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\f0\fs28 \cf0 The most important part of accounting is keeping a good ledger.  If\
you have a good ledger, tools can be written to work whatever\
mathematically tricks you need to better understand your spending\
patterns.  Without a good ledger, no tool, however smart, can help\
you.\
\
The Ledger program aims at making ledger transaction as simple as possible.\
Since it is a command-line tool, it does not provide a user interface\
for keeping a ledger.  If you like, you may use GnuCash to maintain\
your ledger, in which case the Ledger program will read GnuCash's data\
files directly.  In that case, read the GnuCash manual now, and skip\
to the next chapter.\
\
If you are not using GnuCash, but a text editor to maintain your\
ledger, read on.  Ledger has been designed to make data transaction as\
simple as possible, by keeping the ledger format easy, and also by\
automagically determining as much information as possible based on the\
nature of your transactions.\
\
For example, you do not need to tell Ledger about the accounts you\
use.  Any time Ledger sees a posting involving an account it knows\
nothing about, it will create it.  If you use a commodity that is new\
to Ledger, it will create that commodity, and determine its display\
characteristics (placement of the symbol before or after the amount,\
display precision, etc) based on how you used the commodity in the\
posting.\
\
Here is the Pacific Bell example from above, given as a Ledger\
posting:\
\
@smallexample\
9/29 (100) Pacific Bell\
    Expenses:Utilities:Phone                   $23.00\
    Assets:Checking                           $-23.00\
@end smallexample\
\
As you can see, it is very similar to what would be written on paper,\
minus the computed balance totals, and adding in account names that\
work better with Ledger's scheme of things.  In fact, since Ledger is\
smart about many things, you don't need to specify the balanced\
amount, if it is the same as the first line:\
\
@smallexample\
9/29 (100) Pacific Bell\
    Expenses:Utilities:Phone                   $23.00\
    Assets:Checking\
@end smallexample\
\
For this transaction, Ledger will figure out that $-23.00 must come from\
@samp\{Assets:Checking\} in order to balance the transaction.}