@@ -131,24 +131,82 @@ agreement with the NPO, and thus deserve a copy of their books that they can
"take away" with them, or (b) might be affiliated with *other* NPOs that also
hold accounts. This system of earmarked accounts is designed to make it easy
for projects to have a copy of their own accounts, but not interfere with nor
even be aware of (a) the books of other member/affiliated projects, and (b)
the overall books of the entire NPO.
On the latter point, this system utilizes a directory structure and separate
`.ledger` files to separate out the different projects into different
structures. This allows member/affiliated projects to take their data and
run `ledger` commands against it, separately and without access to the other
`.ledger` files of the NPO.
Proper Documentation For Accounts
---------------------------------
Ledger CLI offers a flexible structure of tagging any entry, including
separate tags for parts of a split transaction. This system uses those tags
to ensure proper entry is included.
### Expense Account Documentation
Each Expense account entries need to be tagged with an `Invoice`, `Receipt`,
or `Statement` tag. The value of the tag is a relative path name of a file
elsewhere in the same repository that documents the specific expense. For
example, an entry like this:
2012-02-05 Office Supply Galore - Online Order
Expense:Main Org:Office Supplies $35.00
;Receipt: accounts/documentation/org/receipts/2012-02-05_office-supply-galore.txt
Liabilities:Credit Card:Visa -$35.00
shows that a purchase was made at Office Supply Galore's online store for
$35.00, and the file `accounts/documentation/org/receipts/2012-02-05_office-supply-galore.txt`
contains the receipt from that purchase.
#### payee with "NEVER CHARGED"
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:
2011/05/28 My Bad Billing Hosting - NEVER CHARGED
Liabilities:Credit Card:Visa $-100.00
Expenses:Conservancy:Hosting $100.00
2012/01/01 My Bad Billing Hosting - REVERSAL - NEVER CHARGED
Liabilities:Credit Card:Visa $100.00
Expenses:Conservancy:Hosting $-100.00
However, going forward, you'd likely never enter anything the ledger
**until** you had real proof via an Invoice, Receipt or Statement that showed
the Expense did/should occur. This use of `NEVER CHARGED` in the payee is
thus deprecated.
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,
propagate, and/or redistribute this software under the terms of either:
* The GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software
Foundation, Inc.; either version 3 of the License, or (at your option)
any later version (aka GPLv3-or-later).