
hledger_journal(5)           hledger User Manuals           hledger_journal(5)



NAME
       Journal - hledger's default file format, representing a General Journal

DESCRIPTION
       hledger's usual data source is a plain  text  file  containing  journal
       entries  in  hledger  journal  format.  This file represents a standard
       accounting general journal.  I use file names ending in  .journal,  but
       that's not required.  The journal file contains a number of transaction
       entries, each describing a transfer of money (or any commodity) between
       two or more named accounts, in a simple format readable by both hledger
       and humans.

       hledger's journal format is a compatible subset,  mostly,  of  ledger's
       journal  format,  so  hledger  can  work with compatible ledger journal
       files as well.  It's safe, and encouraged,  to  run  both  hledger  and
       ledger on the same journal file, eg to validate the results you're get-
       ting.

       You can use hledger without learning any more about this file; just use
       the  add  or web commands to create and update it.  Many users, though,
       also edit the  journal  file  directly  with  a  text  editor,  perhaps
       assisted by the helper modes for emacs or vim.

       Here's an example:

              ; A sample journal file. This is a comment.

              2008/01/01 income               ; <- transaction's first line starts in column 0, contains date and description
                  assets:bank:checking  $1    ; <- posting lines start with whitespace, each contains an account name
                  income:salary        $-1    ;    followed by at least two spaces and an amount

              2008/06/01 gift
                  assets:bank:checking  $1    ; <- at least two postings in a transaction
                  income:gifts         $-1    ; <- their amounts must balance to 0

              2008/06/02 save
                  assets:bank:saving    $1
                  assets:bank:checking        ; <- one amount may be omitted; here $-1 is inferred

              2008/06/03 eat & shop           ; <- description can be anything
                  expenses:food         $1
                  expenses:supplies     $1    ; <- this transaction debits two expense accounts
                  assets:cash                 ; <- $-2 inferred

              2008/12/31 * pay off            ; <- an optional * or ! after the date means "cleared" (or anything you want)
                  liabilities:debts     $1
                  assets:bank:checking

FILE FORMAT
   Transactions
       Transactions  are  represented  by journal entries.  Each begins with a
       simple date in column 0, followed by three optional fields with  spaces
       between them:

       o a  status  flag,  which  can be empty or ! or * (meaning "uncleared",
         "pending" and "cleared", or whatever you want)

       o a transaction code (eg a check number),

       o and/or a description

       then some number of postings, of some amount  to  some  account.   Each
       posting is on its own line, consisting of:

       o indentation of one or more spaces (or tabs)

       o optionally, a ! or * status flag followed by a space

       o an account name, optionally containing single spaces

       o optionally, two or more spaces or tabs followed by an amount

       Usually there are two or more postings, though one or none is also pos-
       sible.  The posting amounts within a transaction must  always  balance,
       ie add up to 0.  Optionally one amount can be left blank, in which case
       it will be inferred.

   Dates
   Simple dates
       Within a journal file, transaction dates use Y/M/D (or Y-M-D or  Y.M.D)
       Leading  zeros are optional.  The year may be omitted, in which case it
       will be inferred from  the  context  -  the  current  transaction,  the
       default  year  set  with  a default year directive, or the current date
       when the command is run.  Some examples: 2010/01/31, 1/31,  2010-01-31,
       2010.1.31.

   Secondary dates
       Real-life  transactions  sometimes  involve more than one date - eg the
       date you write a cheque, and the date it clears in your bank.  When you
       want  to  model  this,  eg  for more accurate balances, you can specify
       individual #posting-dates, which I recommend.  Or, you can use the sec-
       ondary  dates  (aka  auxiliary/effective  dates) feature, supported for
       compatibility with Ledger.

       A secondary date can be written after the primary date, separated by an
       equals  sign.   The  primary date, on the left, is used by default; the
       secondary date, on the right, is used when the --date2 flag  is  speci-
       fied (--aux-date or --effective also work).

       The  meaning of secondary dates is up to you, but it's best to follow a
       consistent rule.  Eg write the bank's clearing  date  as  primary,  and
       when needed, the date the transaction was initiated as secondary.

