Finance Ledger

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An Obsidian plugin that renders hledger journals as filterable tables with balance and category dashboards, transaction triage and categorizer-rule management — fed by a companion Python importer.

Plugin ID: finance-ledger (until 2026-06-10: finance).

Status

As of 2026-08-17 — importer port, stages E0–E3: the built-in import now writes journal.ledger, accounts.ledger, opening_balances.ledger and the account and contract notes — without Python. It only touches what it produced itself: anfangssaldo_eur, created, foreign frontmatter fields and everything below the AUTO-GENERATED marker survive every run. Verified by npm run smoke:gui against a running Obsidian (21/21; control run with the patch path removed: 15/20). Reports and dimension notes (E4–E7) still come from the Python importer, run from a terminal.

As of 2026-10-03 — the subprocess is gone entirely: the import dialog, its anti-duplicate preview and the re-import button no longer start the Python importer. The plugin loads no Node module at all (tests/bundle.test.ts guards the built main.js), which is what the Obsidian store review flags as Shell Execution and Direct Filesystem Access.

Before that, as of 2026-08-04 — stages E0+E1: CSV import runs inside the plugin itself (TypeScript, no Python subprocess). Verified byte-for-byte against the Python importer on real data: journal.ledger identical (1,576 transactions, 12 CSVs). Reproducible with npm run parity.

As of 2026-06-10 (post phase 1 of the publication track): slices 1–10 plus the F15 design system merged. Mobile readiness (Platform.isMobile guards) and the design system (KSP palette + finance tokens + light mode) integrated.

Slice-10 detail-pages layer: the importer writes 7 additional wikilink axes, 2 new note classes (transaction types + mandates) and a life-area layer into the vault. Plugin code unchanged (tolerant of extended note schemas).

Tests: 684 green. Bundle size: ~165 kB (main.js).

Features

Views

• Ledger viewer — sortable and filterable table of every transaction in journal.ledger, with click-through navigation to category, account and payee notes
• Balance overview — as-of-aware: shows opening balance (as-of date per account) + transactions after that date. Transactions before the as-of date are filtered out, so the bootstrap workflow never double-counts. Accounts without anfangssaldo_eur: get a TBC marker.
• Category overview — hierarchical aggregate of all categories with percentage share
• TBC triage — every :tbc: transaction with a one-click action: assign account, save categorizer rule, remove tag
• Finance dashboard — five-card overview (balances, TBC backlog, recurring items, top spending categories, upcoming contract payments)

Actions

• Rebuild journal from CSVs (built-in) — a command that produces journal.ledger and accounts.ledger inside the plugin: no Python, no uv, no subprocess. Works on mobile too. Account configuration comes from a konten.yaml in the vault (setting: accounts file).
• CSV import modal — add several CSVs, see an anti-duplicate preview per file, then run the import. All of it inside the plugin: no Python, no subprocess, no temporary files outside the vault — so it works on mobile too.
• Re-import — re-runs the built-in import with a UI lock and counter reset
• Snapshot before writing rules — a dated copy of the rule folder, kept under grandfather-father-son rotation (the 6 newest of today, plus the oldest of each of the last 7 days, 4 weeks and 6 months)
• Categorizer rule modal — define a new pattern rule with a live match counter and conflict check; writes to categorizer-rules/
• Account suggestions — type-ahead built from accounts.ledger plus a frontmatter crawl, deduplicated
• Deep-link URI — obsidian://finance?mode=ledger&filter=… to drive the filters from outside

What it looks like

How it works

The plugin does not compute from raw data — it reads the hledger journal the importer wrote and turns it into views. The one place where it does compute is the account balance:

As-of-aware balance logic

The plugin parses opening_balances.ledger with a small dedicated parser (src/aggregator/openingBalances.ts):

parseOpeningBalances(text: string): Map<account, {amount, standAm}>

computeSaldo(account) = opening.amount + Sum(tx where tx.date > opening.standAm).

Bootstrap workflow: you put the current bank balance and today's date into the account note's frontmatter (anfangssaldo_eur + anfangssaldo_stand_am). The importer turns that into opening_balances.ledger. The plugin then filters out transactions before the as-of date.

Requirements

• Obsidian 1.8.7 or newer, desktop and mobile (isDesktopOnly: false).
• An hledger journal in the vault — journal.ledger, accounts.ledger and optionally opening_balances.ledger. Without a journal the views show nothing.
• For the built-in journal rebuild from CSVs: a konten.yaml in the vault. No Python, no uv — this path works on mobile as well.
• Only for the re-import through the companion repository (reports and note generators): desktop, uv, and a checkout of the Python importer.

Install

This plugin is not distributed through the community store. It lives on its own forge, and there are two ways to get it.

Recommended — via AnySource Sideloader, which installs and updates plugins from any git forge. Subscribe to this catalog once:

https://git.jkaindl.de/jkaindl/obsidian-catalog/raw/branch/main/catalog.json

Finance Ledger then appears in the sideloader's plugin list and updates like any other plugin — no manual copying, and every download is checksum-verified.

