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Comment by colindean | Hacker News Reader

I've used Ledger extensively for a side business as well as for timekeeping for work. It's incredibly powerful and incredibly unforgiving.

If you want to keep PDF, JPG, etc. receipts with it, just put them in the same directory and note them in a comment. Additionally, use a VCS that does binaries well. Git does not.

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As an aside, there are many addons to choose from if you wish to track large files with Git:

http://blog.deveo.com/storing-large-binary-files-in-git-repo...

Your "unforgiving" comment is actually exactly what makes me nervous about using this (a command line util) vs a GUI application. I feel like (and this may be a total misconception) my poor typing abilities are better caught in a GUI than cmd line, unless the application itself has something built in (like git's fuzzy commands), where most UI applications, at least on Mac, are sort of validated by the OS level field validation.

Ledger has a 'strict' mode, where you basically pre-define the accounts you plan on using. That will at least stop you from typoing account names (perhaps like a pre-populated drop-down list in a UI?). Manual entry errors (too many/not enough zeros) are probably just as easy to make on the CLI/in a GUI though.

"It's incredibly powerful and incredibly unforgiving."

Did you really mean to say "unforgiving"? I.e., "unforgiving" is generally a bad thing. Or did you actually mean that it's quite forgiving?

Unforgiving is often a good thing. You don't want your finance package to be 'forgiving' any more than you want your compiler to be.

If you use Ledger the right way, it'll tend to catch stupid typos because the accounts won't balance.

> as well as for timekeeping for work

Any tips on that?

I use https://github.com/nuex/t, which generates ledger timelog entries as documented here http://www.ledger-cli.org/2.6/ledger.html#Using-timeclock-to.... I've tracked approx 2000 billable hours using this method over the last couple of years. When I invoice, timelog entries are archived into a separate file, so my active timelog ledger file records unbilled time.

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