       Here's an example.  Note that a secondary date will use the year of the
       primary date if unspecified.

              2010/2/23=2/19 movie ticket
                expenses:cinema                   $10
                assets:checking

              $ hledger register checking
              2010/02/23 movie ticket         assets:checking                $-10         $-10

              $ hledger register checking --date2
              2010/02/19 movie ticket         assets:checking                $-10         $-10

       Secondary dates require some effort; you must use them consistently  in
       your journal entries and remember whether to use or not use the --date2
       flag for your reports.  They are included in hledger for Ledger compat-
       ibility,  but  posting  dates  are  a  more powerful and less confusing
       alternative.

   Posting dates
       You can give individual postings a different  date  from  their  parent
       transaction,  by  adding a posting comment containing a tag (see below)
       like date:DATE.  This is probably the best way to control posting dates
       precisely.   Eg  in  this  example  the  expense  should  appear in May
       reports, and the deduction from checking should be reported on 6/1  for
       easy bank reconciliation:

              2015/5/30
                  expenses:food     $10   ; food purchased on saturday 5/30
                  assets:checking         ; bank cleared it on monday, date:6/1

              $ hledger -f t.j register food
              2015/05/30                      expenses:food                  $10           $10

              $ hledger -f t.j register checking
              2015/06/01                      assets:checking               $-10          $-10

       DATE  should be a simple date; if the year is not specified it will use
       the year of the transaction's date.  You can  set  the  secondary  date
       similarly,  with  date2:DATE2.   The  date:  or date2: tags must have a
       valid simple date value if they are present, eg a  date:  tag  with  no
       value is not allowed.

       Ledger's earlier, more compact bracketed date syntax is also supported:
       [DATE], [DATE=DATE2] or [=DATE2].  hledger will attempt  to  parse  any
       square-bracketed sequence of the 0123456789/-.= characters in this way.
       With this syntax, DATE infers its year from the transaction  and  DATE2
       infers its year from DATE.

   Account names
       Account  names  typically have several parts separated by a full colon,
       from which hledger derives a hierarchical chart of accounts.  They  can
       be  anything  you  like,  but  in  finance there are traditionally five
       top-level accounts: assets, liabilities, income, expenses, and  equity.

       Account  names  may  contain single spaces, eg: assets:accounts receiv-
       able.  Because of this, they must always be followed  by  two  or  more
       spaces (or newline).

       Account names can be aliased.

   Amounts
       After the account name, there is usually an amount.  Important: between
       account name and amount, there must be two or more spaces.

       Amounts consist of a number and (usually) a currency symbol or  commod-
       ity name.  Some examples:

       2.00001
       $1
       4000 AAPL
       3 "green apples"
       -$1,000,000.00
       INR 9,99,99,999.00
       EUR -2.000.000,00

       As you can see, the amount format is somewhat flexible:

       o amounts  are a number (the "quantity") and optionally a currency sym-
         bol/commodity name (the "commodity").

       o the commodity is a symbol, word, or double-quoted phrase, on the left
         or right, with or without a separating space

       o negative amounts with a commodity on the left can have the minus sign
         before or after it

       o digit groups (thousands, or any other grouping) can be  separated  by
         commas  (in  which  case period is used for decimal point) or periods
         (in which case comma is used for decimal point)

       You can use any of these  variations  when  recording  data,  but  when
       hledger  displays  amounts, it will choose a consistent format for each
       commodity.  (Except for price amounts, which are  always  formatted  as
       written).  The display format is chosen as follows:

       o if there is a commodity directive specifying the format, that is used

       o otherwise the format is inferred from the  first  posting  amount  in
         that  commodity  in the journal, and the precision (number of decimal
         places) will be the maximum from all posting amounts in that commmod-
         ity

       o or  if  there are no such amounts in the journal, a default format is
         used (like $1000.00).

