rtrLEDGER

A hledger system for chaotic German freelancers based on the SKR04 chart of accounts by DATEV bearing in mind the GoBD (German directive for orderly bookeeping)

Table of contents

• General info
• Technologies
• Setup

General Info

I am still a beginner and always glad to learn and improve code! So if you see something that could be done more elegant or faster do not hesitate to ;)

If you want to help me in improving the deployment process so that others can really use this thing (havent tested it, yet) - all welcome

Basic folder structure

./init.sh

Sets up the initial folder structure:

lib/
lib/documents #
lib/tools # for tools sub
lib/journals/$(date +%Y) # current year
lib/assets # for depreciation journals

[TODO]

ledger.journal

Collects all the journal files in the above file structure and delivers an alias based chart of account, up to this day incomplete SKR04. This file should normally be untouched and is the working book. Due to the wildcard-setup everybody can choose his or her own workflow. [TODO] Full SKR04 chart of accounts

Bank CSV - hledger

./update_csv.sh

works with:

lib/documents/%bankname/%year/*.csv
lib/documents/%bankname/%bankname.rules.csv [mandatory]

• Look through all documents/*-folders
• check csv for utf8, check if .utf8.csv exists, otherwise iconv-convert it and create it
• run through folders check for $bankname.csv.rules and run subdirs ($year)
• $bankname can also be your sent|received invoices workdir
• [TODO] update if rules-file has been changed since last update of the *.journal-files
• [TODO] ask if script should Update/Update All/Ignore existing files

VAT Management

./get_vat.sh

• Get numbers for german periodic vat declaration for each quarter based on SKR04-Accounts
• [TODO]: Different timespans

Depreciation

./update_depreciation.sh

• Depreciation is set by posting a good to 0440 Machines account and setting a eg. depreciate:7years
• Its straight depreciation only atm Workflow:
• Scan for depreciate: tags and allow depreciate:xyears or depreciate:ymonths
• use start the month AFTER buying
• write lib/assets/$comment.journal from day 1 monthly till timespan+day1
• [TODO]: Beautify code, offer options, create German "Sammelabschreibung/Poolabschreibung" (Group depreciation?) for goods priced between 250-1000€

Invoicing

• [TODO]
• A latex based invoice template that takes data from csv

Zugferd / PDF Invoice Management

• [TODO]
• Automatic processing of received invoices
• Check for depreciation limits and assist in handling those
• Remember choices for positions, allow comments, tags

Finalize: Currency Conversion / Doubles

• [TODO]
• Automatic processing of currency conversion eg. Paypal/Credit Card based on comments
• Find and do some method to check and finalize monthly bookings by committing to git, hash - chance to create some gobd-save solution?

Technologies

Written mostly in beginners copy&paste shell plus incorporating existing tools in eg. python

• hledger -- great & intuitive plaintextaccounting based on ledger
• depreciateforledger -- Python script that allows for various depreciation methods and is slightly adjusted
• tabular-java -- for pdf processing, lib/tools/tabula*.jar
• sed, iconv, awk, gawk

Setup

• Check above Technologies in your package management system or do manually
• Git clone this repo
• ./init.sh creates local folder structure, set ledger-env if you want, TODO: creates example bank submodule
• setup banks with creating lib/documents/$bankname/$bankname.rules.csv with hledger csv format and set banks-csvs to lib/documents/$bankname/$year/*.csv
• run ./update_csv.sh - checks for utf8, converts if necessary takes the parent *.csv.rules to write according journals
• look through your ledger using hledger-ui and check for adjustments that need to be made in your rules-file - re-run update.csv
• use the lib/journals/$year folder to write additional postings.