Cobblepot

This is a command-line finance tool meant primarily for personal use. The syntax of the command inputs is influenced heavily by beancount, a more robust finance CLI tool.

Purpose

This is a great tool if you are not interested in all the bells and whistles of complicated CLI finance tools. There is little syntax to learn and your input format is an open road. Cobblepot has simple syntax with detailed help text from the command line. You can generate reports and summaries at any moment without becoming confused by the variety.

Definitions

Assets. (+) Asset accounts represent something the owner has. A canonical example is banking accounts. Another one is a “cash” account, which counts how much money is in your wallet. Investments are also assets (their units aren’t dollars in this case, but rather some number of shares of some mutual fund or stock). Finally, if you own a home, the home itself is considered an asset (and its market value fluctuates over time).
Liabilities. (-) A liability account represents something the owner owes. The most common example is a credit card. Again, the statement provided by your bank will show positive numbers, but from your own perspective, they are negative numbers. A loan is also a liability account. For example, if you take out a mortgage on a home, this is money you owe, and will be tracked by an account with a negative amount. As you pay off the mortgage every month the negative number goes up, that is, its absolute value gets smaller and smaller over time (e.g., -120,000 -> -117,345).
Expenses. (+) An expense account represents something you’ve received, perhaps by exchanging something else to purchase it. This type of account will seem pretty natural: food, drinks, clothing, rent, flights, hotels and most other categories of things you typically spend your disposable income on. However, taxes are also typically tracked by an expense account: when you receive some salary income, the amount of taxes withheld at the source is recorded immediately as an expense. Think of it as paying for government services you receive throughout the year.
Income. (-) An income account is used to count something you’ve given away in order to receive something else (typically assets or expenses). For most people with jobs, that is the value of their time (a salary income). Specifically, here we’re talking about the gross income. For example, if you’re earning a salary of $120,000/year, that number is $120,000, not whatever amount remains after paying for taxes. Other types of income includes dividends received from investments, or interest paid from bonds held. There are also a number of oddball things received you might record as income, such the value of rewards received, e.g., cash back from a credit card, or monetary gifts from someone.
Equity. ()And summing up all the Equity accounts clearly tells us what’s our stake in the entity, in other words, if you used the assets to pay off all the liabilities, how much is left in the business… how much it’s worth.
- Previous Earnings or Retained Earnings. An account used to hold the sum total of Income & Expenses balances from the beginning of time until the beginning of a reporting period. This is the account we were referring to in the previous section.
- Current Earnings, also called Net Income. An account used to contain the sum of Income & Expenses balances incurred during the reporting period. They are filled in by “clearing” the Income & Expenses accounts at the end of the reporting period.
- Opening Balances. An equity account used to counterbalance deposits used to initialize accounts. This type of account is used when we truncate the past history of transactions, but we also need to ensure that an account’s balance begins its history with a particular amount.

Details Format

<type> : <country> : <institution> : <account> There are many ways ot abuse the input format for details. This is the method that I will be following.

BookKeeping Terms

Chart of Accounts

Chart of Accounts - Index of all the financial accounts in the General Ledger of a company broken down into subcategories. Accounts cannot be removed, only added.
- Account - Typically contains name, and an identification code, financial statement, group, to increase
- Identification Code - A value used to identify the account.Space is left for additional codes to be inserted in a group. One system for creating this identification code division code, department code, account code. Small businesses and personal may only use the account code. This system for creating the identification code must be consistent across accounting periods
- Financial Statement - The financial statement in which the account appears. choices include Balance Sheet for asset-liability and equity accounts, Income Statement for revenue and expense accounts,
- Group - Refers to the classification of the account into one of the headings : Assets, Liabilities, Shareholder's Equity, Revenue, and Expenses.
- Sub Group - The Sub Group column divides each group into the classification needed to produce the Balance Sheet and Income Statement for accounting reports.
  - Asset Accounts - The lowest range of values, starting with the current assets, then long-term assets. The Current Asset sub groups can include cash and cash equivalents, accounts receivable, inventory, and other current assets. The Long Term sub groups can include property, plant, and equipment.
  - Liability Accounts - The second lowest range of values, starting with current liabilities then long term liabilities. The Current Liabilities sub groups can include accounts payable, and other current liabilities. The Long Term Liabilities can include mortgages and loans.
  - Equity Accounts - The third lowest range of values. The sub groups can include capital, and retained earnings.
  - Income Accounts - The second largest range of values. The sub groups can include revenue, and other income
  - Expense Accounts - The largest range of values. The sub groups can include research and development, sales and marketing, general and administrative, depreciation, finance costs, and income tax expense.
- To Increase - This column is for indicating whether the account is normally increased by a debit or a credit
- This might be part of the General Ledger Domain

