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@ -580,7 +580,837 @@ $ ledger -f drewr3.dat cleared
@end multitable
@node Principles of Accounting, Keeping a Journal, Ledger Tutorial , Top
@chapter Principles of Accounting
@chapter Principles of Accounting with Ledger
@menu
* Accounting with Ledger::
* Stating where money goes::
* Assets and Liabilities::
* Typical queries::
* Commodities and Currencies::
* Accounts and Inventories::
* Understanding Equity::
* Dealing with Petty Cash::
* Working with multiple funds and accounts::
@end menu
@node Accounting with Ledger, Stating where money goes, Principles of Accounting, Principles of Accounting
@section Accounting with Ledger
Accounting is simply tracking your money. It can range from nothing,
and just waiting for automatic overdraft protection to kick in, or not,
to a full blown double entry accounting system. Ledger accomplishes the
latter. With ledger you can handle your personal finances or you
businesses. Double-entry accounting scales.
@node Stating where money goes, Assets and Liabilities, Accounting with Ledger, Principles of Accounting
@section Stating where money goes
Accountants will talk of ``credits'' and ``debits'', but the meaning
is often different from the layman's understanding. To avoid
confusion, Ledger uses only subtractions and additions, although the
underlying intent is the same as standard accounting principles.
Recall that every posting will involve two or more accounts.
Money is transferred from one or more accounts to one or more other
accounts. To record the posting, an amount is @emph{subtracted}
from the source accounts, and @emph{added} to the target accounts.
In order to write a Ledger transaction correctly, you must determine where
the money comes from and where it goes to. For example, when you are
paid a salary, you must add money to your bank account and also
subtract it from an income account:
@smallexample
9/29 My Employer
Assets:Checking $500.00
Income:Salary $-500.00
@end smallexample
Why is the Income a negative figure? When you look at the balance
totals for your ledger, you may be surprised to see that Expenses are
a positive figure, and Income is a negative figure. It may take some
getting used to, but to properly use a general ledger you must think
in terms of how money moves. Rather than Ledger ``fixing'' the minus
signs, let's understand why they are there.
When you earn money, the money has to come from somewhere. Let's call
that somewhere ``society''. In order for society to give you an
income, you must take money away (withdraw) from society in order to
put it into (make a payment to) your bank. When you then spend that
money, it leaves your bank account (a withdrawal) and goes back to
society (a payment). This is why Income will appear negative---it
reflects the money you have drawn from society---and why Expenses will
be positive---it is the amount you've given back. These additions and
subtractions will always cancel each other out in the end, because you
don't have the ability to create new money: it must always come from
somewhere, and in the end must always leave. This is the beginning of
economy, after which the explanation gets terribly difficult.
Based on that explanation, here's another way to look at your balance
report: every negative figure means that that account or person or
place has less money now than when you started your ledger; and every
positive figure means that that account or person or place has more
money now than when you started your ledger. Make sense?
@node Assets and Liabilities, Typical queries, Stating where money goes, Principles of Accounting
@section Assets and Liabilities
Assets are money that you have, and Liabilities are money that you
owe. ``Liabilities'' is just a more inclusive name for Debts.
An Asset is typically increased by transferring money from an Income
account, such as when you get paid. Here is a typical transaction:
@smallexample
2004/09/29 My Employer
Assets:Checking $500.00
Income:Salary
@end smallexample
Money, here, comes from an Income account belonging to ``My
Employer'', and is transferred to your checking account. The money is
now yours, which makes it an Asset.
Liabilities track money owed to others. This can happen when you
borrow money to buy something, or if you owe someone money. Here is
an example of increasing a MasterCard liability by spending money with
it:
@smallexample
2004/09/30 Restaurant
Expenses:Dining $25.00
Liabilities:MasterCard
@end smallexample
The Dining account balance now shows $25 spent on Dining, and a
corresponding $25 owed on the MasterCard---and therefore shown as
$-25.00. The MasterCard liability shows up as negative because it
offsets the value of your assets.
