emacs-orgmode@gnu.org archives
 help / color / mirror / code / Atom feed

From: Matthew Lundin <mdl@imapmail.org>
To: Memnon Anon <gegendosenfleisch@googlemail.com>
Cc: emacs-orgmode@gnu.org
Subject: Re: Org and financial data
Date: Tue, 06 Jan 2009 09:35:51 -0600	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <m28wpoo3ag.fsf@fastmail.fm> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <4962d621.0437560a.287d.ffffa9a1@mx.google.com> (Memnon Anon's message of "Tue\, 06 Jan 2009 04\:54\:50 +0100")


Hi Memnon,
Memnon Anon <gegendosenfleisch@googlemail.com> writes:

> Hi!
>
> A new year has started and I try to get even more organized.
> So, I think it is time to keep track of my financial data, and
> I think orgmode is the way to go.

If your needs are simple (i.e., just tracking discretionary spending)
you might consider using properties and column views to keep track of
where your money is going. I find that this creates a nice way to sum
up weekly, monthly, and yearly expenditures. I described my admittedly
simple setup in this post:

http://article.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.orgmode/9827

I create a tree for each year, a subtree for each month, and a subtree
for each week, such as:

---begin org file---

#+COLUMNS: %30ITEM(Item) %15spendtype(Category) %10amount(Amount){$} %10goal(Goal){$} 
#+PROPERTY: spendtype_all food office household entertainment

* 2008
** December 
   :PROPERTIES:
   :END:
*** Week One (November 29-December 6)
    :PROPERTIES:
    :goal:     #fill in your own goal here#
    :END:
**** Post Office[2008-12-02 Tue]
     :PROPERTIES:
     :amount:   14.40
     :spendtype: office
     :END:
**** Grocery store[2008-12-04 Thu]
     :PROPERTIES:
     :amount:   18.86
     :spendtype: food
     :END:
     
# More entries can go here.

---end property---

With this setup, column views provides a nice summary of weekly and
monthly spending. If you like, you can also add weekly goals to the
headline for the week and compare yearly, monthly, weekly sums to your
goals.

To search for a type of spending you easily do a tag search (e.g, C-a
m +spendtype="food"), optionally restricting the search to a
particular subtree. You could then use columns view in the agenda to
see the total.

Warning: property searches will be really slow if you don't restrict
them to your spending file. If you prefer, you could easily use tags
to keep track of types of spending.

Finally, Eric Schulte's org-collector.el is great for creating
filtered tables of results. See this thread for more information:
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.orgmode/9908

For more sophisticated financial tracking, I'd probably recommend a
tool devoted to that purpose.

Best,
Matt

next prev parent reply	other threads:[~2009-01-06 15:35 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 8+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2009-01-06  3:54 Org and financial data Memnon Anon
2009-01-06  5:48 ` Manish
2009-01-06  8:28   ` Memnon Anon
2009-01-06 15:35 ` Matthew Lundin [this message]
2009-01-06 15:43   ` Matthew Lundin
2009-01-07  4:09   ` Memnon Anon
2009-01-07  8:20     ` Charles Philip Chan
2009-01-07 13:14     ` Bernt Hansen

Reply instructions:

You may reply publicly to this message via plain-text email
using any one of the following methods:

* Save the following mbox file, import it into your mail client,
  and reply-to-all from there: mbox

  Avoid top-posting and favor interleaved quoting:
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style#Interleaved_style

  List information: https://www.orgmode.org/

* Reply using the --to, --cc, and --in-reply-to
  switches of git-send-email(1):

  git send-email \
    --in-reply-to=m28wpoo3ag.fsf@fastmail.fm \
    --to=mdl@imapmail.org \
    --cc=emacs-orgmode@gnu.org \
    --cc=gegendosenfleisch@googlemail.com \
    /path/to/YOUR_REPLY

  https://kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-send-email.html

* If your mail client supports setting the In-Reply-To header
  via mailto: links, try the mailto: link

Code repositories for project(s) associated with this public inbox

	https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/emacs/org-mode.git

This is a public inbox, see mirroring instructions
for how to clone and mirror all data and code used for this inbox;
as well as URLs for read-only IMAP folder(s) and NNTP newsgroup(s).