I've switched all my accounting over to hledger (a Haskell-based and slightly more feature-filled version of the original) and I'm SUPER happy with it so far.
My primary consumption method is hledger-ui, a nice curses-based UI. It's got a `watch` mode so will update in real-time as you make edits to the source database, which is nice.
The ONE thing I miss from the old QuickBooks UI world: Entering categories for transactions directly in my text file is tiresome. QuickBooks had a super nice auto-complete feature wherein it would remember the category as you were typing a transaction, which made data entry a snap.
Anyone have any suggestions on how to replicate this inside a text editor? Or any other good way of quickly doing transaction entry?
I've experimented with classifying my own transaction history using n-grams and either naive Bayes or a neural network, the neural network worked better. I could train the nn to convergence in a few seconds and it was good enough to remove 95% of the classification work.
ledger-mode in Emacs has some excellent account and description auto-completion (warning, may require a bit of configuration to suit your taste).
hledger add, hledger-iadd and hledger-web are some of the data entry uis with auto completion.
Alternatives: other ways of generating entries means less manual data entry, such as copy/paste in your editor, predefined templates (org-capture, yasnippet or equivalents), or conversion from bank csv data.
[PS I realize now you were asking for more than account name auto-completion, ie: filling in defaults for all postings (legs) when you reuse a transaction description. I don't know of many PTA tools doing this yet; hledger add is one.]
My primary consumption method is hledger-ui, a nice curses-based UI. It's got a `watch` mode so will update in real-time as you make edits to the source database, which is nice.
The ONE thing I miss from the old QuickBooks UI world: Entering categories for transactions directly in my text file is tiresome. QuickBooks had a super nice auto-complete feature wherein it would remember the category as you were typing a transaction, which made data entry a snap.
Anyone have any suggestions on how to replicate this inside a text editor? Or any other good way of quickly doing transaction entry?