The plain text accounting tool of the future. Keep track of your π΅, π, π, π, π» on your command line.
For help, please come visit us on our GitHub Discussions page!
- List of Features / TODOs
- Installation
- License
- Usage
- Journal File Format
- Plotting
- Import from Ledger CLI
- FAQ
- Comparison with Hledger
- Ideas
- Related
- Easily editable and processable file format based on YAML
- Modeled on transactions instead of debiting / crediting accounts
=> Support for complex transactions made up of several transfers
- Dedicated payer (from) and payee (to) fields (ledger only supports payee)
- No misuse of accounts as categories / tags => Direct support for tags
- Clear separation between
- Physical account (e.g. wallet, bank account)
- Entities (e.g. my mum, a company)
- Purpose of transaction (e.g. food, travel)
- No hard-coded asset / liability connotation as it is viewpoint dependent => Choose viewpoint by setting the owner of the journal
- Initial balances
- High precision timestamps in ISO 8601 format
- Reference external files (e.g. receipts, contracts, bank statements, β¦)
- Safety checks
- BigInt fractional numbers to eliminate rounding errors
- Verifies exclusive use of predefined entities
- Checks in transactions match with verification balances
- Checks that referenced external files exist and that all external files are referenced
- Export to other formats for post-processing
- Gnuplot (for trends)
- (H)ledger Format (for using (H)ledger exclusive features)
- CSV and TSV (for further processing in spreadsheet software)
- XLSX aka Excel (for further processing in spreadsheet software)
- Multi file support
Transity is distributed as a JavaScript bundle and can therefore be installed via npm:
bun install --global transityWhile Transity is licensed under the AGPL-3.0-or-later and can therefore be used free of charge, I hope you will acknowledge the work and effort it takes to maintain and improve this software and make a donation via my GitHub Support page.
If you find Transity valuable and/or use it regularly this should be a small nuisance for you, but it would mean the world for me! It would mean that I can spend more time on this project and bring it to the next level!
Thanks a lot for your support!
For including Transity in proprietary closed source products, please contact me!
$ transity balance examples/journal.yaml
anna 1 evil-machine
-49978.02 β¬
ben -50 $
-1.432592 BTC
-100 β¬
evil-corp -1 evil-machine
50015 β¬
good-inc -100 β¬
grocery-shop 11.97 β¬
john 371.04 β¬
50 $
1.432592 BTC
:default 219.99 β¬
giro 50 $
1.432592 BTC
85 β¬
wallet 66.05 β¬If linked modules aren't exposed in your path you can also run
cli/main.js balance examples/journal.yamlList complete usage manual by simply calling transity without any arguments.
$ transity
Usage: transity <command> <path/to/journal.yaml>
Command Description
------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------
balance Simple balance of all accounts
transactions All transactions and their transfers
transfers All transfers with one transfer per line
entries All individual deposits & withdrawals
entries-by-account All individual deposits & withdrawals grouped by account
gplot Code and data for gnuplot impulse diagram
to visualize transfers of all accounts
gplot-cumul Code and data for cumuluative gnuplot step chart
to visualize balance of all accounts
Check if all entries are in a chronological order
ag --nonumbers "^ utc:" journals/main.yaml | tr -d "\'" | sort -cTransity includes a few scripts located at ./scripts to automate a Chrome browser to download data. It supports downloading CSV files of all transactions and converting them to journal files and retrieving the current account balance:
Currently supported accounts for transactions:
Currently supported accounts for balances:
Contributions are very welcome!
node scripts/transactions/hypovereinsbank.js > transactions.yamlThis will prompt you for your credentials and afterwards automate a headless Chrome instance to download and convert the data.
A minimal journal file is a YAML file with following format:
owner: anna
commodities:
- id: β¬
name: Euro
alias:
- EUR
note: Currency used in the European Union
utc: '2017-04-02 19:33:53'
entities:
- id: anna
name: Anna Smith
utc: '2017-04-02 19:33:28'
tags:
- person
accounts:
- id: wallet
name: Wallet
note: Anna's black wallet
utc: '2017-04-02 19:33:28'
tags:
- wallet
- id: evil-corp
name: Evil Corporation
utc: '2017-04-02 19:33:28'
note: The Evil Corporation in the United States of Evil
tags:
- company
transactions:
- title: Purchase of evil machine
transfers:
- utc: '2017-02-17'
from: anna
to: evil-corp
amount: 50000 β¬
- utc: '2017-02-17'
from: evil-corp
to: anna
amount: 1 evil-machineBy default all accounts are plotted.
