Learning Bookkeeping
I’m learning to use Ledger. I’ve taken some time away from doing any accounting or budgeting since giving up on YNAB. I guess I’d recommend YNAB to people who need to get their spending under control, I think it’s a pretty nice app, but it doesn’t feel like a “real” accounting tool, I fought to get it to accurately describe my finances. YNAB is an app for envelope-budgeting, and I figured out after a few months that I really don’t want or need that kind of budgeting system to reach my financial goals. But maybe I do need some understanding of bookkeeping and accounting?
Ledger is cool because I’m not fighting with any software to understand what is going on, I’m just looking at journal entries, more or less how I’d write down entries by hand.
I use my personal checking account and credit cards for my very small side-business, but I want to keep separate books for personal finance and business.
Expenses from shared checking account
Let’s say I pay $500 to a contractor from my personal checking account, but I want to record this as an expense for my business. I deduct funds from my checking account in my personal book and add the funds to a personal expense account called “capital contribution”. Then in the business book, I add funds to the checking account, deducting the funds from an equity account called “capital contribution”.
I’ve added an opening balance and a personal expense to make the example a little more realistic.
personal.txt:
2020-09-01 * Checking balance
Assets:Checking 10000.00 USD
Equity:Opening Balances
2020-09-02 * Coffee Shop
Expenses:Lifestyle:Restaurants 10.00 USD
Liabilities:Credit Card:American Express
2020-09-03 * Capital Contribution - V8 Publishing
Expenses:Capital Contribution:V8 Publishing 500.00 USD
Assets:Checking
business.txt:
2020-09-03 * Capital Contribution - Tom
Assets:Checking 500.00 USD
Equity:Capital Contributions:Tom
2020-09-03 * Nicolas L. - Software Contractor
Expenses:Software Development 500.00 USD
Assets:Checking
So the $500 used to pay the contractor remained in the same checking account, but the capital contribution journal entries allowed me to transfer the funds between the two books.
Business income and balance assertions
My business has made a sale. I see the revenue in my personal checking account transactions, but I don’t record the transaction in my personal book, it goes directly into the business book.
business.txt:
2020-09-04 * Amazon
Assets:Checking 24.00 USD
Income:Sales:Illustrated Chess
Now if I use Ledger to run a balance report on my personal and business books, they will show different values for the checking account, each book show the portion of the checking account that belongs to it.
tom@ladybird sample-ledger$ ledger -f personal.txt bal
9500.00 USD Assets:Checking
-10000.00 USD Equity:Opening Balances
510.00 USD Expenses
500.00 USD Capital Contribution:V8 Publishing
10.00 USD Lifestyle:Restaurants
-10.00 USD Liabilities:Credit Card:American Express
--------------------
0
tom@ladybird sample-ledger$ ledger -f business.txt bal
24.00 USD Assets:Checking
-500.00 USD Equity:Capital Contributions:Tom
500.00 USD Expenses:Software Development
-24.00 USD Income:Sales:Illustrated Chess
--------------------
0
But the real checking account balance is $9,524. I want to use balance assertions to make sure that the balance in my books matches the balance reported by the bank.
Because the account names are the same in both books, I can use Ledger
include statements to combine the books together and get my actual
checking account balance. Then I can add a balance assertion to the
combined books.
combined.txt:
include personal.txt
include business.txt
2020-09-05 * Balance Assertion
Equity:Adjustments 0 USD
Assets:Checking -0 USD = 9524 USD
And the combined balance report looks like this:
tom@ladybird sample-ledger$ ledger -f combined.txt bal
9524.00 USD Assets:Checking
-10500.00 USD Equity
-500.00 USD Capital Contributions:Tom
-10000.00 USD Opening Balances
1010.00 USD Expenses
500.00 USD Capital Contribution:V8 Publishing
10.00 USD Lifestyle:Restaurants
500.00 USD Software Development
-24.00 USD Income:Sales:Illustrated Chess
-10.00 USD Liabilities:Credit Card:American Express
--------------------
0
Let’s say I incorrectly recorded the revenue as $25 instead of $24, then Ledger will report an error when I try to run the balance report.
tom@ladybird sample-ledger$ ledger -f combined.txt bal
While parsing file "/home/tom/practice/sample-ledger/combined.txt", line 8:
While parsing posting:
Assets:Checking -0 USD = 9524 USD
^^^^^^^^
Error: Balance assertion off by -1.00 USD (expected to see 9525.00 USD)
One issue with balance assertions, which has been brought up on the
Ledger mailing list, is that assertions are “position dependent” and
not “date aware”. Which means if I create a balance assertion in
combined.txt for September 5, 2020 and then add entries to the books
and run the balance report again, the balance assertion will
fail. Even though the new transactions happen after the date of the
assertion.
