TEtealtan·Sep 22, 2011
You might find this interesting:
https://github.com/jwiegley/ledger
In A First Look at BankSimplejwiegley
ledger
HISTORICAL RECORD2009–2011
jwiegley / ledger · Not publicly available
ledger
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Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 3:56:07 PM UTC.
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Mentions over time
HN mentions by month7 dated mentions
Observed mentions: 2009-10-09 19:17:33 UTC to 2011-09-22 00:09:53 UTC.
Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.
View mention counts and date ranges
| Period | Start (UTC) | End (exclusive, UTC) | Mentions | Submissions | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Oct 2009 | 2009-10-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2009-11-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| Nov 2009 | 2009-11-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2009-12-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Dec 2009 | 2009-12-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2010-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Jan 2010 | 2010-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2010-02-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Feb 2010 | 2010-02-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2010-03-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Mar 2010 | 2010-03-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2010-04-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Apr 2010 | 2010-04-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2010-05-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| May 2010 | 2010-05-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2010-06-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Jun 2010 | 2010-06-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2010-07-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Jul 2010 | 2010-07-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2010-08-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Aug 2010 | 2010-08-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2010-09-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Sep 2010 | 2010-09-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2010-10-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Oct 2010 | 2010-10-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2010-11-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Nov 2010 | 2010-11-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2010-12-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| Dec 2010 | 2010-12-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2011-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Jan 2011 | 2011-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2011-02-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| Feb 2011 | 2011-02-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2011-03-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| Mar 2011 | 2011-03-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2011-04-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| Apr 2011 | 2011-04-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2011-05-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| May 2011 | 2011-05-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2011-06-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Jun 2011 | 2011-06-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2011-07-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Jul 2011 | 2011-07-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2011-08-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Aug 2011 | 2011-08-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2011-09-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Sep 2011 | 2011-09-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2011-10-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
What Hacker News says
7 sources"User-friendly" accounting software (such as QuickBooks) tends to obscure the fundamental simplicity of double-entry accounting.
If you want to actually understand your books, use something simple and powerful like John Wiegley's ledger:
https://github.com/jwiegley/ledger/
In Accounting for Computer ScientistsI find it's easier to track spending by credit card.
I download a csv of my transactions, import into ledger (https://github.com/jwiegley/ledger/wiki/ it's like mint, but for the command line), then just "ledger balance --cost expenses". All my CC transactions are labelled ("expenses:entertainment:bar", "expenses:computer:github"), then I have a big black box: "expenses:cash".
In How Americans Get Out of Credit Card DebtAside from being written in compiled languages, are Ledger and hledger not a good starting point? https://github.com/jwiegley/ledger/wiki http://hledger.org/
In Up The Asset: Modern Accounting on the Open WebFYI, Ledger is CLI and designed for accounting and keeping books:
https://github.com/jwiegley/ledger/wiki
There's a python implementation as well, if that's more up your hacking alley: https://furius.ca/beancount/
In Going into Business? Learn a Programming LanguageIf you're a CLI kind of person, and want serious control over everything involved in the accounting process, check this out:
https://github.com/jwiegley/ledger/wiki/
It's an open source CLI accounting program, which works on text files in a simple, easy to write/generate format. The original program is in C, but the file format is also supported with python (beancount) and haskell (hledger) implementations.
The documentation leads you through the basics of accounting, and is available here:
http://cloud.github.com/downloads/jwiegley/ledger/ledger.pdf
In Ask HN: Resources for basic accounting for small SaaS type businessesLedger: Command-line double-entry accounting
57 points · Open discussion