
HLEDGER(1)                   hledger User Manuals                   HLEDGER(1)



NAME
       hledger - robust, friendly plain text accounting (CLI version)

SYNOPSIS
       hledger
       hledger [-f FILE] COMMAND [OPTS] [ARGS]
       hledger [-f FILE] ADDONCMD -- [OPTS] [ARGS]

INTRODUCTION
       hledger  is a robust, user-friendly, cross-platform set of programs for
       tracking money,  time,  or  any  other  commodity,  using  double-entry
       accounting  and a simple, editable file format.  hledger is inspired by
       and largely compatible with  ledger(1),  and  largely  interconvertible
       with beancount(1).

       This  manual  is for hledger's command line interface, version 1.29.99.
       It also describes the common options, file formats and concepts used by
       all  hledger  programs.  It might accidentally teach you some bookkeep-
       ing/accounting as well!  You don't need to know everything in  here  to
       use  hledger productively, but when you have a question about function-
       ality, this doc should answer it.  It is detailed, so do skip ahead  or
       skim when needed.  You can read it on hledger.org, or as an info manual
       or man page on your system.  You can also get it  from  hledger  itself
       with
       hledger --man, hledger --info or hledger help [TOPIC].

       The  main  function  of  the  hledger  CLI  is to read plain text files
       describing financial transactions, crunch the numbers, and print a use-
       ful  report  on  the  terminal  (or save it as HTML, CSV, JSON or SQL).
       Many reports are available, as subcommands.  hledger will  also  detect
       other hledger-* executables as extra subcommands.

       hledger  reads data from one or more files in journal, timeclock, time-
       dot, or CSV format.  The default file is .hledger.journal in your  home
       directory;  this can be overridden with one or more -f FILE options, or
       the LEDGER_FILE environment variable.  hledger CLI can also  read  from
       stdin with -f-; more on that below.

       Here  is a small but valid hledger journal file describing one transac-
       tion:

              2015-10-16 bought food
                expenses:food          $10
                assets:cash

       Transactions are dated movements of money (etc.)  between two  or  more
       accounts:  bank accounts, your wallet, revenue/expense categories, peo-
       ple, etc.  You can choose any account names you wish, using : to  indi-
       cate  subaccounts.   There  must be at least two spaces between account
       name and amount.  Positive amounts are inflow to that account  (debit),
       negatives  are  outflow  from it (credit).  (Some reports show revenue,
       liability and equity account balances as negative numbers as a  result;
       this is normal.)

       hledger's add command can help you add transactions, or you can install
       other data entry UIs like hledger-web or hledger-iadd.  For more exten-
       sive/efficient  changes,  use a text editor: Emacs + ledger-mode, VIM +
       vim-ledger, or VS Code + hledger-vscode  are  some  good  choices  (see
       https://hledger.org/editors.html).

       To  get  started,  run hledger add and follow the prompts, or save some
       entries like the above in  $HOME/.hledger.journal,  then  try  commands
       like:
       hledger print -x
       hledger aregister assets
       hledger balance
       hledger balancesheet
       hledger incomestatement.
       Run  hledger  to  list  the commands.  See also the "Starting a journal
       file" and "Setting opening balances" sections in PART 5: COMMON  TASKS.

PART 1: USER INTERFACE
Options
   General options
       To  see  general  usage  help, including general options which are sup-
       ported by most hledger commands, run hledger -h.

       General help options:

       -h --help
              show general or COMMAND help

       --man  show general or COMMAND user manual with man

       --info show general or COMMAND user manual with info

       --version
              show general or ADDONCMD version

       --debug[=N]
              show debug output (levels 1-9, default: 1)

       General input options:

       -f FILE --file=FILE
              use  a  different  input  file.   For  stdin,  use  -  (default:
              $LEDGER_FILE or $HOME/.hledger.journal)

       --rules-file=RULESFILE
              Conversion   rules  file  to  use  when  reading  CSV  (default:
              FILE.rules)

       --separator=CHAR
              Field separator to expect when reading CSV (default: ',')

       --alias=OLD=NEW
              rename accounts named OLD to NEW

       --anon anonymize accounts and payees

       --pivot FIELDNAME
              use some other field or tag for the account name

       -I --ignore-assertions
              disable balance assertion checks (note: does not disable balance
              assignments)

       -s --strict
              do  extra  error  checking  (check  that all posted accounts are
              declared)

       General reporting options:

       -b --begin=DATE
              include postings/txns on or after this date (will be adjusted to
              preceding subperiod start when using a report interval)

       -e --end=DATE
              include postings/txns before this date (will be adjusted to fol-
              lowing subperiod end when using a report interval)

       -D --daily
              multiperiod/multicolumn report by day

       -W --weekly
              multiperiod/multicolumn report by week

       -M --monthly
              multiperiod/multicolumn report by month

       -Q --quarterly
              multiperiod/multicolumn report by quarter

       -Y --yearly
              multiperiod/multicolumn report by year

       -p --period=PERIODEXP
              set start date, end date, and/or reporting interval all at  once
              using period expressions syntax

       --date2
              match  the  secondary  date  instead (see command help for other
              effects)

       --today=DATE
              override  today's  date  (affects  relative  smart  dates,   for
              tests/examples)

       -U --unmarked
              include only unmarked postings/txns (can combine with -P or -C)

       -P --pending
              include only pending postings/txns

       -C --cleared
              include only cleared postings/txns

       -R --real
              include only non-virtual postings

       -NUM --depth=NUM
              hide/aggregate accounts or postings more than NUM levels deep

       -E --empty
              show  items with zero amount, normally hidden (and vice-versa in
              hledger-ui/hledger-web)

       -B --cost
              convert amounts to their cost/selling amount at transaction time

       -V --market
              convert  amounts to their market value in default valuation com-
              modities

       -X --exchange=COMM
              convert amounts to their market value in commodity COMM

       --value
              convert amounts to cost or  market  value,  more  flexibly  than
              -B/-V/-X

       --infer-market-prices
              use  transaction  prices  (recorded  with @ or @@) as additional
              market prices, as if they were P directives

       --auto apply automated posting rules to modify transactions.

       --forecast
              generate future transactions from  periodic  transaction  rules,
              for  the  next 6 months or till report end date.  In hledger-ui,
              also make ordinary future transactions visible.

       --commodity-style
              Override the commodity style in the  output  for  the  specified
              commodity.  For example 'EUR1.000,00'.

       --color=WHEN (or --colour=WHEN)
              Should  color-supporting  commands  use ANSI color codes in text
              output.  'auto' (default): whenever stdout seems to be a  color-
              supporting  terminal.  'always' or 'yes': always, useful eg when
              piping output into  'less  -R'.   'never'  or  'no':  never.   A
              NO_COLOR environment variable overrides this.

       --pretty[=WHEN]
              Show  prettier  output,  e.g.  using unicode box-drawing charac-
              ters.  Accepts 'yes' (the default) or 'no' ('y', 'n',  'always',
              'never'  also  work).   If  you provide an argument you must use
              '=', e.g.  '--pretty=yes'.

       When a reporting option appears more than once in the command line, the
       last one takes precedence.

       Some reporting options can also be written as query arguments.

   Command options
       To  see  options  for  a particular command, including command-specific
       options, run: hledger COMMAND -h.

       Command-specific options must be written after the  command  name,  eg:
       hledger print -x.

       Additionally,  if  the  command  is  an add-on, you may need to put its
       options after a double-hyphen, eg: hledger ui -- --watch.  Or, you  can
       run the add-on executable directly: hledger-ui --watch.

   Command arguments
       Most  hledger  commands  accept arguments after the command name, which
       are often a query, filtering the data in some way.

       You can save a set of command line options/arguments  in  a  file,  and
       then  reuse  them by writing @FILENAME as a command line argument.  Eg:
       hledger bal @foo.args.  (To prevent this, eg if you  have  an  argument
       that  begins  with  a literal @, precede it with --, eg: hledger bal --
       @ARG).

       Inside the argument file, each line should contain just one  option  or
       argument.  Avoid the use of spaces, except inside quotes (or you'll see
       a confusing error).  Between a flag and its argument, use =  (or  noth-
       ing).  Bad:

              assets depth:2
              -X USD

       Good:

              assets
              depth:2
              -X=USD

       For  special characters (see below), use one less level of quoting than
       you would at the command prompt.  Bad:

              -X"$"

       Good:

              -X$

       See also: Save frequently used options.

   Special characters
   Single escaping (shell metacharacters)
       In shell command lines, characters significant to your shell - such  as
       spaces,  <, >, (, ), |, $ and \ - should be "shell-escaped" if you want
       hledger to see them.  This is done by enclosing them in single or  dou-
       ble  quotes,  or  by  writing  a backslash before them.  Eg to match an
       account name containing a space:

              $ hledger register 'credit card'

       or:

              $ hledger register credit\ card

       Windows users should keep in mind that cmd treats  single  quote  as  a
       regular  character,  so  you should be using double quotes exclusively.
       PowerShell treats both single and double quotes as quotes.

   Double escaping (regular expression metacharacters)
       Characters significant in regular expressions (described below) -  such
       as  .,  ^,  $, [, ], (, ), |, and \ - may need to be "regex-escaped" if
       you don't want them to be interpreted by hledger's  regular  expression
       engine.   This  is  done  by writing backslashes before them, but since
       backslash is typically also a shell metacharacter, both  shell-escaping
       and  regex-escaping will be needed.  Eg to match a literal $ sign while
       using the bash shell:

              $ hledger balance cur:'\$'

       or:

              $ hledger balance cur:\\$

   Triple escaping (for add-on commands)
       When you use hledger to  run  an  external  add-on  command  (described
       below),  one  level of shell-escaping is lost from any options or argu-
       ments intended for by the add-on command, so those need an extra  level
       of  shell-escaping.   Eg to match a literal $ sign while using the bash
       shell and running an add-on command (ui):

              $ hledger ui cur:'\\$'

       or:

              $ hledger ui cur:\\\\$

       If you wondered why four backslashes, perhaps this helps:


       unescaped:        $
       escaped:          \$
       double-escaped:   \\$
       triple-escaped:   \\\\$

       Or, you can avoid the extra escaping by running the  add-on  executable
       directly:

              $ hledger-ui cur:\\$

   Less escaping
       Options and arguments are sometimes used in places other than the shell
       command line, where shell-escaping is not needed, so there  you  should
       use one less level of escaping.  Those places include:

       o an @argumentfile

       o hledger-ui's filter field

       o hledger-web's search form

       o GHCI's prompt (used by developers).

   Unicode characters
       hledger is expected to handle non-ascii characters correctly:

       o they  should  be  parsed  correctly in input files and on the command
         line, by all hledger tools (add, iadd, hledger-web's  search/add/edit
         forms, etc.)

       o they  should  be  displayed  correctly  by all hledger tools, and on-
         screen alignment should be preserved.

       This requires a well-configured environment.  Here are some tips:

       o A system locale must be configured, and  it  must  be  one  that  can
         decode the characters being used.  In bash, you can set a locale like
         this: export LANG=en_US.UTF-8.  There are some more details in  Trou-
         bleshooting.   This step is essential - without it, hledger will quit
         on encountering a non-ascii character (as with all GHC-compiled  pro-
         grams).

       o your  terminal  software  (eg  Terminal.app, iTerm, CMD.exe, xterm..)
         must support unicode

       o the terminal must be using a font which includes the required unicode
         glyphs

       o the  terminal should be configured to display wide characters as dou-
         ble width (for report alignment)

       o on Windows, for best results you should run hledger in the same  kind
         of  environment in which it was built.  Eg hledger built in the stan-
         dard CMD.EXE environment (like the binaries  on  our  download  page)
         might  show  display  problems when run in a cygwin or msys terminal,
         and vice versa.  (See eg #961).

   Regular expressions
       hledger uses regular expressions in a number of places:

       o query terms, on the command line and in the hledger-web search  form:
         REGEX, desc:REGEX, cur:REGEX, tag:...=REGEX

       o CSV rules conditional blocks: if REGEX ...

       o account  alias directive and --alias option: alias /REGEX/ = REPLACE-
         MENT, --alias /REGEX/=REPLACEMENT

       hledger's regular expressions come from  the  regex-tdfa  library.   If
       they're  not doing what you expect, it's important to know exactly what
       they support:

       1. they are case insensitive

       2. they are infix matching (they do not need to match the entire  thing
          being matched)

       3. they are POSIX ERE (extended regular expressions)

       4. they also support GNU word boundaries (\b, \B, \<, \>)

       5. they  do  not support backreferences; if you write \1, it will match
          the digit 1.  Except when doing  text  replacement,  eg  in  account
          aliases,  where backreferences can be used in the replacement string
          to reference capturing groups in the search regexp.

       6. they do not support mode modifiers ((?s)),  character  classes  (\w,
          \d), or anything else not mentioned above.

       Some things to note:

       o In  the  alias directive and --alias option, regular expressions must
         be enclosed in forward  slashes  (/REGEX/).   Elsewhere  in  hledger,
         these are not required.

       o In  queries,  to match a regular expression metacharacter like $ as a
         literal character, prepend a backslash.  Eg  to  search  for  amounts
         with the dollar sign in hledger-web, write cur:\$.

       o On  the command line, some metacharacters like $ have a special mean-
         ing to the shell and so must be escaped at least once more.  See Spe-
         cial characters.

Environment
       LEDGER_FILE The journal file path when not specified with -f.

       On unix computers, the default value is: ~/.hledger.journal.

       A  more  typical  value is something like ~/finance/YYYY.journal, where
       ~/finance is a version-controlled finance directory  and  YYYY  is  the
       current  year.  Or, ~/finance/current.journal, where current.journal is
       a symbolic link to YYYY.journal.

       The usual way to set this permanently is to add a  command  to  one  of
       your shell's startup files (eg ~/.profile):

              export LEDGER_FILE=~/finance/current.journal`

       On  some Mac computers, there is a more thorough way to set environment
       variables, that will also affect applications started from the GUI (eg,
       Emacs started from a dock icon): In ~/.MacOSX/environment.plist, add an
       entry like:

              {
                "LEDGER_FILE" : "~/finance/current.journal"
              }

       For this to take effect you might need to killall Dock, or reboot.

       On Windows computers, the  default  value  is  probably  C:\Users\YOUR-
       NAME\.hledger.journal.   You  can change this by running a command like
       this in a powershell window (let us know if you need to be an  Adminis-
       trator, and if this persists across a reboot):

              > setx LEDGER_FILE "C:\Users\MyUserName\finance\2021.journal"

       Or,   change   it   in   settings:   see  https://www.java.com/en/down-
       load/help/path.html.

       COLUMNS The screen width used by the register  command.   Default:  the
       full terminal width.

       NO_COLOR  If  this variable exists with any value, hledger will not use
       ANSI color  codes  in  terminal  output.   This  is  overriden  by  the
       --color/--colour option.

Input
       hledger  reads  transactions  from one or more data files.  The default
       data file is $HOME/.hledger.journal  (or  on  Windows,  something  like
       C:\Users\YOURNAME\.hledger.journal).

