ledger-pyreport/README.md

ledger-pyreport

ledger-pyreport is a lightweight Flask webapp for generating interactive and printable accounting reports from ledger-cli data.

Reports

• Trial balance, and comparative trial balance
• Balance sheet, and comparative balance sheet
• Income statement, and comparative income statement
• General ledger
• Account transactions, with or without itemisation of commodities
• Transaction detail, with or without itemisation of commodities

Features

• Correctly values assets/liabilities at market value, and income/expenses at cost (pursuant to AASB 121/IAS 21 para 39)
• Correctly computes unrealised gains (even when Ledger does not)
• Accounts for both profit and loss, and other comprehensive income
• Simulates annual closing of books, with presentation of income/expenses on the balance sheet as retained earnings and current year earnings
• Can simulate cash basis accounting, using FIFO methodology to recode transactions involving liabilities and non-cash assets

Background, demo and screenshots

See https://yingtongli.me/blog/2020/03/31/ledger-pyreport.html for further discussion.

Usage

Install the dependencies from PyPI, optionally in a virtual environment: (Commands presented for Linux/Mac)

virtualenv venv
. venv/bin/activate
pip install -r requirements.txt

Copy config.example.yml to config.yml (or set the LEDGER_PYREPORT_CONFIG environment variable to the path to the config file).

Run as per a usual Flask app, for example:

FLASK_APP=ledger_pyreport python -m flask run

Notes on Ledger setup

ledger-pyreport expects each of assets, liabilities, equity, income and expenses to be setup in Ledger as a separate top-level account. These accounts should contain a zero balance, with all transactions in child accounts.

Additionally, ledger-pyreport expects the next level of assets and liabilities to be categories of asset and liability (e.g. Assets:Current, Liabilities:Non-current). These, too, should contain a zero balance.

Ledger-pyreport by default observes the convention that positive amounts in Ledger represent debits, and negative amounts in Ledger represent credits.