“pass” in this context refers to a GPG-encrypted file based password manager: https://www.passwordstore.org/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pass_(software) https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Pass.

“pass” itself can be used in many contexts, but is primarily a desktop command-line tool. “Password Store” is the Android client for it.

I've written a series of posts on practical "recipes" for how to use Ledger (one of the leading plain text accounting systems) effectively in more complex situations beyond the basic tutorials: https://felixcrux.com/blog/ledger-practices

As a heavy ledger user these are great recipes in my opinion.

Since you’re here and clearly you know ledger well I’ll share a pattern I have that perhaps is a good idea or perhaps has an alternative approach.

We need to track customers and suppliers carefully and then assign payments both made and received to specific projects and categories within those projects. Invoices can contain a mix of these projects in either direction. So our workflow is:

- assign transactions to an account labeled by the counterparty when imported from bank account transactions.

- a script uses ledger print command and creates a 2nd journal file for each counterparty with a mirror transaction inverting the original transaction out of the counterparty account and into an Unknown project and Unknown category sub account as a place holder.

- transactions are then matched by bookkeeper to specific invoices and then assigned to Project:Category accounts in the counterparty journal file. transactions will be split if it’s needed at this point. so a single payment can be split to multiple Project:Category accounts.

- by including all bank transaction journals and all counterparty journals then ledger bal command show if all transactions have been processed by bookkeeping.

My mom started a blog about her triathlon experiences after retirement, including being part of Team USA at world championships: https://triathlonatretirement.blogspot.com/

Thank you!

Do you have any suggestions for how the formatting could be better? Is there something outright broken in how it displays in your browser, or is something simply sub-optimal?

Content warning: Be aware that the linked article opens with a large photo of bodies of killed civilians. It is not explicitly "gory" but it is upsetting.

If the author happens to read this: Please consider not putting that front and centre without a warning.

If a mod happens to read this: Please consider adding a content warning or similar to the link title or somewhere else prominent.

A previous discussion of my writeup on this awesome feature: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19520966

I've written a series of guides on how to use these tools in practice, here: https://felixcrux.com/blog/ledger-practices

Hey felix , Your blog helped me tremendously a few months ago, to get better at managing my ledger files.

Thanks a lot for all of your recommendations !

Hey! I'm really glad it was useful to someone. Thank you for the kind words :)

I'll take any chance I can get to link to this wonderfully sprawling 1996 article from novelist Neal Stephenson about the laying and landing of transoceanic cables: https://www.wired.com/1996/12/ffglass/

Yes it's long, but it's so worth it!

From back when Wired was a really great magazine. I threw out all my 1990s Wired magazines. What a shame.

Emacs, same as for everything else.