Teledger

Service which should combine powerful double-entry accounting system ledger, with reliability of a Git as a Ledger file storage, and convenience of data entry using Telegram and OpenAI LLM.

How It Works

Teledger is a Telegram bot service that manages Plain-Text Accounting files stored in a Git repository. It provides a convenient way to add transactions on the go using natural language. Pro ledger-cli users can still manually edit Ledger files using a text editor and ledger-cli utility for complex transactions or other changes where the bot interface may not be suitable.

Process Overview

• Initiate Transaction: You send a message to Teledger describing the transaction.
• Data Extraction: Teledger clones your Git repository and extracts necessary information such as available accounts and commodities from the Ledger files.
• Generate and Validate Transaction: Teledger constructs a prompt and consults ChatGPT to generate a new transaction entry. This transaction is validated against the data in your Ledger repository to ensure accuracy.
• Commit Changes: Once the transaction passes validation, it is committed and pushed back into the repository, updating your financial records automatically.

Ledger Template Repository

A template repository is available to help set up a new Ledger project.

Configuration

Service Configuration

Configure the service by setting the following environment variables or directly passing them as command-line arguments:

• Telegram:

  • --telegram.token=, $TELEGRAM_TOKEN - Telegram bot token.

• GitHub:

  • --github.url=, $GITHUB_URL - GitHub repository URL.
  • --github.token=, $GITHUB_TOKEN - Fine-grained personal access tokens for the repository with RW Contents scope.

• OpenAI:

  • --openai.token=, $OPENAI_TOKEN - OpenAI API token.

Ledger File Configuration

The teledger.yaml configuration file may be placed in the root of your Ledger project repository. It includes settings specific to your ledger environment. Here is the structure of the expected YAML file:

• mainFile: Specifies the main ledger file name, default is main.ledger.
• strict: Boolean to allow or disallow non-existing accounts and commodities.
• promptTemplate: Template for generating prompts, optional.
• reports: Array of report configurations where each report includes:
  • title: Description of the report.
  • command: Ledger-cli command array to generate the report.

Example configuration in teledger.yaml:

strict: true
reports:
  - title: Expenses This Month
    command: [bal, ^Expenses, --cleared, --period, "this month", -X, EUR]
  - title: Expenses Last Month
    command: [bal, ^Expenses, --cleared, --period, "last month", -X, EUR]
  - title: 💶 Assets
    command: [bal, ^Assets]

Demo

TODO

Deploment

A Docker image for Teledger is available at Docker Hub.

Development

Create .env.dev by copying .env.example and fill in the values.

cp .env.example .env.dev

Source the .env.dev file to set the environment variables

source .env.dev

Start the service

go run app/main.go