       You can override this with the $LEDGER_FILE environment variable:

              $ setenv LEDGER_FILE ~/finance/2016.journal
              $ hledger stats

       or with one or more -f/--file options:

              $ hledger -f /some/file -f another_file stats

       The file name - means standard input:

              $ cat some.journal | hledger -f-

   Data formats
       Usually  the data file is in hledger's journal format, but it can be in
       any of the supported file formats, which currently are:


       Reader:    Reads:                                    Used  for  file  exten-
                                                            sions:
       -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
       journal    hledger  journal  files and some Ledger   .journal  .j   .hledger
                  journals, for transactions                .ledger
       time-      timeclock files, for precise time  log-   .timeclock
       clock      ging
       timedot    timedot  files,  for  approximate  time   .timedot
                  logging
       csv        comma/semicolon/tab/other-separated       .csv .ssv .tsv
                  values, for data import

       These formats are described in more detail below.

       hledger  detects  the format automatically based on the file extensions
       shown above.  If it can't recognise  the  file  extension,  it  assumes
       journal  format.   So  for  non-journal  files, it's important to use a
       recognised file extension, so as to either read successfully or to show
       relevant error messages.

       You  can also force a specific reader/format by prefixing the file path
       with the format and a colon.  Eg, to read a .dat file as csv format:

              $ hledger -f csv:/some/csv-file.dat stats

       Or to read stdin (-) as timeclock format:

              $ echo 'i 2009/13/1 08:00:00' | hledger print -ftimeclock:-

   Multiple files
       You can specify multiple -f options, to read multiple files as one  big
       journal.  There are some limitations with this:

       o most directives do not affect sibling files

       o balance  assertions  will  not see any account balances from previous
         files

       If you need either of those things, you can

       o use a single parent file which includes the others

       o or concatenate the files into one before reading, eg:  cat  a.journal
         b.journal | hledger -f- CMD.

   Strict mode
       hledger checks input files for valid data.  By default, the most impor-
       tant errors are detected, while  still  accepting  easy  journal  files
       without a lot of declarations:

       o Are the input files parseable, with valid syntax ?

       o Are all transactions balanced ?

       o Do all balance assertions pass ?

       With the -s/--strict flag, additional checks are performed:

       o Are  all  accounts  posted  to,  declared with an account directive ?
         (Account error checking)

       o Are all commodities declared with a commodity directive ?  (Commodity
         error checking)

       o Are all commodity conversions declared explicitly ?

       You  can  use  the  check  command to run individual checks -- the ones
       listed above and some more.

Commands
       hledger provides a number of built-in  subcommands  (described  below).
       Most of these read your data without changing it, and display a report.
       A few assist with data entry and management.

       Run hledger with no arguments  to  list  the  commands  available,  and
       hledger CMD to run a command.  CMD can be the full command name, or its
       standard abbreviation shown in the commands list,  or  any  unambiguous
       prefix of the name.  Eg: hledger bal.

   Add-on commands
       Add-on  commands  are extra subcommands provided by programs or scripts
       in your PATH

       o whose name starts with hledger-

       o whose name ends with a  recognised  file  extension:  .bat,.com,.exe,
         .hs,.lhs,.pl,.py,.rb,.rkt,.sh or none

       o and (on unix, mac) which are executable by the current user.

       Addons  can be written in any language, but haskell scripts or programs
       have a big advantage: they can use hledger's library code, for command-
       line options, parsing and reporting.

       Several  add-on  commands  are installed by the hledger-install script.
       See https://hledger.org/scripts.html for more details.

       Note in a hledger command line, add-on command flags must have a double
       dash (--) preceding them.  Eg you must write:

              $ hledger web -- --serve

       and not:

              $ hledger web --serve

       (because the --serve flag belongs to hledger-web, not hledger).

       The -h/--help and --version flags don't require --.

       If you have any trouble with this, remember you can always run the add-
       on program directly, eg:

              $ hledger-web --serve

Output
   Output destination
       hledger commands send their output to the terminal by default.  You can
       of course redirect this, eg into a file, using standard shell syntax:

              $ hledger print > foo.txt

       Some  commands (print, register, stats, the balance commands) also pro-
       vide the -o/--output-file option, which does  the  same  thing  without
       needing the shell.  Eg:

              $ hledger print -o foo.txt
              $ hledger print -o -        # write to stdout (the default)

   Output format
       Some  commands offer other kinds of output, not just text on the termi-
       nal.  Here are those commands and the formats currently supported:


       -                            txt         csv         html           json      sql
       --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
       aregister                    Y           Y           Y              Y
       balance                      Y 1         Y 1         Y 1,2          Y
       balancesheet                 Y 1         Y 1         Y 1            Y
       balancesheetequity           Y 1         Y 1         Y 1            Y
       cashflow                     Y 1         Y 1         Y 1            Y
       incomestatement              Y 1         Y 1         Y 1            Y
       print                        Y           Y                          Y         Y
       register                     Y           Y                          Y

       o 1 Also affected by the balance commands' --layout option.

       o 2 balance does not support html output without a report  interval  or
         with --budget.

       The output format is selected by the -O/--output-format=FMT option:

              $ hledger print -O csv    # print CSV on stdout

       or  by  the  filename  extension  of  an output file specified with the
       -o/--output-file=FILE.FMT option:

              $ hledger balancesheet -o foo.csv    # write CSV to foo.csv

       The -O option can be combined with -o to override the  file  extension,
       if needed:

              $ hledger balancesheet -o foo.txt -O csv    # write CSV to foo.txt

       Some notes about the various output formats:

   CSV output
       o In  CSV  output, digit group marks (such as thousands separators) are
         disabled automatically.

   HTML output
       o HTML output can be styled by an optional hledger.css file in the same
         directory.

   JSON output
       o This is not yet much used; real-world feedback is welcome.

       o Our  JSON  is rather large and verbose, since it is a faithful repre-
         sentation of hledger's internal data types.  To understand the  JSON,
         read   the   Haskell   type   definitions,   which   are   mostly  in
         https://github.com/simonmichael/hledger/blob/master/hledger-
         lib/Hledger/Data/Types.hs.

       o hledger  represents  quantities  as  Decimal values storing up to 255
         significant digits, eg for  repeating  decimals.   Such  numbers  can
         arise in practice (from automatically-calculated transaction prices),
         and would break most JSON consumers.  So in JSON, we show  quantities
         as simple Numbers with at most 10 decimal places.  We don't limit the
         number of integer digits, but that part is under  your  control.   We
         hope  this  approach will not cause problems in practice; if you find
         otherwise, please let us know.  (Cf #1195)

   SQL output
       o This is not yet much used; real-world feedback is welcome.

       o SQL output is expected to work with sqlite, MySQL and PostgreSQL

       o SQL output is structured with the expectations that  statements  will
         be  executed  in the empty database.  If you already have tables cre-
         ated via SQL output of hledger, you would  probably  want  to  either
         clear tables of existing data (via delete or truncate SQL statements)
         or drop tables completely as otherwise your postings will be duped.

   Commodity styles
       When displaying amounts, hledger infers a standard  display  style  for
       each commodity/currency, as described below in Commodity display style.

       If needed, this can be  overridden  by  a  -c/--commodity-style  option
       (except  for  cost  amounts and amounts displayed by the print command,
       which are always displayed with all decimal digits).  For example,  the
       following will force dollar amounts to be displayed as shown:

              $ hledger print -c '$1.000,0'

       This option can repeated to set the display style for multiple commodi-
       ties/currencies.  Its argument is as described in the commodity  direc-
       tive.

   Colour
       In  terminal output, some commands can produce colour when the terminal
       supports it:

       o if the --color/--colour option is given a value of yes or always  (or
         no or never), colour will (or will not) be used;

       o otherwise,  if  the NO_COLOR environment variable is set, colour will
         not be used;

       o otherwise, colour will be used if the output (terminal or file)  sup-
         ports it.

   Box-drawing
       In  terminal  output,  you can enable unicode box-drawing characters to
       render prettier tables:

       o if the --pretty option is given a value of yes or always  (or  no  or
         never), unicode characters will (or will not) be used;

       o otherwise, unicode characters will not be used.

   Debug output
       We intend hledger to be relatively easy to troubleshoot, introspect and
       develop.  You can add --debug[=N] to any hledger command  line  to  see
       additional  debug  output.  N ranges from 1 (least output, the default)
       to 9 (maximum output).  Typically you would start with 1  and  increase
       until  you  are seeing enough.  Debug output goes to stderr, and is not
       affected by -o/--output-file (unless you redirect stderr to stdout, eg:
       2>&1).   It  will  be  interleaved  with  normal output, which can help
       reveal when parts of the code are evaluated.  To capture  debug  output
       in a log file instead, you can usually redirect stderr, eg:

              hledger bal --debug=3 2>hledger.log

Limitations
       The  need  to  precede add-on command options with -- when invoked from
       hledger is awkward.

       When input data contains non-ascii characters, a suitable system locale
       must be configured (or there will be an unhelpful error).  Eg on POSIX,
       set LANG to something other than C.

       In a Microsoft Windows CMD window, non-ascii characters and colours are
       not supported.

       On Windows, non-ascii characters may not display correctly when running
       a hledger built in CMD in MSYS/CYGWIN, or vice-versa.

       In a Cygwin/MSYS/Mintty window, the tab key is not supported in hledger
       add.

       Not  all of Ledger's journal file syntax is supported.  See hledger and
       Ledger > Differences > journal format.

       On large data files, hledger  is  slower  and  uses  more  memory  than
       Ledger.

Troubleshooting
       Here  are  some  issues  you  might encounter when you run hledger (and
       remember you can also seek help from the IRC channel, mail list or  bug
       tracker):

       Successfully installed, but "No command 'hledger' found"
       stack and cabal install binaries into a special directory, which should
       be added to your PATH environment variable.  Eg on  unix-like  systems,
       that is ~/.local/bin and ~/.cabal/bin respectively.

       I set a custom LEDGER_FILE, but hledger is still using the default file
       LEDGER_FILE should be a real environment variable,  not  just  a  shell
       variable.   The command env | grep LEDGER_FILE should show it.  You may
       need to use export.  Here's an explanation.

       Getting errors like "Illegal byte sequence" or "Invalid  or  incomplete
       multibyte  or wide character" or "commitAndReleaseBuffer: invalid argu-
       ment (invalid character)"
       Programs compiled with GHC (hledger, haskell build tools,  etc.)   need
       to  have  a UTF-8-aware locale configured in the environment, otherwise
       they will fail with these kinds of errors when they encounter non-ascii
       characters.

       To  fix it, set the LANG environment variable to some locale which sup-
       ports UTF-8.  The locale you choose must be installed on your system.

       Here's an example of setting LANG temporarily, on Ubuntu GNU/Linux:

              $ file my.journal
              my.journal: UTF-8 Unicode text         # the file is UTF8-encoded
              $ echo $LANG
              C                                      # LANG is set to the default locale, which does not support UTF8
              $ locale -a                            # which locales are installed ?
              C
              en_US.utf8                             # here's a UTF8-aware one we can use
              POSIX
              $ LANG=en_US.utf8 hledger -f my.journal print   # ensure it is used for this command

       If available, C.UTF-8 will also work.  If your preferred  locale  isn't
       listed   by   locale   -a,  you  might  need  to  install  it.   Eg  on
       Ubuntu/Debian:

              $ apt-get install language-pack-fr
              $ locale -a
              C
              en_US.utf8
              fr_BE.utf8
              fr_CA.utf8
              fr_CH.utf8
              fr_FR.utf8
              fr_LU.utf8
              POSIX
              $ LANG=fr_FR.utf8 hledger -f my.journal print

       Here's how you could set it permanently, if you use a bash shell:

              $ echo "export LANG=en_US.utf8" >>~/.bash_profile
              $ bash --login

       Exact spelling and capitalisation may be important.  Note  the  differ-
       ence  on  MacOS  (UTF-8,  not  utf8).  Some platforms (eg ubuntu) allow
       variant spellings, but others (eg macos) require it to be exact:

              $ locale -a | grep -iE en_us.*utf
              en_US.UTF-8
              $ LANG=en_US.UTF-8 hledger -f my.journal print

PART 2: DATA FORMATS
Journal
       hledger's default file format, representing a General Journal.   Here's
       a cheatsheet/mini-tutorial, or you can skip ahead to About journal for-
       mat.

   Journal cheatsheet
              # Here is the main syntax of hledger's journal format
              # (omitting extra Ledger compatibility syntax).
              # hledger journals contain comments, directives, and transactions, in any order:

              ###############################################################################
              # 1. Comment lines are for notes or temporarily disabling things.
              # They begin with #, ;, or a line containing the word "comment".

              # hash comment line
              ; semicolon comment line
              comment
              These lines
              are commented.
              end comment

              # Some but not all hledger entries can have same-line comments attached to them,
              # from ; (semicolon) to end of line.

              ###############################################################################
              # 2. Directives modify parsing or reports in some way.
              # They begin with a word or letter (or symbol).

              account actifs     ; type:A, declare an account that is an Asset. 2+ spaces before ;.
              account passifs    ; type:L, declare an account that is a Liability, and so on.. (ALERX)
              alias chkg = assets:checking
              commodity $0.00
              decimal-mark .
              include /dev/null
              payee Whole Foods
              P 2022-01-01 AAAA $1.40
              ~ monthly    budget goals  ; <- 2+ spaces between period expression and description
                  expenses:food       $400
                  expenses:home      $1000
                  budgeted

              ###############################################################################
              # 3. Transactions are what it's all about; they are dated events,
              # usually describing movements of money.
              # They begin with a date.

              # DATE DESCRIPTION           ; This is a transaction comment.
              #   ACCOUNT NAME 1  AMOUNT1  ; <- posting 1. This is a posting comment.
              #   ACCOUNT NAME 2  AMOUNT2  ; <- posting 2. Postings must be indented.
              #               ; ^^ At least 2 spaces between account and amount.
              #   ...  ; Any number of postings is allowed. The amounts must balance (sum to 0).

              2022-01-01 opening balances are declared this way
                  assets:checking          $1000  ; Account names can be anything. lower case is easy to type.
                  assets:savings           $1000  ; assets, liabilities, equity, revenues, expenses are common.
                  assets:cash:wallet        $100  ; : indicates subaccounts.
                  liabilities:credit card  $-200  ; liabilities, equity, revenues balances are usually negative.
                  equity                          ; One amount can be left blank; $-1900 is inferred here.

              2022-04-15 * (#12345) pay taxes
                  ; There can be a ! or * after the date meaning "pending" or "cleared".
                  ; There can be a transaction code (text in parentheses) after the date/status.
                  ; Amounts' sign represents direction of flow, or credit/debit:
                  assets:checking          $-500  ; minus means removed from this account (credit)
                  expenses:tax:us:2021      $500  ; plus  means added to this account (debit)
                                                  ; revenue/expense categories are also "accounts"

              Kv
              2022-01-01                          ; The description is optional.
                  ; Any currency/commodity symbols are allowed, on either side.
                  assets:cash:wallet     GBP -10
                  expenses:clothing       GBP 10
                  assets:gringotts           -10 gold
                  assets:pouch                10 gold
                  revenues:gifts              -2 "Liquorice Wands"  ; Complex symbols
                  assets:bag                   2 "Liquorice Wands"  ; must be double-quoted.

