 | plain text accounting | 81 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 |
|---|---|---|
| 3 Apr 2024 | ||
 sm | https://codeberg.org/amano.kenji/brick-trading-journal a terminal UI program that calculates basic statistics from trades. | 03:33:32 |
 PTA forum | @simonmic (Simon Michael) posted in Site news: Hosting begun, new funding page
As of March 30th, we are officially hosted by Discourse (with the 50% FOSS discount - thank you Discourse). (Hosting options were discussed here.) And, there is a new Finance page at https://plaintextaccounting.org/finance, with a public ledger and donation options. Those who are in a position to help, thanks in advance for your support! | 20:40:39 |
| sm | incidentally it looks like a lot of forum noise in here but I think when we're chatting we won't notice | 21:00:51 |
| 4 Apr 2024 | ||
| PTA forum | @hledgerfan (Robert Nielsen) posted in Beatles song about plain text accounting?
In the vein of "now for something completely different," I imagine a Beatles song about plain text accounting: https://hledgerfan.com/what-if-the-beatles-had-sung-about-plain-text-accounting/. | 13:55:07 |
| sm | Just one new PTA youtube video in the last year. Ledger CLI, in Tamil https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQKOiU_spHg | 21:10:33 |
| 5 Apr 2024 | ||
| PTA forum | @simonmic (Simon Michael) posted in A go-language client for hledger-web
| 05:54:07 |
| 6 Apr 2024 | ||
 daveakre joined the room. | 16:22:17 | |
| PTA forum | @pkgw (Peter Williams) posted in [beancount] Status of average-cost booking?
I use Beancount V2 to record transactions for various retirement accounts on Vanguard (among other things). I'm pretty sure that I haven't been dealing with my cost basis information correctly ... and I know that in at least some cases Vanguard is doing transactions at an average-cost basis ... so I've been trying to learn more about how Beancount handles average-cost transactions. I've found and... | 20:53:07 |
| 7 Apr 2024 | ||
 blicero | How do you track your upcoming / recurring expenses? | 13:36:21 |
 detest3436 | Upcoming expenses should first be a liability. ``` 2024-01-01 Linus liabilities:payable:personal 100 assets:cash 100 ``` After that, when you give the money back, you can mark it off as an expense accordingly. | 16:21:09 |
| sm | Another way is to record the transaction in a future.journal that you don't usually include in reports. Then copy paste when ready | 17:46:35 |
| sm | A third way, if there's many regularly recurring transactions with consistent amount, is to declare them all with a periodic transaction rule (h/ledger). When each txn comes due you need to convert it to a regular entry | 17:48:59 |
 tario | for beancount I have an importer that generates them for me, so basically whenever I run the importer it creates the entries based on the date | 18:06:36 |
| blicero | Those are valuable tips. I need not just accounting but budgeting as well, looking to integrate both. I'd rather get all out of my head and into text like I managed with my task planning. | 20:37:02 |
| blicero | Those are valuable tips. I need not just accounting but budgeting as well, looking to integrate both. I'd rather get it all out of my head and into text like I managed with my task planning. | 20:37:54 |
| sm | there's Budgeting overview page plaintextaccounting.org | 21:11:53 |
| sm | but no need to get lost in all that, keep it simple | 21:13:44 |
| sm | * there's a Budgeting overview page at plaintextaccounting.org : https://plaintextaccounting.org/Budgeting | 21:14:07 |
| 8 Apr 2024 | ||
 joehealy joined the room. | 01:06:00 | |
| joehealy | Hello, I'm looking to use hledger (or one of the other tools) to keep track of projects I'm working on. I think I have a scheme I'm happy enough with, but am not sure how best to fit it in with traditional accounting aspects. Basically I have a top level account per client, with contract identifiers underneath each of these. At the next level down, I have a number of sub accounts - work (with sub accounts for line items in the project and also add sub accounts for variations), retention (for money withheld by the client to be returned upon project completion and defects liability period ends), and claims/invoices for payment claims and invoices. CLIENTNAME:PROJECTID:work:Build 1 thing CLIENTNAME:PROJECTID:work:Build another thing CLIENTNAME:PROJECTID:invoices:2024-02 CLIENTNAME:PROJECTID:retention money basically goes into the "work" accounts via virtual postings when the contract is signed or variation agreed, then moves from the work to the invoices and retention accounts then from there to an assets:bank account once they pay. Should I be structuring this under traditional account structures (assets, liabilities etc) or is doing it this way "fine"? To me it seems simpler for reporting (particularly project status) to do it this way, but I'm not an expert in PTA or traditional accounting | 01:13:18 |
| joehealy | detest3436: thank you in advance for your thoughts and efforts in replying! I can see substantial time, effort and thought is going into a reply. I really appreciate that | 01:45:44 |
| detest3436 | Any reason you're doing this with PTA? If it works for you I think it's fine but this is very far from a common use case. Normally, in corporate accounting, if you put labor into building something, that amount of money would go into as an expense and an asset(in progress or development cost and then asset). But in this case, it's your labor and it's pretty silly if we try to expense:labor this. It's best you do this: (At the date of you finished your work and sent invoice) assets:receivable:project 100 (use tags to manage project names and client names) revenue:project -100 (At the day you receive money) assets: receivable:project -100 assets:cash 100 If you put in materials while building your project, you can do this when the cost happens 2024-03-01 Home depot assets:tangible:supplies 10 assets:cash -10 2024-03-02 ProjectA assets:project:in progress 10 assets:tangible:supplies -10 2024-03-04 Client1 assets:project:in progress -10 assets:receivable:project 100 revenue:project -90 | 01:47:50 |
| detest3436 | As a person who is much more familiar with corporate finance than personal finance, steering away from classical assets/liabilities gives me grudges 🤓 | 01:50:58 |
| detest3436 | * As a person who is much more familiar with corporate finance than personal finance, steering away from classical assets/liabilities sets me off a little🤓 | 01:53:36 |
| joehealy | Good question. Part of it is I'm trying to audit/reconcile a number of complex projects that started before I did and I haven't found a better tool. Maybe some traditional accounting tools may be able to do it, but we are fairly "flexible" with some of our clients and we will often do a body of work before we know exactly which contract it will fit in with them - I've found the text based nature excellent for "fixing" that up over time - Ie order comes in, work is done, probably paid (maybe partially) then that and other work is bundled up into a larger variation in an existing contract. PTA seems to have been the only method I've come across to track it - being able to enter notes/comments as I go has been invaluable. | 01:54:28 |
| joehealy | As we get towards the end of the contract, we need to reconcile what payments have been made against which variations, where money is outstanding (either work done but not paid or work not done because requirements changed) | 01:57:05 |
| joehealy | I guess most of what I am tracking will sit under an asset account, but I'm unsure where it would initially come from other than as a virtual posting | 01:57:46 |
| joehealy | In reply to @detest3436:matrix.orgI get this. I think part of it is probably a result of the relationship we have with some clients. They get a bundle of money allocated at their end for a body of work, but over time that body of work changes. Often money "unspent" can be repurposed for related items, but we both need to track and agree on what bucket things have come and gone from and when changes occur, which bucket they fit into | 02:03:18 |
| detest3436 | That sounds like something that a spreadsheet is needed honestly | 02:15:29 |
| 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 and visible 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 | 02:31:22 |