--- title: Plain Text Accounting is Pretty Cool | daily.dev description: A personal experience report on switching from apps like Origin, Rocket Money, and Mint to plain text accounting using hledger for tracking personal finances.... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/plain-text-accounting-is-pretty-cool-uhgpbwqu4 twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Plain Text Accounting is Pretty Cool | daily.dev og:description: A personal experience report on switching from apps like Origin, Rocket Money, and Mint to plain text accounting using hledger for tracking personal finances.... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/plain-text-accounting-is-pretty-cool-uhgpbwqu4 og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/UhGpbwqu4.png og:image:alt: Plain Text Accounting is Pretty Cool og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Plain Text Accounting is Pretty Cool **[Lobsters](https://daily.dev/sources/lobsters)** · 13 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary A personal experience report on switching from apps like Origin, Rocket Money, and Mint to plain text accounting using hledger for tracking personal finances. Covers hledger's journal file syntax, multi-account transactions, commodity and price tracking, multi-file journals, transfer tracking via equity accounts, reimbursable expense tracking with accounts receivable, and balance assertions for catching discrepancies. The author, a few weeks into the switch, finds the double-entry rigor and plain text format worthwhile despite manual entry overhead. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Questions this post answers ### How do you record a transfer between two accounts in hledger so both journal files stay balanced? Use an intermediate equity:transfers account to represent money in transit between accounts. In the source account's journal file, debit the account and credit equity:transfers; in the destination account's journal file, debit equity:transfers and credit the destination. This keeps each account's journal file reading like a linear bank statement while the overall books stay balanced, and it gives visibility into transfers that take days to settle. _Developers building personal finance tooling can find more hledger patterns like this through daily.dev._ ### How do I record a reimbursable work expense in hledger without it showing up as a personal expense? Post the expense against an accounts-receivable asset account instead of an expense account, for example assets:accounts-receivable:expense-reimbursement:employer-name. When the reimbursement arrives, debit checking and credit that receivable account back to zero. This avoids the problem of a large expense in one month and a matching negative expense the next month once reimbursed, and it correctly zeroes out even when the original expense spanned multiple subcategories. _Anyone automating expense tracking can compare double-entry approaches like this via daily.dev._ ### How do balance assertions work in hledger and what happens when they fail? A balance assertion is written after an amount using the = syntax, such as $32.00 = $82.00, asserting the account's running balance at that point. Running hledger check replays all transactions and reports a failure showing the journal file, line number, the asserted balance versus the calculated balance, and the difference, helping catch data-entry errors or unaccounted transactions early. _Developers tracking finances programmatically can dig into tools like hledger through daily.dev._ ## Community take How the wider developer community reacted, aggregated from 2 discussions and 29 comments across lobsters, hackernews (as of 2026-08-20). **TL;DR:** Long-time plain text accounting users voice enthusiasm for hledger and beancount, sharing tips on manual entry workflows, bank statement imports, and tooling, while a few raise practical friction points like data entry burden and bank statement quality. **Sentiment:** 75% positive · 20% mixed · 5% skeptical **The case for** - Several longtime users say double-entry plain text accounting has stuck with them for years unlike other tools they've tried. - Multi-currency and commodity/inventory tracking features are praised as powerful, especially in beancount. - Scripting and CLI-based workflows are described as enjoyable and well-suited to automation and even LLM-assisted tooling. - Tools like fava provide visualizations that surpass what banks offer natively. **The pushback** - Manual transaction entry is a real burden for some, especially if you fall behind and have to catch up on weeks of activity. - Some banks provide vague transaction descriptions (e.g. just 'Spending' or amounts with no vendor info), undermining the CSV-import workflow. - Sharing plain text ledgers with a partner who prefers a GUI/phone app is a friction point. - Integrating shared/split expense tracking (e.g. Splitwise-style) with double-entry systems is unclear and confusing. **By community** - lobsters (positive): Enthusiastic, experience-sharing thread from people already using hledger, beancount, or similar tools, with practical tips and some minor gripes about data entry and bank statement quality. - hackernews (mixed): No discussion content was available to assess. **Open questions** - How best to integrate double-entry plain text ledgers with shared/split expense tracking tools like Splitwise. - Whether and how to automate bank transaction ingestion via APIs versus manual entry or CSV import. **Highlights** > Do you really enter every transaction manually into hledger? So if you spend a day out and have a coffee, buy a book and dinner you keep the receipts