              2022-01-01 Cost in another commodity can be noted with @ or @@
                  assets:investments           2.0 AAAA @ $1.50  ; @  means per-unit cost
                  assets:investments           3.0 AAAA @@ $4    ; @@ means total cost
                  assets:checking            $-7.00

              2022-01-02 assert balances
                  ; Balances can be asserted for extra error checking, in any transaction.
                  assets:investments           0 AAAA = 5.0 AAAA
                  assets:pouch                 0 gold = 10 gold
                  assets:savings              $0      = $1000

              1999-12-31 Ordering transactions by date is recommended but not required.
                  ; Postings are not required.

              2022.01.01 These date
              2022/1/1   formats are
              12/31      also allowed (but consistent YYYY-MM-DD is recommended).

   About journal format
       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 or import commands to create and update it.

       Many users, though, edit the journal file with a text editor, and track
       changes with a version control system such as git.  Editor addons  such
       as  ledger-mode  or  hledger-mode  for  Emacs,  vim-ledger for Vim, and
       hledger-vscode for Visual Studio Code, make this easier, adding colour,
       formatting, tab completion, and useful commands.  See Editor configura-
       tion at hledger.org for the full list.

       Here's a description of each part of the  file  format  (and  hledger's
       data model).

       A hledger journal file can contain three kinds of thing: file comments,
       transactions, and/or directives (counting  periodic  transaction  rules
       and auto posting rules as directives).

   Comments
       Lines in the journal will be ignored if they begin with a hash (#) or a
       semicolon (;).  (See also Other  syntax.)   hledger  will  also  ignore
       regions  beginning  with  a comment line and ending with an end comment
       line (or file end).  Here's a suggestion for choosing between them:

       o # for top-level notes

       o ; for commenting out things temporarily

       o comment for quickly commenting large regions (remember it's there, or
         you might get confused)

       Eg:

              # a comment line
              ; another commentline
              comment
              A multi-line comment block,
              continuing until "end comment" directive
              or the end of the current file.
              end comment

       Some hledger entries can have same-line comments attached to them, from
       ; (semicolon) to end of line.  See Transaction comments,  Posting  com-
       ments, and Account comments below.

   Transactions
       Transactions  are the main unit of information in a journal file.  They
       represent events, typically a movement of some quantity of  commodities
       between two or more named accounts.

       Each  transaction is recorded as a journal entry, beginning with a sim-
       ple date in column 0.  This can be followed by  any  of  the  following
       optional fields, separated by spaces:

       o a status character (empty, !, or *)

       o a code (any short number or text, enclosed in parentheses)

       o a description (any remaining text until end of line or a semicolon)

       o a  comment  (any  remaining  text  following a semicolon until end of
         line, and any following indented lines beginning with a semicolon)

       o 0 or more indented posting lines, describing what was transferred and
         the  accounts  involved (indented comment lines are also allowed, but
         not blank lines or non-indented lines).

       Here's a simple journal file containing one transaction:

              2008/01/01 income
                assets:bank:checking   $1
                income:salary         $-1

   Dates
   Simple dates
       Dates in the journal  file  use  simple  dates  format:  YYYY-MM-DD  or
       YYYY/MM/DD or YYYY.MM.DD, with leading zeros optional.  The year may be
       omitted, in which case it will be inferred from the context:  the  cur-
       rent  transaction, the default year set with a Y directive, or the cur-
       rent  date  when  the  command  is  run.   Some  examples:  2010-01-31,
       2010/01/31, 2010.1.31, 1/31.

       (The  UI  also accepts simple dates, as well as the more flexible smart
       dates documented in the hledger manual.)

   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.
       The date: tag must have a valid simple date value if it is present,  eg
       a date: tag with no value is not allowed.

   Status
       Transactions,  or  individual postings within a transaction, can have a
       status mark,  which  is  a  single  character  before  the  transaction
       description  or  posting  account  name,  separated from it by a space,
       indicating one of three statuses:


       mark     status
       ------------------
                unmarked
       !        pending
       *        cleared

       When reporting, you  can  filter  by  status  with  the  -U/--unmarked,
       -P/--pending,  and  -C/--cleared  flags;  or the status:, status:!, and
       status:* queries; or the U, P, C keys in hledger-ui.

       Note, in Ledger and in older versions of hledger, the "unmarked"  state
       is  called  "uncleared".   As  of  hledger  1.3  we  have renamed it to
       unmarked for clarity.

       To replicate Ledger and old hledger's behaviour of also matching  pend-
       ing, combine -U and -P.

       Status  marks  are optional, but can be helpful eg for reconciling with
       real-world accounts.  Some editor modes provide highlighting and short-
       cuts  for working with status.  Eg in Emacs ledger-mode, you can toggle
       transaction status with C-c C-e, or posting status with C-c C-c.

       What "uncleared", "pending", and "cleared" actually mean is up to  you.
       Here's one suggestion:


       status       meaning
       --------------------------------------------------------------------------
       uncleared    recorded but not yet reconciled; needs review
       pending      tentatively reconciled (if needed, eg during a big reconcil-
                    iation)
       cleared      complete, reconciled as far as possible, and considered cor-
                    rect

       With  this scheme, you would use -PC to see the current balance at your
       bank, -U to see things which will probably hit  your  bank  soon  (like
       uncashed checks), and no flags to see the most up-to-date state of your
       finances.

   Code
       After the status mark, but before the description, you  can  optionally
       write  a  transaction  "code", enclosed in parentheses.  This is a good
       place to record a check number, or some other important transaction  id
       or reference number.

   Description
       A  transaction's description is the rest of the line following the date
       and status mark (or until a  comment  begins).   Sometimes  called  the
       "narration" in traditional bookkeeping, it can be used for whatever you
       wish, or left blank.  Transaction descriptions can be  queried,  unlike
       comments.

   Payee and note
       You can optionally include a | (pipe) character in descriptions to sub-
       divide the description into separate fields for payee/payer name on the
       left  (up  to  the  first  |) and an additional note field on the right
       (after the first |).  This may be worthwhile if you  need  to  do  more
       precise querying and pivoting by payee or by note.

   Transaction comments
       Text  following  ;, after a transaction description, and/or on indented
       lines immediately below it, form comments for that  transaction.   They
       are  reproduced by print but otherwise ignored, except they may contain
       tags, which are not ignored.

              2012-01-01 something  ; a transaction comment
                  ; a second line of transaction comment
                  expenses   1
                  assets

   Postings
       A posting is an addition of some amount to, or removal of  some  amount
       from,  an account.  Each posting line begins with at least one space or
       tab (2 or 4 spaces is common), followed by:

       o (optional) a status character (empty, !, or *), followed by a space

       o (required) an account name (any text,  optionally  containing  single
         spaces, until end of line or a double space)

       o (optional) two or more spaces or tabs followed by an amount.

       Positive  amounts  are being added to the account, negative amounts are
       being removed.

       The amounts within a transaction must always sum up to zero.  As a con-
       venience,  one  amount  may be left blank; it will be inferred so as to
       balance the transaction.

       Be sure to note the unusual two-space delimiter  between  account  name
       and  amount.  This makes it easy to write account names containing spa-
       ces.  But if you accidentally leave only one space (or tab) before  the
       amount, the amount will be considered part of the account name.

   Account names
       Accounts  are  the  main  way of categorising things in hledger.  As in
       Double Entry Bookkeeping, they can represent real world accounts  (such
       as a bank account), or more abstract categories such as "money borrowed
       from Frank" or "money spent on electricity".

       You can use any account names you like, but we usually start  with  the
       traditional accounting categories, which in english are assets, liabil-
       ities, equity, revenues, expenses.  (You might see these referred to as
       A, L, E, R, X for short.)

       For  more  precise  reporting, we usually divide the top level accounts
       into more detailed subaccounts, by writing a full colon between account
       name  parts.   For example, from the account names assets:bank:checking
       and expenses:food, hledger will infer this hierarchy of five accounts:

              assets
              assets:bank
              assets:bank:checking
              expenses
              expenses:food

       Shown as an outline, the hierarchical tree structure is more clear:

              assets
               bank
                checking
              expenses
               food

       hledger reports can summarise the account tree to any depth, so you can
       go  as  deep  as  you like with subcategories, but keeping your account
       names relatively simple may be best when starting out.

       Account names may be capitalised or not; they may contain letters, num-
       bers,  symbols,  or  single  spaces.  Note, when an account name and an
       amount are written on the same line, they must be separated by  two  or
       more spaces (or tabs).

       Parentheses  or  brackets enclosing the full account name indicate vir-
       tual postings, described below.  Parentheses or  brackets  internal  to
       the account name have no special meaning.

       Account  names  can  be  altered  temporarily or permanently by account
       aliases.

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

       hledger's  amount  format is flexible, supporting several international
       formats.  Here are some examples.  Amounts have a  number  (the  "quan-
       tity"):

              1

       ..and usually a currency symbol or commodity name (more on this below),
       to the left or right of the quantity,  with  or  without  a  separating
       space:

              $1
              4000 AAPL
              3 "green apples"

       Amounts can be preceded by a minus sign (or a plus sign, though plus is
       the default), The sign can be written before or after a left-side  com-
       modity symbol:

              -$1
              $-1

       One  or more spaces between the sign and the number are acceptable when
       parsing (but they won't be displayed in output):

              + $1
              $-      1

       Scientific E notation is allowed:

              1E-6
              EUR 1E3

   Decimal marks, digit group marks
       A decimal mark can be written as a period or a comma:

              1.23
              1,23456780000009

       In the integer part of the quantity (left of the decimal mark),  groups
       of  digits can optionally be separated by a digit group mark - a space,
       comma, or period (different from the decimal mark):

                   $1,000,000.00
                EUR 2.000.000,00
              INR 9,99,99,999.00
                    1 000 000.9455

       Note, a number containing a single digit group mark and no decimal mark
       is ambiguous.  Are these digit group marks or decimal marks ?

              1,000
              1.000

       If  you  don't tell it otherwise, hledger will assume both of the above
       are decimal marks, parsing both numbers as 1.

       To prevent confusing parsing mistakes and undetected typos,  especially
       if  your data contains digit group marks (eg, thousands separators), we
       recommend explicitly declaring the decimal mark character in each jour-
       nal  file,  using a directive at the top of the file.  The decimal-mark
       directive is best,  otherwise  commodity  directives  will  also  work.
       These are described below.

   Commodity
       Amounts  in  hledger  have both a "quantity", which is a signed decimal
       number, and a "commodity", which is a currency symbol, stock ticker, or
       any word or phrase describing something you are tracking.

       If the commodity name contains non-letters (spaces, numbers, or punctu-
       ation), you must always write it inside double quotes ("green  apples",
       "ABC123").

       If  you  write just a bare number, that too will have a commodity, with
       name ""; we call that the "no-symbol commodity".

       Actually, hledger combines these  single-commodity  amounts  into  more
       powerful  multi-commodity amounts, which are what it works with most of
       the time.  A multi-commodity amount could be, eg: 1 USD, 2  EUR,  3.456
       TSLA.   In  practice,  you  will  only  see  multi-commodity amounts in
       hledger's output; you can't write them directly in the journal file.

       (If you are writing scripts or working with hledger's internals,  these
       are the Amount and MixedAmount types.)

   Directives influencing number parsing and display
       You  can  add  decimal-mark and commodity directives to the journal, to
       declare and control these things more explicitly and precisely.   These
       are described below, but here's a quick example:

              # the decimal mark character used by all amounts in this file (all commodities)
              decimal-mark .

              # display styles for the $, EUR, INR and no-symbol commodities:
              commodity $1,000.00
              commodity EUR 1.000,00
              commodity INR 9,99,99,999.00
              commodity 1 000 000.9455


   Commodity display style
       For the amounts in each commodity, hledger chooses a consistent display
       style to use in most reports.   (Exceptions:  price  amounts,  and  all
       amounts displayed by the print command, are displayed with all of their
       decimal digits visible.)

       A commodity's display style is inferred as follows.

       First, if a default commodity is declared with D,  this  commodity  and
       its style is applied to any no-symbol amounts in the journal.

       Then  each  commodity's style is inferred from one of the following, in
       order of preference:

       o The commodity directive for that commodity (including  the  no-symbol
         commodity), if any.

       o The  amounts  in  that  commodity seen in the journal's transactions.
         (Posting amounts only; prices and periodic or auto rules are ignored,
         currently.)

       o The  built-in fallback style, which looks like this: $1000.00.  (Sym-
         bol on the left, period decimal mark, two decimal places.)

       A style is inferred from journal amounts as follows:

       o Use the general style (decimal mark, symbol placement) of  the  first
         amount

       o Use  the  first-seen digit group style (digit group mark, digit group
         sizes), if any

       o Use the maximum number of decimal places of all.

       Cost amounts don't affect the commodity  display  style  directly,  but
       occasionally  they  can do so indirectly (eg when a posting's amount is
       inferred using a cost).  If you find this causing problems, use a  com-
       modity directive to fix the display style.

       To  summarise:  each  commodity's amounts will be normalised to (a) the
       style declared by a commodity directive, or (b) the style of the  first
       posting  amount  in  the journal, with the first-seen digit group style
       and the maximum-seen number of decimal places.  So if your reports  are
       showing  amounts  in  a  way  you  don't like, eg with too many decimal
       places, use a commodity directive.  Some examples:

              # declare euro, dollar, bitcoin and no-symbol commodities and set their
              # input number formats and output display styles:
              commodity EUR 1.000,
              commodity $1000.00
              commodity 1000.00000000 BTC
              commodity 1 000.

       The inferred commodity style can be overridden by supplying  a  command
       line option.

   Rounding
       Amounts are stored internally as decimal numbers with up to 255 decimal
       places, and displayed with the number of decimal  places  specified  by
       the  commodity display style.  Note, hledger uses banker's rounding: it
       rounds to the nearest even number, eg 0.5 displayed with  zero  decimal
       places is "0").


   Costs
       After  a posting amount, you can note its cost (when buying) or selling
       price (when selling) in another commodity, by writing  either  @  UNIT-
       PRICE  or @@ TOTALPRICE after it.  This indicates a conversion transac-
       tion, where one commodity is exchanged for another.

       (You might also see this called "transaction price"  in  hledger  docs,
       discussions,  or code; that term was directionally neutral and reminded
       that it is a price specific to a transaction, but we now just  call  it
       "cost", with the understanding that the transaction could be a purchase
       or a sale.)

       Costs are usually written explicitly with @ or  @@,  but  can  also  be
       inferred  automatically for simple multi-commodity transactions.  Note,
       if costs are inferred, the order of postings is significant; the  first
       posting will have a cost attached, in the commodity of the second.

