Qiftoledger

I listen to a podcast about open source programming called FLOSS Weekly. I recently discovered a really neat accounting tool called Legder. Now it’s not for the typical computer user. It’s a command line tool. It doesn’t have any fancy graphics or any GUI.

It uses simple text files to keep track of all your accounts and  transactions.

Here’s an example of what a Ledger data file looks like

2011/03/01 * Pay Check
 Assets:Bank:Checking        2287.95
 Income:PayCheck
2011/04/01 * Wal-Mart
 Assets:Bank:Checking        -35.00
 Expenses:Food:Groceries:WalMart
2011/05/01 * Safeway
 Assets:Bank:Checking        -23.06
 Expenses:Food:Groceries:Safeway
2011/12/01 * Costco Gas
 Assets:Bank:Checking        -67.32
 Expenses:Auto:Gasoline:Costco

In order to use Ledger to figure out how I spend my money, I first needed to get all my data from Bank of America into the format used by Ledger.

I downloaded all my data in the QIF file format. I then wrote a Ruby script that read the QIF and spit out a Ledger data file. https://github.com/Kolomona/QIFtoLedger