To limit it to only a subsection use awk to filter the output.
For example all transactions of Euro accounts:
transity gplot examples/journal.yaml \
| awk '/^$/ || /(EOD|^set terminal)/ || /β¬/' \
| gnuplot \
| imgcatOr all account balances of Euro accounts over time:
transity gplot-cumul examples/journal.yaml \
| awk '/^$/ || /(EOD|^set terminal)/ || /β¬/' \
| gnuplot \
| imgcat
We built a dedicated OpenAI GPT to convert any financial data (e.g. CSVs, bank statements, chat history, β¦) to a Transity journal file.
Check it out at chat.openai.com/g/g-aUph953Vj-transity.
Execute the included ledger2transity script:
./ledger2transity.sh examples/hledger.journal > transactions.csvConvert transactions.csv to YAML with e.g. browserling.com/tools/csv-to-yaml
Attention:
- Merge adjacent entries as each entry only debits / credits an account.
A transaction always involves 2 accounts (
fromandto). (For expenses basically copy the ledger-account from the second entry into thefromfield of the first entry) fromandtomight be reversed for income (depending on how thepayeefield was used)- Account names of Ledger-CLI are interpreted as tags Transity understands accounts as physical accounts
- The note is duplicated in the
tagsfield. There is no way to get only the tags in Ledger-CLI π
Existing accounting tools are historically based on the notion of an account. You add money (debit) and you remove money (credit). (If this sounds backwards to you, read this explanation)
For example you get 50 β¬ from your mum and buy some food for 20 β¬.
Account | Debit | Credit
--------|---------|--------
Wallet | 50.00 β¬ |
Wallet | | 20.00 β¬
---------------------------Simple, but also incomplete. Where did the money come from, where did it go? This led to double entry bookkeeping. Whenever you add some money to an account, you have to remove the same amount from another.
Account | Debit | Credit
--------|---------|--------
Wallet | 50.00 β¬ |
Mum | | 50.00 β¬
Wallet | | 20.00 β¬
Food | 20.00 β¬ |
---------------------------But you must never forget a posting, because otherwise your account won't balance.
Account | Debit | Credit
--------|---------|--------
Wallet | 50.00 β¬ |
Mum | | 50.00 β¬
Wallet | | 20.00 β¬
---------------------------Oops, where did the money go? π€·β
If this looks (and sounds) confusing or too complicated, you're not alone! It made sense in former times as this layout makes it easier to add up the amounts by hand, but not in times of computers.
So how can we simplify it? It's actually quite easy: We just have to model it in terms of transactions, and not accounts.
Amount | From | To
-------|--------|--------
50 β¬ | Mum | Wallet
20 β¬ | Wallet | Food
-------------------------- Simple - No more confusing debit / credit / asset / liability mumbo jumbo
- Intuitive - Just like you would talk about it
- Safe - It's obvious if you forget to fill out a field
Together with some further changes it yields an easier to understand, more robust and more complete representation of accounting!
PureScript leverages strong static typing and can therefore give more guarantees about the functionality of the code than weakly typed or untyped languages (like JavaScript).
You wouldn't want your money to get lost in rounding errors or
be turned to undefined, would you? π
PureScript can also easily be used in the browser or get deployed as a cloud function as it simply compiles to JavaScript. With Haskell you'd have to use another language for a web frontend or quarrel with experimental stuff like GHCJS.
(H)ledger's transactions are a (balanced) group of account postings. Transity's transactions are a group of transfers between two accounts.
Checkout the files hledger.journal and journal.yaml for similar transactions modeled in Hledger and in Transity.
There is a lot of ambiguity in the ledger journal format. Are you able to tell the difference between the 2 options?