Ledger

Ledger - Record of all past transactions, organized by accounts. Sorts all transaction information through the accounts. Typically there are three different kinds of Ledgers that can be prepared.
- Debtors Ledger or Sales Ledgers - It records all the transactions that take place between you and your debtors, where debtors are whomever you have sold goods that you manufacture. It contains a collection of accounts associated with your customers, and shows the amount owed to you or yet to be received. The following details are recorded: date of sales, type of goods sold, amount of goods, name of the customers, tax details.
- Creditors Ledger or Purchases Ledger - Records all transactions related to purchases that your business entity makes or between you and your suppliers. Showcases the amount you pay your suppliers or the amount your to be paid for the purchases.The following details are recorded: type and quantity of goods purchased, list of suppliers, purchases involving huge sums of money.
- General Ledger - Contains all the ledger accounts other than sales and purchases accounts. Various sub ledgers* can be provided with requisite details to prepare a single General Ledger.The General Ledger accounts provide information that helps prepare financial statements. The General Ledger Accounts include: Assets, Liabilities, Shareholder's Equity, Revenue, and Expenses.
Account - Contain all Debit and Credit transactions affecting them. Also include detailed information about each transaction, such as date, description, amount, and may include descriptive information on what the transaction was. At least two accounts are managed whenever a transaction takes place
Transaction - They are closed out or summarized to the general ledger. Each transaction affects at least two accounts, and each entry has at least one debit and one credit transaction
Trial Balance - Validates the ledgers accuracy. A report that lists every general ledger account and its balance, makes adjustments easier to check and errors easier to locate.
General Ledger Reconciliation - helps ensure accuracy of the information contained win your Accounts
Financial Statement -

Journal

Journal - Records transactions in the order they occur. There are two types of journals: Specialty Journal and General Journal.
- Specialty Journal - Records special events or transactions that are related to the particular journal itself. There are mainly four kinds of Specialty journals: Sales Journal, Cash receipts, Purchases journal, and Cash disbursements journal
  - Sales Journal - A type of journal that is used to record credit sales transactions of the company and is used for the purpose of tracking the accounts receivable and inventory accounts.
  - Transaction- The format for these transactions are :date, account debited, invoice number, Post Reference Entries, Account Receivable and Sales, cost of goods sold and inventory.
    - Date
    - Account Debited - Name of Customer to be recorded who is purchasing the goods and credit only from an entity
    - Invoice No - Sale invoice no
    - PR - Post Reference Entries and is recorded to the relevant account (Customer Account) daily. Enter certain no. and the same no. to be alloted to Customer Account for tracking
    - Account Receivable and Sales - The Amount to be mentioned which will receive from the customer. Account receivables to be debited and sales to be credited by the same account
    - Cost of Goods Sold and Inventory - The cost of price of goods sold to be mentioned and the cost of goods sold to be debited and inventory to be credited to the same account
  - Cash Receipts Journal - Is used to record all receipts of cash during an accounting period and works on the golden rule of accounting - debit what comes in and credits what goes out. The receipts can be further divided into: Receipt of Cash from Cash Sales, receipt of Cash from Credit Customers, Receipt of Cash from Other Services. The format of these transactions are date, account credited, Ref, Explanation, Cash Dr, Sales Discount Dr, Accounts Receivable Cr, Sales Cr, Other Accounts Cr. The single disadvantage of the cash receipts journal is that it only takes into account the cash basis of accounting. FIXME: might not be relevant for double entry accounting context
    - Receipt of Cash from Cash Sales - All cash received from cash sales of goods and services to customers, mentioning the name of the counter-party in the narration
    - Receipt of Cash from Credit Customers - All cash subsequently collected after making credit sales to the customer basis the credit period
    - Receipt of Cash from Other Services - All other sources of cash such as Bank Interest, Maturity of Investments, sales of non-inventory assets, sales of fixed assets
  - Purchases Journal - A special journal used to keep track of all the credit purchases. While credit transactions are recorded in the Purchase Book, cash purchases are recorded in the general Journal. Capital expenditures are also excluded from this journal. The details of supplier, invoice number, currency, quantity, particulars and other details are included in entry.
  - Cash Disbursement Journal - https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/cash-disbursement-journal.asp
- General Journal - All other transactions that are not contained in the specialty journals are in the General Journal. The following types of transaction: Accounts Receivables, Accounts Payable, Equipment, Accumulated Depreciation, Expenses, Interest Income and Expenses
  - Transaction - each transaction is an exchange between two accounts. Two equal and opposite accounts for all the transactions, namely credit and debit. credits one account and debits another account. The general format for transactions include: date of transaction, memo, debit amount, credit amount, reference number.

TODO

read this file for starting a session for the account
display the session in the console like python venv
create entrys for this account
store these entries in a journal file

Ces-D/cobblepot