Set Up a New Beancount Ledger

A Beancount ledger starts as a plain text file (conventionally .beancount extension). Unlike GnuCash, there are no templates — the user builds the structure from scratch.

Minimal starting file:

option "title" "Personal Finances"
option "operating_currency" "USD"

; Account declarations
2024-01-01 open Assets:Checking        USD
2024-01-01 open Assets:Savings         USD
2024-01-01 open Liabilities:CreditCard USD
2024-01-01 open Equity:Opening-Balances USD
2024-01-01 open Expenses:Food          USD
2024-01-01 open Expenses:Housing       USD
2024-01-01 open Expenses:Transport     USD
2024-01-01 open Income:Salary          USD

; Opening balances
2024-01-01 pad Assets:Checking Equity:Opening-Balances
2024-01-01 balance Assets:Checking  5000.00 USD

Key decisions:

1. Account naming: Beancount requires accounts to start with one of five root types: Assets, Liabilities, Equity, Income, Expenses. Use colons for sub-accounts: Expenses:Food:Groceries.
2. Opening balances: Use pad and balance directives to set starting balances from bank statements.
3. File organization: For a simple setup, one file works. For larger books, use include directives to split by year or category: include "2024.beancount".
4. Validation: Run bean-check ledger.beancount after every editing session. It reports parse errors, unbalanced transactions, and failed balance assertions.

See also: double-entry bookkeeping, chart of accounts.