initiated the income (e.g., a specific fundraising campaign) and/or what

particular program activity an expense is toward (e.g., funding travel to

some specific conference).

The Program tag is always a string with the same format as a Ledger CLI

account (primarily for use with Ledger CLI's `--pivot` and `--group-by`,

[as described later](#testing-program-success)).

### Account Type Documentation Requirements

Each account type has different documentation requirements.  Based on the

type of the account, it requires a different set of tags.

When Ledger CLI's `--pedantic` option is used, these rules are enforced by

ledger itself via the configurations found in `config-tags.ledger` and

`config-accounts.ledger`.

#### Expense Account Documentation

Each `Expense:` account entry must be tagged with the following tags:

* One of: [`Invoice:`](#invoice-tag) [`Receipt:`](#receipt-tag), or

  [`Statement`](#statement-tag).  (The only exception to this rule: an entry

  does not need an `Invoice:`, `Receipt`, nor a `Statement` tag if the

* A [`Program:`] tag.

#### NEVER CHARGED Payee

The only exception to the standard tagging requirement is when the payee has

been modified to indicate that the expense was `NEVER CHARGED`.  This is an

historical special-case.  The solution was originally design for the

following scenario:

Suppose an expense was expected — for example, a situation where you

gave a credit card number to charge something and the charge never came

through — but it turns out the charge never happened.

The recommended way to resolve this problem in the system is to just delete

the entry entirely from the Ledger file, and allow the VCS to log the fact

that the charge was expected, but the vendor never billed the credit card.

The reason the `NEVER CHARGED` payee text was added was to handle the

situation where the books included this charge, but the books were already

closed for the financial period (e.g., the books had already been audited).

Changing the payee was a method for documenting the expense.  You might use

it like this:

     + the `IncomeType` is `RBI` and the income is for a defined, public

       program (such as conference registration)

* An [`Entity:`](#entity-tag) tag, *iff.* the Income for the transaction is

  for more than $800.

* An [`IncomeType:`](#incometype-tag) tag.

* A [`Program:`](#program-tag) tag.

Analysis of the Data

--------------------

If this methodology is followed, Ledger can be used to analyze the financial

data for the organization.

### Testing Program Success

If you use the [`Program`](#program-tag) tag effectively, you can easily test

the successes of various fundraising programs with a command like this:

    $ ledger -f accounts/books.ledger --pivot Program bal '/^Income/'

Meanwhile, using the  [`Program`](#program-tag) tag for Expenses can help

    $ ledger -f accounts/books.ledger --group-by 'tag("Program")' reg '/^Expense/'

FIXME: example output

### Checking Integrity of a Tag

[As mentioned](#entity-tag), the `Entity:` tag is one example among many

where the value is a wide range, but since Ledger CLI isn't backed by a more

complete ERP system, it's possible during data entry for typos to make a

serious problem.  One work around to this flaw is to periodically run a

command like:

    $ ledger -f accounts/books.ledger -F '%(tag("Entity"))\n' reg|sort|uniq|less

which will show all unique `Entity:` values currently in use.

Copyright and License of This File

----------------------------------

This specific document, the README.md file for npo-ledger-cli, is copyrighted:

  Copyright © 2013, Bradley M. Kuhn

This document's license gives you freedom; you can copy, modify, convey,