ledgerで経理

Today's Topic: Background & Motivation

• Not related to work tasks
• Not at all an expert or very knowledgeable in the field
  (But: Everyone uses money, so needs to manage it.)
• Motivation
  • Household CFO
  • Until now: LibreOffice & various spreadsheets
  • One Problem: LibreOffice
  • Another problem: Merging data sources
• Recently discovered ledger and gave it a try

Accounting

Why Accounting?

• For companies: usually required by law
  (to calculate taxes, inform shareholders etc.)
• For private persons/households:
  • Locate and track: How much do you get (from where), how much do you have (where), how much do you spend (how)?
  • Manage: Pay your bills on time.
  • Optimize: What can you do to improve the situation?
  • Plan: What can you afford and when?

Double-Entry Accounting (2)

• Notes
  • In the real world, this is more complex. (Why??)
• Observations
  • The sum of amounts is zero in every transaction.
  • The sum of balances is zero across all accounts.
• Advantages
  • Location of money is immediately observable.
  • A lot of “virtual accounts” can be added for fine-grained reporting.
  • Invoice date and payment date can be different.

Account Structure

• Common structure
  • Income (収入): where money comes from
  • Expenses (費用): where money goes to
  • Assets (資産): where money is
  • Liabilities (負債): money you owe
  • Equity (資本?): “the real value of your property”
• Examples:
  • Income»Salary (will get more and more negative)
  • Expenses»Food (will get more and more positive)
  • Assets»Cash, Assets»Bank Account
  • Liabilities»Credit Card

About ledger

Basic Usage

Concept

• Maintain a plain text file with your transactions.
  (Such a list of transactions is a “ledger”/原簿.)
  • Plain text: Possible to have it in git, encrypt it, print it, copy & paste, edit it with scripts, …
• Execute ledger on that file for reporting.
• ledger checks that everything balances and computes the numbers for the report.
• In particular, ledger is not a tool to enter transactions!

Balance (残高) Report

ledger can compute the balance on each account.

• Input file:

  2016-02-20 Company
    Assets:Bank   123,456 JPY
    Income:Salary
  
  2016-02-22 Bank
    Assets:Cash    20,000 JPY
    Assets:Bank
  
  2016-02-26 Landlord
    Expenses:Rent  70,000 JPY
    Assets:Bank
  
  2016-02-27 Supermarket
    Expenses:Food   2,017 JPY
    Assets:Cash
  

• $ ledger balance

            51,439 JPY  Assets
            33,456 JPY    Bank
            17,983 JPY    Cash
            72,017 JPY  Expenses
             2,017 JPY    Food
            70,000 JPY    Rent
          -123,456 JPY  Income:Salary
  --------------------
                     0
  

  (The input file name is passed with -f or the LEDGER_FILE environment variable.)

Register Report

ledger can display all transaction for an account with a running total.

$ ledger register Cash

16-Feb-22 Bank          Assets:Cash     20,000 JPY   20,000 JPY
16-Feb-25 Lawson        Assets:Cash       -325 JPY   19,675 JPY
16-Feb-27 Supermarket   Assets:Cash     -2,017 JPY   17,658 JPY
16-Mar-01 Lawson        Assets:Cash       -288 JPY   17,370 JPY

$ ledger --period "feb 2016" register Food

16-Feb-25 Lawson        Expenses:Food      325 JPY      325 JPY
16-Feb-27 Supermarket   Expenses:Food    2,017 JPY    2,342 JPY

Other Reports

• Some other commands
  • equity: collapse all transactions into a single one
  • xml, csv: list transactions in other formats
  • xact: create a new transaction from a pattern
• Some parameters
  • --period, --begin, --end: date limit
  • --strict: check that all used entities exist
  • all commands take a regular expression to filter accounts

Example Use Patterns

Dealing With Cash

• Problem: Tracking all the little cash expenses

• One possible solution: Pay as much as possible using credit card, and treat cash as “Expense”, not “Asset”.

  2016-03-02 ATM
    Expenses:Cash   10,000 JPY
    Assets:Bank
  

• To track an “important” expense, move money from Expenses:Cash to the target account:

  2016-03-05 Expensive Restaurant
    Expenses:Eat Out  8,000 JPY
    Expenses:Cash
  

Dealing With Cash (2)

• If you do track your cash expenses (collecting receipts or using some app), at some point target/actual check (reconciliation) needs to be done.

