Beancount

Beancount

Beancount is an open source command-line double-entry accounting program that lets users track bank accounts, stock portfolios, and other financial transactions. It uses a simple, text-based file format to store data and generates detailed financial reports.
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accounting finance doubleentry cli

Beancount: Open Source Command-Line Double-Entry Accounting

Beancount is an open source command-line double-entry accounting program that lets users track bank accounts, stock portfolios, and other financial transactions. It uses a simple, text-based file format to store data and generates detailed financial reports.

What is Beancount?

Beancount is an open source, command-line double-entry accounting program used to track financial transactions. It was created by Martin Blais in 2006 to manage his personal finances and released publicly in 2010 under the GPLv2 license.

Some key features of Beancount include:

  • Text-based data storage using a ledger-style plain text file format
  • Support for multiple currencies and commodities like cash, bank accounts, income, expenses, stock shares, etc.
  • Powerful querying syntax to generate custom financial reports
  • Scripting capabilities to automate recurring transactions
  • Transaction matching and automated data insertion
  • Support for booking future transactions and balance assertions

As an open source project, Beancount is extensible and developers can write plugins to connect with external data sources or customize reports. It runs on all major operating systems like Windows, Mac and Linux. The active development community behind Beancount also maintains detailed documentation to help new users get started.

In summary, if you need a flexible command-line accounting and bookkeeping system to track personal finances across complex accounts and generate custom reports, Beancount is an excellent free and open source choice to consider.

Beancount Features

Features

  1. Double-entry bookkeeping
  2. Plain text file format
  3. Support for multiple currencies
  4. Automatic generation of financial reports
  5. Importing data from external sources
  6. Budgeting and forecasting tools
  7. Scripting capabilities
  8. Web interface

Pricing

  • Open Source

Pros

Free and open source

Text-based format is easy to read/edit

Powerful reporting and analysis features

Flexible and extensible

Good documentation and active community support

Cons

Command line interface has learning curve

Limited official GUI options

Not as user friendly as dedicated accounting software


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