       Price amounts and amounts in D directives usually don't  affect  amount
       format  inference,  but  in  some situations they can do so indirectly.
       (Eg when D's default commodity is applied to a  commodity-less  amount,
       or when an amountless posting is balanced using a price's commodity, or
       when -V is used.) If you find this causing problems,  set  the  desired
       format with a commodity directive.

   Virtual Postings
       When  you  parenthesise  the  account name in a posting, we call that a
       virtual posting, which means:

       o it is ignored when checking that the transaction is balanced

       o it is excluded from reports when the --real/-R flag is used,  or  the
         real:1 query.

       You  could  use  this,  eg, to set an account's opening balance without
       needing to use the equity:opening balances account:

              1/1 special unbalanced posting to set initial balance
                (assets:checking)   $1000

       When the account name is bracketed, we call it a balanced virtual post-
       ing.  This is like an ordinary virtual posting except the balanced vir-
       tual postings in a transaction must balance to 0, like the  real  post-
       ings  (but  separately  from them).  Balanced virtual postings are also
       excluded by --real/-R or real:1.

              1/1 buy food with cash, and update some budget-tracking subaccounts elsewhere
                expenses:food                   $10
                assets:cash                    $-10
                [assets:checking:available]     $10
                [assets:checking:budget:food]  $-10

       Virtual postings have some legitimate uses, but those are few.  You can
       usually  find an equivalent journal entry using real postings, which is
       more correct and provides better error checking.

   Balance Assertions
       hledger supports ledger-style  balance  assertions  in  journal  files.
       These  look  like =EXPECTEDBALANCE following a posting's amount.  Eg in
       this example we assert the expected dollar balance in accounts a and  b
       after each posting:

              2013/1/1
                a   $1  =$1
                b       =$-1

              2013/1/2
                a   $1  =$2
                b  $-1  =$-2

       After reading a journal file, hledger will check all balance assertions
       and report an error if any of them fail.  Balance assertions  can  pro-
       tect  you  from, eg, inadvertently disrupting reconciled balances while
       cleaning up old entries.  You can disable  them  temporarily  with  the
       --ignore-assertions  flag,  which  can be useful for troubleshooting or
       for reading Ledger files.

   Assertions and ordering
       hledger sorts an account's postings and assertions first  by  date  and
       then  (for postings on the same day) by parse order.  Note this is dif-
       ferent from Ledger, which sorts assertions only by parse order.  (Also,
       Ledger  assertions  do not see the accumulated effect of repeated post-
       ings to the same account within a transaction.)

       So, hledger balance assertions keep  working  if  you  reorder  differ-
       ently-dated  transactions  within  the  journal.   But  if  you reorder
       same-dated transactions or postings, assertions might break and require
       updating.   This order dependence does bring an advantage: precise con-
       trol over the order of postings and assertions within a day, so you can
       assert intra-day balances.

       With  included  files, things are a little more complicated.  Including
       preserves the ordering of postings and assertions.  If you have  multi-
       ple  postings  to  an  account  on the same day, split across different
       files, and you also want to assert the account's balance  on  the  same
       day, you'll have to put the assertion in the right file.

   Assertions and commodities
       The  asserted  balance must be a simple single-commodity amount, and in
       fact the assertion checks only  this  commodity's  balance  within  the
       (possibly  multi-commodity) account balance.  We could call this a par-
       tial balance assertion.  This is compatible with Ledger, and  makes  it
       possible to make assertions about accounts containing multiple commodi-
       ties.

       To assert each commodity's balance in such a  multi-commodity  account,
       you  can  add multiple postings (with amount 0 if necessary).  But note
       that no matter how many assertions you  add,  you  can't  be  sure  the
       account does not contain some unexpected commodity.  (We'll add support
       for this kind of total balance assertion if there's demand.)

   Assertions and subaccounts
       Balance assertions do not count  the  balance  from  subaccounts;  they
       check the posted account's exclusive balance.  For example:

              1/1
                checking:fund   1 = 1  ; post to this subaccount, its balance is now 1
                checking        1 = 1  ; post to the parent account, its exclusive balance is now 1
                equity

       The  balance  report's  flat  mode  shows these exclusive balances more
       clearly:

              $ hledger bal checking --flat
                                 1  checking
                                 1  checking:fund
              --------------------
                                 2

   Assertions and virtual postings
       Balance assertions are checked against all postings, both real and vir-
       tual.  They are not affected by the --real/-R flag or real: query.

