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   6     <title>Petter Reinholdtsen: Ledger - double-entry accounting using text based storage format</title>
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  12  <h1>
  13      <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/">Petter Reinholdtsen</a>
  14
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  17 </div>
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  20     <div class="entry">
  21       <div class="title">Ledger - double-entry accounting using text based storage format</div>
  22       <div class="date">18th December 2012</div>
  23       <div class="body"><p>A few days ago I came across
  24 <a href="http://joeyh.name/blog/entry/hledger/">a blog post from Joey
  25 Hess</a> describing <a href="http://ledger-cli.org/">ledger</a> and
  26 hledger, a text based system for double-entry accounting.  I found it
  27 interesting, as I am involved with several organizations where
  28 accounting is an issue, and I have not really become too friendly with
  29 the different web based systems we use.  I find it hard to find what I
  30 look for in the menus and even harder try to get sensible data out of
  31 the systems.  Ledger seem different.  The accounting data is kept in
  32 text files that can be stored in a version control system, and there
  33
  34 are at least <a href="https://github.com/ledger/ledger/wiki/Ports">five
  35 different implementations</a> able to read the format.  An example
  36 entry look like this, and is simple enough that it will be trivial to
  37 generate entries based on CVS files fetched from the bank:</p>
  38
  39 <blockquote><pre>
  40 2004-05-27 Book Store
  41       Expenses:Books                 $20.00
  42       Liabilities:Visa
  43 </pre></blockquote>
  44
  45 <p>The concept seemed interesting enough for me to check it out and
  46 look for others using it.  I found blog posts from
  47 <a href="http://blog.spang.cc/posts/hledger_rocks_my_world/">Christine
  48 Spang</a>,
  49 <a href="http://bugsplat.info/2010-05-23-keeping-finances-with-ledger.html">Pete
  50 Keen</a>,
  51 <a href="http://blog.andrewcantino.com/blog/2010/11/06/command-line-accounting-with-ledger-and-reckon/">Andrew
  52 Cantino</a> and
  53 <a href="http://blog.iphoting.com/blog/2012/11/29/command-line-double-entry-accounting/">Ronald
  54 Ip</a> describing how they use it, as well as a post from
  55 <a href="https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/ledger-cli/r0oWjwbQ9Bo">Bradley
  56 M. Kuhn</a> at the Software Freedom Conservancy.  All seemed like good
  57 recommendations fitting my need.</p>
  58
  59 <p>The <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/l/ledger.html">ledger</a>
  60 package is available in Debian Squeeze, while the
  61 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/h/haskell-hledger.html">hledger</a>
  62 package only is available in Debian Sid.  As I use Squeeze, ledger
  63 seemed the best choice to get started.</p>
  64
  65 <p>To get some real data to test on, I wrote a
  66 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/tools/lodo2ledger">web scraper</a> for
  67 <a href="http://www.lodo.no/">LODO</a>, the accounting system used by
  68 the <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG</a> association, and started to
  69 play with the data set.  I'm not really deeply into accounting, but I
  70 am able to get a simple balance and accounting status for example
  71 using the "<tt>ledger balance</tt>" command.  But I will have to
  72 gather more experience before I know if the ledger way is a good fit
  73 for the organisations I am involved in.</p>
  74 </div>
  75
  76       <div class="tags">Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.</div>
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