Hi Vasily, thank you as well for your help and the pointer to the other tools! I will need a bit time to look at lazy-beancount, but it looks quite helpful.
Thank you! Best Regards Fabian On Saturday, March 22, 2025 at 1:10:23 PM UTC+1 Vasily M wrote: > Hi Fabian, > > I was interested in tracking trip expenses on a high level as well and > recently solved this for myself, at least to the point I'm satisfied with. > The starting point was the awesome > https://github.com/andreasgerstmayr/fava-dashboards plugin for Fava that > already had "Travel" tab in examples but it wasn't clear to me how to use > it without much friction. I ended up slightly altering it and finding some > practices that make it straightforward. > It's all included in https://github.com/Evernight/lazy-beancount and I've > also described various tips at the guide's section here: > https://lazy-beancount.xyz/docs/stage4_improvements/overview/#tracking-trips-and-travel-expenses > > (of course, you don't have to use the whole package and can just reproduce > the bits separately). Well, this point is currently just a single sentence > but hopefully other tips and context make it more understandable. In any > case, happy to expand on technical details. > > 1. Adding #trip-trip-id-maybe-also-date-05-24 and #travel tags make all > transactions appear in the dashboard. This allows to view them in Fava > views and indeed write BQL queries, etc. The Expenses breakdown dashboard > tab then also becomes useful but I had to patch Fava (pull request pending) > to make it work. > > 2. Usually trips happen over continuous period of time and most of > transactions happening within this period can be automatically categorized > into this trip. I use / wrote filter_map plugin to avoid manual tagging. > > 3. You also may be interested in > https://github.com/Akuukis/beancount_interpolate plugin to use, for > example, with transactions related to booking accommodation. For dashboards > and other analytics you can virtually move transaction to a different date > than a date of payment and spread the cost across number of days. > > 4. Indeed, metadata is a good mechanism for further customization. I guess > the only point to add here is that you can easily plug queries into your > customized dashboards for more visual representation. > > Best regards, > Vasily > > On Friday, March 21, 2025 at 5:24:44 PM UTC+1 Patrick Ruckstuhl wrote: > >> Hi Fab, >> >> >> welcome to your journey with beancount :) >> >> >> First for your journey questions. I think if you need/want the days, >> having it as a special currency instead of just metadata might be useful. >> >> This allows you to do calculations/aggregations on them, which I think >> you can't do with the metadata. I use here a separate expense account for >> the "NIGHTS", because I don't like to mix "Currencies", but you could keep >> it in the same one as you keep the monetary expenses. >> >> I'm modeling the other side of the nights as Equity, personally that >> feels cleaner than putting in Assets/Liabilities. >> >> I'm guessing this is just for your own interest, not for reimbursing, >> otherwise I would model it differently. >> >> >> ``` >> option "operating_currency" "EUR" >> >> 2025-01-01 open Expenses:Travel:Accommodation:Hotel EUR >> 2025-01-01 open Assets:Bank:Checking EUR >> 2025-01-01 open Expenses:Travel:Nights NIGHTS >> 2025-01-01 open Equity:Nights NIGHTS >> >> >> >> 2025-03-11 * "Hotel in Berlin (3 nights)" >> date: "2025-03-08" ; Booking date >> >> purpose: "Conference" >> Expenses:Travel:Accommodation:Hotel 300.00 EUR >> >> Expenses:Travel:Nights 3 NIGHTS >> >> >> Assets:Bank:Checking -300.00 EUR >> >> Equity:Nights -3 NIGHTS >> >> >> >> 2025-03-08 * "Hotel in Berlin (3 nights)" >> firstNightDate: "2025-03-11" ; date of 1st night >> >> purpose: "Conference" >> Expenses:Travel:Accommodation:Hotel 300.00 EUR >> >> Expenses:Travel:Nights 3 NIGHTS >> >> >> Assets:Bank:Checking -300.00 