Ledger CLI

Should you track cash as "Assets:Cash"? Actually no.

I used to do this, try to track the difference between what I knew I'd paid with cash and the amount that had apparently left my wallet, chalking it up to "Expenses:Lost cash", but you get this for free if you track all cash as "Expenses:Cash" instead.

That is, you take out cash at the ATM, and view that as a purchase of cash bills. So it's already an expense. Then, if you want, you write down what you use the cash for, which just shuffles money from one expense account to another, like this:

2019-12-01 * "Willys"           ;
    Expenses:Groceries                           145 SEK
    Expenses:Cash

That way, the "cash" expense shrinks and the "groceries" expense grows. The amount still remaining in Expenses:Cash after you've written down all purchases you remember is the unaccounted-for portion, or what I called "Lost cash".

Maybe it's still in your wallet and you haven't used it yet, maybe you've dropped it, maybe you bought something you forgot.

Maybe it doesn't matter. If you decide ahead of time that most of your cash should go to groceries, you can just… leave it in "Expenses:Cash" since you know what it means anyway.