158 lines
7.2 KiB
Markdown
158 lines
7.2 KiB
Markdown
---
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title: "Plaintext Accounting, beancount, and fava"
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date: 2021-01-15T15:54:51+01:00
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draft: false # I don't care for draft mode, git has branches for that
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description: "Or the story of my fall into systematically logging my expenses"
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tags:
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- accounting
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- cli
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categories:
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- software
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- slice of life
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series:
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favorite: false
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---
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[Plain text accounting](https://plaintextaccounting.org/) is a way of tracking
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your finances using simple text files and command line software.
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Being about to work on my end-of-studies internship, and therefore enter the
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*adult*, *professional* world, I decided that I needed a better way to track my
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income, expenses, and net worth.
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<!--more-->
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## My accounting journey
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I went through most of my life without having to account for my money
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explicitly, making use of the "dad bank". I received small sums of money at
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Christmas and for birthdays, most of which went straight to an envelop that my
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dad kept for me. This is the money that I used to buy myself books, games, and
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other small things during childhood. My father kept track of the money and told
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me how much I had left whenever I asked him.
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During high school, my parents opened a bank account for me, and handed me
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a credit card to allow me to buy lunch, make gifts, and other discretionary
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spendings without having to explicitly go through them. It was regularly checked
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on by my parents to make sure I always had some amounts of money to my name in
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case I needed it, which they did up and until my engineering school. At this
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point I had a pretty good idea of how much I could spend and when I could spend
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it. This information could fit entirely in my head without any problems.
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Once I had spent a year at EPITA, I decided to apply to the team of teaching
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assistants. Between the money that I earned during my internship and what I
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was earning as an assistant, I was finally gaining some financial independence.
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Until very recently I was still mostly keeping track of my spending in my head,
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my student job allowing me to avoid explicitly budgeting my money.
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## Why do I want an actual accounting solution?
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As you can see from my history, I have spent my whole life until this point
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without using any form of accounting. Some people keep going their whole life
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without ever explicitly using any accounting solutions, having a ball-park idea
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of how much they have spent and how much they can afford to spend later.
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This, however, does not accommodate me anymore. I want to have more fine-grained
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control over my money, and be able to track and analyse my spending. I also know
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that I am somewhat of an air-head, and tracking my money explicitly will
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probably allow me to avoid, or at least reduce, lifestyle inflation once
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I finish school and enter the work-force.
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To that end, some people use a spreadsheet and simply keep track of their
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transactions as a row of in-n-out flow of money. This is also problematic to me:
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it is bothersome to come up with a useful template for budgeting, easy to mess
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up my reporting, especially with transactions that are harder to model using
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a simple template. Furthermore, it is very hard to version a spreadsheet, being
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a programmer, and lover of the command line, I want to be able to use `git` to
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keep track of my budget through time.
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The perfect system for me has to be:
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* foolproof: it is hard to mess up my reporting, and easy to know when I make
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a mistake,
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* exhaustive: I can use the same system to keep track of my money, my
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investments, my debts, and anything that I would like to track,
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* data-oriented: it should allow me to process my data and do some powerful
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analysis on my past transactions: I want to be able to know how much money
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I have spent at my neighbourhood bakery in the last semester.
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* have a pretty interface and export abilities: this allows me to talk with
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a banker or an accountant without them having to know how to use my accounting
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system,
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* be [Free and Open-Source Software][foss]: I can tinker with the sources if
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something isn't to my liking, and more easily ensure that my data will still
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be usable 20 years down the line.
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[foss]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_and_open-source_software
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## Beancount
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### What is it?
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[`beancount`][beancount] is a tool to do [double-entry accounting][double-entry]
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on the command line, using only plain text files. It is inspired by
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[`ledger`][ledger] and [`hledger`][hledger], both respected tools in the [*plain
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text accounting*][plain-text] community, from which `beancount` draws inspiration
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both in their syntax and their philosophy.
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The point of *plain text accounting* is to make it easier and more efficient to
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use the double-entry-style of accounting. This translates both in the syntax of
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the ledger files, as well as the simplifications made to double-entry accounting
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to make it seem more intuitive and easier to use.
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To be more specific about `beancount`, it is a tool written in Python, made to
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be kept simple and effective by its author. It is both very powerful from
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the get-go, and easy to extend thanks to a system of plug-ins using the dynamic
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nature of Python.
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[beancount]: https://beancount.github.io/
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[double-entry]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-entry_bookkeeping
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[ledger]: https://www.ledger-cli.org/
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[hledger]: https://hledger.org/
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[plain-text]: https://plaintextaccounting.org/
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### Why did I choose it ?
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There are many different accounting solutions which I could have used, from my
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list of wanted features one can presume that I would naturally align myself with
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a double-entry accounting system: they are very powerful and make mistakes
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obvious.
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Furthermore, my want for an easy way to version-control my ledger eliminates
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candidates like [`GNUCash`][gnucash], which make use of XML or other
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hard-to-version file format. The power of plain text accounting is that it is at
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once easy to read, write, and version, but also that I can feel confident that
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I will still be able to access my data in 20 years.
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So, at this, point we're pretty much reduced to one of the *plain text
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accounting* software offerings. So why did I go with `beancount` rather than
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`ledger` or `hledger` ? There are three main factors which led me to this
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decision:
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* `beancount` has a wonderful documentation, specifically, I was first
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introduced to the idea of *double-entry accounting* in its
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[documentation][double-entry-beancount].
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* I read the author's [reasoning for writing `beancount` instead of using
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`ledger` and `hledger`][why-beancount]: I found him very reasonable, and
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agreed with a lot of his ideas (especially about being simpler, stricter,
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and being independent of any transaction ordering)
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* finally, I *grok* python: I can dive in the source code to understand what is
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being done and why, I can write a few lines and submit a PR if I feel like
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something is missing from the base package, I can write a plug-in to customize
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it my exact liking.
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[gnucash]: https://www.gnucash.org/
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[double-entry-beancount]: https://beancount.github.io/docs/the_double_entry_counting_method.html
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[why-beancount]: https://beancount.github.io/docs/a_comparison_of_beancount_and_ledger_hledger.html
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### So how do I use it?
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* backlog of transactions
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* fava
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* simple makefile and git hooks
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* mobile phone app
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## What's next?
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* not accurately tracking my taxes from my pay check
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* not tracking my livret A, PEE, future PEL and AV
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