• For checks, balance assertions can be used.

  2016-03-05 Check balance
    ; ledger run will fail if we don't have 123 JPY
    Assets:Cash    = 123 JPY
  

• To correct the amount, balance resets can be used.

  2016-03-06 Correct balance
    ; take from Expenses:Loss what is required to get to 123 JPY
    Assets:Cash    = 123 JPY
    Expenses:Loss
  

Advanced Features

Currencies/Commodities

• A “currency” is just any string. You could also do inventory tracking using ledger:

  • 2016-02-29 Shopping day
      Fridge
      Supermarket    -2 Apples
      Konbini        -3 Beers
    

  • $ ledger balance fridge

    2 Apples
     3 Beers  Fridge
    

• Currencies can also be exchanged into one another with exchange rate computation…

  • 2016-02-29 ATM @ Europe
      Assets:Cash      50 EUR
      Assets:Bank  -6,258 JPY
    

  • $ ledger prices

    2016/02/29 EUR        125.16 JPY
    

• … or manually given:

  • 2016-02-29 ATM @ Europe
      Assets:Cash  50 EUR @ 125 JPY
      Assets:Bank
    

  • $ ledger balance -X JPY Bank

    JPY-6250  Assets:Bank
    

Metadata

• ledger allows to attach metadata to transactions, such as effective dates, IDs, clearing state, and tags.

  2016-02-15=2016-03-27 ! (123-7654) Rakuten
    Expenses:Books           780 JPY  ; payee: HappyBooks 123
    Expenses:Household     2,350 JPY  ; payee: MyHousehold
    Liabilities:Credit Card
    ; :OnlineShopping:Manga:
    ; ShippingMethod: deliver to home address
    ; ShipmentDate:: [2016-02-16]
  

• The meaning of metadata is completely up to the user.
• Use the data when querying:
  • $ ledger --effective balance
  • $ ledger --pending|--cleared register
  • $ ledger register tag manga
  • $ ledger register tag ShipmentDate < [2016-02-20]

Budgeting

Set up a budget and compare it against real expenses.

~ Monthly
  Expenses:Eat Out  10,000 JPY
  Assets:Cash

2016-02-14 Izakaya
  Expenses:Eat Out   3,723 JPY
  Assets:Cash

2016-02-28 Medium Restaurant
  Expenses:Eat Out   5,182 JPY
  Assets:Cash

2016-03-04 Expensive Restaurant
  Expenses:Eat Out  12,300 JPY
  Assets:Cash

$ ledger --monthly --budget register Expenses

16-Feb-01 - 16-Feb-29    Expenses:Eat Out   -1,095 JPY   -1,095 JPY
16-Mar-01 - 16-Mar-31    Expenses:Eat Out    2,300 JPY    1,205 JPY

Forecasting

Set up a budget and forecast your financial situation.

~ Monthly
  Expenses:Eat Out  10,000 JPY
  Expenses:Food     15,000 JPY
  Expenses:Rent     70,000 JPY
  Income:Salary   -123,456 JPY
  Assets

$ ledger --monthly --forecast "d < [2016-09]" register Assets

16-Apr-01 - 16-Apr-30    Assets             28,456 JPY   28,456 JPY
16-May-01 - 16-May-31    Assets             28,456 JPY   56,912 JPY
16-Jun-01 - 16-Jun-30    Assets             28,456 JPY   85,368 JPY
16-Jul-01 - 16-Jul-31    Assets             28,456 JPY  113,824 JPY
16-Aug-01 - 16-Aug-31    Assets             28,456 JPY  142,280 JPY

The ledger Ecosystem

Related Tools

• Forks
  • hledger (Haskell)
  • beancount (Python)
  • and more …
• Tools to add transactions
  • ledgerhelpers
  • tools to import CSV
  • tools to import OFX
  • native GnuCash import
  • (or roll your own using the Python API)

emacs Integration

• ledger-mode provides syntax highlighting, tab completion, integrated reports etc.

Features Not Presented Today

• Automatic transactions
• Python integration
• Advanced stock valuation
• Report formatting

Summary

• ledger helps you track your money, stock, and (optionally) apples.
• Powerful reporting commands allow to detect spending patterns and plan for future expenses.
• A number of tools help to get data in and out of your ledger files.