Personal Bookkeeper

A command-line finance toolkit for individuals and freelancers. Personal Bookkeeper provides 12 dedicated commands for recording transactions, categorizing expenses, checking balances, tracking trends, forecasting budgets, generating reports, and managing tax notes — all backed by simple timestamped log files.

Commands

| Command | Description | |---------|-------------| | personal-bookkeeper record <input> | Record a financial transaction (income, expense, transfer). Without args, shows recent record entries. | | personal-bookkeeper categorize <input> | Categorize a transaction (food, rent, transport, entertainment). Without args, shows recent entries. | | personal-bookkeeper balance <input> | Log a balance snapshot (account balance, net worth checkpoint). Without args, shows recent balance entries. | | personal-bookkeeper trend <input> | Record a spending or income trend observation. Without args, shows recent trend entries. | | personal-bookkeeper forecast <input> | Log a budget forecast or projection. Without args, shows recent forecast entries. | | personal-bookkeeper export-report <input> | Save a report entry (monthly summary, quarterly review). Without args, shows recent export-report entries. | | personal-bookkeeper budget-check <input> | Record a budget check (over/under budget notes). Without args, shows recent budget-check entries. | | personal-bookkeeper summary <input> | Log a financial summary (weekly recap, category totals). Without args, shows recent summary entries. | | personal-bookkeeper alert <input> | Record a financial alert (overspending, low balance, due date). Without args, shows recent alert entries. | | personal-bookkeeper history <input> | Log a history note or view recent history entries. | | personal-bookkeeper compare <input> | Record period-over-period comparisons (this month vs last). Without args, shows recent compare entries. | | personal-bookkeeper tax-note <input> | Save tax-related notes (deductible expenses, filing reminders). Without args, shows recent tax-note entries. | | personal-bookkeeper stats | Show summary statistics across all categories — entry counts per log file, total entries, and data size. | | personal-bookkeeper export <fmt> | Export all data to a file. Supported formats: json, csv, txt. | | personal-bookkeeper search <term> | Search across all log files for a keyword (case-insensitive). | | personal-bookkeeper recent | Show the 20 most recent entries from the activity history log. | | personal-bookkeeper status | Health check — version, data directory, total entries, disk usage, last activity. | | personal-bookkeeper help | Display the full help message with all available commands. | | personal-bookkeeper version | Print the current version (v2.0.0). |

Data Storage

All data is stored as plain-text log files in ~/.local/share/personal-bookkeeper/:

Each command writes to its own log file (e.g. record.log, categorize.log, tax-note.log)
Every action is also recorded in history.log with a timestamp
Entries use the format YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM|<input> (pipe-delimited)
Export produces files at ~/.local/share/personal-bookkeeper/export.{json,csv,txt}
No database required — all data is grep-friendly and human-readable

Requirements

Bash 4+ (uses set -euo pipefail)
Standard Unix utilities: date, wc, du, head, tail, grep, cat, cut
No external dependencies — pure bash, no Python, no API keys
Works on Linux and macOS

When to Use

Daily expense tracking — Use record every time you make a purchase, then categorize to tag it (food, transport, entertainment) for end-of-month analysis.
Monthly budget reviews — Run budget-check to note whether you're over or under budget, summary to log category totals, and compare to see this month vs. last.
Tax season preparation — Use tax-note throughout the year to flag deductible expenses, then export csv to hand your accountant a clean spreadsheet.
Financial forecasting — Log forecast entries with projected income and expenses for upcoming months, then trend to track whether actuals match your projections.
Freelancer income management — record each invoice payment, balance to snapshot your account after deposits, and alert to flag overdue invoices or low cash reserves.

Examples

# Record a grocery expense
personal-bookkeeper record "Groceries at Costco -¥358.50"

# Categorize a transaction
personal-bookkeeper categorize "Costco receipt -> food/groceries"

# Check if you're on budget this month
personal-bookkeeper budget-check "March budget: spent ¥4200 of ¥5000 limit"

# Add a tax-deductible note
personal-bookkeeper tax-note "Home office internet bill ¥199/mo — deductible"

# Export everything to CSV for spreadsheet review
personal-bookkeeper export csv