The combined total of your Assets and Liabilities is your net worth.
So to see your current net worth, use this command:
@example
ledger balance ^assets ^liabilities
@end example
Relatedly, your Income accounts show up negative, because they
transfer money @emph{from} an account in order to increase your
assets. Your Expenses show up positive because that is where the
money went to. The combined total of Income and Expenses is your cash
flow. A positive cash flow means you are spending more than you make,
since income is always a negative figure. To see your current cash
flow, use this command:
@example
ledger balance ^income ^expenses
@end example
Another common question to ask of your expenses is: How much do I
spend each month on X? Ledger provides a simple way of displaying
monthly totals for any account. Here is an example that summarizes
your monthly automobile expenses:
@example
ledger -M register expenses:auto
@end example
This assumes, of course, that you use account names like
@samp{Expenses:Auto:Gas} and @samp{Expenses:Auto:Repair}.
@menu
* Tracking reimbursable expenses::
@end menu
@node Tracking reimbursable expenses, , Assets and Liabilities, Assets and Liabilities
@subsection Tracking reimbursable expenses
Sometimes you will want to spend money on behalf of someone else,
which will eventually get repaid. Since the money is still ``yours'',
it is really an asset. And since the expenditure was for someone
else, you don't want it contaminating your Expenses reports. You will
need to keep an account for tracking reimbursements.
This is fairly easy to do in ledger. When spending the money, spend
it @emph{to} your Assets:Reimbursements, using a different account for
each person or business that you spend money for. For example:
@smallexample
2004/09/29 Circuit City
Assets:Reimbursements:Company XYZ $100.00
Liabilities:MasterCard
@end smallexample
This shows $100.00 spent on a MasterCard at Circuit City, with the
expense was made on behalf of Company XYZ. Later, when Company XYZ
pays the amount back, the money will transfer from that reimbursement
account back to a regular asset account:
@smallexample
2004/09/29 Company XYZ
Assets:Checking $100.00
Assets:Reimbursements:Company XYZ
@end smallexample
This deposits the money owed from Company XYZ into a checking account,
presumably because they paid the amount back with a check.
But what to do if you run your own business, and you want to keep
track of expenses made on your own behalf, while still tracking
everything in a single ledger file? This is more complex, because you
need to track two separate things: 1) The fact that the money should
be reimbursed to you, and 2) What the expense account was, so that you
can later determine where your company is spending its money.
This kind of posting is best handled with mirrored postings in
two different files, one for your personal accounts, and one for your
company accounts. But keeping them in one file involves the same
kinds of postings, so those are what is shown here. First, the
personal transaction, which shows the need for reimbursement:
@smallexample
2004/09/29 Circuit City
Assets:Reimbursements:Company XYZ $100.00
Liabilities:MasterCard
@end smallexample
This is the same as above, except that you own Company XYZ, and are
keeping track of its expenses in the same ledger file. This transaction
should be immediately followed by an equivalent transaction, which shows the
kind of expense, and also notes the fact that $100.00 is now payable
to you:
@smallexample
2004/09/29 Circuit City
Company XYZ:Expenses:Computer:Software $100.00
Company XYZ:Accounts Payable:Your Name
@end smallexample
This second transaction shows that Company XYZ has just spent $100.00 on
software, and that this $100.00 came from Your Name, which must be
paid back.
These two transactions can also be merged, to make things a little clearer.
Note that all amounts must be specified now:
@smallexample
2004/09/29 Circuit City
Assets:Reimbursements:Company XYZ $100.00
Liabilities:MasterCard $-100.00
Company XYZ:Expenses:Computer:Software $100.00
Company XYZ:Accounts Payable:Your Name $-100.00
@end smallexample
To ``pay back'' the reimbursement, just reverse the order of
everything, except this time drawing the money from a company asset,
paying it to accounts payable, and then drawing it again from the
reimbursement account, and paying it to your personal asset account.
