Blog
Plain-text accounting insights, tutorials, and updates from the Beancount.io team. Browse by tag.
How I Beancount: Eight Years of Money in Git and a 20-Minute Sunday Check-In
A software engineer walks through her real Beancount routine: receipt capture at the grocery store, a 20-minute Sunday check-in in Fava, balance assertions that work like unit tests, and eight years of family finances version-controlled in Git.
Walmart Q2 FY2027 Earnings: The $2.9 Billion Refund Inside a Record Quarter
Walmart posted $187.94B of revenue (+5.9%) and $9.38B of operating income (+28.8%) in Q2 FY2027, but roughly $2.9B of tariff refunds ran through cost of sales. Backing the refund out puts gross margin near 24.6% and operating margin near 3.4%, below the prior year — while net income fell 8.7% on a $3.91B swing in non-operating items.
Target Q2 FY2026 Earnings: $1.65 of the $4.11 EPS Came From a Tariff Refund
Target's Q2 FY2026 net sales rose 5.3% to $26.54B and diluted EPS doubled to $4.11, but $994M of tariff refunds cut cost of sales and supplied $1.65 of that EPS plus 3.7 points of operating margin. Excluding the refund, operating income still grew about 19% and gross margin was near 29.9%, on comparable sales of +3.8% led by 3.6% traffic growth and 8.7% digital growth.
Home Depot Q2 FY2026 Earnings: 75% of the Sales Growth Came From the SRS Distribution Bet
Home Depot's Q2 FY2026 sales rose 5.7% to $47.86B, but the Other/SRS distribution segment supplied about 75% of the $2.58B increase at a 4.9% operating margin versus 15.4% for retail. Roughly $685M of IEEPA tariff refunds cut cost of goods sold; backing it out puts inferred gross margin near 32.2% and operating margin near 12.9%, while comparable transactions fell 1.0%.
Cisco Q4 FY2026 Earnings: $9.3 Billion of AI Orders Against an 80% Inventory Build
Cisco's fiscal fourth quarter brought $17.25B of revenue (+18%), $3.86B of net income (+51%), 40% networking order growth and $9.3B of full-year hyperscaler AI orders — alongside inventory up 80% to $5.69B and full-year operating cash flow flat at $14.2B. A Beancount ledger reconciles the income statement, the inventory build and the deferred-revenue counterweight.
Wild Rice Harvester Bookkeeping: How to Manage an Unpredictable Harvest Window
Natural wild rice has a fixed August 15–September 30 season and a 9 a.m.–3 p.m. daily harvest window, so its bookkeeping must separate harvest, processing, inventory, and deferred customer deposits. This guide shows how to build a crop-based chart of accounts, treat preorders as a liability until earned, reconcile buyer settlements, and run a weekly cash check.
Uzbekistan's Simplified Tax Threshold: A Recordkeeping Guide for Small Traders
Uzbekistan raised its simplified-regime threshold from 1 billion to 5 billion soums on June 1, 2026, and added a voluntary 6% simplified VAT for catering, retail, and services. Here is how small traders should track turnover in soums, keep tax collected separate from revenue, and model the VAT trade-off before electing it.
Travel Agency Bookkeeping: How to Reconcile Ticket Sales, Refunds, and Airline Remittances
A ledger-based method for ARC-accredited travel agencies to separate ticket proceeds, airline settlement obligations, service-fee revenue, and refunds—so daily, per-period, and monthly reconciliation shows exactly how much cash the agency actually owns.
Tesla Q2 2026 Earnings: 480K Deliveries Could Not Save the Operating Margin
Tesla's Q2 2026 revenue rose 25.5% to $28.24 billion on 480,450 deliveries and a record 13.5 GWh of energy storage, yet operating income fell 57% to $398 million as R&D rose 49%, SG&A rose 45%, and regulatory-credit revenue dropped 67% to $146 million. A $1.0 billion unrealized gain on Tesla's SpaceX stake then lifted net income to $1.13 billion, nearly triple the operating result. Full income statement, balance sheet and FY2021-Q2 2026 history in a public Beancount ledger.
How to Keep a Shared Commissary Kitchen Profitable: Revenue, Storage, and Overhead
A bookkeeping playbook for shared commissary kitchen operators—separate every revenue stream, price storage and peak hours, allocate shared costs by a rule you can explain, reconcile bookings to bank deposits, and hold refundable deposits as liabilities until earned.
Saudi Arabia E-Invoicing: A Practical FATOORA Compliance Guide for SMEs
A practical guide for Saudi SMEs under ZATCA's FATOORA e-invoicing mandate—how B2B clearance and B2C reporting differ, why master data is a compliance control, and how to reconcile your accounting ledger with what your e-invoicing system submits.
QR-Code Payment Scams: Protect Your Accounts Payable and Checkout Controls
QR-code phishing (quishing) can redirect a vendor payment or capture a customer's card by swapping one image. The defenses are ordinary bookkeeping controls—verify the vendor master, separate approval from payment release, and reconcile QR channels daily.