Plain Text Accounting

I'm trying to set up ledger. I have three accounts from my bank. I exported the transaction history, massaged it a bit, and it seems to work fine. I can't for the life of me figure out how to set initial balances without causing more noise.

I guess I'm just doing this for fun and because I generally like text-based utilities over GUIs. Not sure if I will keep trying. Seems like all the docs, even the get started docs, are for intermediate to advanced users. I can't even get past the "set my fucking balances so they are correct" stage. shit.just.doesn't.work for me.

The definitive overview of Plain Text Accounting.

Placeholder community for those wanting to jump ship from https://www.reddit.com/r/plaintextaccounting/.