   Prices
   Transaction prices
       When  recording a transaction, you can also record an amount's price in
       another commodity.  This documents the exchange rate, cost (of  a  pur-
       chase),  or  selling  price  (of a sale) that was in effect within this
       particular transaction (or more precisely, within the particular  post-
       ing).  These transaction prices are fixed, and do not change.

       Such  priced amounts can be displayed in their transaction price's com-
       modity, by using the --cost/-B flag (B for "cost Basis"), supported  by
       most hledger commands.

       There are three ways to specify a transaction price:

       1. Write  the  unit price (aka exchange rate), as @ UNITPRICE after the
          amount:

                  2009/1/1
                    assets:foreign currency   100 @ $1.35  ; one hundred euros at $1.35 each
                    assets:cash

       2. Or write the total price, as @@ TOTALPRICE after the amount:

                  2009/1/1
                    assets:foreign currency   100 @@ $135  ; one hundred euros at $135 for the lot
                    assets:cash

       3. Or let hledger infer the price so as to balance the transaction.  To
          permit  this,  you must fully specify all posting amounts, and their
          sum must have a non-zero amount in exactly two commodities:

                  2009/1/1
                    assets:foreign currency   100          ; one hundred euros
                    assets:cash              $-135          ; exchanged for $135

       With any of the above examples we get:

              $ hledger print -B
              2009/01/01
                  assets:foreign currency       $135.00
                  assets:cash                  $-135.00

       Example use for transaction prices: recording the effective  conversion
       rate of purchases made in a foreign currency.

   Market prices
       Market  prices are not tied to a particular transaction; they represent
       historical exchange rates between two commodities,  usually  from  some
       public market which publishes such rates.

       When  market  prices  are known, the -V/--value option will use them to
       convert reported amounts to their market value as  of  the  report  end
       date.   This  option  is currently available only with the balance com-
       mand.

       You record market prices (Ledger calls them historical prices) with a P
       directive, in the journal or perhaps in a separate included file.  Mar-
       ket price directives have the format:

              P DATE COMMODITYSYMBOL UNITPRICE

       For example, the following directives say that the euro's exchange rate
       was  1.35  US  dollars  during  2009,  and  $1.40 from 2010 onward (and
       unknown before 2009).

              P 2009/1/1  $1.35
              P 2010/1/1  $1.40

       Example use for market prices: tracking the value of stocks.

   Comments
       Lines in the journal beginning with a semicolon  (;)  or  hash  (#)  or
       asterisk  (*)  are  comments,  and will be ignored.  (Asterisk comments
       make it easy to treat your journal like an org-mode outline in  emacs.)

       Also,   anything  between  comment  and  end comment  directives  is  a
       (multi-line) comment.  If there is no end comment, the comment  extends
       to the end of the file.

       You  can  attach  comments  to  a transaction by writing them after the
       description and/or indented on the following lines  (before  the  post-
       ings).   Similarly, you can attach comments to an individual posting by
       writing them after the amount and/or indented on the following lines.

       Some examples:

              # a journal comment

              ; also a journal comment

              comment
              This is a multiline comment,
              which continues until a line
              where the "end comment" string
              appears on its own.
              end comment

              2012/5/14 something  ; a transaction comment
                  ; the transaction comment, continued
                  posting1  1  ; a comment for posting 1
                  posting2
                  ; a comment for posting 2
                  ; another comment line for posting 2
              ; a journal comment (because not indented)

   Tags
       A tag is a word followed by a full colon inside a transaction or  post-
       ing  comment.   You  can  write  multiple  tags,  comma separated.  Eg:
       ; a comment containing sometag:, anothertag:.  You can search for  tags
       with the tag: query.

