Quickstart

This is minimal quickstart setup for Tackler-NG versions 24.11.1 or higher.

Tackler binary

Assuming you have Rust toolchain installed, run this command in a terminal:

cargo install tackler

It will build and install tackler globally available if you’ve followed default Rust toolchain installation. See Installation Manual for full instructions. You can uninstall it by running cargo uninstall tackler.

Creating a journal

Once you have installed tackler, run the following command:

tackler new my_journal
tackler --config my_journal/conf/tackler.toml

This will create a new bookkeeping setup, and print balance and register reports with example transactions of my_journal (feel free to delete or modify those transaction files).

Output will be similar to this:

Balance Report
--------------
                 0.00    17.50  Expenses
                 0.00    12.00  Expenses:Food
                12.00    12.00  Expenses:Food:Fast-Food
                 0.00     5.50  Expenses:Sweets
                 2.50     2.50  Expenses:Sweets:Candy
                 3.00     3.00  Expenses:Sweets:Ice·Cream
=====================
                17.50

Register Report
---------------
...

See Journal Format, tackler.toml, accounts.toml, commodities.toml and tags.toml for how to use and configure tackler.

Journal examples and source code

Tackler repository contains several example journals, which you can use to play and test tackler furter, for example git integration:

git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/e257-fi/tackler-ng
cd tackler-ng

Simple example

The simple.toml example uses filesystem based storage backend, no account name validations, no auditing features.

Command

tackler --config examples/simple.toml

Output

**********************************************************************************

Balance Report
--------------
                 0.00   12.00  Expenses:Food
                12.00   12.00  Expenses:Food:Groceries
                 0.00    3.32  Expenses:Sweets
                 2.12    2.12  Expenses:Sweets:Ice·cream
                 1.20    1.20  Expenses:Sweets:Salmiakki
=====================
                15.32
##################################################################################
**********************************************************************************
...
...
...

Let’s play for real - Git storage and Audit mode

The audit.toml example uses a bare git repository as transaction storage, and also strict and audit mode is activated by configuration. This means that all accounts, commodity names and tags are validated. The triplet of git commit id, Txn Set Checksum and Account Selector Checksum provides an auditable (cryptographic) proof of transactions used by reports.

Command

tackler --config examples/audit.toml

Output

Git Storage
         commit : 4aa4e9797501c1aefc92f32dff30ab462dae5545
      reference : txns-1E1
      directory : txns
         suffix : .txn
        message : txns-1E1: 2016/12

Txn Set Checksum
        SHA-256 : 9b29071e1bf228cfbd31ca2b8e7263212e4b86e51cfee1e8002c9b795ab03f76
       Set size : 10

**********************************************************************************
Account Selector Checksum
        SHA-256 : 19d31a48bf9a8604a1128ccfd281511f961c5469748a97897a21fc0fa2a5f519

Balance Report
--------------
                 0.00   -161.00  a:ay2016
                -6.00     -6.00  a:ay2016:am02
               -14.00    -14.00  a:ay2016:am03
               -19.00    -19.00  a:ay2016:am04
               -26.00    -26.00  a:ay2016:am05
                -1.00     -1.00  a:ay2016:am07
                -7.00     -7.00  a:ay2016:am08
               -13.00    -13.00  a:ay2016:am09
               -19.00    -19.00  a:ay2016:am10
               -25.00    -25.00  a:ay2016:am11
               -31.00    -31.00  a:ay2016:am12
=====================
              -161.00
##################################################################################