example.ledger

; Personal book-keeping typically has 4 account types:
;    Expense   : where you record what you spent.
;    Income    : where you got money from others.
;    Asset     : money you have right now
;    Liability : money you owe to others
;
; Business bookkeeping adds a 5th type:
;    Equity    : assets supplied by the owners
;
; The rules are:
;  - When you buy something, add value to the expense account
;    and subtract it from the source of the funds
;  - When you receive income, subtract it from the income account
;    and add it to the account it went to
;
; Income accounts read negative the more money you receive
;     (i.e. the source of the income, your job, has less money)
; Expense accounts go positive as you spend more money
; Liability accounts to more negative as you owe more money
; Asset accounts go more positive as you have more money

; You can record this two ways:
2015-05-30  Salary
    ; Recording the gross pay here makes it easier to just look at your books
    ; when it comes time to fill in your tax forms at the end of the year
    Personal:Income:Day Job      $-1000
    Personal:Expenses:Federal income tax withheld  $100
    Personal:Expenses:State income tax withheld  $100
    Personal:Assets:Checking Account

2015-06-01  Groceries
    Personal:Expenses:Groceries   $22
    Personal:Assets:Checking Account

2015-06-02  Car servicing
    Personal:Expenses:Vehicle    $422.98
    Personal:Liabilities:VISA

; The bucket command sets a default balancing account.  Unbalanced transactions
; will be balanced with an amount to this account.
bucket Personal:Assets:Checking Account
2015-06-03 Groceries again
    Personal:Expenses:Groceries   $32.73


; You can verify balances using the 'assert balance' command
; This will check that the balance of the account using everything
; seen so far matches what you've got.  This can be useful for verifying
; against account balances from your bank after you've entered a bunch
; of transactions.
assert balance Personal:Expenses:Groceries  $54.73
; You can also use an 'asof' date for a balance check, helpful if you
; have a bank statement with a single balance and date, but you just
; want to append the check to the bottom of your ledger file (e.g.
; if doing one file per month).  This checks the balance at the end of
; a certain date, using data seen up until now
assert balance 2015-06-02 Personal:Expenses:Groceries  $22

; You can define alias shortcuts (just single words)
alias groceries Personal:Expenses:Groceries
2015-06-04 Even more groceries
    groceries  $23.99

; In my state, if you buy something online, you often don't
; pay sales tax  on it.  However, technically you still owe
; the 6% tax.  This shows how to track that outstanding
; liability so you can send payment to the tax department
; at the end of the year
; Note that the "bucket" account is still in effect
2015-02-05 Chair from amazon
    Personal:Expenses:Office  ($139 * 1.06)
    Personal:Liabilities:State Sales Tax  ($1.39 * -0.06)


; uledger also supports the "accounting equation", where you can check
; that everything balances as it should
assert equation 2015-07-01 Personal:Assets - Personal:Liabilities = Personal:Equity + Personal:Income - Personal:Expenses