A simple solution to this would be to update the balance assertions
for the most recent date, and start a new set of files every quarter
or year. This wouldn’t mean a new set of books, just the addition of
include statements to the new files for each year or quarter. The
old balance assertions should then work because records will be
processed in the correct order.
Another solution would be to merge and sort all of the books. This demonstrates one reason why text-based tools are cool, a solution can be developed in a few minutes using standard Linux tools.
Expenses from shared credit card
There are both personal and business expenses on the credit card.
personal.txt
2020-09-02 * Coffee Shop
Expenses:Lifestyle:Restaurants 10.00 USD
Liabilities:Credit Card:American Express
2020-09-06 * Coffee Shop
Expenses:Lifestyle:Restaurants 14.00 USD
Liabilities:Credit Card:American Express
business.txt
2020-09-06 * Server Fees
Expenses:Equipment:Servers 50.00 USD
Liabilities:Credit Card:American Express
Like with the checking account, I can see these credit card balances separately, each book showing the transactions it is responsible for, and I can see the total real balance using the combined book.
Unlike the checking account, things are not resolved with simply recording the spending. I also need to pay off the credit card balance. To do this, I will personally pay my share of the credit card bill and the business will pay it’s share of the credit card bill, and I will personally make a capital contribution to the business to give it the funds to pay it’s share.
The credit card balance is $74, $24 personal and $50 business.
personal.txt
2020-09-10 * American Express
Liabilities:Credit Card:American Express 24.00 USD
Assets:Checking
2020-09-10 * Capital Contribution - Tom
Equity:Capital Contributions:Tom 50.00 USD
Assets:Checking
business.txt
2020-09-03 * Capital Contribution - Tom
Assets:Checking 50.00 USD
Equity:Capital Contributions:Tom
2020-09-10 * American Express
Liabilities:Credit Card:American Express 50.00 USD
Assets:Checking
To keep things simple, I’d probably record a single capital contribution at the beginning of each month or quarter, but I’m making it granular here to illustrate the idea.
Adding another business
I’m a self-employed contractor, so I actually have two businesses, the publishing business and selling my labor as a programmer. It clouds the picture of my household finances to include business expenses like my office rent, so I can create a third book for my self-employment, using the same techniques I used for the other business.
The difference here is that I usually move money from my household into my publishing business, but with my contracting business I need to move money from the business into my household.
I think it should look like this:
contracting.txt
2020-10-01 * My Favorite Client
Assets:Checking 10000.00 USD
Income:Labor:My Favorite Client
2020-10-01 * Household Income
Expenses:Household Income 9000.00 USD
Assets:Checking
personal.txt
2020-10-01 * Household Income - Contracting
Assets:Checking 9000.00 USD
Income:Contracting
So even though the money actually stays in the checking account, the same sort of transactions take place as when I transfer money into a business.
Doesn’t capital contribution get me an asset?
I got confused while thinking about this, but capital contribution is not the acquisition of more asset value. I could see this was the case because the accounting doesn’t work, then I understood how to think about it.
My business is an asset and I own 100% of it. I guess I can record the business in my personal assets if I want to. But contributing capital to the business does not increase my ownership in the business, I am not purchasing more shares, I am only spending money on my existing asset, so it is an expense, not an asset.
Say I record my watch as an asset, and then I need to spend $1,000 to have the watch serviced. I did not gain $1,000 in assets, I still own one watch. I spent money on the asset. Maybe the watch changed in value by having it serviced, but that is the intrinsic owner equity on the watch’s balance sheet, from the point of view of my personal balances, it’s still one watch.
Tags: bean counting