 | plain text accounting | 79 Members |
| Doing accounting with plain text | https://plaintextaccounting.org, https://wiki.plaintextaccounting.org | This room is logged at https://view.matrix.org/room/!EPSbhTFKacHmjCdoQb:matrix.org | See also #plaintextaccounting-space:matrix.org , #plaintextaccounting on Libera IRC | 13 Servers |
| Sender | Message | Time |
|---|---|---|
| 8 Apr 2024 | ||
 joehealy | * I tried and failed at that a number of times before I arrived at PTA. PTA has been the only way I've been able to make headway in untangling the past history. Roughly 8 or so contracts with the one client, a few of these having up to 30 variations and new orders coming and going on a weekly basis for 3-4 years. The combination of the ledger and "work" values not being 0 indicating that money is outstanding for one reason or another seems to work really well. It also seems to work really well when we have an expense that the client will pay for, but I don't yet know the value. I can put the value in as UNK for unknown and this bubbles to the top when it comes to invoicing for me to resolve. e.g.: 2024-04-08 Modify product to fit site conditions (CLIENTNAME:PROJECT:work:site mod 43) 1UKN Similarly if work is approved, but the value/bucket/details hasn't made its way to me yet: 2024-04-08 Order from Frank for more stuff (CLIENTNAME:undefined:order for zone 4) 1UKN As time progresses, having these easily queryable, visible and editable seems to assist in ensuring they don't get missed. Maybe some of these issues are business problems (I'm sure some accountants/lawyers would be horrified), but I have to work in the existing organisation | 02:34:54 |
 detest3436 | Accountants(and myself) deal with financial reporting, which is all about shareholders. If something works for you, it works. This is an interesting usage of PTA nonetheless! | 02:49:51 |
| detest3436 | * Accountants(and myself) deal with financial reporting, which is all about shareholders. It's very far from being suitable to personal finance let alone project management, which has a whole different category of accounting. If something works for you, it works. This is an interesting usage of PTA nonetheless! | 02:50:49 |
 sm | * but no need to get ]lost in all that, keep it simple | 02:51:34 |
| sm | * but no need to get lost in all that, keep it simple | 02:51:43 |
| detest3436 | I've recently been writing a book about personal financing with PTA in regard to the conceptual framework for financial reporting by IFRS | 02:56:10 |
| detest3436 | Since most of the PTA users are not familiar with an actual accounting and there are a lot to learn about them I think it will help someone someday | 02:57:16 |
| joehealy | I agree - the book sounds like it would be very useful to people | 02:58:02 |
| detest3436 | In reply to @detest3436:matrix.orgIt's basically a nice little documentation on how to write your own accounting standards | 02:58:23 |
| sm | welcome joehealy . Like detest3436 I think you'll ultimately want to place these within the standard chart of accounts, under the ALERX top level accounts. But, as someone new to both PTA and accounting there's no harm in experimenting with other arrangements and they can definitely be an improvement even if not standard accounting practice. I also think it'll help to start simple and not try to layer in everything at step 1. | 02:58:59 |
| joehealy | I guess what I am doing/trying to do fits right at the front end at/before revenue. I think I'm happy to sit outside the traditional accounts, but move into them the traditional accounts as they become invoices | 02:59:54 |
| joehealy | * I guess what I am doing/trying to do fits right at the front end at/before revenue. I think I'm happy to start sitting outside the traditional accounts, but move the money into the traditional accounts as they become invoices | 03:00:18 |
| joehealy | I guess half of my question (which this discussion has helped form) is where should contracts for work to be performed in the future sit under traditional accounts? | 03:01:10 |
| sm | I do cash-basis accounting so there's no real place to track invoices, but I track them anyway. I put them under equity as that makes sense to me. | 03:01:18 |
| joehealy | It is not yet revenue, the work has not been done and the money not yet earned | 03:01:32 |
| sm | as they are an (intangible, uncertain) increase in my wealth, and equity tracks wealth | 03:01:52 |
| detest3436 | Using equity sounds like it makes a lot of sense | 03:02:23 |
| detest3436 | You can reverse it back into income like corporate finance but in reverse | 03:03:30 |
| sm | my invoice txn looks like | 03:04:14 |
| detest3436 | Unrelated but how did you do <pre> in Matrix? | 03:05:19 |
| sm | and my payment txn looks similar to | 03:08:54 |
| sm | Redacted or Malformed Event | 03:09:17 |
| sm | three backticks before and after, detest3436 | 03:09:37 |
| detest3436 | In reply to @detest3436:matrix.orgI tried but it didn't work. Guess it's just client issue | 03:10:39 |
| detest3436 | Now works?? Smh | 03:10:54 |
| sm | * and my payment txn looks similar to | 03:10:55 |
| sm | a line containing just three backticks before and after, to be precise | 03:11:37 |
| sm | also in some versions of element it's a preference whether it uses a rich text editor or markdown. That might be a factor. | 03:12:22 |
| detest3436 | Markdown was turned off. Thank you! | 03:14:10 |
| sm | before using equity as above, I just used (unbalanced:postings), as joehealy does above, and that also worked | 03:18:42 |