* mplo...@gmail.com <mplo...@gmail.com> [2018-04-28 16:43]: > Martin, could you explain a little bit on the logic on making > decision on keeping record as "narration" vs "payee" "" ? > > What are the advantages / disadvantages. Let say for example if i > put all my records as narrations, what is the situation in which i > might see the disadvantages to this strategy? > > Sorry for this detailed questions, i am just trying to understand. > Beancount have 2 description fields VS 1 in ledger, so there should > be the reason why you added additional field.
I'm not Martin Blais, but coming from ledger I'm really glad that beancount has the distinction of payee and narration. Payee is who I'm dealing with. Narration is a description of what the transaction is about. Some people don't use a description but I think it's important because it allows you to remember what the transaction was about. Sure, for your SimpleMobile payment it's pretty simple. You know it's always going to be a "monthly phone plan" or something like that. But what does "Amazon Marketplace" mean? Was it a purchase of food? Was it the bike you bought? The gloves? What does "Amazon Marketplace" really tell you apart from who the vendor is (in fact, with Amazon Marketplace you don't even record who the actual vendor is, just that you bought it via Amazon)? That's where the narration comes in. Now you can say this is what account names are for, but if you use Expenses:Clothes you may still want to know which purchase was the t-shirt you like so much vs the gloves vs the socks, etc. The payee is useful because it lets you group things and search for them. e.g. "Show me all purchases from Amazon Marketplace." -- Martin Michlmayr http://www.cyrius.com/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Beancount" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to beancount+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to beancount@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/beancount/20180429074105.x7alrcndzeybeblo%40jirafa.cyrius.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
