Plain Text Accounting

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Bookkeeping and accounting with plain text files and scriptable, command-line-friendly software, such as Ledger, hledger, or Beancount.

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zako

Trends to analyze expenses and revenues (self.plaintextaccounting)

submitted 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) by zako to c/plaintextaccounting

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This is a brain storming I want to share with you 😆 .

I feel that PTA is very good to track every transaction but sometimes it is difficult to "understand" the evolution or if I am in the right path of my finances. It easy to know your expenses one month, year... (hledger bal expenses -p 2023 or hledger bal expenses: -M -p 2023). But it does not provide a good and quick picture if I am expending more or not.

I think that many use graphics to try to understand the trend of our personal finances. But I think it could be also achieved with text reports. I am thinking in two kind of reports:

Balance Report to compare the same period of time in the last years. For example, compare the Q1 (or months, or weeks...) of the last 3-4 years

hledger report-type-1 --period-report q1 --period 2020..2023 "expenses:"

                ||   Q1-2020   Q1-2021   Q3-2022
================++==============================
 expenses:...   ||

Moving Average Report. For example, I can obtain the average expenses in the last 12 months with hledger bal expenses: -MA -p 2022.01..2023.01 and I could obtain the average 12 month expenses of the previous month with hledger bal expenses: -MA -p 2021.12..2022.12. The idea would be to have a report to know if I am spending less in average in the last X months and, not exactly month to month or quarter to quarter.

                ||   2022.11-Average-12m   2022.12-Average-12m   2023.01-Average-12m
================++==================================================================
 expenses:...   ||

These are a bunch of ideas. Perhaps it should not be directly linked with the reporting capabilities of PTA. Perhaps it should be scripted with bash, with org-mode...

What do you think? How do you analyze your PTA data?

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[–] simonmic 3 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I agree entirely. This is a weak area for myself and probably many PTA-ers... after learning the tools, managing your files, setting up a chart of accounts, tending your CSV rules, entering/downloading/converting/importing transactions, reconciling... there is likely not a lot of time or mental bandwidth left for higher-level analysis !

I feel making every step easier along the way helps to increase the chance of getting there. Another approach is to bypass some of the earlier steps; the only way that comes to mind is to periodically record balances (ie, large rollup "transactions") rather than individual transactions. I haven't really tried this myself nor seen it much written about, but that's the approach taken by the recent gainstrack app. It also suggests using a higher-level DSL for recording transactions, when you do record them.

I believe what's needed is

more discussion and sharing on this topic, like yours
some solid FAQ answers & how-tos on hledger.org and/or plaintextaccounting.org, describing how to achieve such reports with current tools
leading to some easier built-in reports & docs.

I don't really know what reports would be useful to me beyond the basics. It sounds like you have identified two good candidates. https://hledger.org/scripts.html#hledger-combine-balances is a script for comparing two periods. I also always want an easy way to make simple charts, and https://hledger.org/scripts.html#hledger-bar is the way I currently do that. There might be other scripts of interest on this page also (hledger-plot, hledger-lots..).

[–] simonmic 3 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

PS one big win for me has been switching to just for managing my hledger-related scripts efficiently. Now it's cheaper for me to create new custom reports and to remember and reuse them.

[–] zako 2 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

I totally agree with you that PTA is a-must to control finances but it not easy to analyze or understand in depth the financial situation (something that goes beyond the monthly or anual expenses, revenues, p/l... ). But information is there in the journals.

I also migrated to just and it was a big change. I can think about the most useful-complex reports and make them available with a simple command to never forget them. And even when the report is displayed, the hledger command is displayed so I can remember/verify the meaning of the report. I have a bunch of reports I use often:

just common-expenses: all the discretional expenses (excluding taxes...) with my partner
just my-expenses: my personal discretional expenses (excluding taxes...)
just is: my overall inconmestatement
just is-job: my incomestatement of all the expenses (including taxes) against the revenues of my job. This report gives me my savings and I like this report because I prefer to assign the revenues of my investments to the ROI of my investments.
just roi: hledger roi ROI report of my investments
....

I tried hledger-vega but it was a bit complex to maintain and to modify, but savings graph was really clarifying. It help me to understand what was really a saving in my journal.

I will check https://hledger.org/scripts.html#hledger-combine-balances and https://hledger.org/scripts.html#hledger-bar. hledger-combine-balances is the first report I was interested in :).