2019-01-17 Bought food
expenses:food $10
assets:cash
; vs
2019-01-17 Bought food
assets:cash
expenses:food $10
Also, it lacks some fields for more precise recording of which parties where involved.
- What food?
- Where did you buy it?
- When exactly did you buy it?
- Which supermarket?
2019-01-17 Bought food
expenses:food $10
assets:cash
hledger --file examples/hledger.journal balance
# vs
transity balance examples/journal.yamlhledger --file examples/hledger.journal register
# vs
transity transactions examples/journal.yamlhledger --file examples/hledger.journal register --output-format=csv
# vs
transity entries examples/journal.yaml- No support for precise timestamps (transactions only have an associated date)
- No first class support for Gnuplot (Check out Report Scripts for Ledger CLI with Gnuplot for some scripts)
Measured with hyperfine including 3 warmups on an early 2015 MacBook Pro.
For a journal file with around 2000 entries:
Transity:
Benchmark #1: transity balance journals/main.yaml
Time (mean Β± Ο): 1.287 s Β± 0.021 s [User: 1.790 s, System: 0.140 s]
Range (min β¦ max): 1.250 s β¦ 1.324 s 10 runsHledger:
Benchmark #1: hledger -f test.ledger balance
Time (mean Β± Ο): 409.6 ms Β± 6.1 ms [User: 366.6 ms, System: 28.5 ms]
Range (min β¦ max): 398.8 ms β¦ 417.6 ms 10 runsLedger:
Benchmark #1: ledger -f test.ledger balance
Time (mean Β± Ο): 76.3 ms Β± 9.1 ms [User: 62.7 ms, System: 9.4 ms]
Range (min β¦ max): 65.1 ms β¦ 101.8 ms 28 runs- Features for duplicates
- Print list of possible duplicates
- Label an entry explicitly as a duplicate to store it in several places
- CSV import
- Dashboard
- Budgets (including progress visualization)
- Cache-files to speed up processing of large data sets
- Generate EPC QR Codes for transfers
- LSP server for journal files
- Export to Graphviz (for account / entity relations)
- Export to JS-Sequence-Diagrams (sequence of transactions)
- Meta data for all entities (transactions, accounts, entities, β¦)
- Nanosecond precision for timestamps
- Additional features for crypto currencies
- Commodities
- Treat as scientific units (e.g 1 kβ¬ == 1000 β¬)
- First class support for any type of commodity (e.g. time and messages)
- Support for time limited commodities (e.g. subscription for a month)
- Define which are allowed / prohibited for each account
- Hard vs Soft vs Fungible vs β¦
- Differentiation between transfers, transactions & exchanges
- Special syntax for exchanges
- Support for all states of transaction life cycle
- Request - Request to exchange a commodity
- Offer - Specification of commodity & expected trade item
- Acceptance - Affirmation of interest in offered exchange
- Fulfillments
- Certification - Acknowledgment that exchange was performed
There are no separate fields for entry or value dates necessary. Simply use ISO 8601 time intervals to specify the duration of a transfer.
transactions:
- id: '123456789'
note: Deposit of savings
transfers:
- utc: 2018-01-04T12:00--05T22:10
from: john
to: bank
amount: 100 β¬This is a first concept of an alternative syntax for the journal file:
# Comments after a hash
2016-04-16 18:50:28
| 1 year registration of domain "example.org"
+tagOne # Tags are written after a plus
+tagTwo
id: 20135604 # Arbitrary metadata
# Transactions are indentend by 2 spaces
john -> paypal : 9.95 β¬
paypal -> namecheap : {10 + 0.69} $
paypal -> icann : 0.18 $ +fee
namecheap -> john : 1 Domain
For a full list of plain text accounting tools check out plaintextaccounting.org. Here are some of the links that are especially relevant for Transity:
- Ledger - The original command line accounting tool (written in C++).
- Hledger - Ledger clone with a focus on UX, reliability, and real-world practicality (written in Haskell).
- Beancount - Double-entry accounting from text files (written in Python).
- Rust Ledger - Ledger clone that uses YAML as well (written in Rust).
- cs007.blog - Personal finance for engineers.
- principlesofaccounting.com - Online tutorial on accounting.