=====================================================
   BeanCount: Command-line Double-Entry Accounting
=====================================================

.. contents::
..
    1  Description
    2  Running the Demo
    3  Download
    4  Documentation
    5  Copyright and License
    6  Author

Description
===========

A double-entry accounting system that uses a simple text file format
as input. A few Python scripts are used to parse the contents of the
file, for example, to serve the contents as a locally running web
server. Scripts are provided to convert from OFX files into Ledger
input format, and other formats (easily extensible).

Notes:

- The ideas and syntax is entirely inspired by John Wiegley's Ledger_,
  and the syntax is pretty much compatible with it. Beancount's syntax
  is a subset of Ledger (a little more restrictive), with a few
  additional directives. You should probably read Ledger's
  documentation in order to you use Beancount.

- Beancount is a Python version of Ledger, and thus is much slower,
  but also easier to extend (the code is pure Python).

- Beancount provides a simple web front to view the contents of the
  database, so you don't have to parse the entire file everytime you
  want to view a different account (this helps mitigate the fact that
  parsing is comparatively slow).

- New features can be expected to flow between Ledger and Beancount,
  as the authors have been in touch and have discussed ways of doing
  integration. In particular, Ledger is being augmented with the
  ability to export its parser with a binding for the Python language,
  so Beancount's parser may eventually use the Ledger parser for
  speed, and Ledger may eventually leverage Beancount's web front-end.

.. _Ledger: http://www.newartisans.com/blog/projects/ledger.html


.. important::

   This code works; as a testimony, I'm using it personally, actively
   to manage my own finances and my company's finances, and thus I'm
   running it and its components at the very least a few times montly.
   If you have any problem using it, please let me know. This software
   should be in a functional state; this is not abandonware, nor is it
   prototyping code either. You should be able to use beancount to do
   "real work" (I do).


Running the Demo
================

There is a demonstration ledger input file under the examples
directory. To run a local web server on the example demo file, cd into
``examples`` and run the demo scripts.


Download
========

You can obtain the Ledger source from Furius' public Mercurial
repository, by typing the following command::

  hg clone https://hg.furius.ca/public/beancount


Documentation
=============

- `Demo Ledger input file <examples/demo.ledger>`_
- `CHANGES <CHANGES>`_
- `TODO <TODO>`_


Copyright and License
=====================

Copyright (C) 2007-2008  Martin Blais.  All Rights Reserved.

This code is distributed under the `GNU General Public License <COPYING>`_;


Author
======

Martin Blais <blais@furius.ca>