       As  an  example, here are several ways to record purchases of a foreign
       currency in hledger, using  the  cost  notation  either  explicitly  or
       implicitly:

       1. Write the price per unit, as @ UNITPRICE after the amount:

                  2009/1/1
                    assets:euros     EUR100 @ $1.35  ; one hundred euros purchased at $1.35 each
                    assets:dollars                 ; balancing amount is -$135.00

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

                  2009/1/1
                    assets:euros     EUR100 @@ $135  ; one hundred euros purchased at $135 for the lot
                    assets:dollars

       3. Specify amounts for all postings, using exactly two commodities, and
          let hledger infer the price that balances the transaction.  Note the
          effect of posting order: the price is added to first posting, making
          it EUR100 @@ $135, as in example 2:

                  2009/1/1
                    assets:euros     EUR100          ; one hundred euros purchased
                    assets:dollars  $-135          ; for $135

       Amounts can be converted to cost at report  time  using  the  -B/--cost
       flag; this is discussed more in the COST REPORTING section.

   Other cost/lot notations
       A  slight digression for Ledger and Beancount users.  Ledger has a num-
       ber of cost/lot-related notations:

       o @ UNITCOST and @@ TOTALCOST

         o expresses a conversion rate, as in hledger

         o when buying, also creates a lot than can  be  selected  at  selling
           time

       o (@) UNITCOST and (@@) TOTALCOST (virtual cost)

         o like  the  above,  but also means "this cost was exceptional, don't
           use it when inferring market prices".

       Currently, hledger treats the above like @ and @@; the parentheses  are
       ignored.

       o {=FIXEDUNITCOST} and {{=FIXEDTOTALCOST}} (fixed price)

         o when buying, means "this cost is also the fixed price, don't let it
           fluctuate in value reports"

       o {UNITCOST} and {{TOTALCOST}} (lot price)

         o can be used identically to @ UNITCOST and @@ TOTALCOST,  also  cre-
           ates a lot

         o when  selling,  combined with @ ..., specifies an investment lot by
           its cost basis; does not check if that lot is present

       o and related: [YYYY/MM/DD] (lot date)

         o when buying, attaches this acquisition date to the lot

         o when selling, selects a lot by its acquisition date

       o (SOME TEXT) (lot note)

         o when buying, attaches this note to the lot

         o when selling, selects a lot by its note

       Currently, hledger accepts any or all of the above in any  order  after
       the posting amount, but ignores them.  (This can break transaction bal-
       ancing.)

       For Beancount users, the notation and behaviour is different:

       o @ UNITCOST and @@ TOTALCOST

         o expresses a cost without creating a lot, as in hledger

         o when buying (augmenting) or selling (reducing) a lot, combined with
           {...}:  documents  the cost/selling price (not used for transaction
           balancing)

       o {UNITCOST} and {{TOTALCOST}}

         o when buying (augmenting), expresses the cost for  transaction  bal-
           ancing, and also creates a lot with this cost basis attached

         o when selling (reducing),

           o selects a lot by its cost basis

           o raises an error if that lot is not present or can not be selected
             unambiguously (depending on booking method configured)

           o expresses the selling price for transaction balancing

       Currently, hledger accepts the  {UNITCOST}/{{TOTALCOST}}  notation  but
       ignores it.

       o variations:  {}, {YYYY-MM-DD}, {"LABEL"}, {UNITCOST, "LABEL"}, {UNIT-
         COST, YYYY-MM-DD, "LABEL"} etc.

       Currently, hledger rejects these.

   Balance assertions
       hledger supports Ledger-style  balance  assertions  in  journal  files.
       These  look  like, for example, = EXPECTEDBALANCE following a posting's
       amount.  Eg here 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
       -I/--ignore-assertions flag, which can be useful for troubleshooting or
       for reading Ledger files.  (Note: this flag currently does not  disable
       balance assignments, described below).

   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 differently-
       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 control over the
       order of postings and assertions within a day, so you can assert intra-
       day balances.

   Assertions and multiple included files
       Multiple files included with the include directive are processed as  if
       concatenated  into  one  file,  preserving  their order and the posting
       order within each file.  It means  that  balance  assertions  in  later
       files will see balance from earlier files.

       And  if you have multiple postings to an account on the same day, split
       across multiple files, and you want to assert the account's balance  on
       that day, you'll need to put the assertion in the right file - the last
       one in the sequence, probably.

   Assertions and multiple -f files
       Unlike include, when multiple files are specified on the  command  line
       with  multiple  -f/--file options, balance assertions will not see bal-
       ance from earlier files.  This can be useful when you do not want prob-
       lems in earlier files to disrupt valid assertions in later files.

       If  you  do  want  assertions  to  see  balance from earlier files, use
       include, or concatenate the files temporarily.

   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.   This  is  how  assertions
       work in Ledger also.  We could call this a "partial" balance assertion.

       To assert the balance of more than one commodity in an account, you can
       write multiple postings, each asserting one commodity's balance.

       You  can  make a stronger "total" balance assertion by writing a double
       equals sign (== EXPECTEDBALANCE).  This asserts that there are no other
       commodities  in the account besides the asserted one (or at least, that
       their balance is 0).

              2013/1/1
                a   $1
                a    1EUR
                b  $-1
                c   -1EUR

              2013/1/2  ; These assertions succeed
                a    0  =  $1
                a    0  =   1EUR
                b    0 == $-1
                c    0 ==  -1EUR

              2013/1/3  ; This assertion fails as 'a' also contains 1EUR
                a    0 ==  $1

       It's not yet possible to make a complete assertion about a balance that
       has  multiple commodities.  One workaround is to isolate each commodity
       into its own subaccount:

              2013/1/1
                a:usd   $1
                a:euro   1EUR
                b

              2013/1/2
                a        0 ==  0
                a:usd    0 == $1
                a:euro   0 ==  1EUR

   Assertions and prices
       Balance assertions ignore costs, and should normally be written without
       one:

              2019/1/1
                (a)     $1 @ EUR1 = $1

       We  do allow prices to be written there, however, and print shows them,
       even though they don't affect whether the assertion  passes  or  fails.
       This  is  for  backward  compatibility (hledger's close command used to
       generate balance assertions with prices), and because  balance  assign-
       ments do use them (see below).

   Assertions and subaccounts
       The  balance  assertions above (= and ==) do not count the balance from
       subaccounts; they check the account's exclusive balance only.  You  can
       assert the balance including subaccounts by writing =* or ==*, eg:

              2019/1/1
                equity:opening balances
                checking:a       5
                checking:b       5
                checking         1  ==* 11

   Assertions and virtual postings
       Balance assertions always consider both real and virtual postings; they
       are not affected by the --real/-R flag or real: query.

   Assertions and auto postings
       Balance assertions are affected by the  --auto  flag,  which  generates
       auto postings, which can alter account balances.  Because auto postings
       are optional in hledger, accounts affected by them effectively have two
       balances.   But  balance  assertions  can only test one or the other of
       these.  So to avoid making fragile assertions, either:

       o assert the balance calculated with --auto, and always use --auto with
         that file

       o or assert the balance calculated without --auto, and never use --auto
         with that file

       o or avoid balance assertions on accounts affected by auto postings (or
         avoid auto postings entirely).

   Assertions and precision
       Balance  assertions  compare  the exactly calculated amounts, which are
       not always what is shown by reports.   Eg  a  commodity  directive  may
       limit  the  display  precision, but this will not affect balance asser-
       tions.  Balance assertion failure messages show exact amounts.

   Posting comments
       Text following ;, at the end of a  posting  line,  and/or  on  indented
       lines  immediately  below it, form comments for that posting.  They are
       reproduced by print but otherwise  ignored,  except  they  may  contain
       tags, which are not ignored.

              2012-01-01
                  expenses   1  ; a comment for posting 1
                  assets
                  ; a comment for posting 2
                  ; a second comment line for posting 2

   Tags
       Tags  are  a  way to add extra labels or labelled data to transactions,
       postings, or accounts, which you can then search or pivot on.

       They are written as a word (optionally hyphenated) immediately followed
       by  a  full  colon,  in a transaction or posting or account directive's
       comment.  (This is an exception to the usual rule that things  in  com-
       ments  are ignored.)  Eg, here four different tags are recorded: one on
       the checking account, two on the transaction, and one on  the  expenses
       posting:

              account assets:checking         ; accounttag:

              2017/1/16 bought groceries      ; transactiontag-1:
                  ; transactiontag-2:
                  assets:checking        $-1
                  expenses:food           $1  ; postingtag:

       Postings  also  inherit  tags from their transaction and their account.
       And transactions also acquire tags from their postings  (and  postings'
       accounts).   So  in the example above, the expenses posting effectively
       has all four tags (by inheriting from account and transaction), and the
       transaction  also  has  all  four  tags (by acquiring from the expenses
       posting).

       You can list tag names with hledger tags [NAMEREGEX], or match  by  tag
       name with a tag:NAMEREGEX query.

   Tag values
       Tags  can  have  a  value, which is any text after the colon up until a
       comma or end of line (with surrounding whitespace removed).  Note  this
       means  that  hledger tag values can not contain commas.  Eg in the fol-
       lowing posting, the three tags' values are "value 1", "value 2", and ""
       (empty) respectively:

                  expenses:food   $10    ; foo, tag1: value 1 , tag2:value 2, bar tag3: , baz

       Note  that  tags can be repeated, and are additive rather than overrid-
       ing: when the same tag name is seen again with a  new  value,  the  new
       name:value  pair is added to the tags.  (It is not possible to override
       a tag's value or remove a tag.)

       You can list a tag's values with  hledger  tags  TAGNAME  --values,  or
       match by tag value with a tag:NAMEREGEX=VALUEREGEX query.

   Directives
       A  directive is a line in the journal beginning with a special keyword,
       that influences how the journal is processed, how things are displayed,
       and  so  on.  hledger's directives are based on (a subset of) Ledger's,
       but there are many  differences,  and  also  some  differences  between
       hledger versions.  Here are some more definitions:

       o subdirective   -   Some  directives  support  subdirectives,  written
         indented below the parent directive.

       o decimal mark - The character to interpret as a decimal  mark  (period
         or comma) when parsing amounts of a commodity.

       o display style - How to display amounts of a commodity in output: sym-
         bol side and spacing, digit groups, decimal mark, and number of deci-
         mal places.

       Directives  are  not  required  when starting out with hledger, but you
       will probably want to add some as  your  needs  grow.   Here  some  key
       directives for particular needs:


       purpose                                       directives
       --------------------------------------------------------------------------
       READING DATA:
       Declare  file's  decimal mark to help parse   decimal-mark
       amounts accurately
       Rewrite account names                         alias
       Comment out sections of the data              comment
       Include extra data files                      include
       GENERATING DATA:
       Generate recurring transactions  or  budget   ~
       goals
       Generate extra postings on transactions       =
       CHECKING FOR ERRORS:
       Define valid entities to provide more error   account, commodity, payee
       checking
       REPORTING:
       Declare accounts' type and display order      account
       Declare commodity display styles              commodity
       Declare market prices                         P

   Directive effects
       And here is what each directive  does,  and  which  files  and  journal
       entries (transactions) it affects:




       direc-     what it does                                                       ends
       tive                                                                          at
                                                                                     file
                                                                                     end?
       --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
       account    Declares an account, for checking all entries in all files;  and   N
                  its display order and type.  Subdirectives: any text, ignored.
       alias      Rewrites  account  names, in following entries until end of cur-   Y
                  rent file or end aliases.  Command line equivalent: --alias
       comment    Ignores  part  of the journal file, until end of current file or   Y
                  end comment.
       commod-    Declares up to four things: 1.  a commodity symbol, for checking   N,Y,N,N
       ity        all amounts in all  files  2.   the  decimal  mark  for  parsing
                  amounts of this commodity, in the following entries until end of
                  current file (if there is no decimal-mark directive) 3.  and the
                  display  style  for  amounts of this commodity 4.  which is also
                  the precision to use for balanced-transaction checking  in  this
                  commodity.   Takes  precedence  over  D.   Subdirectives: format
                  (Ledger-compatible syntax).  Command line equivalent:  -c/--com-
                  modity-style
       deci-      Declares the decimal mark, for parsing amounts of  all  commodi-   Y
       mal-       ties in following entries until next decimal-mark or end of cur-
       mark       rent file.  Included files can override.  Takes precedence  over
                  commodity and D.
       include    Includes entries and directives from another file,  as  if  they   N
                  were   written   inline.   Command  line  alternative:  multiple
                  -f/--file
       payee      Declares a payee name, for checking all entries in all files.      N
       P          Declares the market price of a commodity on some date, for value   N
                  reports.
       ~          Declares  a  periodic  transaction  rule  that  generates future   N
       (tilde)    transactions with  --forecast  and  budget  goals  with  balance
                  --budget.
       Other
       syntax:
       apply      Prepends  a  common parent account to all account names, in fol-   Y
       account    lowing entries until end of current file or end apply account.
       D          Sets a default commodity to use for  no-symbol  amounts;and,  if   Y,Y,N,N
                  there  is no commodity directive for this commodity: its decimal
                  mark, balancing precision, and display style, as above.
       Y          Sets  a default year to use for any yearless dates, in following   Y
                  entries until end of current file.
       =          Declares an auto posting rule that generates extra  postings  on   partly
       (equals)   matched  transactions with --auto, in current, parent, and child
                  files (but not sibling files, see #1212).
       Other      Other  directives  from  Ledger's  file  format are accepted but
       Ledger     ignored.
       direc-
       tives

   Directives and multiple files
       If you use  multiple  -f/--file  options,  or  the  include  directive,
       hledger will process multiple input files.  But directives which affect
       input typically have effect only until the end of  the  file  in  which
       they occur (and on any included files in that region).

       This may seem inconvenient, but it's intentional; it makes reports sta-
       ble and deterministic, independent of the order  of  input.   Otherwise
       you  could see different numbers if you happened to write -f options in
       a different order, or if you moved includes around  while  cleaning  up
       your files.

       It  can  be  surprising though; for example, it means that alias direc-
       tives do not affect parent or sibling files (see below).

   account directive
       account directives can be used to declare accounts (ie, the places that
       amounts  are transferred from and to).  Though not required, these dec-
       larations can provide several benefits:

       o They can document your intended chart of accounts, providing a refer-
         ence.

       o In  strict  mode,  they  restrict  which accounts may be posted to by
         transactions, which helps detect typos.

       o They control account display order in  reports,  allowing  non-alpha-
         betic sorting (eg Revenues to appear above Expenses).

       o They  help with account name completion (in hledger add, hledger-web,
         hledger-iadd, ledger-mode, etc.)

       o They can store additional account information as comments, or as tags
         which can be used to filter or pivot reports.

       o They  can  help  hledger know your accounts' types (asset, liability,
         equity, revenue, expense), affecting reports  like  balancesheet  and
         incomestatement.

       They  are  written  as  the  word  account  followed by a hledger-style
       account name, eg:

              account assets:bank:checking

       Note, however, that accounts declared in  account  directives  are  not
       allowed  to  have surrounding brackets and parentheses, unlike accounts
       used in postings.  So the following journal will not parse:

              account (assets:bank:checking)

   Account comments
       Text following two or more spaces and ; at the end of an account direc-
       tive  line,  and/or following ; on indented lines immediately below it,
       form comments for that account.  They are ignored except they may  con-
       tain tags, which are not ignored.

