# Beancount txn parser/writer in Emacs Lisp? **URL:** \ **Category:** General\ **Tags:** beancount, emacs\ **Created:** [July 25, 2024, 8:49pm UTC](https://forum.plaintextaccounting.org/t/beancount-txn-parser-writer-in-emacs-lisp/314 "2024-07-25T20:49:41Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![TRS-80](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex003/user_avatar/forum.plaintextaccounting.org/trs-80/32/92_2.png) [@TRS-80](https://forum.plaintextaccounting.org/u/TRS-80)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2024, 8:49pm UTC](https://forum.plaintextaccounting.org/t/beancount-txn-parser-writer-in-emacs-lisp/314/1 "2024-07-25T20:49:41Z")
Hi friends, Over the last years I seem to have implemented some hacky parts of this here and there, and was about to start working on pulling it together properly into a library, and perhaps even publishing it at some point. However I thought I would check around and see if anyone else did it already (as I have a bad habit of re-implementing things that already exist). I searched the official [Beancount mailing list](https://groups.google.com/g/beancount), as well as the [Library section](https://plaintextaccounting.org/#library) of the PTA website, but only found some Rust and tree-sitter based parsers[0]. Maybe that's a better way to go about it, but I don't know Rust (nor tree-sitter) and so... Why else? Because I don't particularly like Python, I just prefer working on my books in Emacs and often find myself writing my own tools in Emacs Lisp (generally speaking). I plan on sending this to the Beancount mailing list, as well as maybe r/plaintextaccounting, so apologies if you frequent any of those and see it duplicated. Any thoughts would be appreciated. [0] Which seem to be, to date, apparently WIP/incomplete(?). ---
**Author:** ![TRS-80](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex003/user_avatar/forum.plaintextaccounting.org/trs-80/32/92_2.png) [@TRS-80](https://forum.plaintextaccounting.org/u/TRS-80)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2024, 2:47pm UTC](https://forum.plaintextaccounting.org/t/beancount-txn-parser-writer-in-emacs-lisp/314/2 "2024-08-02T14:47:41Z")
I am very pleased to announce the initial release of my parser/writer library! beancount-txn-elisp A library to read/parse and write/insert individual Beancount transactions, implemented in Emacs Lisp. Please try to break it! šŸ˜ƒ And let me know if you are successful. [https://sr.ht/~trs-80/beancount-txn-elisp/](https://sr.ht/~trs-80/beancount-txn-elisp/) ---
**Author:** ![TRS-80](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex003/user_avatar/forum.plaintextaccounting.org/trs-80/32/92_2.png) [@TRS-80](https://forum.plaintextaccounting.org/u/TRS-80)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2025, 7:16pm UTC](https://forum.plaintextaccounting.org/t/beancount-txn-parser-writer-in-emacs-lisp/314/3 "2025-12-20T19:16:12Z")
## Version 0.1.0 published I just wanted to publish an update. Iā€™ve been using (and improving) my little library this whole time, fixing bugs, adding (small) features, etc. I use it multiple times per week, itā€™s a big (if underlying) part of my almost completely automated system, I probably couldnā€™t really do PTA without it. I just published version 0.1.0, the main feature is ā€œcategorizerā€ support. If you set the variable `bean-txn-categorizer` (which see) to the name of some function, the TXN-FORM will be passed through said function and modified however you like. Change log: > **[~trs-80/beancount-txn-elisp: master - sourcehut git](https://git.sr.ht/~trs-80/beancount-txn-elisp/log)** Enjoy! ---
**Author:** ![simonmic](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex003/user_avatar/forum.plaintextaccounting.org/simonmic/32/1_2.png) [@simonmic](https://forum.plaintextaccounting.org/u/simonmic)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2025, 8:15pm UTC](https://forum.plaintextaccounting.org/t/beancount-txn-parser-writer-in-emacs-lisp/314/4 "2025-12-20T20:15:36Z")
Very cool. How does this fit into your workflow ? Does it make editing the journal easier ? ---
**Author:** ![TRS-80](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex003/user_avatar/forum.plaintextaccounting.org/trs-80/32/92_2.png) [@TRS-80](https://forum.plaintextaccounting.org/u/TRS-80)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2025, 8:32pm UTC](https://forum.plaintextaccounting.org/t/beancount-txn-parser-writer-in-emacs-lisp/314/5 "2025-12-20T20:32:14Z")
> [@simonmic](#): > > How does this fit into your workflow ? Does it make editing the journal easier ? To answer directly, not really, at least not in terms of what I would consider ā€œediting.ā€ As I think I hinted at, I am using this as more of an underlying library, to be used by other things. I should probably state that I am not doing the typical straight ā€œimportā€ that most seem to be (bank CSV or whatever). I mean, I used to do that. But I didnā€™t like it (I found the bank descriptions ugly, quite frankly, lol). Some things I do, for example: Take photo of receipt and upload to ā†’ Veryfi API ā†’ then download jpg, PDF, txt, and JSON[0] of receipt ā†’ replace original local file and generate Beancount txn automatically from that. Itā€™s that latter part (writing the Beancount txn) that I use this for. I also updated my transfer function (and others) to use this library now. Then I reconcile my txns, which I get from SimpleFIN API. If I missed any (exist in bankā€™s records but not mine), I can hit a key ā€œ(w)riteā€ and that also uses this library. etcā€¦ [0] This is where Veryfi really shines. They not only crop and do OCR, they return JSON of all relevant individual fields as key-value pairs (date, card number, vendor, and many moreā€¦).