Table of contents

Preface

I want to structure the process of logging money expense/income/debts. Beancount has good reputation of it.

I recently tried Bagels to track my money, its UI really attracts me to track my money and build a habit of logging my money. So I started to want to use Beancount to track my money in the long term. bcs its much more reliable.

Pre-Install

pip3 install beancount
pip3 install fava

Setup directory

• kaaass’s guide on beancount

Common Commands

Here are some useful Beancount commands:

# Check for errors in your bean file
bean-check main.bean

# Generate balance sheet report
bean-report main.bean balance

# Generate income statement
bean-report main.bean income

Host beancount

• hostedbeans
• preview

Start your log

2024-05-18 open Assets:Card
2024-05-18 open Assets:Alipay
2024-05-18 open Assets:Wechat
2024-05-18 open Liabilities:CreditCard
2024-05-18 open Liabilities:Huabei
2024-05-18 open Expenses:Food
2024-05-18 open Expenses:lifeThings
2024-05-18 open Expenses:VirtualThings
2024-05-18 open Income:Salary
2024-05-18 open Equity:Opening-Balances

2024-05-18 * "Bank Card Initial Balance"
    Assets:Card                    777.00 CNY
    Equity:Opening-Balances       -777.00 CNY
2024-05-18 * "Huabei Credit Initial Balance"
    Liabilities:Huabei            -11.00 CNY
    Equity:Opening-Balances        11.00 CNY
2024-08-18 * "Salary"
    Assets:Card                   3333.00 CNY
    Income:Salary                  -3333.00 CNY

Web visualize your graph

fava main.bean

Conclusion

Future plans for my Beancount setup:

• Explore Beancount importers for automatic transaction imports
• Set up GitHub Actions for automated checking
• Create custom reports for specific needs
• Investigate integration with mobile apps for easier logging

I hope I could explore more, like use bot or other plugin(smart import) to log this in a long term.

Reference

• BTV