       The  two-space  requirement for same-line account comments is because ;
       is allowed in account names.

              account assets:bank:checking    ; same-line comment, at least 2 spaces before the semicolon
                ; next-line comment
                ; some tags - type:A, acctnum:12345

   Account subdirectives
       Ledger-style indented subdirectives are also  accepted,  but  currently
       ignored:

              account assets:bank:checking
                format subdirective is ignored

   Account error checking
       By  default,  accounts  need  not be declared; they come into existence
       when a posting references them.   This  is  convenient,  but  it  means
       hledger  can't warn you when you mis-spell an account name in the jour-
       nal.  Usually you'll find that error later, as an extra account in bal-
       ance reports, or an incorrect balance when reconciling.

       In  strict mode, enabled with the -s/--strict flag, hledger will report
       an error if any transaction uses an account  name  that  has  not  been
       declared by an account directive.  Some notes:

       o The  declaration is case-sensitive; transactions must use the correct
         account name capitalisation.

       o The account directive's scope is "whole file and below"  (see  direc-
         tives).  This means it affects all of the current file, and any files
         it includes, but not  parent  or  sibling  files.   The  position  of
         account directives within the file does not matter, though it's usual
         to put them at the top.

       o Accounts can only be declared  in  journal  files,  but  will  affect
         included files of all types.

       o It's  currently  not  possible  to declare "all possible subaccounts"
         with a wildcard; every account posted to must be declared.

   Account display order
       The order in which account directives are written influences the  order
       in  which  accounts appear in reports, hledger-ui, hledger-web etc.  By
       default accounts appear in alphabetical order, but  if  you  add  these
       account directives to the journal file:

              account assets
              account liabilities
              account equity
              account revenues
              account expenses

       those accounts will be displayed in declaration order:

              $ hledger accounts -1
              assets
              liabilities
              equity
              revenues
              expenses

       Any undeclared accounts are displayed last, in alphabetical order.

       Sorting is done at each level of the account tree, within each group of
       sibling accounts under the same parent.  And currently, this directive:

              account other:zoo

       would  influence the position of zoo among other's subaccounts, but not
       the position of other among the top-level accounts.  This means:

       o you will sometimes declare parent accounts (eg account  other  above)
         that  you  don't  intend  to post to, just to customize their display
         order

       o sibling accounts stay together (you couldn't display x:y  in  between
         a:b and a:c).

   Account types
       hledger knows that accounts come in several types: assets, liabilities,
       expenses and so on.  This enables easy reports  like  balancesheet  and
       incomestatement, and filtering by account type with the type: query.

       As a convenience, hledger will detect these account types automatically
       if you  are  using  common  english-language  top-level  account  names
       (described  below).   But  generally  we  recommend  you  declare types
       explicitly, by adding a type: tag to your top-level account directives.
       Subaccounts  will  inherit  the  type of their parent.  The tag's value
       should be one of the five main account types:

       o A or Asset (things you own)

       o L or Liability (things you owe)

       o E or Equity (investment/ownership; balanced counterpart of  assets  &
         liabilities)

       o R  or  Revenue (what you received money from, AKA income; technically
         part of Equity)

       o X or Expense (what you spend money on; technically part of Equity)

       or, it can be (these are used less often):

       o C or Cash (a subtype of Asset, indicating liquid assets for the cash-
         flow report)

       o V  or  Conversion  (a  subtype  of  Equity, for conversions (see COST
         REPORTING).)

       Here is a typical set of account type declarations:

              account assets             ; type: A
              account liabilities        ; type: L
              account equity             ; type: E
              account revenues           ; type: R
              account expenses           ; type: X

              account assets:bank        ; type: C
              account assets:cash        ; type: C

              account equity:conversion  ; type: V

       Here are some tips for working with account types.

       o The rules for inferring types from  account  names  are  as  follows.
         These are just a convenience that sometimes help new users get going;
         if they don't work for you, just ignore them and declare your account
         types.  See also Regular expressions.

                If account's name contains this (CI) regular expression:            | its type is:
                --------------------------------------------------------------------|-------------
                ^assets?(:.+)?:(cash|bank|che(ck|que?)(ing)?|savings?|current)(:|$) | Cash
                ^assets?(:|$)                                                       | Asset
                ^(debts?|liabilit(y|ies))(:|$)                                      | Liability
                ^equity:(trad(e|ing)|conversion)s?(:|$)                             | Conversion
                ^equity(:|$)                                                        | Equity
                ^(income|revenue)s?(:|$)                                            | Revenue
                ^expenses?(:|$)                                                     | Expense

       o If  you  declare  any  account  types, it's a good idea to declare an
         account for all of the account types, because a mixture  of  declared
         and name-inferred types can disrupt certain reports.

       o Certain  uses  of  account  aliases  can  disrupt account types.  See
         Rewriting accounts > Aliases and account types.

       o As mentioned above, subaccounts will inherit a type from their parent
         account.   More  precisely, an account's type is decided by the first
         of these that exists:

         1. A type: declaration for this account.

         2. A type: declaration in the parent accounts  above  it,  preferring
            the nearest.

         3. An account type inferred from this account's name.

         4. An  account type inferred from a parent account's name, preferring
            the nearest parent.

         5. Otherwise, it will have no type.

       o For troubleshooting, you can list accounts and their types with:

                $ hledger accounts --types [ACCTPAT] [-DEPTH] [type:TYPECODES]

   alias directive
       You can define account alias rules which rewrite your account names, or
       parts of them, before generating reports.  This 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

       o combining two accounts into one, eg to see their sum or difference on
         one line

       o customising reports

       Account aliases also rewrite account names in account directives.  They
       do not affect account names being entered via hledger add  or  hledger-
       web.

       Account aliases are very powerful.  They are generally easy to use cor-
       rectly, but you can also generate invalid account names with them; more
       on this below.

       See also Rewrite account names.

   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  (but  note:  not sibling or parent 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  case  sensitive  full  account  names.   hledger  will
       replace  any occurrence of the old account name with the new one.  Sub-
       accounts 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  wrapping  the  pattern in forward slashes.  (This is the
       only place where hledger requires  forward  slashes  around  a  regular
       expression.)

       Eg:

              alias /REGEX/ = REPLACEMENT

       or:

              $ hledger --alias '/REGEX/=REPLACEMENT' ...

       Any  part  of  an  account  name  matched  by REGEX will be replaced by
       REPLACEMENT.  REGEX is case-insensitive as usual.

       If you need to match a forward slash, escape it with  a  backslash,  eg
       /\/=:.

       If  REGEX  contains parenthesised match groups, these can be referenced
       by the usual backslash and number in REPLACEMENT:

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

       REPLACEMENT continues to the end of line (or on command line, to end of
       option argument), so it can contain trailing whitespace.

   Combining aliases
       You  can  define  as many aliases as you like, using journal directives
       and/or command line options.

       Recursive aliases - where an account name is rewritten  by  one  alias,
       then  by  another  alias, and so on - are allowed.  Each alias sees the
       effect of previously applied aliases.

       In such cases it can be important to understand which aliases  will  be
       applied  and  in  which order.  For (each account name in) each journal
       entry, we apply:

       1. alias directives preceding the journal entry, most  recently  parsed
          first (ie, reading upward from the journal entry, bottom to top)

       2. --alias  options,  in  the  order  they appeared on the command line
          (left to right).

       In other words, for (an account name in) a given journal entry:

       o the nearest alias declaration before/above the entry is applied first

       o the next alias before/above that will be be applied next, and so on

       o aliases defined after/below the entry do not affect it.

       This  gives nearby aliases precedence over distant ones, and helps pro-
       vide semantic stability - aliases will keep working the same way  inde-
       pendent of which files are being read and in which order.

       In  case  of  trouble,  adding  --debug=6 to the command line will show
       which aliases are being applied when.

   Aliases and multiple files
       As explained at Directives and multiple files, alias directives do  not
       affect parent or sibling files.  Eg in this command,

              hledger -f a.aliases -f b.journal

       account  aliases  defined  in  a.aliases  will  not  affect  b.journal.
       Including the aliases doesn't work either:

              include a.aliases

              2020-01-01  ; not affected by a.aliases
                foo  1
                bar

       This means that account aliases should usually be declared at the start
       of your top-most file, like this:

              alias foo=Foo
              alias bar=Bar

              2020-01-01  ; affected by aliases above
                foo  1
                bar

              include c.journal  ; also affected

   end aliases directive
       You can clear (forget) all currently defined aliases (seen in the jour-
       nal so far, or defined on the command line) with this directive:

              end aliases

   Aliases can generate bad account names
       Be aware that account aliases  can  produce  malformed  account  names,
       which could cause confusing reports or invalid print output.  For exam-
       ple, you could erase all account names:

              2021-01-01
                a:aa     1
                b

              $ hledger print --alias '/.*/='
              2021-01-01
                                 1

       The above print output is not a valid journal.  Or you could insert  an
       illegal  double space, causing print output that would give a different
       journal when reparsed:

              2021-01-01
                old    1
                other

              $ hledger print --alias old="new  USD" | hledger -f- print
              2021-01-01
                  new             USD 1
                  other

   Aliases and account types
       If an account with a type declaration (see Declaring accounts > Account
       types)  is  renamed  by  an alias, normally the account type remains in
       effect.

       However, renaming in a way that reshapes the account tree (eg  renaming
       parent  accounts  but  not their children, or vice versa) could prevent
       child accounts from inheriting the account type of their parents.

       Secondly, if an account's type is being inferred from its name,  renam-
       ing it by an alias could prevent or alter that.

       If  you  are  using account aliases and the type: query is not matching
       accounts as you expect, try troubleshooting with the accounts  command,
       eg something like:

              $ hledger accounts --alias assets=bassetts type:a

   commodity directive
       You  can use commodity directives to declare your commodities.  In fact
       the commodity directive performs several functions at once:

       1. It declares commodities which may be used in the journal.  This  can
          optionally  be  enforced, providing useful error checking.  (Cf Com-
          modity error checking)

       2. It declares which decimal  mark  character  (period  or  comma),  to
          expect  when  parsing  input  - useful to disambiguate international
          number formats in your data.  Without this, hledger will parse  both
          1,000 and 1.000 as 1.  (Cf Amounts)

       3. It  declares  how  to render the commodity's amounts when displaying
          output - the decimal mark, any digit group marks, the number of dec-
          imal  places,  symbol  placement  and  so on.  (Cf Commodity display
          style)

       You will run into one of the problems solved  by  commodity  directives
       sooner or later, so we recommend using them, for robust and predictable
       parsing and display.

       Generally you should put them at the top of your  journal  file  (since
       for function 2, they affect only following amounts, cf #793).

       A  commodity  directive is just the word commodity followed by a sample
       amount, like this:

              ;commodity SAMPLEAMOUNT

              commodity $1000.00
              commodity 1,000.0000 AAAA  ; optional same-line comment

       It may also be written on multiple lines, and use the format  subdirec-
       tive,  as  in  Ledger.   Note in this case the commodity symbol appears
       twice; it must be the same in both places:

              ;commodity SYMBOL
              ;  format SAMPLEAMOUNT

              ; 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 1,00,00,000.00

       Other indented subdirectives are currently ignored.

       Remember that if the commodity  symbol  contains  spaces,  numbers,  or
       punctuation, it must be enclosed in double quotes (cf Commodity).

       The  amount's quantity does not matter; only the format is significant.
       It must include a decimal mark - either a period or a comma -  followed
       by 0 or more decimal digits.

       A few more examples:

              # number formats for $, EUR, INR and the no-symbol commodity:
              commodity $1,000.00
              commodity EUR 1.000,00
              commodity INR 9,99,99,999.0
              commodity 1 000 000.

       Note  hledger  normally  uses  banker's rounding, so 0.5 displayed with
       zero decimal digits is "0".  (More at Commodity display style.)

       Even in the presence of commodity  directives,  the  commodity  display
       style can still be overridden by supplying a command line option.

   Commodity error checking
       In  strict mode, enabled with the -s/--strict flag, hledger will report
       an error if a commodity symbol is used that has not been declared by  a
       commodity  directive.   This works similarly to account error checking,
       see the notes there for more details.

       Note, this disallows amounts without a commodity symbol,  because  cur-
       rently it's not possible (?)  to declare the "no-symbol" commodity with
       a directive.  This is one exception for convenience: zero  amounts  are
       always allowed to have no commodity symbol.

   decimal-mark directive
       You can use a decimal-mark directive - usually one per file, at the top
       of the file - to declare which character represents a decimal mark when
       parsing amounts in this file.  It can look like

              decimal-mark .

       or

              decimal-mark ,

       This  prevents  any  ambiguity  when parsing numbers in the file, so we
       recommend it, especially if the file contains  digit  group  marks  (eg
       thousands separators).

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

              include FILEPATH

       Only journal files can include, and only journal, timeclock or  timedot
       files can be included (not CSV files, currently).

       If  the  file  path  does not begin with a slash, it is relative to the
       current file's folder.

       A tilde means home directory, eg: include ~/main.journal.

       The path may contain glob patterns to match multiple files, eg: include
       *.journal.

       There  is  limited  support  for recursive wildcards: **/ (the slash is
       required) matches 0 or more subdirectories.  It's not super  convenient
       since  you  have to avoid include cycles and including directories, but
       this can be done, eg: include */**/*.journal.

       The path may also be prefixed to force a specific file format, overrid-
       ing  the  file  extension  (as  described in hledger.1 -> Input files):
       include timedot:~/notes/2020*.md.

   P directive
       The P directive declares a market price, which  is  a  conversion  rate
       between  two  commodities on a certain date.  This allows value reports
       to convert amounts of one commodity to their value in  another,  on  or
       after  that  date.   These  prices  are  often  obtained  from  a stock
       exchange, cryptocurrency exchange, the or foreign exchange market.

       The format is:

              P DATE COMMODITY1SYMBOL COMMODITY2AMOUNT

       DATE is a simple date, COMMODITY1SYMBOL is the symbol of the  commodity
       being  priced, and COMMODITY2AMOUNT is the amount (symbol and quantity)
       of commodity 2 that one unit of commodity 1  is  worth  on  this  date.
       Examples:

              # one euro was worth $1.35 from 2009-01-01 onward:
              P 2009-01-01 EUR $1.35

              # and $1.40 from 2010-01-01 onward:
              P 2010-01-01 EUR $1.40

       The  -V,  -X  and  --value flags use these market prices to show amount
       values in another commodity.  See Valuation.


   payee directive
       payee PAYEE NAME

       This directive can be used to declare a limited set of payees which may
       appear  in transaction descriptions.  The "payees" check will report an
       error if any transaction refers to a payee that has not been  declared.
       Eg:

              payee Whole Foods

       Any indented subdirectives are currently ignored.

   tag directive
       tag TAGNAME

       This  directive  can  be  used  to  declare  a limited set of tag names
       allowed in tags.  TAGNAME should be a valid tag name (no spaces).  Eg:

              tag  item-id

       Any indented subdirectives are currently ignored.

       The "tags" check will report an error if any  undeclared  tag  name  is
       used.  It is quite easy to accidentally create a tag through normal use
       of colons in comments(#comments]; if you want to prevent this, you  can
       declare and check your tags .

