Ah, I misunderstood your original problem, apologies.
Dodging your question again (since I really don't know the answer), I've
also found that storing values in non-leaf accounts gets me into all sorts
of trouble. It generally is confusing and my automation doesn't understand
it. If this example were in accounts, I would do this:
2017-10-01 * Opening Balance
Assets:CurrentAccount:Real $1000
Equity:OpeningBalance
2017-10-02 * Savings
Assets:CurrentAccounts:Savings $100
Assets:CurrentAccounts:Real
This works with the "assert account(...).total" style of assertion, but
totally fails with the Reconcile method I posted (it thinks that there is
$0 in Assets:CurrentAccounts). The assert style still doesn't show you in
what direction it is wrong, unfortunately.
Alternatively, this sounds sort of like the envelope-budgeting system I
use. Would something like the below be interesting for you?
2017-10-01 * Opening Balance
Assets:CurrentAccount $1000
(Budgets:SpendingMoney) $1000
Equity:OpeningBalance
2017-10-02 * Savings
[Budgets:Saved] $100
[Budgets:SpendingMoney]
2017-10-03 * Reconcile
[Assets:CurrentAccount] $0 = $1000
The "Budgets" subtree are accounts made entirely of virtual transactions to
track how money has been allocated, whereas the Assets subtree is about
where money really is. I have scripts that help make sure that in
transactions like 2017-10-01 the amount that the asset increases by
balances with the amount the budgets increase by. I then have rules to
automatically pair up Expense and Budget transactions.
On Fri, Oct 20, 2017 at 1:46 PM John Lee <j...@pobox.com> wrote:
> Hi Michael
>
> If you take a look at my previous thread here from a week or so back
> you'll see the problem you run into when trying to apply that to the
> transactions I posted in this thread.
>
> https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/ledger-cli/bqu-qNr6cjM
>
> Consider:
>
> 2017-10-01 * Opening Balance
> Assets:CurrentAccount $1000
> Equity:OpeningBalance
>
> 2017-10-02 * Savings
> Assets:CurrentAccount:Savings $100
> Assets:CurrentAccount
>
> 2017-10-03 * Assertion
> [Assets:CurrentAccount] $0 = $1000
>
>
> That final balance assertion fails for the same reason I mentioned in my
> second post in the earlier thread: that assertion refers not to the
> summed-up total of everything in *or under* Assets:CurrentAccount (as
> you'd see in the output of ledger b Assets:CurrentAccount), but the
> amount that lives in that *exact* location (which you might write in a
> balance command as
> '^Assets:CurrentAccount$'). So $1000 errors, and $900 does not. That
> means I can't record the total balance of that real account, which is
> what I'm after. That's what motivated my use of assertion value
> expressions, with which I guess I've either run into a bug, or I don't
> understand something (see my previous post in this thread).
>
> I get the impression that transferring between subaccounts in this way
> suggested here earlier, is a bit of a dark corner of ledger that's not
> terribly well supported?
>
> I'm keen to hear about other approaches, but so far I'm running into
> roadblocks whichever way I try to tackle using ledger the problem I set
> out in that first thread (which is the same basic problem I'm trying to
> solve here in this thread, though my question here was about a detail).
>
> I guess I should either dust off my very dusty C++ and try to fix it, or
> try one of the ledger spinoffs like beancount... maybe there are
> beancount / hledger people here who can comment re whether those systems
> have ways to tackle the problem from the thread linked above?
>
> On Thu, 19 Oct 2017, at 23:54, Michael Cooper wrote:
> > This isn't a direct answer to your question, but this is how I do these
> > kind of balance checks:
> >
> > 2017/01/01 * Opening Balance
> > Assets:Checking $1000
> > Equity:Opening
> >
> > 2017/01/02 * Savings
> > Assets:Savings $100
> > Assets:Checking
> >
> > 2017/01/03 * Reconcile
> > [Assets:Checking] $0 = $900
> > [Assets:Savings] $0 = $100
> >
> > 2017/01/04 * Savings
> > Assets:Savings $100
> > Assets:Checking
> >
> > 2017/01/05 * Reconcile
> > [Assets:Checking] $0 = $800
> > [Assets:Savings] $0 = $200
> >
> > This works well. I read these reconcile transactions as "If $0 is added
> > to
> > the account, the balance should be $800".
> >
> > If I instead change the last reconcile to "[Assets:Checking] $0 = $700"
> > (that is, make it $100 off) I get this error:
> >
> > While parsing file "/home/mythmon/tmp/foo.ledger", line 18:
> > While parsing posting:
> > [Assets:Checking] $0 = $700
> > ^^^^
> > Error: Balance assertion off by $-100 (expected to see $800)
> >
> > This shows me both the value I said it should be ($700), the value Ledger
> > says it should be ($800), and the difference ($-100). All of these end up
> > being very useful at different times.
> >
> > I leave these in my ledger files. This gives me both a history of
> > balances,
> > and also a sort of test suite. If I change the organization of my files,
> > change rules, or do other refactoring, these assertions give me
> > confidence
> > that I didn't break anything.
> >
> > -Michael Cooper
> >
> >
> > On Thu, Oct 19, 2017 at 3:43 PM John Lee <j...@pobox.com> wrote:
> >
> > > An example that currently has me puzzled: the first assert below
> passes,
> > > and the second fails. I'm interested both in learning why in this
> > > particular case, and more important, learning how to use ledger to
> debug
> > > problems like this in general.
> > >
> > > 2017-10-01 * Opening Balance
> > > Assets:CurrentAccount $1000
> > > Equity:OpeningBalance
> > >
> > > 2017-10-02 * Savings
> > > Assets:CurrentAccount:Savings $100
> > > Assets:CurrentAccount
> > >
> > > assert account("Assets:CurrentAccount").total == $1000
> > >
> > > 2017-10-03 * Savings
> > > Assets:CurrentAccount:Savings $100
> > > Assets:CurrentAccount
> > >
> > > assert account("Assets:CurrentAccount").total == $1000
> > >
> > >
> > > This surprises me because if I comment that last assert out and run
> > > ledger b '^Assets:CurrentAccount$' I get $800, and ledger b
> > > '^Assets:CurrentAccount:Savings$' prints $200 -- which adds to $1000,
> > > and indeed ledger b '^Assets:CurrentAccount' prints $1000. Bug?? How
> > > can I see what ledger *thinks* the total is when it evaluates the
> > > assert?
> > >
> > >
> > > On Thu, 19 Oct 2017, at 23:13, John Lee wrote:
> > > > Sometimes the assert expressions I'm adding to my ledger file fail
> and I
> > > > don't immediately know why. If I have something like this:
> > > >
> > > > assert account("Assets:CurrentAccount").total == $123.45
> > > >
> > > > and I'm wrong about the total, then I'll just be told that I'm wrong,
> > > > and not what the correct value is. What's the easiest way to get
> ledger
> > > > to compute and print the correct value?
> > > >
> > > > Maybe there's a way to print out account values at a given point in a
> > > > ledger file? In particular, maybe there's a way to print the values
> of
> > > > value expressions as the ledger file is evaluated by a command like
> > > > balance?
> > > >
> > > > I realize it's good to be able to see what the answer is before one
> > > > writes it down, but sometimes it just saves time to have the computer
> > > > work it out so you can see quickly what you did wrong.
> > >
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