It's easier shown than said:
@smallexample
2004/10/15 Company XYZ
Assets:Checking $100.00
Assets:Reimbursements:Company XYZ $-100.00
Company XYZ:Accounts Payable:Your Name $100.00
Company XYZ:Assets:Checking $-100.00
@end smallexample
And now the reimbursements account is paid off, accounts payable is
paid off, and $100.00 has been effectively transferred from the
company's checking account to your personal checking account. The
money simply ``waited''---in both @samp{Assets:Reimbursements:Company
XYZ}, and @samp{Company XYZ:Accounts Payable:Your Name}---until such
time as it could be paid off.
The value of tracking expenses from both sides like that is that you
do not contaminate your personal expense report with expenses made on
behalf of others, while at the same time making it possible to
generate accurate reports of your company's expenditures. It is more
verbose than just paying for things with your personal assets, but it
gives you a very accurate information trail.
The advantage to keep these doubled transactions together is that they
always stay in sync. The advantage to keeping them apart is that it
clarifies the transfer's point of view. To keep the postings in
separate files, just separate the two transactions that were joined above.
For example, for both the expense and the pay-back shown above, the
following four transactions would be created. Two in your personal ledger
file:
@smallexample
2004/09/29 Circuit City
Assets:Reimbursements:Company XYZ $100.00
Liabilities:MasterCard $-100.00
2004/10/15 Company XYZ
Assets:Checking $100.00
Assets:Reimbursements:Company XYZ $-100.00
@end smallexample
And two in your company ledger file:
@smallexample
!account Company XYZ
2004/09/29 Circuit City
Expenses:Computer:Software $100.00
Accounts Payable:Your Name $-100.00
2004/10/15 Company XYZ
Accounts Payable:Your Name $100.00
Assets:Checking $-100.00
!end
@end smallexample
(Note: The @samp{!account} above means that all accounts mentioned in
the file are children of that account. In this case it means that all
activity in the file relates to Company XYZ).
After creating these transactions, you will always know that $100.00 was
spent using your MasterCard on behalf of Company XYZ, and that Company
XYZ spent the money on computer software and paid it back about two
weeks later.
@node Typical queries, Commodities and Currencies, Assets and Liabilities, Principles of Accounting
@section Typical queries
A query such as the following shows all expenses since last
October, sorted by total:
@example
ledger -b "last oct" -s -S T bal ^expenses
@end example
From left to right the options mean: Show transactions since October, 2003;
show all sub-accounts; sort by the absolute value of the total; and
report the balance for all expenses.
@menu
* Reporting monthly expenses::
* Visualizing with Gnuplot::
@end menu
@node Reporting monthly expenses, Visualizing with Gnuplot, Typical queries, Typical queries
@subsection Reporting monthly expenses
The following query makes it easy to see monthly expenses, with each
month's expenses sorted by the amount:
@example
ledger -M --period-sort t reg ^expenses
@end example
Now, you might wonder where the money came from to pay for these
things. To see that report, add @option{-r}, which shows the
``related account'' postings:
@example
ledger -M --period-sort t -r reg ^expenses
@end example
But maybe this prints too much information. You might just want to
see how much you're spending with your MasterCard. That kind of query
requires the use of a display predicate, since the postings
calculated must match @samp{^expenses}, while the postings
displayed must match @samp{mastercard}. The command would be:
@example
ledger -M -r -d /mastercard/ reg ^expenses
@end example
This query says: Report monthly subtotals; report the ``related
account'' postings; display only related postings whose
account matches @samp{mastercard}, and base the calculation on
postings matching @samp{^expenses}.
This works just as well for report the overall total, too:
@example
ledger -s -r -d /mastercard/ reg ^expenses
@end example
The @option{-s} option subtotals all postings, just as @option{-M}
subtotaled by the month. The running total in both cases is off,
however, since a display expression is being used.
@node Visualizing with Gnuplot, , Reporting monthly expenses, Typical queries
@subsection Visualizing with Gnuplot
If you have @command{Gnuplot} installed, you can graph any of the
above register reports. The script to do this is included in the
ledger distribution, and is named @file{scripts/report}. Install
@file{report} anywhere along your @env{PATH}, and then use
@command{report} instead of @command{ledger} when doing a register
report. The only thing to keep in mind is that you must specify
@option{-j} or @option{-J} to indicate whether Gnuplot should plot the
amount, or the running total. For example, this command plots total
monthly expenses made on your MasterCard.
@example
report -j -M -r -d /mastercard/ reg ^expenses
@end example
The @command{report} script is a very simple Bourne shell script, that
passes a set of scripted commands to Gnuplot. Feel free to modify the
script to your liking, since you may prefer histograms to line plots,
for example.
@menu
* Typical plots::
@end menu
@node Typical plots, , Visualizing with Gnuplot, Visualizing with Gnuplot
@subsubsection Typical plots
Here are some useful plots:
@smallexample
report -j -M reg ^expenses # monthly expenses
report -J reg checking # checking account balance
report -J reg ^income ^expenses # cash flow report
# net worth report, ignoring non-$ postings
report -J -l "Ua>=@{\$0.01@}" reg ^assets ^liab
# net worth report starting last February. the use of a display
# predicate (-d) is needed, otherwise the balance will start at
# zero, and thus the y-axis will not reflect the true balance
report -J -l "Ua>=@{\$0.01@}" -d "d>=[last feb]" reg ^assets ^liab
@end smallexample
The last report uses both a calculation predicate (@option{-l}) and a
display predicate (@option{-d}). The calculation predicates limits
the report to postings whose amount is greater than $1 (which can
only happen if the posting amount is in dollars). The display
predicate limits the transactions @emph{displayed} to just those since last
February, even those transactions from before then will be computed as part
of the balance.
@node Commodities and Currencies, Accounts and Inventories, Typical queries, Principles of Accounting
@section Commodities and Currencies
Ledger makes no assumptions about the commodities you use; it only
requires that you specify a commodity. The commodity may be any
non-numeric string that does not contain a period, comma, forward
slash or at-sign. It may appear before or after the amount, although
it is assumed that symbols appearing before the amount refer to
currencies, while non-joined symbols appearing after the amount refer
to commodities. Here are some valid currency and commodity
specifiers:
@example
$20.00 ; currency: twenty US dollars
40 AAPL ; commodity: 40 shares of Apple stock
60 DM ; currency: 60 Deutsch Mark
£50 ; currency: 50 British pounds
50 EUR ; currency: 50 Euros (or use appropriate symbol)
@end example
Ledger will examine the first use of any commodity to determine how
that commodity should be printed on reports. It pays attention to
whether the name of commodity was separated from the amount, whether
it came before or after, the precision used in specifying the amount,
whether thousand marks were used, etc. This is done so that printing
the commodity looks the same as the way you use it.
An account may contain multiple commodities, in which case it will
have separate totals for each. For example, if your brokerage account
contains both cash, gold, and several stock quantities, the balance
might look like:
@smallexample
$200.00
100.00 AU
AAPL 40
BORL 100
FEQTX 50 Assets:Brokerage
@end smallexample
This balance report shows how much of each commodity is in your
brokerage account.
Sometimes, you will want to know the current street value of your
balance, and not the commodity totals. For this to happen, you must
specify what the current price is for each commodity. The price can
be any commodity, in which case the balance will be computed in terms
of that commodity. The usual way to specify prices is with a price
history file, which might look like this:
@smallexample
P 2004/06/21 02:18:01 FEQTX $22.49
P 2004/06/21 02:18:01 BORL $6.20
P 2004/06/21 02:18:02 AAPL $32.91
P 2004/06/21 02:18:02 AU $400.00
@end smallexample
Specify the price history to use with the @option{--price-db} option,
with the @option{-V} option to report in terms of current market
value:
@example
ledger --price-db prices.db -V balance brokerage
@end example
The balance for your brokerage account will be reported in US dollars,
since the prices database uses that currency.
@smallexample
$40880.00 Assets:Brokerage
@end smallexample
You can convert from any commodity to any other commodity. Let's say
you had $5000 in your checking account, and for whatever reason you
wanted to know many ounces of gold that would buy, in terms of the
current price of gold:
@example
ledger -T "@{1 AU@}*(O/P@{1 AU@})" balance checking
@end example
Although the total expression appears complex, it is simply saying
that the reported total should be in multiples of AU units, where the
quantity is the account total divided by the price of one AU. Without
the initial multiplication, the reported total would still use the
dollars commodity, since multiplying or dividing amounts always keeps
the left value's commodity. The result of this command might be:
@smallexample
14.01 AU Assets:Checking
@end smallexample
@menu
* Commodity Price Histories::
* Commodity equivalencies::
@end menu
@node Commodity Price Histories, Commodity equivalencies, Commodities and Currencies, Commodities and Currencies
@subsection Commodity price histories
Whenever a commodity is purchased using a different commodity (such as
a share of common stock using dollars), it establishes a price for
that commodity on that day. It is also possible, by recording price
details in a ledger file, to specify other prices for commodities at
any given time. Such price transactions might look like those below:
@smallexample
P 2004/06/21 02:17:58 TWCUX $27.76
P 2004/06/21 02:17:59 AGTHX $25.41
P 2004/06/21 02:18:00 OPTFX $39.31
P 2004/06/21 02:18:01 FEQTX $22.49
P 2004/06/21 02:18:02 AAPL $32.91
@end smallexample
By default, ledger will not consider commodity prices when generating
its various reports. It will always report balances in terms of the
commodity total, rather than the current value of those commodities.
To enable pricing reports, use one of the commodity reporting options.
@node Commodity equivalencies, , Commodity Price Histories, Commodities and Currencies
@subsection Commodity equivalencies
Sometimes a commodity has several forms which are all equivalent. An
example of this is time. Whether tracked in terms of minutes, hours
or days, it should be possible to convert between the various forms.
Doing this requires the use of commodity equivalencies.
For example, you might have the following two postings, one which
transfers an hour of time into a @samp{Billable} account, and another
which decreases the same account by ten minutes. The resulting report
will indicate that fifty minutes remain:
@smallexample
2005/10/01 Work done for company
Billable:Client 1h
Project:XYZ
2005/10/02 Return ten minutes to the project
Project:XYZ 10m
Billable:Client
@end smallexample
Reporting the balance for this ledger file produces:
@smallexample
50.0m Billable:Client
-50.0m Project:XYZ
@end smallexample
This example works because ledger already knows how to handle seconds,
minutes and hours, as part of its time tracking support. Defining
other equivalencies is simple. The following is an example that
creates data equivalencies, helpful for tracking bytes, kilobytes,
megabytes, and more:
@smallexample
C 1.00 Kb = 1024 b
C 1.00 Mb = 1024 Kb
C 1.00 Gb = 1024 Mb
C 1.00 Tb = 1024 Gb
@end smallexample
Each of these definitions correlates a commodity (such as @samp{Kb})
and a default precision, with a certain quantity of another commodity.
In the above example, kilobytes are reporetd with two decimal places
of precision and each kilobyte is equal to 1024 bytes.
Equivalency chains can be as long as desired. Whenever a commodity
would report as a decimal amount (less than @samp{1.00}), the next
smallest commodity is used. If a commodity could be reported in terms
of a higher commodity without resulting to a partial fraction, then
the larger commodity is used.
@node Accounts and Inventories, Understanding Equity, Commodities and Currencies, Principles of Accounting
@section Accounts and Inventories
Since Ledger's accounts and commodity system is so flexible, you can
have accounts that don't really exist, and use commodities that no one
else recognizes. For example, let's say you are buying and selling
various items in EverQuest, and want to keep track of them using a
ledger. Just add items of whatever quantity you wish into your
EverQuest account:
@smallexample
9/29 Get some stuff at the Inn
Places:Black's Tavern -3 Apples
Places:Black's Tavern -5 Steaks
EverQuest:Inventory
@end smallexample
Now your EverQuest:Inventory has 3 apples and 5 steaks in it. The
amounts are negative, because you are taking @emph{from} Black's
Tavern in order to add to your Inventory account. Note that you don't
have to use @samp{Places:Black's Tavern} as the source account. You
could use @samp{EverQuest:System} to represent the fact that you
acquired them online. The only purpose for choosing one kind of
source account over another is for generate more informative reports
later on. The more you know, the better analysis you can perform.
If you later sell some of these items to another player, the transaction
would look like:
@smallexample
10/2 Sturm Brightblade
EverQuest:Inventory -2 Steaks
EverQuest:Inventory 15 Gold
@end smallexample
Now you've turned 2 steaks into 15 gold, courtesy of your customer,
Sturm Brightblade.
@node Understanding Equity, Dealing with Petty Cash, Accounts and Inventories, Principles of Accounting
@section Understanding Equity
The most confusing transaction in any ledger will be your equity account---
because starting balances can't come out of nowhere.
When you first start your ledger, you will likely already have money
in some of your accounts. Let's say there's $100 in your checking
account; then add a transaction to your ledger to reflect this amount.
Where will money come from? The answer: your equity.
@smallexample
10/2 Opening Balance
Assets:Checking $100.00
Equity:Opening Balances
@end smallexample
But what is equity? You may have heard of equity when people talked
about house mortgages, as ``the part of the house that you own''.
Basically, equity is like the value of something. If you own a car
worth $5000, then you have $5000 in equity in that car. In order to
turn that car (a commodity) into a cash flow, or a credit to your bank
account, you will have to debit the equity by selling it.
When you start a ledger, you are probably already worth something.
Your net worth is your current equity. By transferring the money in
the ledger from your equity to your bank accounts, you are crediting
the ledger account based on your prior equity. That is why, when you
look at the balance report, you will see a large negative number for
Equity that never changes: Because that is what you were worth (what
you debited from yourself in order to start the ledger) before the
money started moving around. If the total positive value of your
assets is greater than the absolute value of your starting equity, it
means you are making money.
Clear as mud? Keep thinking about it. Until you figure it out, put
@samp{-Equity} at the end of your balance command, to remove the
confusing figure from the total.
@node Dealing with Petty Cash, Working with multiple funds and accounts, Understanding Equity, Principles of Accounting
@section Dealing with Petty Cash
Something that stops many people from keeping a ledger at all is the
insanity of tracking small cash expenses. They rarely generate a
receipt, and there are often a lot of small postings, rather than
a few large ones, as with checks.
One solution is: don't bother. Move your spending to a debit card,
but in general ignore cash. Once you withdraw it from the ATM, mark
it as already spent to an @samp{Expenses:Cash} category:
@smallexample
2004/03/15 ATM
Expenses:Cash $100.00
Assets:Checking
@end smallexample
If at some point you make a large cash expense that you want to track,
just ``move'' the amount of the expense from @samp{Expenses:Cash} into
the target account:
@smallexample
2004/03/20 Somebody
Expenses:Food $65.00
Expenses:Cash
@end smallexample
This way, you can still track large cash expenses, while ignoring all
of the smaller ones.