By hand, if you would rather not add another plugin:

1. Download main.js, manifest.json and styles.css from the latest release.
2. Copy them into <vault>/.obsidian/plugins/finance-ledger/.
3. Obsidian → Settings → Community plugins → enable Finance Ledger.

Updates then have to be repeated by hand — the sideloader route exists to avoid exactly that.

From source: npm install && npm run build produces the same files; npm run deploy puts them straight into a configured vault (see Build and deploy).

Usage

The pie-chart icon in the ribbon opens the dashboard. Everything else lives in the command palette:

The usual loop: rebuild or import the journal → work through TBC triage (each assignment also writes a categorizer rule, so the same transaction lands by itself next time) → read the dashboard.

From outside, the plugin can be driven through obsidian://finance?mode=ledger&filter=….

Configuration

Settings → Community plugins → Finance Ledger:

• Amount display: sign mode (intuitive: income +, expenses − · accounting: raw, as in hledger) plus a colour scheme (classic / monochrome / inverted) shown as swatch tiles with a live preview. Cash flow follows the setting, balances stay sign-based; colour follows the account type and is orthogonal to the sign.
• Vault-relative paths to ledger, accounts, contracts and categorizer rules
• uv binary path, with auto-detect fallback
• Filter presets (create, edit, delete — stored locally)

Documentation

The full documentation lives in docs/:

• Getting started — from the install to your first balance overview.
• Troubleshooting — the exact message you see, what it means, what to do.
• Design system — tokens and where they are wired.

Design system

The plugin uses three layers:

• Obsidian CSS variables for layout, typography, borders and surfaces (theme-agnostic)
• --fl-* tokens for finance-specific semantics (credit/debit/TBC colours, account-type accents, money display, typed card top borders)
• the KSP signal palette as the foundation of the --fl-* tokens, with light-mode corrections for AA contrast

Wired into five views — balance overview, finance dashboard, ledger view, TBC triage and category overview. Money values carry .fl-money plus a sign colour, account chips a data-type outline, cards a data-card top border, status dots .fl-txn-state. The light-mode bridge dims the signal colours to keep AA contrast.

Detailed documentation: docs/design.md (high level plus wiring state) and docs/design/README.md (canonical token files).

Mobile status

• No desktop-only paths left (as of 2026-10-03): the CSV import modal, the preview and the re-import all run inside the plugin. The Python subprocess and the Node filesystem access are gone, so the platform guards that went with them are gone too. ⚠️ Not yet verified on a physical phone or tablet — the code path is free of Node APIs and covered by tests, but the file picker on mobile has not been exercised.
• Still desktop-bound: reports and dimension notes (monthly/quarterly/yearly reports, category, payee, transaction-type and mandate notes). Those come from the Python importer, run from a terminal — the plugin offers the full command as a copy button.
• Mobile icons: on iPhone and iPad some placeholder icons are still visible after the last icon fix — diagnosis is pending on a desktop with mobile dev tools.

The companion importer

The Python CLI importer that produces the journal is a separate project and is not published yet. Its output in the vault lives under <vault>/<financeRoot>/Ledger/ plus the note folders (German names, as the code expects them) 10-Konten, 20-Verträge, 30-Sparziele, 40-Monatsberichte, 45-Kategorien, 55-Categorizer-Rules, 60-Empfänger, 70-Quartalsberichte, 80-Jahresberichte and 05-Bases.

Everything the plugin needs beyond that journal — the built-in rebuild from CSVs — it does on its own.

Output note schema (marker system)

Every note the importer writes (account, report, category, payee, rule) uses a marker pattern that protects user edits:

---
frontmatter
---
<user-editable header>

<!-- BEGIN: AUTO-GENERATED -->
auto section (tables, mermaid charts, bases embeds, cross-references)
<!-- END: AUTO-GENERATED -->

## 📌 Notes
user edit zone — untouched on re-runs.

On top of that: mermaid charts (pie for top categories, bar and xy-line for trends) and collapsible bases embeds inside [!quote] callouts.

Budget layer

Monthly reports carry a budget section: target (12-month average) / actual / forecast (linear extrapolation) / difference / traffic light (🟢 below 90 % of target, 🟡 90–110 %, 🔴 above 110 %). A caveat warning appears when the average rests on fewer than 12 months.

Build and deploy

npm install                # once
npm test                   # vitest run (684 green)
npm run build              # esbuild → main.js (repo root)
npm run dev                # esbuild --watch (inline sourcemap, no minify)
npm run deploy             # build + copy manifest.json, main.js, styles.css into a vault

npm run deploy copies into the target set through an environment variable:

export OBSIDIAN_PLUGIN_DIR="<vault>/.obsidian/plugins/finance-ledger"
npm run deploy

Then in Obsidian: Settings → Community plugins → turn off safe mode → enable Finance Ledger. On updates, run npm run deploy again and reload the plugin (toggle it off and on, or Cmd+R).

Repository layout

License

• Code: AGPL-3.0-or-later (LICENSE)
• Documentation and prose: CC BY-SA 4.0 (LICENSE-DOCS)

Copyright © 2026 Johannes Kaindl.