import2ledger provides a Python library and CLI tool to read financial data from various popular sources and generate entries for text-based accounting books from them.
Installation
------------
This is a pretty normal Python module, so if you have a favorite way to install those, it will probably work. If you just want to install it to run the script locally, try running from the source directory::
Since different organizations follow different accounting rules, you need to define an entry template for each kind of data that you want to be able to import. You do that in a configuration file. By default, import2ledger reads a configuration file at ``~/.config/import2ledger.ini``. You can specify a different path with the ``-C`` option, and you can specify that multiple times to read multiple configuration files in order.
Writing templates
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A template looks like a Ledger entry with a couple of differences:
Every setting in your configuration file has to be in a section. ``[DEFAULT]`` is the default section, and import2ledger reads configuration settings from here if you don't specify another one. This documentation explains how to use sections later.
``patreon income ledger entry =`` specifies which entry template this is. Every template is found from a setting with a name in the pattern ``<SOURCE> <TYPE> ledger entry``. The remaining lines are indented further than this name; this defines a multiline value. Don't worry about the exact indentation of your template; import2ledger will indent its output nicely.
The next two lines split the money across accounts. They follow almost the same format as they do in Ledger: there's an account named, followed by a tab or two or more spaces, and then an expression. Each time import2ledger generates an entry, it will evaluate this expression using the data it imported to calculate the actual currency amount to write. Your expression can use numbers, basic arithmetic operators (including parentheses for grouping), and imported data referred to as ``{variable_name}``.
import2ledger uses decimal math to calculate each amount, and rounds to the number of digits appropriate for that currency. If the amount of currency being imported doesn't split evenly, spare change will be allocated to the last split to keep the entry balanced on both sides.
Refer to the `Python documentation for INI file structure <https://docs.python.org/3/library/configparser.html#supported-ini-file-structure>`_ for full details of the syntax. Note that import2ledger doesn't use ``;`` as a comment prefix, since that's the primary comment prefix in Ledger.
import2ledger templates have access to a few variables for each transaction that can be included anywhere in the entry, not just amount expressions. In other parts of the entry, they're treated as strings, and you can control their formatting using `Python's format string syntax <https://docs.python.org/3/library/string.html#formatstrings>`_. For example, this template customizes the payee line and sets different payees for each side of the transaction::
Templates automatically detect whether or not you have a custom payee line by checking if the first line begins with a date variable. If it does, it's assumed to be your payee line. Otherwise, the template uses a default payee line of ``{date} {payee}``.
Various options control how import2ledger formats dates and currency amounts. Run ``import2ledger --help`` for a full list; they're listed under the "default overrides" section. You can specify these in your configuration file, too. Just change any dashes (``-``) in the option name to underscores (``_``), and separate the switch name from your value with ``=``. For example, add this to your configuration file to use ISO 8601-formatted dates in your Ledger entries::
If you keep different sets of books, it might be helpful to have different configuration settings for each. For example, you might adjust the templates for each set of books to use different accounts or tags. Or you might just need to change the formatting of dates or currency amounts.
import2ledger makes this easy by letting you define a new section of options, and then using them all when you import transactions. For example, say you keep two sets of books, one for US accounts and another for European accounts. You could write a configuration file like::
[us]
date_format = %%m/%%d/%%Y
signed_currencies = USD
[eu]
date_format = %%d.%%m.%%Y
signed_currencies = EUR
When you run import2ledger, you can tell it to load options from one of these sections with the option ``--use-config NAME``, or ``-c NAME`` for short. In this example, ``import2ledger -c eu`` would load the settings for your European books. import2ledger looks for configuration settings in the following places, and uses the first setting it finds:
1. The configuration section you specify with ``-c``
import2ledger will read all the data sources and generate bookkeeping entries from them.
import2ledger needs to be able to seek within the source files. Because of that, your input files need to be normal files, or symlinks to them. Special files like devices and FIFOs aren't supported by import2ledger.
