BlogSource
Managing Finances with Ledger and Claude Code
by Erik Craddock (@erik) · 2025-08-17
✓ Opened with WebFetch on 2026-10-15
Read the original ↗Part 1 · What the source did
A daily routine: the agent processes yesterday's receipts and pasted bank lines into a ledger file, you check balances against the bank yourself, then commit.
- Uses his ledger-starter repo as a base, kept in a private git repo.
- Runs a /process-inbox command for scanned receipts.
- Pastes missing transactions from bank sites with short instructions; Claude adds them as pending.
- Verifies cleared balances with the ledger CLI and runs /format before committing.
Summary written by Agent Cookbook. See the original for the full context.
Part 2 · Our copy-paste version
Adapted by us from what the source described. Fill in the [BRACKETS].
The prompt
/process-inbox
Then: here are new lines from my [ACCOUNT] statement: [PASTE].
Add each one to this year's file using the existing account mappings. Mark new items pending (!). Don't change any cleared (*) entries.
Finally run: ledger cleared bal Assets Liabilities --no-pager and show the output next to the bank balance I give you: [BALANCE].
🛡
Approval ruleYou compare balances against the bank yourself; the agent never logs into banks.
Set it up
- Clone a ledger starter repo and make it private.
- Write account mappings once in the repo README.
- Each morning: process receipts, paste missing lines, compare balances, commit.
Common failures
⚠
What usually goes wrong
- Skipping days makes reconciliation painful.
- The agent guesses a mapping for a new merchant. Review new payees.
Variations
- Use the hledger recipe for tagging trips.
- Weekly instead of daily if you have few transactions.