Wow, thanks for the fast and thorough response. It is very encouraging, and really what I needed for my mental health haha.
A couple reactions at random: > Yodlee, or Plaid ๐๐๐ will check these out > Sure, you can split. It won't make it much faster though. I am excited about performance coming with the C++ rewrite, but this was not so much about addressing performance as my ability to find things. (but to be clear). The headers Iโve created in my journal are per-institution-account (e.g. fidelity 401k) with sub-headers by year and then by month. These headers with their folding in vim (similar to emacs outline mode) are helpful, but I think I can do better. It is also a less-than-nice experience for on the fly entries such as invoices, tracking kidsโ allowance, and so on. I need to just set aside a few hours to ponder this and come up with the right organization and workflow. > There is a final stage of awakening called "ace-jump-mode", kept as a closely > guarded secret Is there a vim equivalent of nirvana? :P Because of beancount, I gave emacs+orgmode a real try โ a month with spacemacs, and a month with doom, but ultimately reverted back to what I know (vim). Iโm hoping to get my beancount vim+VSCode experience leveled up. > new rewriting capabilities will make it possible to rewrite the actual file > by changing the AST and writing it back out. This sounds really exciting. > in the next version. With a more generic SQL or providing a library that > works with petl Being able to reason about my financials using dataframes sounds empowering. Looking forward to it. -- Dustin Farris (646) 671-2007 > On Feb 7, 2021, at 8:06 AM, Martin Blais <bl...@furius.ca> wrote: > > On Sun, Feb 7, 2021 at 10:24 AM Dustin Farris <dustin.far...@gmail.com > <mailto:dustin.far...@gmail.com>> wrote: > I've been using beancount for a little over a year to manage my personal > finances as well as some side self-employment accounting. I have twice > gotten frustrated to the point of trying other products (specifically > Personal Capital, Mint, Quicken, and QuickBooks) but give up and come back to > command-line accounting for reasons probably familiar to everyone in this > group. > > So here are my frustrations and what I'm going to attempt to do for myself to > address them. I'm mainly venting here, but if anyone has any suggestions I'd > really appreciate them. > > I update my journal every month. Getting updated transactions from 25+ > different accounts every month is very time consuming. > Todo: Research programmatic downloads of transactions from all banks (has > this been done already?) > Look for Yodlee, or Plaid. > If you're willing to give up your passwords, those could save you time by > lumping together a bunch of imports. > (I tend to only update the most important ones - checking, credit card, > investing - frequently, and the others lag behind a bit.) > > Also, there are simplifications coming up to the importing framework which is > going to make it substantially simpler to use, though I'm not sure if those > changes will address your specific needs. > > The beancount file is getting overwhelmingly large after just 1 year. This > is making it hard for me to jump around and find/fix things. I often have > personal transactions that cross equity accounts into our rental business, or > my software engineering self employment. > Todo: split personal.beancount into smaller journals (by month?) > Sure, you can split. It won't make it much faster though. (The ongoing > rewrite in C++ is going to address that.) > > I use outline-minor-mode. Another clever trick is to realize that like in > life, you only ever go to a few places in that file - depending how you > organize it - and insert unique comment tags and just i-search for them to go > there directly (*). Huge time saver. The new import framework might even > auto-insert in front of those tags. > > I think if you have the patience, you could refine your previous transaction > detection so that it's nearly flawless, automatically categorize your > transactions, and implement auto-insert in your file and trust it. Would save > some time, but it'll be time-consuming to get it right IMO (you'll spend the > time coding instead of updating; it's unclear to me in that situation which > will be better). beangulp will also provide more hooks for you to refine > previous-import-detection, even per importer. (For more on upcoming changes > on that look here > https://docs.google.com/document/d/1O42HgYQBQEna6YpobTqszSgTGnbRX7RdjmzR2xumfjs/edit > > <https://docs.google.com/document/d/1O42HgYQBQEna6YpobTqszSgTGnbRX7RdjmzR2xumfjs/edit>) > > > (*) In fact, I would say if you're using emacs this is the fourth stage of > evolution of Emacs users about cursor movement: first you use the cursor > keys, then you learn to use the relative word and paragraph movement, then > you graduate to sexp movements (e.g. beginning of function), and when you > nearly achieve enlightenment you are nearly always moving via > interactive-search > (https://www.masteringemacs.org/article/effective-editing-movement > <https://www.masteringemacs.org/article/effective-editing-movement>). There > is a final stage of awakening called "ace-jump-mode", kept as a closely > guarded secret by those of use experiencing a permanent state of non-duality > ;-). > > > omni-complete in vim is an awkward keyboard chord and account completions in > vim are sometimes broken depending on what you last typed > Todo: try VSCode which can now embed neovim and has it's own beancount > extension that should make the editing experience nicer > except VSCode folding is weird so this might actually make things worse > I still donโt understand how reporting works, and part of that is because I > don't use it enough. I feel like I'm relearning Beancount Query Language > every time I do need something. > Todo: keep a list of commonly-used queries > Write your queries as code, and run your own scripts. There's a neat API. > You can also use the Query directive to save pre-made queries in your > Beancount file and execute them by name. > > Easier reporting is something I'd like to refine in the next version. With a > more generic SQL or providing a library that works with petl. > > > reconciling receipts / splitting transactions is time consuming, although vim > macros help here > Todo: Improve importer recognition of payees and likely expense accounts > Yep. > > (v3's new parser will bring another dimension to this: instead of having to > write code to fixup the payees in memory only, the new rewriting capabilities > will make it possible to rewrite the actual file by changing the AST and > writing it back out.) > > no way to attach receipt pictures to transactions? > Todo: Research beancount tooling or other apps to capture receipts > See the ingest framework's filling ability. It renames files that have been > identified prepending a date and can stash them in a repository under the > same account hierarchy. bean-web used to serve those directives right next to > the transactions and you could insert a common link to link them together (or > write a plugin that attempts to match them up automatically) > > fava is nice, but could be nicer > Todo: Research writing a new frontend reporting/visualization tool and/or > contribute to fava > Go for it! > Custom one-off renderings are also useful (e.g. like in beangrow). > > > > -- > 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 > <mailto:beancount+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com>. > To view this discussion on the web visit > https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/beancount/4bd97aa7-ef37-4f08-9b65-d9555acbe7fbn%40googlegroups.com > > <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/beancount/4bd97aa7-ef37-4f08-9b65-d9555acbe7fbn%40googlegroups.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer>. > > -- > 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 > <mailto:beancount+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com>. > To view this discussion on the web visit > https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/beancount/CAK21%2BhNsEmRrdxnDCbrZXqxam2pphcGysM4WpEmb0CS-wd3R6w%40mail.gmail.com > > <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/beancount/CAK21%2BhNsEmRrdxnDCbrZXqxam2pphcGysM4WpEmb0CS-wd3R6w%40mail.gmail.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer>. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Beancount" group. 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