blog/data/2012-12-18-ledger.txt

   1 Title: Ledger - double-entry accounting using text based storage format
   2 Tags: english, nuug, debian edu
   3 Date: 2012-12-18 23:30
   4
   5 <p>A few days ago I came across
   6 <a href="http://joeyh.name/blog/entry/hledger/">a blog post from Joey
   7 Hess</a> describing <a href="http://ledger-cli.org/">ledger</a> and
   8 hledger, a text based system for double-entry accounting.  I found it
   9 interesting, as I am involved with several organizations where
  10 accounting is an issue, and I have not really become too friendly with
  11 the different web based systems we use.  I find it hard to find what I
  12 look for in the menus and even harder try to get sensible data out of
  13 the systems.  Ledger seem different.  The accounting data is kept in
  14 text files that can be stored in a version control system, and there
  15
  16 are at least <a href="https://github.com/ledger/ledger/wiki/Ports">five
  17 different implementations</a> able to read the format.  An example
  18 entry look like this, and is simple enough that it will be trivial to
  19 generate entries based on CVS files fetched from the bank:</p>
  20
  21 <blockquote><pre>
  22 2004-05-27 Book Store
  23       Expenses:Books                 $20.00
  24       Liabilities:Visa
  25 </pre></blockquote>
  26
  27 <p>The concept seemed interesting enough for me to check it out and
  28 look for others using it.  I found blog posts from
  29 <a href="http://blog.spang.cc/posts/hledger_rocks_my_world/">Christine
  30 Spang</a>,
  31 <a href="http://bugsplat.info/2010-05-23-keeping-finances-with-ledger.html">Pete
  32 Keen</a>,
  33 <a href="http://blog.andrewcantino.com/blog/2010/11/06/command-line-accounting-with-ledger-and-reckon/">Andrew
  34 Cantino</a> and
  35 <a href="http://blog.iphoting.com/blog/2012/11/29/command-line-double-entry-accounting/">Ronald
  36 Ip</a> describing how they use it, as well as a post from
  37 <a href="https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/ledger-cli/r0oWjwbQ9Bo">Bradley
  38 M. Kuhn</a> at the Software Freedom Conservancy.  All seemed like good
  39 recommendations fitting my need.</p>
  40
  41 <p>The <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/l/ledger.html">ledger</a>
  42 package is available in Debian Squeeze, while the
  43 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/h/haskell-hledger.html">hledger</a>
  44 package only is available in Debian Sid.  As I use Squeeze, ledger
  45 seemed the best choice to get started.</p>
  46
  47 <p>To get some real data to test on, I wrote a
  48 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/tools/lodo2ledger">web scraper</a> for
  49 <a href="http://www.lodo.no/">LODO</a>, the accounting system used by
  50 the <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG</a> association, and started to
  51 play with the data set.  I'm not really deeply into accounting, but I
  52 am able to get a simple balance and accounting status for example
  53 using the "<tt>ledger balance</tt>" command.  But I will have to
  54 gather more experience before I know if the ledger way is a good fit
  55 for the organisations I am involved in.</p>