Today's #FreeSoftwareAdvent entry: ledger(1) & hledger(1)

I primarily use ledger use for my #plaintextaccounting purposes¹ but try to mostly keep my data-files in a form that hledger can process them too.

Getting started involved a crash-course in accounting terms, but the use of positive/negative numbers (rather than "debits" and "credits" which always bugged me; though both have ways of specifying that output should be in credit/debit format) eased the transition.

While it started a little tedious, a few helper-scripts and shell-functions simplified adding new common entries and gave me lazy access to common reports.

I still struggle a little bit with closing the books (I though I'd figured it out, and documented it², but had some hiccups so I'll need to revisit my documentation in January)

But it's been incredibly helpful to see and track our household net worth, spot trends, keep tabs on gift-card balances that would otherwise get forgotten, track invoices sent to clients, and it simplifies balancing the checkbook monthly.

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¹ http://plaintextaccounting.org/
² https://blog.thechases.com/posts/closing-out-the-books-in-ledger/