My first thought is that looks like an incredible amount of typing. Trying to imagine a payroll run with half a dozen employees, calculating sit, fit, fica, state and federal with holdings manually , posting all that then writing the checks manually.

My second thought is some of those issues could be handled with a few python scripts

My third thought is a browser based front end shouldn't be too hard to create with some knowledge of html, ccs and java script.

My fourth thought is if there is a browser based front end would a sql database be far more efficient than the text file input? At this point there still isn't any thing involved that isn't free and open source.

My final thought is I valued my time at minimum wage......

I'm sure this works for you and that is great. Don't think ledger would work for me. Is interesting though. Thanks for the link. Maybe one day when I'm retired I'll take on the task above.