Since May 2024, @ellane@pkm.social and @johnnydecimal@hachyderm.io have been publishing their coaching sessions for the command line, terminal, and hledger. These are a great read if you're new to those topics, or if you'd like to better understand how they look to newcomers. Recommended!
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Thanks, Simon. I can tell you there were two vital elements in bringing me to hledger:
- Simon's approachability and the active community behind the app (Beancount's docs are 10+ years old)
- Johnny Decimal's patience in helping me shift from clueless to beginner in using an app that doesn't have a graphical user interface (like MYOB and YNAB).
I'm at the point of being able to use VS Code to enter transactions, and Terminal on my Mac to generate a balance report. Income statement comes up blank, however, so it's apparent I still have a lot to learn. Next step is to read the documentation more thoroughly, then come here and search / ask for answers.
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Great! A shot in the dark for incomestatement: name your accounts like "revenue:something" or "income:something" or "expense:something". Or if you use top-level account names other than those, declare their types as in the green box at hledger manual (1.34) - hledger.
This is a fantastic exposé. The accidental vim episode got a good chuckle out of me.
It's an exciting journey, @Ellane. If you have any questions, I'll be more than willing to help.
Protip: if you're in VSCode, there's a terminal in there you can use to generate ledger reports. This saves you context-switching between apps.
Pro-protip: Learn one of the CLI editors. One of the time sinks is context-switching between CLI and GUI. You'd see top percentile benefit — couldn't phrase this otherwise — if you work in one interface: CLI or GUI. I prefer CLI. I'm hoping you're beginning to prefer it as well.
On PTA apps… I recommend HLedger. I started in Ledger, and I swear by Ledger too; actively contributing to it when I can. But when I saw the balancesheet output in HLedger, I legit got conflicted. I use both now, but I always recommend starters to use HLedger.
Welcome to the community!!
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Thank you for the helpful info and kinds words!
I saw the terminal inside VSCode, but haven't played with it yet. The GUI is confusing, so I'm sticking with CLI for now.
Yes, hledger was what I started with, but the Ledger bal has subcategories indented under their parent category, making the output much easier on the eye. I have much to learn about reports, so perhaps there's a way to do that in hledger as well.
Ledger's bal == HLedger's bal --tree
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Perfect, thank you!
Which most people write in its short form to save typing: -t.
(I mention it for completeness since it mightn't be obvious. Flag names and abbreviations can be checked by adding the help flag to a command, eg hledger bal -h.)