   Periodic transactions
       The ~ directive declares recurring transactions.  Such directives allow
       hledger to generate temporary future transactions (visible in  reports,
       not in the journal file) to help with forecasting or budgeting.

       Periodic  transactions  can be a little tricky, so before you use them,
       read this whole section, or at least these tips:

       1. Two spaces accidentally added or omitted will cause  you  trouble  -
          read about this below.

       2. For  troubleshooting,  show  the generated transactions with hledger
          print  --forecast  tag:generated  or  hledger  register   --forecast
          tag:generated.

       3. Forecasted  transactions  will  begin  only after the last non-fore-
          casted transaction's date.

       4. Forecasted transactions will end 6 months from  today,  by  default.
          See below for the exact start/end rules.

       5. period   expressions  can  be  tricky.   Their  documentation  needs
          improvement, but is worth studying.

       6. Some period expressions with a repeating interval must  begin  on  a
          natural  boundary  of  that  interval.  Eg in weekly from DATE, DATE
          must be a monday.  ~ weekly from 2019/10/1 (a tuesday) will give  an
          error.

       7. Other period expressions with an interval are automatically expanded
          to cover a whole number of that interval.  (This is done to  improve
          reports, but it also affects periodic transactions.  Yes, it's a bit
          inconsistent with the above.)  Eg: ~ every 10th day  of  month  from
          2020/01,  which  is  equivalent  to  ~  every 10th day of month from
          2020/01/01, will be adjusted to start on 2019/12/10.

   Periodic rule syntax
       A periodic transaction rule looks like a normal journal entry, with the
       date replaced by a tilde (~) followed by a period expression (mnemonic:
       ~ looks like a recurring sine wave.):

              # every first of month
              ~ monthly
                  expenses:rent          $2000
                  assets:bank:checking

              # every 15th of month in 2023's first quarter:
              ~ monthly from 2023-04-15 to 2023-06-16
                  expenses:utilities          $400
                  assets:bank:checking

       The period expression is the same syntax  used  for  specifying  multi-
       period  reports,  just  interpreted  differently;  there,  it specifies
       report periods; here it specifies recurrence dates (the periods'  start
       dates).

   Periodic rules and relative dates
       Partial  or  relative  dates (like 12/31, 25, tomorrow, last week, next
       quarter) are usually not  recommended  in  periodic  rules,  since  the
       results  will change as time passes.  If used, they will be interpreted
       relative to, in order of preference:

       1. the first day of the default year specified by a recent Y directive

       2. or the date specified with --today

       3. or the date on which you are running the report.

       They will not be affected at all by report period  or  forecast  period
       dates.

   Two spaces between period expression and description!
       If  the  period  expression  is  followed by a transaction description,
       these must be separated by two or more spaces.  This helps hledger know
       where the period expression ends, so that descriptions can not acciden-
       tally alter their meaning, as in this example:

              ; 2 or more spaces needed here, so the period is not understood as "every 2 months in 2020"
              ;               ||
              ;               vv
              ~ every 2 months  in 2020, we will review
                  assets:bank:checking   $1500
                  income:acme inc

       So,

       o Do write two spaces between your period expression and your  transac-
         tion description, if any.

       o Don't  accidentally  write  two  spaces  in the middle of your period
         expression.

   Other syntax
       hledger journal format supports quite a few other features,  mainly  to
       make  interoperating  with or converting from Ledger easier.  Note some
       of the features below are powerful and can be useful in special  cases,
       but  in general, features in this section are considered less important
       or even not recommended for most users.   Downsides  are  mentioned  to
       help you decide if you want to use them.

   Auto postings
       The  =  directive  declares  a  rule for automatically adding temporary
       extra postings (visible in reports, not in the  journal  file)  to  all
       transactions  matched by a certain query, when you use the --auto flag.

       Downsides: depending on generated data  for  your  reports  makes  your
       financial  data  less portable, less future-proof, and less trustworthy
       in an audit.  Also, because the feature  is  optional,  other  features
       like balance assertions can break depending on whether it is on or off.

       An auto posting rule looks a bit like a transaction:

              = QUERY
                  ACCOUNT  AMOUNT
                  ...
                  ACCOUNT  [AMOUNT]

       except the first line is an equals sign (mnemonic:  =  suggests  match-
       ing),  followed  by a query (which matches existing postings), and each
       "posting" line describes a posting to be  generated,  and  the  posting
       amounts can be:

       o a  normal  amount  with a commodity symbol, eg $2.  This will be used
         as-is.

       o a number, eg 2.  The commodity symbol (if any) from the matched post-
         ing will be added to this.

       o a  numeric  multiplier,  eg  *2 (a star followed by a number N).  The
         matched posting's amount (and total price, if any) will be multiplied
         by N.

       o a  multiplier  with a commodity symbol, eg *$2 (a star, number N, and
         symbol S).  The matched posting's amount will be multiplied by N, and
         its commodity symbol will be replaced with S.

       Any  query  term containing spaces must be enclosed in single or double
       quotes, as on the command line.  Eg, note the quotes around the  second
       query term below:

              = expenses:groceries 'expenses:dining out'
                  (budget:funds:dining out)                 *-1

       Some examples:

              ; every time I buy food, schedule a dollar donation
              = expenses:food
                  (liabilities:charity)   $-1

              ; when I buy a gift, also deduct that amount from a budget envelope subaccount
              = expenses:gifts
                  assets:checking:gifts  *-1
                  assets:checking         *1

              2017/12/1
                expenses:food    $10
                assets:checking

              2017/12/14
                expenses:gifts   $20
                assets:checking

              $ hledger print --auto
              2017-12-01
                  expenses:food              $10
                  assets:checking
                  (liabilities:charity)      $-1

              2017-12-14
                  expenses:gifts             $20
                  assets:checking
                  assets:checking:gifts     -$20
                  assets:checking            $20

   Auto postings and multiple files
       An auto posting rule can affect any transaction in the current file, or
       in any parent file or child file.  Note, currently it will  not  affect
       sibling files (when multiple -f/--file are used - see #1212).

   Auto postings and dates
       A  posting  date (or secondary date) in the matched posting, or (taking
       precedence) a posting date in the auto posting rule itself,  will  also
       be used in the generated posting.

   Auto postings and transaction balancing / inferred amounts / balance asser-
       tions
       Currently, auto postings are added:

       o after missing amounts are inferred, and transactions are checked  for
         balancedness,

       o but before balance assertions are checked.

       Note  this  means that journal entries must be balanced both before and
       after auto postings are added.  This changed in hledger 1.12+; see #893
       for background.

       This  also means that you cannot have more than one auto-posting with a
       missing amount applied to a given transaction, as it will be unable  to
       infer amounts.

   Auto posting tags
       Automated postings will have some extra tags:

       o generated-posting:= QUERY - shows this was generated by an auto post-
         ing rule, and the query

       o _generated-posting:= QUERY - a hidden tag, which does not  appear  in
         hledger's output.  This can be used to match postings generated "just
         now", rather than generated in the past and saved to the journal.

       Also, any transaction that has been changed by auto posting rules  will
       have these tags added:

       o modified: - this transaction was modified

       o _modified: - a hidden tag not appearing in the comment; this transac-
         tion was modified "just now".

   Balance assignments
       Ledger-style balance assignments are also supported.   These  are  like
       balance  assertions, but with no posting amount on the left side of the
       equals sign; instead it is calculated automatically so  as  to  satisfy
       the  assertion.   This  can be a convenience during data entry, eg when
       setting opening balances:

              ; starting a new journal, set asset account balances
              2016/1/1 opening balances
                assets:checking            = $409.32
                assets:savings             = $735.24
                assets:cash                 = $42
                equity:opening balances

       or when adjusting a balance to reality:

              ; no cash left; update balance, record any untracked spending as a generic expense
              2016/1/15
                assets:cash    = $0
                expenses:misc

       The calculated amount depends on the account's balance in the commodity
       at  that  point  (which depends on the previously-dated postings of the
       commodity to that account since the last balance assertion  or  assign-
       ment).

       Downsides:  using balance assignments makes your journal less explicit;
       to know the exact amount posted, you have to run hledger or do the cal-
       culations  yourself,  instead of just reading it.  Also balance assign-
       ments' forcing of balances can hide errors.   These  things  make  your
       financial  data  less portable, less future-proof, and less trustworthy
       in an audit.

   Balance assignments and prices
       A cost in a balance assignment will cause the calculated amount to have
       that price attached:

              2019/1/1
                (a)             = $1 @ EUR2

              $ hledger print --explicit
              2019-01-01
                  (a)         $1 @ EUR2 = $1 @ EUR2

   Bracketed posting dates
       For  setting posting dates and secondary posting dates, Ledger's brack-
       eted date syntax is also supported: [DATE], [DATE=DATE2] or [=DATE2] in
       posting  comments.   hledger will attempt to parse any square-bracketed
       sequence of the 0123456789/-.= characters in this way.  With this  syn-
       tax,  DATE  infers  its  year from the transaction and DATE2 infers its
       year from DATE.

       Downsides:  another  syntax  to   learn,   redundant   with   hledger's
       date:/date2: tags, and confusingly similar to Ledger's lot date syntax.

   D directive
       D AMOUNT

       This directive sets a default commodity, to be used for any  subsequent
       commodityless  amounts (ie, plain numbers) seen while parsing the jour-
       nal.  This effect lasts until the next D directive, or the end  of  the
       journal.

       For  compatibility/historical  reasons,  D  also  acts like a commodity
       directive (setting the commodity's decimal mark for parsing and display
       style for output).  So its argument is not just a commodity symbol, but
       a full amount demonstrating the style.  The amount must include a deci-
       mal mark (either period or comma).  Eg:

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

              1/1
                a     5  ; <- commodity-less amount, parsed as $5 and displayed as $5.00
                b

       Interactions with other directives:

       For  setting  a  commodity's  display  style, a commodity directive has
       highest priority, then a D directive.

       For detecting a commodity's decimal mark during  parsing,  decimal-mark
       has highest priority, then commodity, then D.

       For  checking  commodity  symbols  with  the check command, a commodity
       directive is required (hledger check commodities ignores D directives).

       Downsides:  omitting  commodity  symbols makes your financial data less
       explicit, less portable, and less trustworthy in an audit.  It is  usu-
       ally  an unsustainable shortcut; sooner or later you will want to track
       multiple commodities.  D is overloaded with  functions  redundant  with
       commodity  and decimal-mark.  And it works differently from Ledger's D.

   apply account directive
       This directive sets a default parent account, which will  be  prepended
       to all accounts in following entries, until an end apply account direc-
       tive or end of current file.  Eg:

              apply account home

              2010/1/1
                  food    $10
                  cash

              end apply account

       is equivalent to:

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

       account directives are also affected, and so is any included content.

       Account names entered via hledger add or hledger-web are not  affected.

       Account  aliases,  if  any,  are  applied  after  the parent account is
       prepended.

       Downsides: this can make your financial data less explicit, less porta-
       ble, and less trustworthy in an audit.

   Y directive
       Y YEAR

       or (deprecated backward-compatible forms):

       year YEAR apply year YEAR

       The  space is optional.  This sets a default year to be used for subse-
       quent dates which don't specify a year.  Eg:

              Y2009  ; set default year to 2009

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

              year 2010  ; 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

       Downsides: omitting the year (from primary transaction dates, at least)
       makes your financial data less explicit, less portable, and less trust-
       worthy in an audit.  Such dates can get  separated  from  their  corre-
       sponding  Y  directive,  eg  when evaluating a region of the journal in
       your editor.  A missing Y directive makes reports dependent on  today's
       date.

   Secondary dates
       A secondary date is written after the primary date, following an equals
       sign.  If the year is omitted, the  primary  date's  year  is  assumed.
       When  running  reports, the primary (left) date is used by default, but
       with the --date2 flag (or --aux-date  or  --effective),  the  secondary
       (right) date will be used instead.

       The  meaning of secondary dates is up to you, but it's best to follow a
       consistent rule.  Eg "primary = the bank's clearing date,  secondary  =
       date the transaction was initiated, if different".

       Downsides:  makes  your financial data more complicated, less portable,
       and less trustworthy in an audit.  Keeping the meaning of the two dates
       consistent  requires discipline, and you have to remember which report-
       ing mode is appropriate for a given report.  Posting dates are  simpler
       and better.

   Star comments
       Lines  beginning  with  * (star/asterisk) are also comment lines.  This
       feature allows Emacs users to insert org  headings  in  their  journal,
       allowing  them  to  fold/unfold/navigate it like an outline when viewed
       with org mode.

       Downsides: another, unconventional comment syntax to learn.   Decreases
       your  journal's  portability.  And switching to Emacs org mode just for
       folding/unfolding meant losing the benefits of  ledger  mode;  nowadays
       you  can add outshine mode to ledger mode to get folding without losing
       ledger mode's features.

   Valuation expressions
       Ledger allows a valuation function or value to  be  written  in  double
       parentheses after an amount.  hledger ignores these.

   Virtual postings
       A  posting with parentheses around the account name is called a virtual
       posting or unbalanced posting, which means it is exempt from the  usual
       rule that a transaction's postings must balance add up to zero.

       This  is  not  part of double entry bookkeeping, so you might choose to
       avoid this feature.  Or you can use it sparingly  for  certain  special
       cases  where  it can be convenient.  Eg, you could set opening balances
       without using a balancing equity account:

              2022-01-01 opening balances
                (assets:checking)   $1000
                (assets:savings)    $2000

       A posting with brackets around the account name is  called  a  balanced
       virtual  posting.   The balanced virtual postings in a transaction must
       add up to zero (separately from other postings).  Eg:

              2022-01-01 buy food with cash, update budget envelope subaccounts, & something else
                assets:cash                    $-10  ; <- these balance each other
                expenses:food                    $7  ; <-
                expenses:food                    $3  ; <-
                [assets:checking:budget:food]  $-10  ;   <- and these balance each other
                [assets:checking:available]     $10  ;   <-
                (something:else)                 $5  ;     <- this is not required to balance

       Postings whose account names are neither  parenthesised  nor  bracketed
       are  called  real  postings.   You  can  exclude  virtual postings from
       reports with the -R/--real flag or a real:1 query.

       Downsides: violates double entry bookkeeping, can be used to avoid fig-
       uring  out correct entries, makes your financial data less portable and
       less trustworthy in an audit.

   Other Ledger directives
       These other Ledger directives are currently accepted but ignored.  This
       allows  hledger  to read more Ledger files, but be aware that hledger's
       reports may differ from Ledger's if you use these.

              apply fixed COMM AMT
              apply tag   TAG
              assert      EXPR
              bucket / A  ACCT
              capture     ACCT REGEX
              check       EXPR
              define      VAR=EXPR
              end apply fixed
              end apply tag
              end apply year
              end tag
              eval / expr EXPR
              python
                PYTHONCODE
              tag         NAME
              value       EXPR
              --command-line-flags

       See also https://hledger.org/ledger.html for a detailed  hledger/Ledger
       syntax comparison.


CSV
       hledger  can read CSV files (Character Separated Value - usually comma,
       semicolon, or tab) containing dated records,  automatically  converting
       each record into a transaction.

