#plain-text-accounting
Discover the power of version-controlled, human-readable financial records
Start here: what plain-text accounting is, why text files beat opaque software, and the core concepts — transactions, accounts, double-entry, directives.
Keep this syntax companion open while you read on: account types, commodities, and the directives every later post assumes you recognize.
See past the file: the importers, editor integrations, Fava, and bean-check workflow that turn a ledger into a daily practice.
Study a complete annotated business ledger — opens, Stripe and COGS transactions, even crypto — and copy its shape for your own books.
Install the bea CLI with two commands, hand your existing AI agent its first bookkeeping task, and verify the 987.50 USD result — then reproduce the three-row challenge that one recorded agent run checked at 2958.50 USD.
A bookkeeping guide for mobile silent disco operators — chart of accounts for a $114,000 headphone fleet, Section 179 vs. bonus vs. MACRS depreciation, why rental deposits and ticket presales are liabilities rather than revenue, per-channel costing for corporate, dry-hire, and ticketed events, and the weekly fleet counts that control shrinkage.
A three-way match compares the purchase order, receiving record, and supplier invoice before any payment is released, catching duplicate bills, unapproved price increases, and short shipments. This guide shows small businesses how to implement the control with clear ownership, line-level matching, written tolerances, and a practical exception workflow — plus when a two-way match is the better fit.
How to govern AI bookkeeping with a four-level permission ladder — read-only analysis, draft recommendations, low-risk auto-posting, and human-approved external actions — plus an approval matrix, evidence-chain requirements, output testing against real failure modes, and a 30-day implementation plan.
Lowe's posted $25.96B in Q2 FY2026 revenue, up 8.3%, but net earnings were flat at $2.40B and operating margin fell 81 basis points. Acquired businesses supplied about 90% of the sales increase while Retail Home Improvement grew just 0.8% and comparable sales rose 0.2% — the full income statement and balance sheet reconciled in a public Beancount ledger.
MiniMax reported $116.6M of H1 2026 revenue, up 283.1% and more than its entire FY2025 result, as Open Platform revenue grew 703.1% to become 63.4% of the mix. IFRS net loss narrowed 11% to $358.0M only because fair-value charges on pre-IPO preferred shares fell $222.9M; adjusted net loss more than doubled to $293.0M as R&D reached $296.9M — twice the incremental revenue — while the January listing converted a $3.6B preferred-share liability into $1.35B of positive equity. The full income statement and balance sheet are reconciled in a public Beancount ledger.
Starbucks reported $9.32B of Q3 FY2026 revenue, down 1.4%, while global comparable-store sales rose 7.9% and net earnings nearly doubled to $1.05B. Moving China retail into a licensed joint venture removed roughly $780M of consolidated revenue, and a $536.3M divestiture gain accounted for more than the entire year-over-year increase in net income — the full income statement and balance sheet reconciled in a public Beancount ledger.
Uber processed $58.0B of gross bookings in Q2 2026, up 24%, while revenue grew 12% to $14.19B and operating income grew 30% to $1.89B. Net income rose 77% to $2.39B, but a $1.61B gain on debt and equity securities supplied more than half of pre-tax profit, and a UK shift to an agent model cut reported revenue by roughly $1.1B — the full income statement and balance sheet reconciled in a public Beancount ledger.
Cisco's fiscal fourth quarter brought $17.25B of revenue (+18%), $3.86B of net income (+51%), 40% networking order growth and $9.3B of full-year hyperscaler AI orders — alongside inventory up 80% to $5.69B and full-year operating cash flow flat at $14.2B. A Beancount ledger reconciles the income statement, the inventory build and the deferred-revenue counterweight.
Home Depot's Q2 FY2026 sales rose 5.7% to $47.86B, but the Other/SRS distribution segment supplied about 75% of the $2.58B increase at a 4.9% operating margin versus 15.4% for retail. Roughly $685M of IEEPA tariff refunds cut cost of goods sold; backing it out puts inferred gross margin near 32.2% and operating margin near 12.9%, while comparable transactions fell 1.0%.
Target's Q2 FY2026 net sales rose 5.3% to $26.54B and diluted EPS doubled to $4.11, but $994M of tariff refunds cut cost of sales and supplied $1.65 of that EPS plus 3.7 points of operating margin. Excluding the refund, operating income still grew about 19% and gross margin was near 29.9%, on comparable sales of +3.8% led by 3.6% traffic growth and 8.7% digital growth.
Walmart posted $187.94B of revenue (+5.9%) and $9.38B of operating income (+28.8%) in Q2 FY2027, but roughly $2.9B of tariff refunds ran through cost of sales. Backing the refund out puts gross margin near 24.6% and operating margin near 3.4%, below the prior year — while net income fell 8.7% on a $3.91B swing in non-operating items.
