How I do command-line accounting: Ledger and Reckon
Ledger is a powerful yet simple double-entry accounting system with a command line interface, making it perfect for those of us who prefer our text editor and flat files over any confusing and inflexible accounting program.
I’ve been using Ledger for about a year now, including for balancing last year’s budget. In the process, I’ve needed both to import CSV files of financial data from various sources and to label that data with the most appropriate account. To do this, I’ve written a Ruby gem called Reckon that can usually guess bank data CSV headings, and can also use Bayesian learning to automatically categorize each entry. I think of this as Mint for the command line, but where you don’t have to trust a 3rd party with your bank account passwords.
Getting started with Ledger is pretty easy. I recommend skimming the official documentation (pdf).
I usually start out the year by making a new year.dat file and entering my business bank account’s starting balance:
2010/01/01 * Checking
Assets:Bank:Checking $5.000.00
Equity:Opening Balances
Next, I run Reckon on a CSV dump file from my bank: reckon -f bank.csv -p
If the output looks reasonable, I convert to ledger format and label everything:
$ reckon -f bank.csv -o output.dat
What is the account name of this bank account in Ledger? |Assets:Bank:Checking|
(Here I accept the default because I want to have all money flowing in and out of my bank account.)
+------------+--------+--------------------------+
| 2010/03/13 | $100.00 | GOOGLE ADSENSE REVENUE |
+------------+--------+--------------------------+
Which account provided this income? ([account]/[q]uit/[s]kip) Income:Adsense
(I decided to call this Income:Adsense.)
+------------+---------+-----------------------------+
| 2010/03/14 | -$10.00 | FEE: INCOMING DOMESTIC WIRE |
+------------+---------+-----------------------------+
To which account did this money go? ([account]/[q]uit/[s]kip) |Income:Adsense| Expenses:Bank Fees
+------------+-----------+-----------------------+
| 2010/03/14 | $1000.00 | WIRE TRANSFER DEPOSIT |
+------------+-----------+-----------------------+
Which account provided this income? ([account]/[q]uit/[s]kip) |Expenses:Bank Fees| Income:Various Sales
(Reckon guessed Expenses:Bank Fees, but I decided to call this Income:Blogging.)
+------------+-----------+------------------------+
| 2010/03/28 | $300.00 | GOOGLE ADSENSE REVENUE |
+------------+-----------+------------------------+
Which account provided this income? ([account]/[q]uit/[s]kip) |Income:Adsense|
(Notice how this time it guessed Income:Adsense correctly.)
...
Now, my output.dat file looks something like:
2010/01/01 * Checking
Assets:Bank:Checking $5.000.00
Equity:Opening Balances
2010/03/13 GOOGLE ADSENSE REVENUE
Assets:Bank:Checking $100.00
Income:Adsense -$100.00
2010/03/14 FEE: INCOMING DOMESTIC WIRE
Expenses:Bank Fees $10.00
Assets:Bank:Checking -$10.00
2010/03/14 WIRE TRANSFER DEPOSIT
Assets:Bank:Checking $1000.00
Income:Blogging -$1000.00
2010/03/28 GOOGLE ADSENSE REVENUE
Assets:Bank:Checking $300.00
Income:Adsense -$300.00
And if I run Ledger on it, I can get a breakdown:
$ ledger -f output.dat balance
$6390.00 Assets
$-5000.00 Equity
$10.00 Expenses
$-1400.00 Income
$ ledger -f output.dat equity
2010/11/06 Opening Balances
Assets:Bank:Checking $6390.00
Equity:Opening Balances $-5000.00
Expenses:Bank Fees $10.00
Income:Adsense $-400.00
Income:Blogging $-1000.00
0
Notice that the income is negative because the money flowed from the income source (Google and Blogging) to the destination (my bank account). This is double entry accounting, so the final sum is always zero, as seen in the last row.
Finally, later in the year when there is new financial data, I want Reckon to learn from my existing .dat file, so I do:
reckon -f bank.csv -l 2010.dat -o output.dat
To install Ledger and Reckon, see their Github pages: