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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Experiences of PTA and personal budget? (fosstodon.org)

submitted 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) by [email protected] to c/plaintextaccounting

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Experiences of PTA and personal budget?

There are many options for a #plaintextaccounting budget: #hledger builtin feature, automated transactions with virtual accounts, subaccounts of assets for envelope budgeting... I like the idea of accumulative budget of envelope budgeting but I would like to have one reduced list of budget categories (necessary, non-necessary, savings) and a broad list of expense categories (home, transport, utilities...).

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[–] berryjam 1 points 9 months ago

Late to the party, but I use a combination of spreadsheets (libreoffice calc) and hledger.

I defined categories for expenses and income, like your example (some of mine are: expenses:auto:maintenance, expenses:auto:repairs in ledger while in the spreadsheet I only have one row for auto). I track totals for the categories in hledger. Monthly I update the spreadsheet and track how well I stuck to the budget.

I haven't used the built in budget feature in hledger.

[–] simonmic 1 points 8 months ago

I think envelope budgeting is more worth the effort when closely managing cash and strong enforcement of limits is important. I find goal budgeting (bal --budget) quicker and easier for general planning.