Plain-text accounting, double-entry, and an agent that keeps books.https://countbean.com/https://countbean.com/blog/quickbooks-alternatives-own-your-data/https://countbean.com/blog/quickbooks-alternatives-own-your-data/Everyone claims you own your data. The test is whether you can read it, take it, and keep working — without the vendor's cooperation, and after you have stopped paying them.Tue, 25 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://countbean.com/blog/bank-csv-to-double-entry/https://countbean.com/blog/bank-csv-to-double-entry/What actually happens between a bank export and a set of balanced books — column mapping, sign conventions, the running-balance trap, and why duplicates are the hard part.Tue, 25 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://countbean.com/blog/double-entry-in-five-minutes/https://countbean.com/blog/double-entry-in-five-minutes/Double-entry is not an accounting technique you have to learn. It is one rule — every transaction touches two places and the two cancel out — and everything else is names for the places.Tue, 25 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://countbean.com/blog/multi-currency-bookkeeping/https://countbean.com/blog/multi-currency-bookkeeping/Multi-currency accounting is not one number converted at the end. It is a rate, on a date, from a source, recorded at the moment the money moved — which is why spreadsheets stop working first here.Tue, 25 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://countbean.com/blog/bookkeeping-behind-catching-up/https://countbean.com/blog/bookkeeping-behind-catching-up/You are not behind because bookkeeping is hard. You are behind because it is a queue of small decisions, and a queue of decisions is the one kind of work that cannot be done in a burst of willpower.Tue, 25 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://countbean.com/blog/every-change-is-a-commit/https://countbean.com/blog/every-change-is-a-commit/Countbean stores your accounts as a plain-text Beancount ledger in a git repository, so every change an agent makes is a diff you can review and revert.Tue, 25 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://countbean.com/blog/reconcile-a-month-without-a-spreadsheet/https://countbean.com/blog/reconcile-a-month-without-a-spreadsheet/Reconciliation is one claim: on this date, this account held this much. In a plain-text ledger that claim is a single line, and it either passes or it fails loudly.Tue, 25 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://countbean.com/blog/what-to-hand-your-accountant/https://countbean.com/blog/what-to-hand-your-accountant/An accountant does not want your shoebox and does not want your login. They want four documents, a list of the things you were unsure about, and a way to ask you one question.Tue, 25 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT