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