       (To learn about writing CSV, see CSV output.)

       For  best error messages when reading CSV/TSV/SSV files, make sure they
       have a corresponding .csv, .tsv or .ssv file extension or use a hledger
       file prefix (see File Extension below).

       Each CSV file must be described by a corresponding rules file.
       This  contains  rules describing the CSV data (header line, fields lay-
       out, date format etc.), how to construct hledger transactions from  it,
       and  how  to  categorise  transactions  based  on  description or other
       attributes.

       By default hledger looks for a rules file named like the CSV file  with
       an  extra  .rules  extension,  in the same directory.  Eg when asked to
       read foo/FILE.csv, hledger looks for foo/FILE.csv.rules.  You can spec-
       ify  a  different rules file with the --rules-file option.  If no rules
       file is found, hledger will create a sample rules  file,  which  you'll
       need to adjust.

       At  minimum,  the  rules file must identify the date and amount fields,
       and often it also specifies the date format and how many  header  lines
       there are.  Here's a simple CSV file and a rules file for it:

              Date, Description, Id, Amount
              12/11/2019, Foo, 123, 10.23

              # basic.csv.rules
              skip         1
              fields       date, description, , amount
              date-format  %d/%m/%Y

              $ hledger print -f basic.csv
              2019-11-12 Foo
                  expenses:unknown           10.23
                  income:unknown            -10.23

       There's an introductory Importing CSV data tutorial on hledger.org, and
       more  CSV  rules  examples  below,   and   a   larger   collection   at
       https://github.com/simonmichael/hledger/tree/master/examples/csv.

   CSV rules cheatsheet
       The following kinds of rule can appear in the rules file, in any order.
       (Blank lines and lines beginning with # or ; or * are ignored.)


       separator                  declare the field separator, instead of  rely-
                                  ing on file extension
       skip                       skip one or more header lines at start of file
       date-format                declare how to parse CSV dates/date-times
       timezone                   declare the time zone of ambiguous  CSV  date-
                                  times
       newest-first               improve  txn  order  when:  there are multiple
                                  records, newest first, all with the same date
       intra-day-reversed         improve txn order when: same-day txns  are  in
                                  opposite order to the overall file
       decimal-mark               declare  the decimal mark used in CSV amounts,
                                  when ambiguous
       fields list                name  CSV  fields  for  easy  reference,   and
                                  optionally  assign  their  values  to  hledger
                                  fields
       Field assignment           assign a CSV value or interpolated text  value
                                  to a hledger field

       if block                   conditionally assign values to hledger fields,
                                  or skip a record or end (skip rest of file)
       if table                   conditionally assign values to hledger fields,
                                  using compact syntax
       balance-type               select    which   type   of   balance   asser-
                                  tions/assignments to generate
       include                    inline another CSV rules file

       Working with CSV tips can be found below, including How CSV  rules  are
       evaluated.

   separator
       You  can  use the separator rule to read other kinds of character-sepa-
       rated data.  The argument is any single  separator  character,  or  the
       words  tab or space (case insensitive).  Eg, for comma-separated values
       (CSV):

              separator ,

       or for semicolon-separated values (SSV):

              separator ;

       or for tab-separated values (TSV):

              separator TAB

       If the input file has a .csv, .ssv or .tsv file extension (or  a  csv:,
       ssv:, tsv: prefix), the appropriate separator will be inferred automat-
       ically, and you won't need this rule.

   skip
              skip N

       The word skip followed by a number (or  no  number,  meaning  1)  tells
       hledger  to  ignore this many non-empty lines at the start of the input
       data.  (Empty/blank lines are skipped automatically, so you don't  need
       to  count  those.)   You'll  need  this whenever your CSV data contains
       header lines.  Header lines skipped in this way are  ignored,  and  not
       parsed as CSV.

       skip can also be used inside if blocks (described below), to skip indi-
       vidual data records.  Note  records  skipped  in  this  way  are  still
       required to be valid CSV, even though otherwise ignored.

   date-format
              date-format DATEFMT

       This  is  a  helper for the date (and date2) fields.  If your CSV dates
       are not formatted like YYYY-MM-DD,  YYYY/MM/DD  or  YYYY.MM.DD,  you'll
       need  to  add  a date-format rule describing them with a strptime-style
       date   parsing   pattern   -   see    https://hackage.haskell.org/pack-
       age/time/docs/Data-Time-Format.html#v:formatTime.    The  pattern  must
       parse the CSV date value completely.  Some examples:

              # MM/DD/YY
              date-format %m/%d/%y

              # D/M/YYYY
              # The - makes leading zeros optional.
              date-format %-d/%-m/%Y

              # YYYY-Mmm-DD
              date-format %Y-%h-%d

              # M/D/YYYY HH:MM AM some other junk
              # Note the time and junk must be fully parsed, though only the date is used.
              date-format %-m/%-d/%Y %l:%M %p some other junk

   timezone
              timezone TIMEZONE

       When CSV contains date-times that are  implicitly  in  some  time  zone
       other than yours, but containing no explicit time zone information, you
       can use this rule to declare the CSV's native time  zone,  which  helps
       prevent off-by-one dates.

       When  the  CSV  date-times  do contain time zone information, you don't
       need this rule; instead, use %Z in date-format (or %z,  %EZ,  %Ez;  see
       the formatTime link above).

       In either of these cases, hledger will do a time-zone-aware conversion,
       localising the CSV date-times to your current system time zone.  If you
       prefer to localise to some other time zone, eg for reproducibility, you
       can (on unix at least) set the output timezone with the TZ  environment
       variable, eg:

              $ TZ=-1000 hledger print -f foo.csv  # or TZ=-1000 hledger import foo.csv

       timezone  currently  does  not understand timezone names, except "UTC",
       "GMT", "EST", "EDT", "CST", "CDT", "MST", "MDT", "PST", or "PDT".   For
       others, use numeric format: +HHMM or -HHMM.

   newest-first
       hledger tries to ensure that the generated transactions will be ordered
       chronologically, including  intra-day  transactions.   Usually  it  can
       auto-detect  how the CSV records are ordered.  But if it encounters CSV
       where all records are on the same date, it assumes that the records are
       oldest  first.  If in fact the CSV's records are normally newest first,
       like:

              2022-10-01, txn 3...
              2022-10-01, txn 2...
              2022-10-01, txn 1...

       you can add the newest-first rule to help hledger generate the transac-
       tions in correct order.

              # same-day CSV records are newest first
              newest-first

   intra-day-reversed
       CSV  records  for each day are sometimes ordered in reverse compared to
       the overall date order.  Eg, here  dates  are  newest  first,  but  the
       transactions on each date are oldest first:

              2022-10-02, txn 3...
              2022-10-02, txn 4...
              2022-10-01, txn 1...
              2022-10-01, txn 2...

       In  this  situation,  add the intra-day-reversed rule, and hledger will
       compensate, improving the order of transactions.

              # transactions within each day are reversed with respect to the overall date order
              intra-day-reversed

   decimal-mark
              decimal-mark .

       or:

              decimal-mark ,

       hledger automatically accepts either period or comma as a decimal  mark
       when  parsing  numbers (cf Amounts).  However if any numbers in the CSV
       contain digit group marks,  such  as  thousand-separating  commas,  you
       should  declare  the  decimal  mark explicitly with this rule, to avoid
       misparsed numbers.

   fields list
              fields FIELDNAME1, FIELDNAME2, ...

       A fields list (the word fields followed by comma-separated field names)
       is optional, but convenient.  It does two things:

       1. It  names  the  CSV field in each column.  This can be convenient if
          you are referencing them in other rules, so you can  say  %SomeField
          instead of remembering %13.

       2. Whenever  you  use one of the special hledger field names (described
          below), it assigns the CSV value in this position  to  that  hledger
          field.   This  is  the quickest way to populate hledger's fields and
          build a transaction.

       Here's an example that says "use the 1st, 2nd and  4th  fields  as  the
       transaction's  date,  description  and amount; name the last two fields
       for later reference; and ignore the others":

              fields date, description, , amount, , , somefield, anotherfield

       In a fields list, the separator is always comma; it is unrelated to the
       CSV file's separator.  Also:

       o There must be least two items in the list (at least one comma).

       o Field  names may not contain spaces.  Spaces before/after field names
         are optional.

       o Field names may contain _ (underscore) or - (hyphen).

       o Fields you don't care about can be given a dummy  name  or  an  empty
         name.

       If  the  CSV contains column headings, it's convenient to use these for
       your  field  names,  suitably  modified  (eg  lower-cased  with  spaces
       replaced by underscores).

       Sometimes  you may want to alter a CSV field name to avoid assigning to
       a hledger field with the same name.  Eg you could call the CSV's  "bal-
       ance"  field balance_ to avoid directly setting hledger's balance field
       (and generating a balance assertion).

   Field assignment
              HLEDGERFIELD FIELDVALUE

       Field assignments are the more flexible way to  assign  CSV  values  to
       hledger fields.  They can be used instead of or in addition to a fields
       list (see above).

       To assign a value to a hledger field, write the field name (any of  the
       standard  hledger  field/pseudo-field  names,  defined below), a space,
       followed by a text value on the same line.  This text value may  inter-
       polate  CSV  fields,  referenced  by  their 1-based position in the CSV
       record (%N), or by the name they were given in the fields  list  (%CSV-
       FIELD).

       Some examples:

              # set the amount to the 4th CSV field, with " USD" appended
              amount %4 USD

              # combine three fields to make a comment, containing note: and date: tags
              comment note: %somefield - %anotherfield, date: %1

       Tips:

       o Interpolation  strips  outer  whitespace  (so  a CSV value like " 1 "
         becomes 1 when interpolated) (#1051).

       o Interpolations always refer to a CSV field - you can't interpolate  a
         hledger field.  (See Referencing other fields below).

   Field names
       Note  the  two  kinds  of  field names mentioned here, and used only in
       hledger CSV rules files:

       1. CSV field names (CSVFIELD in these docs): you  can  optionally  name
          the  CSV columns for easy reference (since hledger doesn't yet auto-
          matically recognise column headings in a CSV file), by writing arbi-
          trary names in a fields list, eg:

                  fields When, What, Some_Id, Net, Total, Foo, Bar

       2. Special  hledger  field names (HLEDGERFIELD in these docs): you must
          set at least some of these to generate the hledger transaction  from
          a  CSV  record,  by  writing  them  as the left hand side of a field
          assignment, eg:

                  date        %When
                  code        %Some_Id
                  description %What
                  comment     %Foo %Bar
                  amount1     $ %Total

           or directly in a fields list:

                  fields date, description, code, , amount1, Foo, Bar
                  currency $
                  comment  %Foo %Bar

       Here are all the special hledger field names available, and  what  hap-
       pens when you assign values to them:

   date field
       Assigning to date sets the transaction date.

   date2 field
       date2 sets the transaction's secondary date, if any.

   status field
       status sets the transaction's status, if any.

   code field
       code sets the transaction's code, if any.

   description field
       description sets the transaction's description, if any.

   comment field
       comment sets the transaction's comment, if any.

       commentN, where N is a number, sets the Nth posting's comment.

       You  can  assign multi-line comments by writing literal \n in the code.
       A comment starting with \n will begin on a new line.

       Comments can contain tags, as usual.

   account field
       Assigning to accountN, where N is 1 to 99, sets the account name of the
       Nth posting, and causes that posting to be generated.

       Most  often  there are two postings, so you'll want to set account1 and
       account2.  Typically account1 is associated with the CSV file,  and  is
       set  once  with  a top-level assignment, while account2 is set based on
       each transaction's description, in conditional rules.

       If a posting's account name is left unset but its amount  is  set  (see
       below),  a default account name will be chosen (like "expenses:unknown"
       or "income:unknown").

   amount field
       There are several "amount" field name variants,  useful  for  different
       situations:

       o amountN  sets  the amount of the Nth posting, and causes that posting
         to be generated.  By assigning to amount1, amount2,  ...   etc.   you
         can  generate  up  to  99 postings.  Posting numbers don't have to be
         consecutive; in certain situations using a high number might be help-
         ful to influence the layout of postings.

       o amountN-in  and  amountN-out  should be used instead, as a pair, when
         and only when the amount must be obtained from two  CSV  fields.   Eg
         when the CSV has separate Debit and Credit fields instead of a single
         Amount field.  Note:

         o Don't think "-in is for the first posting and -out is for the  sec-
           ond posting" - that's not correct.  Think: "amountN-in and amountN-
           out together detect the amount for posting N, by inspecting two CSV
           fields at once."

         o hledger  assumes  both  CSV fields are unsigned, and will automati-
           cally negate the -out value.

         o It also expects that at least one of the values is empty  or  zero,
           so  it  knows  which  one to ignore.  If that's not the case you'll
           need an if rule (see Setting amounts below).

       o amount, with no posting number (and similarly, amount-in and  amount-
         out  with no number) are an older syntax.  We keep them for backwards
         compatibility, and because they have special behaviour that is  some-
         times convenient:

         o They  set the amount of posting 1 and (negated) the amount of post-
           ing 2.

         o Posting 2's amount will be converted to  cost  if  it  has  a  cost
           price.

         o Any  of  the  newer  rules  for  posting  1  or 2 (like amount1, or
           amount2-in and amount2-out)  will  take  precedence.   This  allows
           incrementally migrating old rules files to the new syntax.

       There's  more to say about amount-setting that doesn't fit here; please
       see also "Setting amounts" below.

   currency field
       currency sets a currency symbol,  to  be  prepended  to  all  postings'
       amounts.   You  can  use this if the CSV amounts do not have a currency
       symbol, eg if it is in a separate column.

       currencyN prepends a currency symbol to just the Nth posting's  amount.

   balance field
       balanceN  sets  a balance assertion amount (or if the posting amount is
       left empty, a balance assignment) on posting N.

       balance is a compatibility spelling for hledger <1.17; it is equivalent
       to balance1.

       You  can  adjust the type of assertion/assignment with the balance-type
       rule (see below).

       See Tips below for more about setting amounts and currency.

   if block
       Rules can be applied conditionally, depending on patterns  in  the  CSV
       data.   This allows flexibility; in particular, it is how you can cate-
       gorise transactions, selecting an appropriate  account  name  based  on
       their  description  (for  example).  There are two ways to write condi-
       tional rules: "if blocks", described here, and "if  tables",  described
       below.

       An  if  block is the word if and one or more "matcher" expressions (can
       be a word or phrase), one per line, starting either on the same or next
       line; followed by one or more indented rules.  Eg,

              if MATCHER
               RULE

       or

              if
              MATCHER
              MATCHER
              MATCHER
               RULE
               RULE

       If  any  of  the  matchers  succeeds, all of the indented rules will be
       applied.  They are usually field assignments, but the following special
       rules may also be used within an if block:

       o skip  -  skips the matched CSV record (generating no transaction from
         it)

       o end - skips the rest of the current CSV file.