@node Working with multiple funds and accounts, , Dealing with Petty Cash, Principles of Accounting
@section Working with multiple funds and accounts
There are situations when the accounts you're tracking are different
between your clients and the financial institutions where money is
kept. An example of this is working as the treasurer for a religious
institution. From the secular point of view, you might be working
with three different accounts:
@itemize
@item Checking
@item Savings
@item Credit Card
@end itemize
From a religious point of view, the community expects to divide its
resources into multiple ``funds'', from which it makes purchases or
reserves resources for later:
@itemize
@item School fund
@item Building fund
@item Community fund
@end itemize
The problem with this kind of setup is that when you spend money, it
comes from two or more places at once: the account and the fund. And
yet, the correlation of amounts between funds and accounts is rarely
one-to-one. What if the school fund has @samp{$500.00}, but
@samp{$400.00} of that comes from Checking, and @samp{$100.00} from
Savings?
Traditional finance packages require that the money reside in only one
place. But there are really two ``views'' of the data: from the
account point of view and from the fund point of view -- yet both sets
should reflect the same overall expenses and cash flow. It's simply
where the money resides that differs.
This situation can be handled one of two ways. The first is using
virtual postings to represent the fact that money is moving to and
from two kind of accounts at the same time:
@smallexample
2004/03/20 Contributions
Assets:Checking $500.00
Income:Donations
2004/03/25 Distribution of donations
[Funds:School] $300.00
[Funds:Building] $200.00
[Assets:Checking] $-500.00
@end smallexample
The use of square brackets in the second transaction ensures that the
virtual postings balance to zero. Now money can be spent directly
from a fund at the same time as money is drawn from a physical
account:
@smallexample
2004/03/25 Payment for books (paid from Checking)
Expenses:Books $100.00
Assets:Checking $-100.00
(Funds:School) $-100.00
@end smallexample
When reports are generated, by default they'll appear in terms of the
funds. In this case, you will likely want to mask out your
@samp{Assets} account, because otherwise the balance won't make much
sense:
@example
ledger bal -^Assets
@end example
If the @option{--real} option is used, the report will be in terms of
the real accounts:
@example
ledger --real bal
@end example
If more asset accounts are needed as the source of a posting, just
list them as you would normally, for example:
@smallexample
2004/03/25 Payment for books (paid from Checking)
Expenses:Books $100.00
Assets:Checking $-50.00
Liabilities:Credit Card $-50.00
(Funds:School) $-100.00
@end smallexample
The second way of tracking funds is to use transaction codes. In this
respect the codes become like virtual accounts that embrace the entire
set of postings. Basically, we are associating a transaction with a
fund by setting its code. Here are two transactions that desposit money
into, and spend money from, the @samp{Funds:School} fund:
@smallexample
2004/03/25 (Funds:School) Donations
Assets:Checking $100.00
Income:Donations
2004/04/25 (Funds:School) Payment for books
Expenses:Books $50.00
Assets:Checking
@end smallexample
Note how the accounts now relate only to the real accounts, and any
balance or registers reports will reflect this. That the transactions
relate to a particular fund is kept only in the code.
How does this become a fund report? By using the
@option{--code-as-payee} option, you can generate a register report
where the payee for each posting shows the code. Alone, this is
not terribly interesting; but when combined with the
@option{--by-payee} option, you will now see account subtotals for any
postings related to a specific fund. So, to see the current
monetary balances of all funds, the command would be:
@smallexample
ledger --code-as-payee -P reg ^Assets
@end smallexample
Or to see a particular funds expenses, the @samp{School} fund in this
case:
@smallexample
ledger --code-as-payee -P reg ^Expenses -- School
@end smallexample
Both approaches yield different kinds of flexibility, depending on how
you prefer to think of your funds: as virtual accounts, or as tags
associated with particular transactions. Your own tastes will decide which
is best for your situation.
@node Keeping a Journal, Command-line Syntax, Principles of Accounting, Top
@chapter Keeping a Journal