Question for my dearest #accounting and double-entry #bookkeeping nerds:
I want to explicitly track some of my money for periodic subscriptions, e.g. paying for RuneScape membership every six months:
> Expenses:RuneScape EUR 47.99
> Assets:Bank:Liquid EUR -47.99
My idea is to move a sixth of that amount to a savings account every month like this:
> Assets:Bank:Saved:RuneScape EUR 8
> Assets:Bank:Liquid EUR -8
This is fine, but it doesn't track the liability that I have with Jagex to pay the subscription every six months. In my mental model, I should be able to track the cost of the future subscription payment as a liability because it affects my working capital, so I should record the liability with something like this:
> Liabilities:RuneScape EUR -47.99
> ???:??? EUR 47.99
However, I don't know which kind of account I should debit the liability to! Where should this money come from? Debiting equity doesn't feel right and my subscription is not an asset either. My idea is that when I finally pay the subscription, I'll credit the liabilities account with my saved cash:
> Liabilities:RuneScape EUR -47.99
> Assets:Bank:Saved:RuneScape EUR -47.99
But then I'll have to record the liability again for the next period.
I feel like my mental model for this is wrong. Any #help on how I can make this work? Thank you 
Monatliche Zinsgutschrift auf dem Tagesgeld-Konto. Selber (mikriger) Zinsbetrag wie im letzten Monat. Aber ein Cent (0,01€) mehr Kapitalertragssteuer? WTF???
Hi Caleb, I'm so excited to find that I'm not the only person interested in the breakdown of #beancount or other #plaintextaccounting
My current progress: Given this receipt
It generates such beancount output:
After almost two months, I’ve finished first version of #BeanBeaver: it parses grocery receipts into #Beancount records.
https://github.com/Endle/beanbeaver
I hope I’m not the only person who cares about a grocery-by-item breakdown 🦫
After bouncing around ideas and several experiments, I've decided to launch a new project with the goal of creating CLI tooling that facilitates receipt handling for #plaintextaccounting workflows. LLM based OCR and data extraction has improved to the point that I believe it will be possible to make bulk data extraction useful. If you have ideas, want to contribute, or just want to follow along jump in:
To be clear, #ActualBudget was REALLY getting good when I left - felt like jumping ship right as it hit its stride
They've added custom reports with Excel-style formulas, a burndown chart, and the UI keeps improving. Genuinely great #opensource budgeting software
But as a #SoftwareEngineer, the scriptability of #beancount is a huge win. I can pipe data through #fzf for fuzzy account selection, write #Python scripts that understand my finances, and build weird custom tools that would be impossible in a GUI app
Sometimes you just need to "grep" your money
#plainTextAccounting #CLI #devTools #personalFinance #fava #budgeting
Made the switch from #ActualBudget to #beancount for my personal finances
The ecosystem is nice
- #fava, #beangulp for imports, #beanahead for recurring transactions, #favaCustomDashboards for charts, and #favaInvestor for portfolio tracking
Also went overboard with custom stuff:
- PDF importers with #ML payee/account prediction
- Custom linters for validation
- Forked #favaEnvelope for envelope budgeting
- #Makefile with 28 targets for price fetching to #FIRE calcs
#plainTextAccounting is great when you can just write #Python to solve your edge cases
#personalFinance #doubleEntryAccounting #CLI #fintech #devlife