EUR >> >> Equity:Nights -3 NIGHTS >> ``` >> >> Without even doing any special queries, you'll already get a lot of >> information (e.g. in Fava) >> >> >> and you can query that information like >> >> >> ``` >> SELECT sum(filter_currency(position, 'EUR')) as Cost, >> sum(filter_currency(position, 'NIGHTS')) as Nights, entry_meta('purpose') >> as Purpose >> WHERE account ~ '^Expenses:Travel' GROUP BY entry_meta('purpose') >> ``` >> >> >> As for dealing with investments from IBKR, I'm doing this as well. >> >> My use case is pretty simple and boring, mostly buy and hold. For this I >> have built two things which are useful for me >> >> An importer which pulls, buys and dividends directly from IBKR >> >> >> https://tariochbctools.readthedocs.io/en/latest/importers.html#interactivebrokers >> >> A price import which pulls the price information for securities from IBKR >> >> https://tariochbctools.readthedocs.io/en/latest/price_fetchers.html >> >> >> For general documentation about investments, this part of the official >> beancount doc is a very good starting point >> >> https://beancount.github.io/docs/trading_with_beancount.html >> >> >> Regards, >> >> Patrick >> >> >> On 20.03.2025 19:33, Fabian Braennstroem wrote: >> >> Hi all, >> >> I am quite new to beancount (and in accounting in general) and are >> testing a few >> minor things at the moment with version 3. >> >> At the moment I am planing to use it for two topics. One is for >> travelling and >> another one is for calculating tax relevant gains from >> investing (with interarctive brokers), which needs to be converted to EUR >> currency gain. For my understanding that is possible with beancount, but >> I missed up >> to now a good example case for it. Maybe someone can point me to one? >> This would >> be great! >> >> As mentioned, in addition to these investing tasks, I would like to track >> my business trips and also count days abroad or days in a hotel. >> >> For my understanding I am having different options to track this. >> I saws this: https://groups.google.com/g/beancount/c/NGt2BRHR6LE >> and understand, that I can use tags, meta or links for additional >> information. >> It seems that meta is a good option. >> Maybe I could even use a special NIGHT-currency also for tracking it. >> >> But I am not sure yet, what the best way is to get e.g. the number of >> nights >> which I stayed in a hotel in a certain time frame and what I paid for >> this. >> >> E.g. I could state a stay of 3 night in these two ways: >> ``` >> 2025-03-11 * "Hotel in Berlin (3 nights)" >> date: "2025-03-08" ; Booking date >> nights: 3 ; Number of nights >> purpose: "Conference" >> Expenses:Travel:Accommodation:Hotel 300.00 EUR >> Assets:Bank:Checking -300.00 EUR >> >> 2025-03-08 * "Hotel in Berlin (3 nights)" >> firstNightDate: "2025-03-11" ; date of 1st night >> nights: 3 ; Number of nights >> purpose: "Conference" >> Expenses:Travel:Accommodation:Hotel 300.00 EUR >> Assets:Bank:Checking -300.00 EUR >> ``` >> >> With this query: >> >> ``` >> bean-query uow_test3.beancount " >> SELECT SUM(position), entry.meta['nights'] as nights >> WHERE account ~ '^Expenses:Travel' >> GROUP BY nights >> " >> ``` >> >> >> I get something like this: >> >> ``` >> SUM(positi n >> ---------- - >> 600.00 EUR 3 >> ``` >> >> I.e. I am summing the cost for all stays with 3 nights, but the number of >> nights. >> >> Do you have an advice how I can adjust my query for this? >> Thank you in advance! >> Best Regards >> Fab >> >> -- >> 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+...@googlegroups.com. >> To view this discussion visit >> https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/beancount/fb28e70a-7ee3-4d56-9dcc-081de1ecc923n%40googlegroups.com >> >> <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/beancount/fb28e70a-7ee3-4d56-9dcc-081de1ecc923n%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. 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