Pick your way in
Try it in 30 seconds
No install. No empty-ledger setup. Just record your first real transaction:
- Sign up at beancount.io/sign-up — already have an account? Log in.
- Open your ledger (create one if prompted — it takes seconds).
- Record a transaction — on the web open your ledger's Journal and add an entry; on mobile tap Add Transaction. Try a coffee run:
Expenses:Dining 12.50 paid from Assets:Checking.
- See it land — check the journal, then watch the income statement and balance sheet update.
That's the whole idea: double-entry books you can read as plain text, with reports, phone, terminal, and agents on top of the same ledger.
You don't install Beancount yourself — one command installs bea, which provisions its engine for you.
brew install bex-co/tap/bea # macOS / Linuxbrew
# or: uv tool install beancount-io # anywhere with uv + Python 3.12+
bea --no-input init books --currency USD --date 2026-08-01 \
--opening-balance "Assets:Checking 1000"
cd books
bea add transaction "Coffee" --date 2026-08-02 \
--posting "Expenses:Dining 12.50" --posting "Assets:Checking"
bea check && bea report balance-sheet
Checking now holds 987.50 USD — validated, formatted, and readable as plain text.
Then: record two or three real transactions · open the live demo and click through the balance sheet and account trees · automate with the CLI tutorial or point your coding agent at the skills.
Already keep Beancount books? Bring them as they are: bea init --existing reads your ledger, writes an AGENTS.md that tells your coding agent its root, includes and plugins, and changes no ledger file. See bring an existing ledger.
Who this is for
Every surface, one ledger
Your ledger stays the same plain-text file across all of them — hosted or local-first, with no hosted service required for CLI and skills workflows.
Mobile apps
Review your finances, add transactions, scan receipts, and edit ledger files from the native Beancount client. The same open ledger stays available from the web, terminal, Python, and agent workflows.
Agents and MCP
Beancount.io is built for the agent era: your ledger is text an agent can read, and every write is validated and reversible.
- Coding-agent skills (local ledger) — sixteen
beancount-* workflows for Claude Code and Codex: scaffold a ledger, record everyday entries, payroll runs, investment trades and property events, import bank and payment-processor exports without duplicates, reconcile against statements, migrate from Mint/Monarch/QuickBooks, query finances in plain language (including profit by client or project), explain balance-sheet movements, prepare supported accrual drafts, track invoices and bills with the payments against them, and run a confirm-gated month-end close. Install the skills (native Windows: Windows PowerShell 5.1) → ask your first question → first-month guide → migration guide; already in Beancount? bring an existing ledger. Unified suite distribution and OpenClaw/Hermes installation record the current publication and host compatibility limits.
- MCP server — point any MCP client at a deployment to query and edit a ledger from an agent. Also listed on the official MCP Registry as
io.beancount/beancount (OAuth sign-in).
{
"mcpServers": {
"beancount": {
"type": "http",
"url": "https://your-deployment/api-gateway/mcp",
"headers": { "Authorization": "Bearer [REDACTED]" }
}
}
}
Tools cover BQL queries, file reads and edits, entry and receipt insertion, account renames, moving entries between files, statement parsing, bank import, and more. URI-addressed resources and accounting prompts support spending reports, month-end close, reconciliation and import categorization — e.g. /mcp__beancount__close-month in Claude Code. Use tools/list, resources/templates/list, and prompts/list against your deployment for its current catalog. File edits, directive appends, and bank imports preview with dry_run, every call re-authorizes, and failures return a machine code plus the next call to make. Per-host notes for Claude, Claude Code, ChatGPT, Cursor, Copilot, OpenClaw, and Hermes Agent: MCP docs; contract: ADR 0007.
This is the beginning of the README. Read the rest at the original. Read the full README ↗
