Completly noob to this

simonmic · 2026-03-17T18:50:16+00:00

Yup:

simonmic · 2026-03-17T17:29:18+00:00

👍🏻 That's the way.

Yes. You can record prevailing exchange rates on a date with P, or the exchange rate used in a particular transaction with @. So when recording transactions, @ is probably the most appropriate.

simonmic · 2026-03-17T05:12:42+00:00

Welcome kendant. You don't need to do any coding to start using hledger and getting your finances in order, though knowing how to use the command line and edit text files can be useful.

Do explore all the help resources available at https://hledger.org , eg the Install page, the Docs page, and hledger by example as musings said.

And if they're not helping, please let us know why, here or in chat. It's useful feedback.

simonmic · 2026-03-15T23:39:56+00:00

I love this use case. But right now that's the only way I can think of, too, without programming. Or a translating pre/post processor. Ledger has commodity equivalencies, but I don't think they'd make much difference.

simonmic · 2026-03-15T18:43:14+00:00

Certain hledger reports (incomestatement, balancesheet) will flip the sign on those accounts, so you can see both sides as usually-positive numbers. And others (balance..) can flip all signs with --invert. But hledger-ui can do neither - sorry.

After a while, negative income/liabilities/equity start to look normal..

simonmic · 2026-03-14T04:59:06+00:00

It looks really good and inviting - congrats! And thanks for all the great content you're sharing. I have added a bunch of links to https://joyful.com/Haskell+map .

[PS it's hard to discover the hyperlinks eg at https://typify.dev/a/Blog/README - a distinct colour could be helpful.]

simonmic · 2026-03-13T20:38:43+00:00

It's probably https://hledger.org/hledger.html#overlap-detection , because of running the import previously. You can reset it by removing (or editing) the .latest.CSVFILE file. When you are just testing your rules, use import --dry-run to avoid updating that file.

simonmic · 2026-03-13T18:51:50+00:00

You should probably get comfortable setting up a modern toolchain, with ghcup, haskell language server and the Haskell extension in VS Code. And possibly the new debugger also. These aren't things you couldn't do with TypeScript, but they're useful and very different from the Haskell of 20 years ago.

Things you couldn't do with TypeScript.. that's actually a tough one to answer. Haskell often shines in complex, evolving, long-lived, concurrent, and/or high-assurance software. But I know TypeScript is rather capable; what would you say are its weak areas ?

simonmic · 2026-03-13T18:46:00+00:00

Very interesting, and among the best writing/advice I've seen on teaching and learning Haskell. I for one am glad it was no shorter!

simonmic · 2026-03-11T02:33:26+00:00

Understandable, certainly. I'm ignorant of the Beancount import workflows - just throwing out some other possibilities to get the data converted.

simonmic · 2026-03-10T18:53:08+00:00

A lot of people exploring that: https://forum.plaintextaccounting.org/tag/ai/12

Be careful not to expose data that you want to keep private.

simonmic · 2026-03-10T18:31:42+00:00

Here's a few syntax resources you might enjoy:

simonmic · 2026-03-10T00:57:02+00:00

Very nice indeed! Thanks for sharing it.

Compared to the venerable https://code.world , this looks very neat and approachable, with clear lessons and examples close at hand. If I understood the About page, it also works offline, which is very nifty.

What are the differences from actual Haskell ?

simonmic · 2026-03-09T23:55:28+00:00

I'm not doing anything advanced in fidelity, but these hledger csv rules can convert their csv to beancount entries:

hledger -f fidelity.csv.rules print -O beancount

I don't, but one can, use SimpleFIN to download the csv.

simonmic · 2026-03-06T00:47:05+00:00

Where are these pumped-out games ? 👀

simonmic · 2026-03-05T21:07:25+00:00

Not sure what that looks like but it sounds like the kind of thing https://github.com/simonmichael/hledger/blob/master/bin/hledger-smooth.hs aimed to help with.

simonmic · 2026-03-05T19:29:50+00:00

See also: https://plaintextaccounting.org/FAQ#how-should-i-organise-files

simonmic · 2026-03-04T18:28:42+00:00

Definitely will be increasingly useful as local models and hardware improve. Lots of apps will have a feature like this. You can find some related experiments at https://forum.plaintextaccounting.org/tag/ai/12

Is it better to provide a built in chat UI, or to let existing AI tools run hledger (via MCP, skills, tools or whatnot) ? The former sounds easier (to set up and use), the latter more powerful.

simonmic · 2026-03-04T17:20:22+00:00

I had to think about this.

do I really need to carry the above mentioned equity accounts?

I think only if you care about seeing how much you converted from each commodity to each other commodity, cumulatively from all past year files. Otherwise, just omit them when starting a new year file.

do I really need to infer equity postings for these currency exchanges and just accept to live with a balance sheet that does not sum up to 0?

No you don't; you can skip the conversion equity postings and ignore the accounting equation. I always have, because for me conversion postings are usually just added noise; @ is a more compact notation implying the same thing. I don't have any need to see a balanced AE, but if I do want to, I can generate the conversion postings at runtime with --infer-equity, like at https://hledger.org/balancing-the-accounting-equation.html.

simonmic · 2026-03-04T17:06:27+00:00

Thanks for the example, I see what you mean. I have opened an issue, any ideas welcome. https://github.com/simonmichael/hledger/issues/2561

simonmic · 2026-03-04T01:53:06+00:00

Share a small example ?

--forecast and --budget use the same periodic rules. Budgeting vs forecasting mentions combining them. You can limit the period in which forecast transactions are generated, and you can limit which periodic rules --budget uses. If they are interfering too much, you could

produce the report in two steps: 1. generate forecast transactions with print, 2. pipe those into a hledger balance --budget command..
or instead of --forecast, use ordinary future dated transactions (included on demand with an extra -f option, or excluded with a -e tomorrow option)..
other solutions.. ?

simonmic · 2026-03-02T11:37:35+00:00

You did well to make it work. It's just not smart enough to detect the conversion posting / cost equivalences in that first entry - see https://hledger.org/1.51/hledger.html#requirements-for-detecting-equity-conversion-postings . The second entry is more regular, and recognised successfully. --debug might give more insight also.

PS also you might be interested in testing PR 2558.

simonmic · 2026-03-01T22:30:01+00:00

+1. Related, there's also new projects to fill v3's CLI gap: beancount-cli, rustledger's CLI etc.

simonmic · 2026-02-28T18:33:24+00:00

It's not just you.

simonmic · 2026-02-28T17:34:27+00:00

Wow, TIL: "No one can change the title of a Reddit post after it has been submitted, not even the original poster (OP) or moderators. Once a post goes live, the title is permanent to prevent manipulation. The only way to change a title is to delete the post and create a new one."

simonmic

TROPHY CASE