Re: Balance, Pad, and 'why should I use an equity account'?
> > My question is - should my 'unaccounted transactions' be considered > an equity transfer or an expense? My previous reason for listing > this as an expense is that the cashflow tracked here is almost > always actually a (forgotten) expense, and should thus show up as > something I've spent. I'd like to hear some accounting reasoning on > that (I understand equity to mean 'value', but I'm an engineer not > an accountant). > My reasoning is to use the most specific account you can, where „Equity“ is the least specific and therefore less specific than „Expenses“. E.g. - if you know you spent $1 in food, specifically cookies, you could use Expenses:Food:Cookies - if you know you spent $1 in food but don't need to specify what exactly, use Expenses:Food:Various - if you know you spent $1 but don't need to say (or remember) in what, use Expenses:Unaccounted (or call it Expenses:Various) - if you know there was a $1 transaction but you don't even know if it was an Expense or an Assets transfer or a Liability etc., use Equity:Unaccounted Also, to each of the previous cases, add this subcase: „if you don't know the amount or the number of transactions, you should use 'pad' with that account instead of writing the amounts (like $1)“. That is, you could pad to Expenses:Food:Cookies, to Expenses:Food:Various, Expenses:Unaccounted, Equity:Unaccounted. Other accounts (Income, …) also make sense: for instance, I have a bank account that pays around 0'02€ every month in interest, and I won't spend time recording every transaction; instead I pad to Income:Bank1:Interest, maybe once a year, to express that „this account paid me some interest but I don't care about the number of transactions or the amount of each transaction“. In practice, I rarely use Expenses:Unaccounted (== „I spent something but don't know what“) because it rarely happens that I know nothing else about the transactions; instead I'll say the type (e.g. Expenses:Food:Various) or just use Equity:Unaccounted for all cases (== „there were some movements, but I don't know or I don't care about which ones or even about +/-“). Equity:Unaccounted always with pad (never write Equity:* transactions by hand unless you understand very well everything else, and be prepared to rectify them if you do, because it makes little). I sometimes use „Expenses:Food:Various“ with pad. And of course „Expenses:Food:Cookies“ never with pad, always with detailed information. I remember this topic was very difficult for me to understand, because you have the freedom to use accounts as you like and you need to create your own rules as you understand more and more. My rules and algorithms are the ones stated above, and I don't know if they're accounting-ly correct, but they now make sense to me. Greetings -- 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/877f2nw254.wl-n142857%40gmail.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Grouping Income accounts
I started to use Beancount some time ago without reading entire documentation. Thus, I have Income accounts grouped by income type. E.g. Income:Interest:MyBank:Savings Income:Interest:AnotherBank:Savings But I have found that Beancount doc recommends grouping Income accounts by institution. What advantages does this approach have? Thanks. -- 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/96a2303f-c5ef-44bc-bbd3-77d3cfc255cb%40googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Grouping Income accounts
First thing to note is that it's fairly trivial to convert account names (assuming you're handy with your editor, regex, sed, or any other string processing method). That being said, the main difference between Income:Type:Institution and Income:Institution:Type is what the main group is. Using 'Institution' as the main group means you have an overview amount/transaction list per institution. So you know how much 'business' you do with a particular BankA, and how much of your net worth currently resides in that bank. In my country, for example, automatic government insurance on deposited amount is per-institution, so I can immediately see if my total deposits in various types of accounts is close to that limit (at which point moving some funds to another institution makes sense). Using 'Interest' as a main group has a different utility, as it allows easy viewing of how much interest you actually made, across all institutions. Of course, a quick query can 'solve' both of the above, whatever your structure. So no, it doesn't really matter much at the end of the day. I prefer the recommended way because I use fava exclusively and it displays nicely there without me having to write a query. On Sat, Apr 15, 2017 at 4:28 AM, wrote: > I started to use Beancount some time ago without reading entire > documentation. Thus, I have Income accounts grouped by income type. E.g. > > Income:Interest:MyBank:Savings > Income:Interest:AnotherBank:Savings > > But I have found that Beancount doc recommends grouping Income accounts by > institution. > > What advantages does this approach have? > > Thanks. > > -- > 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/96a2303f-c5ef-44bc-bbd3-77d3cfc255cb%40googlegroups.com. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > -- 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/CAGQ70ev%2BmtyEJwp9D3BoxuxjDc8wizwER%3DKr%2BAXx2h_AdCQhaQ%40mail.gmail.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Grouping Income accounts
Thanks for the prompt reply. On Saturday, April 15, 2017 at 9:51:30 AM UTC+10, Oon-Ee Ng wrote: > > First thing to note is that it's fairly trivial to convert account names > (assuming you're handy with your editor, regex, sed, or any other string > processing method). > This brings another interesting question. Are there any tools available that can manipulate ledger files on a higher level? Regex search and replace is sufficient in this case, but I would like to perform more complex file transformations in the future. > Using 'Institution' as the main group means you have an overview > amount/transaction list per institution. So you know how much 'business' > you do with a particular BankA, and how much of your net worth currently > resides in that bank. In my country, for example, automatic government > insurance on deposited amount is per-institution, so I can immediately see > if my total deposits in various types of accounts is close to that limit > (at which point moving some funds to another institution makes sense). > We also have limited government insurance. This is why I choose Institution grouping for Asset accounts but I wasn't able to find strong reasons to use the same grouping for Income accounts. It looks like it is a matter of personal preference. > Of course, a quick query can 'solve' both of the above, whatever your > structure. So no, it doesn't really matter much at the end of the day. I > prefer the recommended way because I use fava exclusively and it displays > nicely there without me having to write a query. > I tried fava and it looks great. Now I am wondering how one can switch between rendering income by institution (banks) and by type (i.e. interest) writing queries in fava. It is easy to do with bean-web since I can select components (either institution name or income type) on the main page and then navigate to Income Statement page. > On Sat, Apr 15, 2017 at 4:28 AM, > wrote: > >> I started to use Beancount some time ago without reading entire >> documentation. Thus, I have Income accounts grouped by income type. E.g. >> >> Income:Interest:MyBank:Savings >> Income:Interest:AnotherBank:Savings >> >> But I have found that Beancount doc recommends grouping Income accounts >> by institution. >> >> What advantages does this approach have? >> >> Thanks. >> >> -- >> 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 post to this group, send email to bean...@googlegroups.com >> . >> To view this discussion on the web visit >> https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/beancount/96a2303f-c5ef-44bc-bbd3-77d3cfc255cb%40googlegroups.com >> . >> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. >> > > -- 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/77b7bb37-d7d9-4922-a828-8f91f9848c73%40googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
