# How often do you write/import your transactions?

**URL:** <https://forum.plaintextaccounting.org/t/how-often-do-you-write-import-your-transactions/187>\
**Category:** General\
**Created:** [March 13, 2024, 11:19pm UTC](https://forum.plaintextaccounting.org/t/how-often-do-you-write-import-your-transactions/187 "2024-03-13T23:19:55Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 6\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![Quasic](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex003/user_avatar/forum.plaintextaccounting.org/quasic/32/370_2.png) [@Quasic](https://forum.plaintextaccounting.org/u/Quasic)\
**Post date:** [December 25, 2024, 1:21am UTC](https://forum.plaintextaccounting.org/t/how-often-do-you-write-import-your-transactions/187/21 "2024-12-25T01:21:46Z")

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Well done! I tried to do that with one source, but the pdf was cut into a lot of different parts that I had to piece back together to get all the information, and I ended up just doing it manually. At some point, I may revisit that.

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**Author:** ![sean](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f0a364/32.png) [@sean](https://forum.plaintextaccounting.org/u/sean)\
**Post date:** [December 27, 2024, 12:59am UTC](https://forum.plaintextaccounting.org/t/how-often-do-you-write-import-your-transactions/187/22 "2024-12-27T00:59:02Z")

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I've never bothered to import transactions from my financial institution.

As far as manually adding, I do it the same day in almost all cases. Since I do so few transactions, it's quite easy to look at the receipt of the things I've purchased and get them added

from hledger stats:

```auto
Txns last 30 days : 51 (1.7 per day)
Txns last 7 days : 9 (1.3 per day)

```

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**Author:** ![cicko](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e480ec/32.png) [@cicko](https://forum.plaintextaccounting.org/u/cicko)\
**Post date:** [January 7, 2025, 12:44pm UTC](https://forum.plaintextaccounting.org/t/how-often-do-you-write-import-your-transactions/187/23 "2025-01-07T12:44:49Z")

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I'm using homemade [https://cashier-svelte.netlify.app/](https://cashier-svelte.netlify.app/) (or previous versions `cashier-ii.alensiljak.eu.org` and `cashier.alensiljak.eu.org`) to enter transactions ASAP so I don't have to think of them.  
Occasionally I reconcile the balances and add any missing transactions by checking the bank account transactions online or in an app.  
Cashier helps me a lot to maintain scheduled transactions like income and monthly or annual bills.  
I never import any transactions (other than what's exported from Cashier).

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**Author:** ![leugrady](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/9f8e36/32.png) [@leugrady](https://forum.plaintextaccounting.org/u/leugrady)\
**Post date:** [January 7, 2025, 1:37pm UTC](https://forum.plaintextaccounting.org/t/how-often-do-you-write-import-your-transactions/187/24 "2025-01-07T13:37:10Z")

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I use Emacs. I manually add transactions by writing a short snippet in a separate buffer and converting it to a hledger transaction, then append it to my hledger journal by using my own Elisp library.

For example, a snippet `20250107 food 500+700` will be converted to

```auto
20250107 food
   Expenses:Groceries:Food 500 JPY 
   Liabilities:CreditCard
20250107 food
   Expenses:Groceries:Food 700 JPY 
   Liabilities:CreditCard

```

The payee defaults to `CreditCard`.

A more complicated one `20250107 food 5$=800JPY @bank ;an entry paid by creditcard` will be converted to

```auto
20250107 food ;an entry paid by creditcard
   Expenses:Groceries:Food 5 $ @@ 800 JPY 
   Assets:Bank

```

The payee is assigned `Bank` by using `@`.

I also created a minor mode in the separate buffer to bind the `Enter` key to quick insert the date and use `abbrev-mode` or `yasnippet` to expand some short templates into entries. So usually my workflow is:

1. Press Enter in the separate buffer to insert today's date. I also have keybindings to backward and forward the day.
2. Type a single char `f` , then `space` key to expand `f` into `food `
3. Write down the amount manually.

When there are enough snippet lines, I call the command to convert and append them to the journal one time.

It's pretty easy and doesn't take much time, so I do it several times a day.

Edit: update some details.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![tario](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex003/user_avatar/forum.plaintextaccounting.org/tario/32/9_2.png) [@tario](https://forum.plaintextaccounting.org/u/tario)\
**Post date:** [January 7, 2025, 5:07pm UTC](https://forum.plaintextaccounting.org/t/how-often-do-you-write-import-your-transactions/187/25 "2025-01-07T17:07:22Z")

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For importing PDFs I've used camelot [GitHub - atlanhq/camelot: Camelot: PDF Table Extraction for Humans](https://github.com/atlanhq/camelot) quite a bit and generally works pretty well if you have some python/programming skills.

Just noticed that it got archived yesterday, so looks like there isn't further development happening on it ☹

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**Author:** ![tario](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex003/user_avatar/forum.plaintextaccounting.org/tario/32/9_2.png) [@tario](https://forum.plaintextaccounting.org/u/tario)\
**Post date:** [January 7, 2025, 5:08pm UTC](https://forum.plaintextaccounting.org/t/how-often-do-you-write-import-your-transactions/187/26 "2025-01-07T17:08:10Z")

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Sorry, my mistake, development just got moved here [GitHub - camelot-dev/camelot: A Python library to extract tabular data from PDFs](https://github.com/camelot-dev/camelot)

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