I initially thought that it had to be either/or and when I switched to beancount I was sorely missing then simple balance reports from ledger.
What I’ve been doing lately is just generating ledger-formatted ledger on the fly for this that I used ledger before, while still benefiting from the strict beancount format, balance assertions and such that ledger doesn’t have
oh nice, thanks for sharing, I wasn't aware of that :-)
It seems though that the assertions are attached to transactions. The way I use balance assertions on beancount is that, say, payday after balancing everything I'd enter
> 2022-01-30 balance Assets:Bank 500.00 USD
and that will ensure that whatever happens, even if I need to go back in time to clear transactions, the amount needs to be that one, and that balance is usually straight from my current bank balance.
So, it seems slightly different use case that ledger's balance assertion
I've been using ledger for 10+ years. I guess I should try beancount, but ledger works for me. I've never had to calculate capital gains or any other taxes myself, though.
Ledger's simple model makes a lot more sense to me (ie. everything is just a commodity), but it sounds like beancount is set up to deal with a lot of the extra bullshit that exists in the legal system.
What I’ve been doing lately is just generating ledger-formatted ledger on the fly for this that I used ledger before, while still benefiting from the strict beancount format, balance assertions and such that ledger doesn’t have