NixOS community repo.
Then you need to create journal.txt file, use example above.
Then run this commands to quickly understand how it’s basicaly working:
$ # Usage: ledger -f <journal-file> [...]
$ ledger -f journal.txt balance
$ ledger -f journal.txt balance Groceries
$ ledger -f journal.txt register
# Start an interactive session
# and type "balance", then press Enter
# (press ctrl+d to quit)
$ ledger -f journal.txt