Expenses in.
Net worth out.
A spreadsheet drifts because every month you re-type five totals that could have been computed. Ledger stores the detail and derives the rest — so the summary and the detail cannot disagree.
cash + investments + receivables − credits
The total was the problem
In a workbook, the monthly summary is a figure someone maintains by hand. It is correct until the month you add an account and forget to widen a formula — and nothing tells you, because a spreadsheet cannot know what its own total was supposed to be.
Here it is a view over the rows. There is no stored total anywhere in the database, so there is nothing to fall out of step.
How it works
Three things, in the order you will actually do them.
What it does
Start with the month you are in
Your nine expense categories are created for you at sign-up, so you can log something in the first minute — and import the back catalogue whenever you feel like it.