Finance Articles

Over the past few years I've written a number of posts about Ledger, a command-line accounting system. In a nutshell, when using Ledger you keep your financial records in a plain text file and then run reports using the ledger command line program.

Program your Finances: Command-line Accounting

All about my financial journey, from debt-ridden towards debt-free. More importantly, this is a very basic introduction to how to use ledger to keep track of your finances. This has been described as the best introduction to ledger out there.

Program your Finances: Reporting for Fun and Profit

Outlines a reporting system that I used for awhile to run queries against my ledger data that I couldn't with the native ledger program. Also introduces a small tool for generating realistic sample ledger data.

Program your Finances: Vacation Tracking

Describes a system that I hacked together in an afternoon before a recent vacation that let me keep track of vacation finances on the fly without a laptop.

Program your Finances: Automated Transactions

Gives a simple introduction to ledger's automated transactions and virtual accounts, two features that are great by themselves but let you do really interesting things when combined.

A Robust Reporting System for Ledger

Walks through a simple but very capable and extensible reporting system for ledger written in Ruby. Reports are simple ERB pages with embedded SQL and javascript.

Automatic Finances

Presents a simple and easy to understand financial system that does things simply and automatically so you don't have to think about it if you don't want to.