import

Read new transactions added to each FILE since last run, and add them to
the journal. Or with --dry-run, just print the transactions that would
be added. Or with --catchup, just mark all of the FILEs' transactions as
imported, without actually importing any.

_FLAGS

This command may append new transactions to the main journal file (which
should be in journal format). Existing transactions are not changed.
This is one of the few hledger commands that writes to the journal file
(see also add).

Unlike other hledger commands, with import the journal file is an output
file, and will be modified, though only by appending (existing data will
not be changed). The input files are specified as arguments, so to
import one or more CSV files to your main journal, you will run
hledger import bank.csv or perhaps hledger import *.csv.

Note you can import from any file format, though CSV files are the most
common import source, and these docs focus on that case.

Deduplication

As a convenience import does deduplication while reading transactions.
This does not mean "ignore transactions that look the same", but rather
"ignore transactions that have been seen before". This is intended for
when you are periodically importing foreign data which may contain
already-imported transactions. So eg, if every day you download bank CSV
files containing redundant data, you can safely run
hledger import bank.csv and only new transactions will be imported.
(import is idempotent.)

Since the items being read (CSV records, eg) often do not come with
unique identifiers, hledger detects new transactions by date, assuming
that:

1.  new items always have the newest dates
2.  item dates do not change across reads
3.  and items with the same date remain in the same relative order
    across reads.

These are often true of CSV files representing transactions, or true
enough so that it works pretty well in practice. 1 is important, but
violations of 2 and 3 amongst the old transactions won't matter (and if
you import often, the new transactions will be few, so less likely to be
the ones affected).

hledger remembers the latest date processed in each input file by saving
a hidden ".latest" state file in the same directory. Eg when reading
finance/bank.csv, it will look for and update the
finance/.latest.bank.csv state file. The format is simple: one or more
lines containing the same ISO-format date (YYYY-MM-DD), meaning "I have
processed transactions up to this date, and this many of them on that
date." Normally you won't see or manipulate these state files yourself.
But if needed, you can delete them to reset the state (making all
transactions "new"), or you can construct them to "catch up" to a
certain date.

Note deduplication (and updating of state files) can also be done by
print --new, but this is less often used.

Related: CSV > Working with CSV > Deduplicating, importing.

Import testing

With --dry-run, the transactions that will be imported are printed to
the terminal, without updating your journal or state files. The output
is valid journal format, like the print command, so you can re-parse it.
Eg, to see any importable transactions which CSV rules have not
categorised:

$ hledger import --dry bank.csv | hledger -f- -I print unknown

or (live updating):

$ ls bank.csv* | entr bash -c 'echo ====; hledger import --dry bank.csv | hledger -f- -I print unknown'

Note: when importing from multiple files at once, it's currently
possible for some .latest files to be updated successfully, while the
actual import fails because of a problem in one of the files, leaving
them out of sync (and causing some transactions to be missed). To
prevent this, do a --dry-run first and fix any problems before the real
import.

Importing balance assignments

Entries added by import will have their posting amounts made explicit
(like hledger print -x). This means that any balance assignments in
imported files must be evaluated; but, imported files don't get to see
the main file's account balances. As a result, importing entries with
balance assignments (eg from an institution that provides only balances
and not posting amounts) will probably generate incorrect posting
amounts. To avoid this problem, use print instead of import:

$ hledger print IMPORTFILE [--new] >> $LEDGER_FILE

(If you think import should leave amounts implicit like print does,
please test it and send a pull request.)

Commodity display styles

Imported amounts will be formatted according to the canonical commodity
styles (declared or inferred) in the main journal file.