       A  tag  can  also have a value, which is any text between the colon and
       the next comma or newline, excluding leading/trailing whitespace.   (So
       hledger tag values can not contain commas or newlines).

       Tags  in  a  transaction  comment affect the transaction and all of its
       postings, while tags in a posting comment  affect  only  that  posting.
       For  example,  the  following  transaction  has  three  tags  (A, TAG2,
       third-tag) and the posting has four (A, TAG2, third-tag, posting-tag):

              1/1 a transaction  ; A:, TAG2:
                  ; third-tag: a third transaction tag, this time with a value
                  (a)  $1  ; posting-tag:

       Tags are like Ledger's metadata feature, except  hledger's  tag  values
       are simple strings.

   Directives
   Account aliases
       You  can define aliases which rewrite your account names (after reading
       the journal, before generating reports).  hledger's account aliases can
       be useful for:

       o expanding shorthand account names to their full form, allowing easier
         data entry and a less verbose journal

       o adapting old journals to your current chart of accounts

       o experimenting with new account organisations, like a new hierarchy or
         combining two accounts into one

       o customising reports

       See also How to use account aliases.

   Basic aliases
       To  set an account alias, use the alias directive in your journal file.
       This affects all subsequent journal entries in the current file or  its
       included files.  The spaces around the = are optional:

              alias OLD = NEW

       Or, you can use the --alias 'OLD=NEW' option on the command line.  This
       affects all entries.  It's useful for trying out aliases interactively.

       OLD  and  NEW  are full account names.  hledger will replace any occur-
       rence of the old account name with the new one.  Subaccounts  are  also
       affected.  Eg:

              alias checking = assets:bank:wells fargo:checking
              # rewrites "checking" to "assets:bank:wells fargo:checking", or "checking:a" to "assets:bank:wells fargo:checking:a"

   Regex aliases
       There  is  also a more powerful variant that uses a regular expression,
       indicated by the forward slashes.  (This was the default  behaviour  in
       hledger 0.24-0.25):

              alias /REGEX/ = REPLACEMENT

       or --alias '/REGEX/=REPLACEMENT'.

       REGEX  is  a  case-insensitive regular expression.  Anywhere it matches
       inside an account name, the matched part will be replaced  by  REPLACE-
       MENT.   If REGEX contains parenthesised match groups, these can be ref-
       erenced by the usual numeric backreferences in REPLACEMENT.  Note, cur-
       rently  regular  expression  aliases  may  cause noticeable slow-downs.
       (And if you use Ledger on your hledger file, they will be ignored.) Eg:

              alias /^(.+):bank:([^:]+)(.*)/ = \1:\2 \3
              # rewrites "assets:bank:wells fargo:checking" to  "assets:wells fargo checking"

   Multiple aliases
       You  can  define  as  many aliases as you like using directives or com-
       mand-line options.  Aliases are recursive - each alias sees the  result
       of  applying  previous  ones.   (This  is  different from Ledger, where
       aliases are non-recursive by default).  Aliases are applied in the fol-
       lowing order:

       1. alias  directives,  most recently seen first (recent directives take
          precedence over earlier ones; directives not yet seen are ignored)

       2. alias options, in the order they appear on the command line

   end aliases
       You  can  clear  (forget)  all  currently  defined  aliases  with   the
       end aliases directive:

              end aliases

   account directive
       The  account directive predefines account names, as in Ledger and Bean-
       count.  This may be useful for your own documentation; hledger  doesn't
       make use of it yet.

              ; account ACCT
              ;   OPTIONAL COMMENTS/TAGS...

              account assets:bank:checking
               a comment
               acct-no:12345

              account expenses:food

              ; etc.

   apply account directive
       You  can  specify  a  parent  account  which  will  be prepended to all
       accounts within a section of the journal.  Use  the  apply account  and
       end apply account directives like so:

              apply account home

              2010/1/1
                  food    $10
                  cash

              end apply account

       which is equivalent to:

              2010/01/01
                  home:food           $10
                  home:cash          $-10

       If  end apply account  is  omitted,  the effect lasts to the end of the
       file.  Included files are also affected, eg:

              apply account business
              include biz.journal
              end apply account
              apply account personal
              include personal.journal

       Prior to hledger 0.28, legacy account and end spellings were also  sup-
       ported.

   Multi-line comments
       A  line containing just comment starts a multi-line comment, and a line
       containing just end comment ends it.  See comments.

   commodity directive
       The commodity directive predefines commodities (currently this is  just
       informational),  and  also it may define the display format for amounts
       in this commodity (overriding the automatically inferred format).

       It may be written on a single line, like this:

              ; commodity EXAMPLEAMOUNT

              ; display AAAA amounts with the symbol on the right, space-separated,
              ; using period as decimal point, with four decimal places, and
              ; separating thousands with comma.
              commodity 1,000.0000 AAAA

       or on multiple lines, using the "format" subdirective.   In  this  case
       the  commodity  symbol  appears  twice  and  should be the same in both
       places:

              ; commodity SYMBOL
              ;   format EXAMPLEAMOUNT

              ; display indian rupees with currency name on the left,
              ; thousands, lakhs and crores comma-separated,
              ; period as decimal point, and two decimal places.
              commodity INR
                format INR 9,99,99,999.00

   Default commodity
       The D directive sets a default commodity (and display  format),  to  be
       used for amounts without a commodity symbol (ie, plain numbers).  (Note
       this differs from Ledger's default commodity directive.) The  commodity
       and  display  format  will  be applied to all subsequent commodity-less
       amounts, or until the next D directive.

              # commodity-less amounts should be treated as dollars
              # (and displayed with symbol on the left, thousands separators and two decimal places)
              D $1,000.00

              1/1
                a     5    # <- commodity-less amount, becomes $1
                b

   Default year
       You can set a default year to be used for subsequent dates which  don't
       specify  a year.  This is a line beginning with Y followed by the year.
       Eg:

              Y2009      ; set default year to 2009

              12/15      ; equivalent to 2009/12/15
                expenses  1
                assets

              Y2010      ; change default year to 2010

              2009/1/30  ; specifies the year, not affected
                expenses  1
                assets

              1/31       ; equivalent to 2010/1/31
                expenses  1
                assets

   Including other files
       You can pull in the content of additional journal files by  writing  an
       include directive, like this:

              include path/to/file.journal

       If  the path does not begin with a slash, it is relative to the current
       file.  Glob patterns (*) are not currently supported.

       The include directive can only  be  used  in  journal  files.   It  can
       include journal, timeclock or timedot files, but not CSV files.

EDITOR SUPPORT
       Add-on modes exist for various text editors, to make working with jour-
       nal files easier.  They add colour, navigation aids  and  helpful  com-
       mands.   For  hledger  users  who  edit  the journal file directly (the
       majority), using one of these modes is quite recommended.

       These were written with Ledger in mind,  but  also  work  with  hledger
       files:


       Emacs              http://www.ledger-cli.org/3.0/doc/ledger-mode.html
       Vim                https://github.com/ledger/ledger/wiki/Get-
                          ting-started
       Sublime Text       https://github.com/ledger/ledger/wiki/Using-Sub-
                          lime-Text
       Textmate           https://github.com/ledger/ledger/wiki/Using-Text-
                          Mate-2
       Text Wrangler      https://github.com/ledger/ledger/wiki/Edit-
                          ing-Ledger-files-with-TextWrangler



REPORTING BUGS
       Report  bugs at http://bugs.hledger.org (or on the #hledger IRC channel
       or hledger mail list)


AUTHORS
       Simon Michael <simon@joyful.com> and contributors


COPYRIGHT
       Copyright (C) 2007-2016 Simon Michael.
       Released under GNU GPL v3 or later.


SEE ALSO
       hledger(1),     hledger-ui(1),     hledger-web(1),      hledger-api(1),
       hledger_csv(5), hledger_journal(5), hledger_timeclock(5), hledger_time-
       dot(5), ledger(1)

       http://hledger.org



hledger 0.28dev                    May 2016                 hledger_journal(5)
