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Demo Tutorial

The demo is the fastest way to understand what Giduru is for. It gives you a realistic personal finance vault with multiple accounts, multiple files, and enough history for the analysis views to be useful.

1. Load The Demo

Open the demo app or click Load demo on the home screen.

Giduru creates a disposable in-memory vault for you. The demo dates are shifted forward so the charts and recurring views feel current.

2. Start With main.journal

Open main.journal first.

This file is the root of the vault. It includes the other ledgers:

include accounts.journal
include commodities.journal
include banking/checking.journal
include banking/savings.journal
include loans/mortgage.journal
include credit-card/2024.journal

That is the first key idea in Giduru: one logical ledger, many physical files.

3. Open accounts.journal

Now open accounts.journal.

You will see explicit account declarations such as:

account assets:bank:checking
account liabilities:credit-card:visa
account income:salary
account expenses:food:groceries

This is where the vault defines its chart of accounts. It is also what lets Giduru provide better autocomplete, validation, and account-aware analysis.

4. Inspect A Real Transaction File

Open banking/checking.journal or credit-card/2024.journal.

You will see ordinary double-entry transactions such as salary, transfers, groceries, bills, and card payments. The important thing is that nothing about the format is app-owned. These are normal journal files.

Look for patterns like:

2026-03-25 Grocery Store
expenses:food:groceries 52.30 USD
liabilities:credit-card:visa

and:

2026-03-28 Payroll
assets:bank:checking 5,250.00 USD
expenses:taxes:federal 1,180.00 USD
expenses:taxes:state 420.00 USD
income:salary

5. Open The Analysis Views

Use the views panel to open a few core reports:

  • Net Worth Over Time for the big picture
  • Accounts Balance to inspect balances by account
  • Recurring Transactions to detect subscriptions, payroll, and regular bills
  • Possible Duplicates to find suspiciously similar transactions
  • Monthly Expenses to review spending by month
  • Income Flow (Sankey) to see where income ends up

The important thing to notice is that these views are derived from the same files you are editing.

6. Edit Something And Watch It Recompute

Change an amount in one of the transaction files or add a new transaction.

You should notice:

  • syntax highlighting and autocomplete in the editor
  • validation if the entry becomes invalid
  • analysis views updating from the current draft, not only from saved files

That side-by-side loop is the core Giduru experience.

7. Use The Demo As A Template

The demo vault is intentionally opinionated. It is a good starting template for a real vault:

  • main.journal as the entry file
  • accounts.journal for account declarations
  • commodities.journal for currency setup
  • folders split by institution or obligation such as banking/, credit-card/, and loans/

If that shape makes sense to you, continue with: