I am currently tracking my balances and financial assets with a bespoke set of Google Sheet files and this has the potential to simplify things a lot because it basically helps you with the tedious task of categorizing all the transactions (as long as you use a text editor with Ledger-aware autocompletion capability) and then you can cut and dice your data any way you want.
Hopefully I could even automate parsing my bank Excel files to automate (or to complicate) things even more.
Anyone here is using Ledger, Beancount or similar and can share tips or recommendations?
In terms of choosing between ledger, bean count, etc. They’re all great and it doesn’t really make a difference which you choose. However, Beancount Documentation I found has the most expansive list of examples of how to apply things you want to track into plaintext.
Ultimately though, I didn’t find any of the auto categorizations to be very good and I don’t really budget and I’m not saving up for anything particular so I lost the motivation to continue adding transactions in. I still wonder if it would make doing my own taxes easier, but I haven’t taken that on.
Also, https://plaintextaccounting.org the community is super friendly and helpful. Let me know if you go for it and how it goes!
Edit: Looks like there’s ML based categorization tools now so the auto-categorization may be a lot more capable!
Yes, it’s a deep rabbit hole. But I am already doing my accounting manually, aggregating and categorizing every type of expense in my Google Sheets and it takes more than I like (2 deep, focused hours per month!). Doing a single sweep typing single entries with auto complete for every expense category seems faster and, to top it all, makes it easy to later put that into Google Sheets as I would be working with a single entry for groceries instead of 14 debit card movements dispersed into my downloaded bank report, that work would be done by Ledger.
In terms of automation, ML tools look promising (care to share a link?) but I think I would prefer to cook my own scripts to generate the entries in Ledger format.
I use hledger (a ledger derivative) and love it. I even wrote about my attempts to recreate YNAB’s zero-based budget system in it. I actually like it better than YNAB for its flexibility, and use the web ui to build reports and stuff regularly. It can be finicky and has a learning curve, but it’s fun for me. I don’t use any of the csv import features because I have always been a manual entry and reconciliation gal, but there is a lot of flexibility in importing as well.
I can understand the want for moving away from a service and to an app, but just wondering why plain text?
I’ve used GNUCash alongside YNAB for a number of years, which is double entry accounting. I tried years ago to budget with it, but quickly moved on to just tracking net worth in it really (i.e. mortgage, investments, pensions and spending) rather than an actual budget.
I’d like to have a play, especially as Paisa looks interesting, but currently need the app, as my wife has got on board with YNAB and would need something similar if we were to move - such as a cloud version of Actual Budget.
Probably the same reason I’m using local Markdown notes as my note taking solution of choice: portability, data ownership, future-proofing and hackability (I can do quite a lot of scripting with Python or Ruby)
I tried this last year, but it didn’t last as there was too much friction for me.
I now use Account Tracker Pro. Every day, I add new transactions and manually reconcile with my banking app. This includes credit card, savings accounts and cash. I’ve used this consistently for 2024 and it’s been superb. There’s also a companion Mac app that I use when I do my taxes to download a csv.
(AFAIK there’s even a ledger obsidian plugin)