> How do you deal with Cash?

For personal finances, when I get cash (say from an ATM) I transfer the amount from asset Bank to asset Cash (i.e. CR Bank/DR Cash). I then record (important) expenses against either Cash or Bank (e.g. CR Cash/DR Groceries). At the end of the period, I check the actual amount of cash vs recorded, and charge the difference against a Misc expense account.

This is in the spirit of the standard accounting rules for handling petty cash in an organization.

> How do you deal with interest?

Consider interest an expense, e.g. CR Bank/DR Interest

> Advice?

Consider learning the following rules of double-entry accounting:-

Asset ... Increase = DR, Decrease = CR

Liability ... Increase = CR, Decrease = DR

Income ... Increase = CR, Decrease = DR

Expense ... Increase = DR, Decrease = CR

Equity ... Increase = CR, Decrease = DR

Aside: yes an increase in an asset like Bank is a DR. Your actual bank statement is showing what is recorded in your bank's accounting systems, not in yours. If you have a positive balance at your bank it is recorded as a CR on your bank statement because it is a LIABILITY for them, i.e. they owe you the money.

Knowing these rules allows you to think how to deal with things. For example, a purchase on your credit card is what?

Some example entries:

Get Paid: CR Income 100 (see table increase in Income) / DR Bank 100 (see table increase in Asset)

Pay Groceries: CR Cash on Hand 20 (see table decrease in Asset) / DR Groceries 20 (see table increase in Expense)

Purchase on credit card: DR Airline Tickets 1,250 (see table increase in Expense) / CR Accounts Payable 1,250 (see table increase in Liability)

Pay credit card: CR Bank 1,250 (see table decrease in Asset) / DR Accounts Payable 1,250 (see table decrease in Liability)

Interest on bank statement: CR Bank 35 (see table decrease in Asset) / DR Interest 35 (see table increase in Expense)

edit: tried to deal with HN not allowing any sort of text formatting

Long time beancount+fava user here.

To answer your question Re Cash: Note I may have a different definition of cash. In my ledger, cash is anything that I can liquidate in <1 days. That includes saving/checking/CD. As for your question about the real cash in your wallet, I tend to not account for those.

Re Interest: Interest should be correctly recorded. That means the interest for your checking/saving/CD should be recorded, as well as clearly separate your loan payment into two legs (principle and interest).

> How do you deal with Cash?

Move money from Asset:Checking to Expenses:Cash

> How do you deal with interest?

Move money from Income:Interest to Asset:Depot

> How do you keep your bank statements?

I download CSVs once in a while an import them with hledgers import tool (see https://bloerg.net/2016/02/22/ledger-import-of-deutsche-bank...)

> How do you convert your balance sheet into a tax filing compatible format?

I don't, sorry. But it's actually pretty easy to get the relevant data if you split your taxable incoming accordingly.

> How do you track things like rent? Do you keep it as a recurring entry i.e. `~ Monthly` or do you only book it when you pay with buchhaltung?

It's part of the bank statement, so yes it moves money from Assets:Checking to Expenses:Rent whenever the transaction happens.

> How do you track small expenses on the go?

I don't. After a while I found it's not worth the effort. I rarely make financial decisions based on how much I spent on beers and sandwiches, so most of these little things are just subsumed in Expenses:Cash.

Great answers. I'd just like to add https://github.com/egh/ledger-autosync as an additional solution for bank statement import.

> I don't. After a while I found it's not worth the effort. I rarely make financial decisions based on how much I spent on beers and sandwiches, so most of these little things are just subsumed in Expenses:Cash.

Agree completely - when keeping track of expenses, it is only worth tracking the numbers that matter to you. If it won't effect your decisions, don't bother tracking.

> > How do you deal with Cash?

> Move money from Asset:Checking to Expenses:Cash

I've been moving from Assets:Checking to Assets:Cash, and then from Assets:Cash to Expenses:Haircuts (or whatever)

You can also move from Assets:Checking to Expenses:Cash, and then from Expenses:Cash to Expenses:Haircuts. This allows you to track the larger cash expenses if you like, while letting the small purchases accrue in Expenses:Cash.

I just found that workflow described in a blog post elsewhere too:

"Pro-tip: tracking cash withdrawals and purchases can be a pain. I typically just maintain an Expenses:Cash account for these sorts of things. If I can remember how I spent a bit of cash, great: I can just debit Expenses:Cash and credit the appropriate account for what I spent the cash on after the fact. Otherwise, I just leave the amount attributed to Expenses:Cash. It's often not worth the trouble of trying to keep finer track of cash purchases than that." -- http://matthewturland.com/2014/03/29/ledger-basics-and-habit...

Sounds smart, though at the scale of my personal finances, I get much more value out of tracking the petty transactions. I guess I'm pound-wise but penny-foolish.

Probably you should read up or watch some youtube videos on accounting. (H)Ledger is a great tool which allows you to find your solutions to your problems.

If you want an example for standardized structures of accounts take a look at the german "Kontenrahmen" https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kontenrahmen.

Cash can be dealt with in many ways. Some only track the ATM transactions.

Interests are just transactions, too.

HBCI/FinTS is a great way to keep track with your actual bank account.

Usually tax reports only need a few numbers. Write up some script that prints these numbers for your ledger account.

(H)Ledger does not support recurring transactions. But there are a lot of unix tools that do recurring things (cron, systemd-timers).

I would keep ledger files for private and businesspurposes seperate.

Keep in mind, that (H)Ledger is plaintext. Automation is simple. If you want to track expenses on the go, my advise would be to write a Telegram bot.

> (H)Ledger does not support recurring transactions.

https://www.ledger-cli.org/3.0/doc/ledger3.html#Periodic-Tra...

Start here: https://www.ledger-cli.org/3.0/doc/ledger3.html

In particular section 3 answers some of your questions.

I tend to not keep things in order on the go, but I do organize things when I really need to understand my finances (e.g. when deciding if I should buy a house, take a new job, move countries)

> How do you deal with interest?

Interest paid are expenses, interest received is income.

> How do you deal with Cash?

For petty cash, just treat it as its own expense category (i.e. consider the money spent as you withdraw it). For larger amounts, just treat it as an account in assets.

> How do you keep your bank statements?

I use CSV export, and this: http://hledger.org/csv-import.html

Bank statements don't always tell the whole story. E.g. for my mortgage payments and my salary, I break these down further (e.g. bank statement only reflects net pay). They're usually the same, so often you can copy last month's record and just adjust the numbers.

> How do you convert your balance sheet into a tax filing compatible format?

You don't. Is the tax interested in your assets/liabilities? Generally I use ledger to verify my income statments (W-2 in the US) match what I actually received, and that interest-payment statements from my bank and lender do too. If I have costs to deduct, I keep those in separate expense accounts in ledger.

> How do you track small expenses on the go?

I don't bother if its cash (which I don't use much). For card transactions, I broadly categorize them according to the description that the bank gives me.