and sit down in the evening to enter it? Is it discouraged to use your bank's/credit card's API or something to ingest the transactions? > — [lenny on lobsters · 1 points, 3 comments](https://lobste.rs/s/i4lxyt/plain_text_accounting_is_pretty_cool#c_dz4tjf) > So this whole thing relies on having a bank that populates your statements with more detail than "Payment for Goods/Services" or "Purchase via eChannels" or ".... I don't think it's going to work for me then. > — [stephenr on lobsters · 1 points, 1 comments](https://lobste.rs/s/i4lxyt/plain_text_accounting_is_pretty_cool#c_tjj7d9) > On Saturday afternoon, you pull the last ~8 days of activity from your bank as a csv. Then you use a script or macro to swizzle it into hledger format, then you correct it. Not that huge a burden, until you miss ~12 weeks and decide to just start from a new baseline lol > — [rondahlgren on lobsters · 1 points, 2 comments](https://lobste.rs/s/i4lxyt/plain_text_accounting_is_pretty_cool#c_jaqakn) > I'd be fine with hledger personally, but I manage my finances with someone less interested in learning to interact directly with plain text and would rather use a phone with a GUI. I'm considering hledger Android and Syncthing but I'm not sure how well those will hold up in practice. > — [liberty on lobsters · 1 points](https://lobste.rs/s/i4lxyt/plain_text_accounting_is_pretty_cool#c_vyzsnf) > Any tips on how to best integrate my double-entry based system (like hledger, Beancount) with shared expense tracking (like spliit.app, Splitwise)? I guess it would be possible to convert transactions entered to the expense tracker into the plaintext format. But for expenses I paid, there already will be a transaction, so they have to be merged somehow. Do I use an intermediary account here? And I also got confused because one ends up tracking assets and liabilities of *others*. Any solutions out there? > — [lorenzleutgeb on lobsters · 1 points](https://lobste.rs/s/i4lxyt/plain_text_accounting_is_pretty_cool#c_0lns0i) **Source threads** - [lobsters](https://lobste.rs/s/i4lxyt/plain_text_accounting_is_pretty_cool) · 63 points · 29 comments - [hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49367783) · 1 points · 0 comments ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [One Number I Trust: Plain-Text Accounting for a Multi-Currency Household](https://daily.dev/posts/one-number-i-trust-plain-text-accounting-for-a-multi-currency-household-rpex4z21e) · Lobsters · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [10 years of personal finances in plain text files](https://daily.dev/posts/10-years-of-personal-finances-in-plain-text-files-uscnbakm1) · Hacker News · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Modern and Flexible Accounting](https://daily.dev/posts/modern-and-flexible-accounting-lhvqrr3ir) · ElixirStatus · 41 upvotes · 0 comments - [I ditched the fancy notes apps for a system so simple it almost feels boring](https://daily.dev/posts/i-ditched-the-fancy-notes-apps-for-a-system-so-simple-it-almost-feels-boring-rt1xg9cax) · XDA Developers · 20 upvotes · 2 comments - [You Don't Know What a Ledger is For](https://daily.dev/posts/you-don-t-know-what-a-ledger-is-for-zjdw8smrs) · The PayEng Playbook · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#open-source](https://daily.dev/tags/open-source) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/plain-text-accounting-is-pretty-cool-uhgpbwqu4) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Plain Text Accounting is Pretty Cool","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/plain-text-accounting-is-pretty-cool-uhgpbwqu4","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/plain-text-accounting-is-pretty-cool-uhgpbwqu4"},"datePublished":"2026-08-19T20:34:10.499Z","dateModified":"2026-08-20T09:07:54.823Z","description":"A personal experience report on switching from apps like Origin, Rocket Money, and Mint to plain text accounting using hledger for tracking personal finances....","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/s--2-1xRawN--/f_auto/v1722860399/public/Placeholder%2011","thumbnailUrl":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/s--2-1xRawN--/f_auto/v1722860399/public/Placeholder%2011","isAccessibleForFree":true,"articleSection":"Lobsters","inLanguage":"en","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180}},"author":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Lobsters","logo":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/s--tl8v_Fku--/f_auto,t_logo/v1698841318/logos/lobste.jpg","url":"https://daily.dev/sources/lobsters"},"commentCount":0,"discussionUrl":"https://daily.dev/posts/plain-text-accounting-is-pretty-cool-uhgpbwqu4","interactionStatistic":[{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":0},{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"CommentAction"},"userInteractionCount":0}],"keywords":"open-source","timeRequired":"PT13M"} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https://daily.dev"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Lobsters","item":"https://daily.dev/sources/lobsters"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"Plain Text Accounting is Pretty Cool"}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"FAQPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/plain-text-accounting-is-pretty-cool-uhgpbwqu4#faq","mainEntity":[{"@type":"Question","name":"How do you record a transfer between two accounts in hledger so both journal files stay balanced?","acceptedAnswer":{"@type":"Answer","text":"Use an intermediate equity:transfers account to represent money in transit between accounts. 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