hrj/abandon

Smart, Simple and Robust Accounting

hrj

@hrj

(for some reason I am not getting gitter email notifications; hence the slow reply)

hrj

@hrj

@jaa127 Great to see the stream of PRs !

Do you still use abandon for scuba accounting?

Colin Dean

@colindean

Thanks for the pointer, @hrj. I eventually didn't make the change, but noted it for 2017.

I'm trying to move my accounting entirely to Abandon for 2017. I'm finding that I have a solid need for commodity tracking, in order to track stocks. What would it take to make commodity tracking happen? I could set aside some time in the next few weeks to try to code it up, but I'd be having to learn a lot about how Abandon parses in order to do so, it seems. I know Scala pretty well, fwiw, and that's what's having me choose Abandon over Beancount.

hrj

@hrj

@colindean I don't have any experience in commodities. I could help you with the code changes, but first things first: what are the requirements, and what could be the simplest way to support them.

BTW, it's nice to see the interest around abandon. I am busy with another project and I am still trying to catch up with the work that @jaa127 has been doing.

Colin Dean

@colindean

So the requirement for commodities, @hrj, is that I want to be able to define||use any symbol as a commodity. If I use a $ or USD with an amount for an account, it is denominated in USD. I could set something in my conf that declares the commodity and its expected format, or I just use it after the amount.

If I had a transaction like:

2017-01-01 MyLocalBar
  Income:Earnings:BarJob     -500.00 USD
  Income:Earnings:FreeDrinks   -5 drinksAtBar
  Assets:Bank:Checking        500.00 USD
  Assets:Favors                 5 drinksAtBar

then I could run balance and see that after another transaction(s) took $500 away from Assets:Bank:Checking that I still have 5 drinksAtBar in Assets:Favors

Colin Dean

@colindean

This is a contrived example, but it shows the freedom to define commodities on the fly. ledger-cli does this very well: I have an informal system at work that allows me to keep track of my vacation days and personal choice holidays using ledger, wherein a day is just a commodity called "days"

I really do need to write up a public post about that.

hrj

@hrj

Thanks for the explanation @colindean. I was somewhat aware of this feature from ledger, but always thought that this could be achieved using separate accounts for each type of commodity. For example, Assets:Favors:DrinksAtBar instead of just Assets:Favors.

However, now I realize that these currencies are like types, and it would be good to have type checking, so that someone doesn't accidentally transfer the drinks account into the USD account.

However, internally, these "types" can be managed as sub-accounts of the user-visible account.

Aside, for some reason, gitter is not notifying me of new messages any more. Let's move this discussion to hrj/abandon#124

Colin Dean

@colindean

How would one represent credit card rewards dollars as cash back, e.g. statement credit or a check? It's that season for we Costco members.

I thought about making it be something like Income:CreditCardX:Cashback

but then it'll muck with my income tally

if I've put $100 onto the credit card account

well

I guess it could be just another transaction, since it's not technically with a payment or something else

hrj

@hrj

@colindean Incidentally, I am having some cashbacks beginning this year. I haven't thought much about how to account for it.. but does "negative expense" make sense?

That is, you account it as a reduction in expenditure (like a discount), rather than an increase in income.

A more tedious, but perhaps correct way, is to mark the cash back as receivable for every individual expense transaction. And then move the amount from Asset:Receivable to Asset:Bankwhen the cashback is processed.

Colin Dean

@colindean

I thought about marking it as equity:

2017-02-11 AMEX Cash back credit
  Liabilities:CreditCard:AmericanExpress  225.00
  Equity:Cashback

hrj

@hrj

@colindean Makes sense too. I guess you would need to fold the Equity:Cashback account at the end of the accounting year.

hrj

@hrj

@/all New release 0.4.0 is out: https://github.com/hrj/abandon/releases/tag/v0.4.0

Thanks to all contributors!

hrj

@hrj

@/all New release 0.5.0 : https://github.com/hrj/abandon/releases/tag/v0.5.0-tag2

Juan Luna

@jgluna

hi @hrj how do I use abandon as a library?

hrj

@hrj

@jgluna Sorry for the late response. There is no documented API for abandon. The jars are published on maven, but beyond that I haven't really made the libraries easier to use.

Ng Wei Shyang

@gaara4896

Hi, I would like to contribute to this project, are there contributor guide for the practice that should follow and whr can I find wht is being developing and what is plan to develop?

hrj

@hrj

@gaara4896 Hi. You are welcome to contribute. Unfortunately, the project is not in active development, and we don't have much in the form of guides.

You can look at the issues and milestones for a rough plan. Issues marked with the "low-hanging-fruit" label should provide an easy entry into the project.

If you pick up something, let us know here, and I will try my best to respond back.

Ng Wei Shyang

@gaara4896

@hrj I see, thanks. I looking for a open source project that are in active development to sharpen my programming skills. The guide that I mean is as in like the workflow practice for the project.

hrj

@hrj

@/all Managed to release https://github.com/hrj/abandon-reports today. Let me know if you find it useful.

hrj

@hrj

Added a new type of report called "flow report" and released version 1.0: https://github.com/hrj/abandon-reports/releases/tag/v1.0

hrj

@hrj

@/all Important announcement. Abandon Reports 1.0 had a bug. Please use version 1.1 instead https://github.com/hrj/abandon-reports/releases/tag/v1.1

hrjet

@hrjet:matrix.org

[m]

Hi. I am the author of abandon. Just chiming in to say that I am still around and use abandon daily. Would love to know if anyone else uses it.

@simonmic:matrix.org

[m]

hi hrjet! hledger author here. FYI I listed this chat in the Matrix #plaintextaccounting space

1 reply

you might be interested in #plaintextaccounting:matrix.org also

@simonmic:matrix.org

[m]

hello hrjet, FYI I'm announcing https://wiki.plaintextaccounting.org a little more widely, https://groups.google.com/g/ledger-cli/c/-ylWBNTUC9Q

hrjet

@hrjet:matrix.org

[m]

sm: Nice, thanks!

I seem to be the only user for Abandon. Would love to know if anyone else is using it.

If I get time to work on it, the next thing I am planning for Abandon is a web based viewer, with interactive reports, filters, etc.

@simonmic:matrix.org

[m]

cool hrjet. If you want more users, do you have time to hang out in #plaintextaccounting:matrix.org / #plaintextaccounting:libera.chat and mention/promote it ?

other ideas: tweets with #plaintextaccounting tag, blog posts/youtubes which can be linked on plaintextaccounting.org, abandon-specific examples added to wiki.plaintextaccounting.org, and if you're feeling brave a Show HN post on hacker news

https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html

hrjet

@hrjet:matrix.org

[m]

No, not really looking for new users. Was just wondering if there are any existing users, other than me.

But thanks for the tips sm ! Will try to contribute to the wiki!

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