Personal Finance in org-mode?

Personal Finance in org-mode?

[Madhu Rao]

Has anyone tried to configure org in a personal finance manager mode?
I looked in the mail archive, but couldn't find any related posts.

The finance applications on Mac OS are either too clumsy or  
sophisticated.
I thought org-mode with some remember capture templates will do that  
stuff
rather efficiently.
If anyone has already set this up, that will help get started.

Thanks, Madhu

Re: Personal Finance in org-mode?

[Carsten Dominik]

On Apr 13, 2009, at 11:19 AM, Madhu Rao wrote:

> Has anyone tried to configure org in a personal finance manager mode?
> I looked in the mail archive, but couldn't find any related posts.
>
> The finance applications on Mac OS are either too clumsy or  
> sophisticated.
> I thought org-mode with some remember capture templates will do that  
> stuff
> rather efficiently.
> If anyone has already set this up, that will help get started.

While I have not used it myself, I would suspect that people,
who get along with Org well, would be candidates for trying ledger
by John Wiegley

- Carsten

Re: Personal Finance in org-mode?

[Russell Adams]

Madhu,

I second ledger. I've found it to be very powerful! After much use, I
even wrote a CSV importer to bring in my bank statements.

Now if I could only use remember-mode to hot-add ledger entries.

Thanks.

On Mon, Apr 13, 2009 at 01:53:59PM +0200, Carsten Dominik wrote:
>
> On Apr 13, 2009, at 11:19 AM, Madhu Rao wrote:
>
>> Has anyone tried to configure org in a personal finance manager mode?
>> I looked in the mail archive, but couldn't find any related posts.
>>
>> The finance applications on Mac OS are either too clumsy or  
>> sophisticated.
>> I thought org-mode with some remember capture templates will do that  
>> stuff
>> rather efficiently.
>> If anyone has already set this up, that will help get started.
>
> While I have not used it myself, I would suspect that people,
> who get along with Org well, would be candidates for trying ledger
> by John Wiegley
>
> - Carsten
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Emacs-orgmode mailing list
> Remember: use `Reply All' to send replies to the list.
> Emacs-orgmode@gnu.org
> http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/emacs-orgmode
>


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Re: Personal Finance in org-mode?

[Carsten Dominik]

On Apr 13, 2009, at 4:50 PM, Russell Adams wrote:

> Madhu,
>
> I second ledger. I've found it to be very powerful! After much use, I
> even wrote a CSV importer to bring in my bank statements.
>
> Now if I could only use remember-mode to hot-add ledger entries.

That will be coming soon, one way or another.

- Carsten


>
> Thanks.
>
> On Mon, Apr 13, 2009 at 01:53:59PM +0200, Carsten Dominik wrote:
>>
>> On Apr 13, 2009, at 11:19 AM, Madhu Rao wrote:
>>
>>> Has anyone tried to configure org in a personal finance manager  
>>> mode?
>>> I looked in the mail archive, but couldn't find any related posts.
>>>
>>> The finance applications on Mac OS are either too clumsy or
>>> sophisticated.
>>> I thought org-mode with some remember capture templates will do that
>>> stuff
>>> rather efficiently.
>>> If anyone has already set this up, that will help get started.
>>
>> While I have not used it myself, I would suspect that people,
>> who get along with Org well, would be candidates for trying ledger
>> by John Wiegley
>>
>> - Carsten
>>
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Emacs-orgmode mailing list
>> Remember: use `Reply All' to send replies to the list.
>> Emacs-orgmode@gnu.org
>> http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/emacs-orgmode
>>
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------
> Russell Adams                            RLAdams@AdamsInfoServ.com
>
> PGP Key ID:     0x1160DCB3           http://www.adamsinfoserv.com/
>
> Fingerprint:    1723 D8CA 4280 1EC9 557F  66E8 1154 E018 1160 DCB3
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Emacs-orgmode mailing list
> Remember: use `Reply All' to send replies to the list.
> Emacs-orgmode@gnu.org
> http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/emacs-orgmode

Re: Personal Finance in org-mode?

[Leo]

On 2009-04-13 15:50 +0100, Russell Adams wrote:
> Madhu,
>
> I second ledger. I've found it to be very powerful! After much use, I
> even wrote a CSV importer to bring in my bank statements.
>
> Now if I could only use remember-mode to hot-add ledger entries.

I just installed ledger on macosx yesterday. It looks very powerful.

> Thanks.

-- 
.: Leo :. [ sdl.web AT gmail.com ] .: I use Emacs :.

Re: Personal Finance in org-mode?

[Carsten Dominik]

On Apr 13, 2009, at 4:50 PM, Russell Adams wrote:

> Madhu,
>
> I second ledger. I've found it to be very powerful! After much use, I
> even wrote a CSV importer to bring in my bank statements.
>
> Now if I could only use remember-mode to hot-add ledger entries.


You can now.  After the next pull, try a remember template like this.

This is only a dirty hack, I hope James TD Smith's
implementation will be better.  But it works.  If the
heading field in the template is `top' or `bottom', it is
now OK if the target file is not in Org-mode, and the text
in the remember buffer will be added to the file unchanged.

