FAQ

Why another plain text accounting tool?

Existing accounting tools are historically based on the notion of an account. You add money (debit) and you remove money (credit). (If this sounds backwards to you, read this explanation)

For example you get 50 € from your mum and buy some food for 20 €.

Account | Debit | Credit
--------|-------|--------
Wallet  |  50 € |
Wallet  |       |   20 €

Simple, but also incomplete. Where did the money come from, where did it go? This led to double entry bookkeeping. Whenever you add some money to an account, you have to remove the same amount from another.

Account | Debit | Credit
--------|-------|--------
Wallet  |  50 € |
Mum     |       |   50 €
Wallet  |       |   20 €
Food    |  20 € |

But you must never forget a posting, because otherwise your account won't balance.

Account | Debit | Credit
--------|-------|--------
Wallet  |  50 € |
Mum     |       |   50 €
Wallet  |       |   20 €

Oops, where did the money go? 🤷‍

If this looks (and sounds) confusing or too complicated, you're not alone! It made sense in former times as this layout makes it easier to add up the amounts by hand, but not in times of computers.

So how can we simplify it? It's actually quite easy: We just have to model it in terms of transactions, and not accounts.

From   | To     | Amount
-------|--------|--------
Mum    | Wallet |   50 €
Wallet | Food   |   20 €

• Simple - No more confusing debit / credit / asset / liability mumbo jumbo
• Intuitive - Just like you would talk about it
• Safe - It's obvious if you forget to fill out a field

Together with some further changes it yields an easier to understand, more robust and more complete representation of accounting!

Why is it written in PureScript?

PureScript leverages strong static typing and can therefore give more guarantees about the functionality of the code than weakly typed or untyped languages like JavaScript.

You wouldn't want your money to get lost in rounding errors or be turned to undefined, would you? 😉

Why is it not written in Haskell?

PureScript can also easily be used in the browser or get deployed as a cloud function as it simply compiles to JavaScript. With Haskell you'd have to use another language for a web frontend or quarrel with experimental stuff like GHC's WebAssembly backend.