Try a template like this:

("ledger" 108 "" "~/org/ledger" bottom nil)


HTH

- Carsten





>
> Thanks.
>
> On Mon, Apr 13, 2009 at 01:53:59PM +0200, Carsten Dominik wrote:
>>
>> On Apr 13, 2009, at 11:19 AM, Madhu Rao wrote:
>>
>>> Has anyone tried to configure org in a personal finance manager  
>>> mode?
>>> I looked in the mail archive, but couldn't find any related posts.
>>>
>>> The finance applications on Mac OS are either too clumsy or
>>> sophisticated.
>>> I thought org-mode with some remember capture templates will do that
>>> stuff
>>> rather efficiently.
>>> If anyone has already set this up, that will help get started.
>>
>> While I have not used it myself, I would suspect that people,
>> who get along with Org well, would be candidates for trying ledger
>> by John Wiegley
>>
>> - Carsten
>>
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Emacs-orgmode mailing list
>> Remember: use `Reply All' to send replies to the list.
>> Emacs-orgmode@gnu.org
>> http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/emacs-orgmode
>>
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------
> Russell Adams                            RLAdams@AdamsInfoServ.com
>
> PGP Key ID:     0x1160DCB3           http://www.adamsinfoserv.com/
>
> Fingerprint:    1723 D8CA 4280 1EC9 557F  66E8 1154 E018 1160 DCB3
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Emacs-orgmode mailing list
> Remember: use `Reply All' to send replies to the list.
> Emacs-orgmode@gnu.org
> http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/emacs-orgmode

Re: Personal Finance in org-mode?

[Matthew Lundin]

Hi Madhu,

Madhu Rao <bgmrao@gmail.com> writes:

> Has anyone tried to configure org in a personal finance manager mode?
> I looked in the mail archive, but couldn't find any related posts.

These threads contain some ideas about tracking finances in org-mode:

- http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.orgmode/10234/focus=10249
- http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.orgmode/9663
- http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.finance.ledger.general/838

> I thought org-mode with some remember capture templates will do that
> stuff rather efficiently.

It depends on what you'd like to accomplish. For a robust accounting
solution (i.e., something that can easily tracks all your finances and
can spit out data in all sorts of ways) I would second Carsten's
recommendation of John Wiegley's ledger.

For a while, I tried a home-brewed double bookkeeping solution in org
mode using properties and columns. I used a small subtree for each
transaction with one subitem for the debit and one for the credit, with
properties spendtype, account, assets, liabilities, income, equity,
expenses. The structure of the tree was as follows:

,----
| * Accounts
| ** April
| *** [2009-04-13 Mon] Transaction Name
| **** [2009-04-13 Mon] Debit
| **** [2009-04-13 Mon] Credit
| *** Opening Balances...
`----

The sum of all my accounts could then be viewed by invoking column view
on the Accounts heading. Particular accounts could by summed up by using
agenda views and org-collector.

The problem here, of course, is that once you have a large number of
entries, it takes a lot of CPU cycles just to generate an account
summary, since org-mode has to climb the entire outline tree and grab
all the properties. In the end, I settled on ledger because of its
power, speed, and flexibility.

Best,
Matt

Re: Personal Finance in org-mode?

[Madhu Rao]

> Hi Madhu,
>
> Madhu Rao <bgmrao@gmail.com> writes:
>
>> Has anyone tried to configure org in a personal finance manager mode?
>> I looked in the mail archive, but couldn't find any related posts.
>
> These threads contain some ideas about tracking finances in org-mode:
>
> - http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.orgmode/10234/focus=10249
> - http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.orgmode/9663
> - http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.finance.ledger.general/838

Hi Matt, Thanks for these links.

>
>> I thought org-mode with some remember capture templates will do that
>> stuff rather efficiently.
>
> It depends on what you'd like to accomplish. For a robust accounting
> solution (i.e., something that can easily tracks all your finances and
> can spit out data in all sorts of ways) I would second Carsten's
> recommendation of John Wiegley's ledger.
>
> For a while, I tried a home-brewed double bookkeeping solution in org
> mode using properties and columns. I used a small subtree for each
> transaction with one subitem for the debit and one for the credit,  
> with
> properties spendtype, account, assets, liabilities, income, equity,
> expenses. The structure of the tree was as follows:
>

Yes, this is pretty much what I was intending to keep track of. I did
setup something similar to the outline below. Also, a remember
capture, with tags and property query for entry and the category:		

("Finance" ?f "** %^{Title} %^g \n %u %^{HOW_MUCH}p %^{CATEGORY}p" "~/ 
Org/Finance.org")

> ,----
> | * Accounts
> | ** April
> | *** [2009-04-13 Mon] Transaction Name
> | **** [2009-04-13 Mon] Debit
> | **** [2009-04-13 Mon] Credit
> | *** Opening Balances...
> `----
>
> The sum of all my accounts could then be viewed by invoking column  
> view
> on the Accounts heading. Particular accounts could by summed up by  
> using
> agenda views and org-collector.

Yes, this will suffice. I will start off with using column view and
see how this scales.

Thanks for your notes.

Regards, Madhu

>
> The problem here, of course, is that once you have a large number of
> entries, it takes a lot of CPU cycles just to generate an account
> summary, since org-mode has to climb the entire outline tree and grab
> all the properties. In the end, I settled on ledger because of its
> power, speed, and flexibility.
>
> Best,
> Matt