       Some examples:

              # if the record contains "groceries", set account2 to "expenses:groceries"
              if groceries
               account2 expenses:groceries

              # if the record contains any of these phrases, set account2 and a transaction comment as shown
              if
              monthly service fee
              atm transaction fee
              banking thru software
               account2 expenses:business:banking
               comment  XXX deductible ? check it

              # if an empty record is seen (assuming five fields), ignore the rest of the CSV file
              if ,,,,
               end

   Matchers
       There are two kinds:

       1. A record matcher is a word or single-line text fragment  or  regular
          expression  (REGEX),  which  hledger will try to match case-insensi-
          tively anywhere within the CSV record.
       Eg: whole foods

       2. A field matcher is preceded with a percent sign and CSV  field  name
          (%CSVFIELD  REGEX).  hledger will try to match these just within the
          named CSV field.
       Eg: %date 2023

       The regular expression is (as usual in hledger) a POSIX extended  regu-
       lar  expression,  that  also  supports GNU word boundaries (\b, \B, \<,
       \>), and nothing else.  If you have trouble, see "Regular  expressions"
       in the hledger manual (https://hledger.org/hledger.html#regular-expres-
       sions).

       With record matchers, it's important to know that the record matched is
       not  the  original  CSV  record, but a modified one: separators will be
       converted to commas, and enclosing double  quotes  (but  not  enclosing
       whitespace)  are removed.  So for example, when reading an SSV file, if
       the original record was:

              2020-01-01; "Acme, Inc.";  1,000

       the regex would see, and try to match, this modified record text:

              2020-01-01,Acme, Inc.,  1,000

       When an if block has multiple matchers, they are combined as follows:

       o By default they are OR'd (any one of them can match)

       o When a matcher is preceded by ampersand (&) it will  be  AND'ed  with
         the previous matcher (both of them must match).

       There's not yet an easy syntax to negate a matcher.

   if table
       "if  tables"  are  an  alternative  to if blocks; they can express many
       matchers and field assignments in a more compact tabular  format,  like
       this:

              if,HLEDGERFIELD1,HLEDGERFIELD2,...
              MATCHERA,VALUE1,VALUE2,...
              MATCHERB,VALUE1,VALUE2,...
              MATCHERC,VALUE1,VALUE2,...
              <empty line>

       The  first character after if is taken to be the separator for the rest
       of the table.  It should be a non-alphanumeric character like  ,  or  |
       that  does  not  appear anywhere else in the table.  (Note: it is unre-
       lated to the CSV file's separator.)  Whitespace  can  be  used  in  the
       matcher  lines  for readability, but not in the if line currently.  The
       table must be terminated by an empty line (or end of file).  Each  line
       must contain the same number of separators; empty values are allowed.

       The  above means: try all of the matchers; whenever a matcher succeeds,
       assign all of the values on that  line  to  the  corresponding  hledger
       fields;  later  lines  can overrider earlier ones.  It is equivalent to
       this sequence of if blocks:

              if MATCHERA
                HLEDGERFIELD1 VALUE1
                HLEDGERFIELD2 VALUE2
                ...

              if MATCHERB
                HLEDGERFIELD1 VALUE1
                HLEDGERFIELD2 VALUE2
                ...

              if MATCHERC
                HLEDGERFIELD1 VALUE1
                HLEDGERFIELD2 VALUE2
                ...

       Example:

              if,account2,comment
              atm transaction fee,expenses:business:banking,deductible? check it
              %description groceries,expenses:groceries,
              2020/01/12.*Plumbing LLC,expenses:house:upkeep,emergency plumbing call-out

   balance-type
       Balance assertions generated by assigning to balanceN are of the simple
       =  type  by  default, which is a single-commodity, subaccount-excluding
       assertion.  You may find the subaccount-including variants more useful,
       eg  if  you  have  created some virtual subaccounts of checking to help
       with budgeting.  You can select a different type of assertion with  the
       balance-type rule:

              # balance assertions will consider all commodities and all subaccounts
              balance-type ==*

       Here are the balance assertion types for quick reference:

              =    single commodity, exclude subaccounts
              =*   single commodity, include subaccounts
              ==   multi commodity,  exclude subaccounts
              ==*  multi commodity,  include subaccounts

   include
              include RULESFILE

       This  includes  the  contents  of another CSV rules file at this point.
       RULESFILE is an absolute file path or a path relative  to  the  current
       file's  directory.  This can be useful for sharing common rules between
       several rules files, eg:

              # someaccount.csv.rules

              ## someaccount-specific rules
              fields   date,description,amount
              account1 assets:someaccount
              account2 expenses:misc

              ## common rules
              include categorisation.rules

   Working with CSV
       Some tips:

   Rapid feedback
       It's a good idea to get rapid feedback  while  creating/troubleshooting
       CSV rules.  Here's a good way, using entr from eradman.com/entrproject:

              $ ls foo.csv* | entr bash -c 'echo ----; hledger -f foo.csv print desc:SOMEDESC'

       A desc: query (eg) is used to select just one, or a  few,  transactions
       of  interest.   "bash  -c"  is used to run multiple commands, so we can
       echo a separator each time the command re-runs,  making  it  easier  to
       read the output.

   Valid CSV
       Note  that  hledger  will only accept valid CSV conforming to RFC 4180,
       and equivalent SSV and TSV formats (like RFC 4180 but with semicolon or
       tab as separators).  This means, eg:

       o Values may be enclosed in double quotes, or not.  Enclosing in single
         quotes is not allowed.  (Eg 'A','B' is rejected.)

       o When values are enclosed in double quotes, spaces outside the  quotes
         are not allowed.  (Eg "A", "B" is rejected.)

       o When  values  are not enclosed in quotes, they may not contain double
         quotes.  (Eg A"A, B is rejected.)

       If your CSV/SSV/TSV is not valid in this sense, you'll need  to  trans-
       form  it before reading with hledger.  Try using sed, or a more permis-
       sive CSV parser like python's csv lib.

   File Extension
       To help hledger choose the CSV file reader and  show  the  right  error
       messages  (and  choose the right field separator character by default),
       it's best if CSV/SSV/TSV files are named with  a  .csv,  .ssv  or  .tsv
       filename extension.  (More about this at Data formats.)

       When  reading  files with the "wrong" extension, you can ensure the CSV
       reader (and the default field separator) by  prefixing  the  file  path
       with csv:, ssv: or tsv:: Eg:

              $ hledger -f ssv:foo.dat print

       You can also override the default field separator with a separator rule
       if needed.

   Reading CSV from standard input
       You'll need the file format prefix when reading CSV  from  stdin  also,
       since hledger assumes journal format by default.  Eg:

              $ cat foo.dat | hledger -f ssv:- print

   Reading multiple CSV files
       If  you  use  multiple  -f  options to read multiple CSV files at once,
       hledger will look for a correspondingly-named rules file for  each  CSV
       file.   But if you use the --rules-file option, that rules file will be
       used for all the CSV files.

   Valid transactions
       After reading a CSV file, hledger post-processes and validates the gen-
       erated journal entries as it would for a journal file - balancing them,
       applying balance assignments, and canonicalising  amount  styles.   Any
       errors  at this stage will be reported in the usual way, displaying the
       problem entry.

       There is one exception: balance assertions, if you have generated them,
       will  not  be checked, since normally these will work only when the CSV
       data is part of the main journal.  If you  do  need  to  check  balance
       assertions generated from CSV right away, pipe into another hledger:

              $ hledger -f file.csv print | hledger -f- print

   Deduplicating, importing
       When  you  download a CSV file periodically, eg to get your latest bank
       transactions, the new file may overlap with  the  old  one,  containing
       some of the same records.

       The import command will (a) detect the new transactions, and (b) append
       just those transactions to your main journal.  It is idempotent, so you
       don't  have to remember how many times you ran it or with which version
       of the CSV.  (It keeps state in a hidden .latest.FILE.csv file.)   This
       is the easiest way to import CSV data.  Eg:

              # download the latest CSV files, then run this command.
              # Note, no -f flags needed here.
              $ hledger import *.csv [--dry]

       This  method  works  for  most CSV files.  (Where records have a stable
       chronological order, and new records appear only at the new end.)

       A number of other tools and workflows, hledger-specific and  otherwise,
       exist for converting, deduplicating, classifying and managing CSV data.
       See:

       o https://hledger.org/cookbook.html#setups-and-workflows

       o https://plaintextaccounting.org -> data import/conversion

   Setting amounts
       Continuing from amount field above, here are more tips on handling var-
       ious amount-setting situations:

       1. If the amount is in a single CSV field:

           a. If its sign indicates direction of flow:
           Assign  it  to amountN, to set the Nth posting's amount.  N is usu-
           ally 1 or 2 but can go up to 99.

           b. If another field indicates direction of flow:
           Use one or more conditional rules to  set  the  appropriate  amount
           sign.  Eg:

                  # assume a withdrawal unless Type contains "deposit":
                  amount1  -%Amount
                  if %Type deposit
                    amount1  %Amount

       2. If the amount is in one of two CSV fields (eg Debit and Credit):

           a. If both fields are unsigned:
           Assign the fields to amountN-in and amountN-out.  This sets posting
           N's amount to whichever of these has a non-zero value.  If it's the
           -out value, the amount will be negated.

           b. If either field is signed:
           Use a conditional rule to flip the sign when needed.  Eg below, the
           -out value already has a minus sign so we undo hledger's  automatic
           negating by negating once more (but only if the field is non-empty,
           so that we don't leave a minus sign by itself):

                  fields date, description, amount1-in, amount1-out
                  if %amount1-out [1-9]
                   amount1-out -%amount1-out

           c. If both fields can contain a non-zero  value  (or  both  can  be
              empty):
           The -in/-out rules normally choose the value which is non-zero/non-
           empty.  Some value pairs can be ambiguous, such as 1 and none.  For
           such  cases,  use conditional rules to help select the amount.  Eg,
           to handle the above you could select the value containing  non-zero
           digits:

                  fields date, description, in, out
                  if %in [1-9]
                   amount1 %in
                  if %out [1-9]
                   amount1 %out

       3. If you want posting 2's amount converted to cost:
       Use the unnumbered amount (or amount-in and amount-out) syntax.

       4. If the CSV has only balance amounts, not transaction amounts:
       Assign  to  balanceN,  to  set a balance assignment on the Nth posting,
       causing the posting's amount to be calculated  automatically.   balance
       with no number is equivalent to balance1.  In this situation hledger is
       more likely to guess the wrong default account name, so you may need to
       set that explicitly.

   Amount signs
       There  is  some  special handling for amount signs, to simplify parsing
       and sign-flipping:

       o If an amount value begins with a plus sign:
       that will be removed: +AMT becomes AMT

       o If an amount value is parenthesised:
       it will be de-parenthesised and sign-flipped: (AMT) becomes -AMT

       o If an amount value has two minus signs (or two sets  of  parentheses,
         or a minus sign and parentheses):
       they cancel out and will be removed: --AMT or -(AMT) becomes AMT

       o If  an  amount value contains just a sign (or just a set of parenthe-
         ses):
       that is removed, making it an empty value.  "+" or "-" or "()"  becomes
       "".

   Setting currency/commodity
       If  the  currency/commodity  symbol  is  included  in  the CSV's amount
       field(s):

              2020-01-01,foo,$123.00

       you don't have to do anything special for the commodity symbol, it will
       be assigned as part of the amount.  Eg:

              fields date,description,amount

              2020-01-01 foo
                  expenses:unknown         $123.00
                  income:unknown          $-123.00

       If the currency is provided as a separate CSV field:

              2020-01-01,foo,USD,123.00

       You can assign that to the currency pseudo-field, which has the special
       effect of prepending itself to every amount in the transaction (on  the
       left, with no separating space):

              fields date,description,currency,amount

              2020-01-01 foo
                  expenses:unknown       USD123.00
                  income:unknown        USD-123.00

       Or,  you  can  use a field assignment to construct the amount yourself,
       with more control.  Eg to put the symbol on the right, and separated by
       a space:

              fields date,description,cur,amt
              amount %amt %cur

              2020-01-01 foo
                  expenses:unknown        123.00 USD
                  income:unknown         -123.00 USD

       Note  we  used a temporary field name (cur) that is not currency - that
       would trigger the prepending effect, which we don't want here.

   Amount decimal places
       Like amounts in a journal file, the amounts generated by CSV rules like
       amount1 influence commodity display styles, such as the number of deci-
       mal places displayed in reports.

       The original amounts as written in the CSV file do not  affect  display
       style (because we don't yet reliably know their commodity).

   Referencing other fields
       In  field assignments, you can interpolate only CSV fields, not hledger
       fields.  In the example below, there's both a CSV field and  a  hledger
       field  named  amount1, but %amount1 always means the CSV field, not the
       hledger field:

              # Name the third CSV field "amount1"
              fields date,description,amount1

              # Set hledger's amount1 to the CSV amount1 field followed by USD
              amount1 %amount1 USD

              # Set comment to the CSV amount1 (not the amount1 assigned above)
              comment %amount1

       Here, since there's no CSV amount1 field, %amount1 will produce a  lit-
       eral "amount1":

              fields date,description,csvamount
              amount1 %csvamount USD
              # Can't interpolate amount1 here
              comment %amount1

       When  there  are  multiple field assignments to the same hledger field,
       only the last one takes effect.  Here, comment's value will be be B, or
       C if "something" is matched, but never A:

              comment A
              comment B
              if something
               comment C

   How CSV rules are evaluated
       Here's  how  to  think of CSV rules being evaluated (if you really need
       to).  First,

       o include - all includes are inlined, from top to bottom, depth  first.
         (At  each  include  point the file is inlined and scanned for further
         includes, recursively, before proceeding.)

       Then "global" rules are  evaluated,  top  to  bottom.   If  a  rule  is
       repeated, the last one wins:

       o skip (at top level)

       o date-format

       o newest-first

       o fields - names the CSV fields, optionally sets up initial assignments
         to hledger fields

       Then for each CSV record in turn:

       o test all if blocks.  If any of them contain  a  end  rule,  skip  all
         remaining CSV records.  Otherwise if any of them contain a skip rule,
         skip that many CSV records.   If  there  are  multiple  matched  skip
         rules, the first one wins.

       o collect  all field assignments at top level and in matched if blocks.
         When there are multiple assignments for a field, keep only  the  last
         one.

       o compute  a  value  for  each  hledger field - either the one that was
         assigned to it (and  interpolate  the  %CSVFIELD  references),  or  a
         default

       o generate a hledger transaction (journal entry) from these values.

       This  is all part of the CSV reader, one of several readers hledger can
       use to parse input files.  When all files have been read  successfully,
       the  transactions  are passed as input to whichever hledger command the
       user specified.


   Well factored rules
       Some things than can help reduce duplication and  complexity  in  rules
       files:

       o Extracting  common  rules  usable with multiple CSV files into a com-
         mon.rules, and adding include common.rules to each CSV's rules  file.

       o Splitting if blocks into smaller if blocks, extracting the frequently
         used parts.

   CSV rules examples
   Bank of Ireland
       Here's a CSV with two amount fields (Debit and Credit), and  a  balance
       field,  which we can use to add balance assertions, which is not neces-
       sary but provides extra error checking:

              Date,Details,Debit,Credit,Balance
              07/12/2012,LODGMENT       529898,,10.0,131.21
              07/12/2012,PAYMENT,5,,126

              # bankofireland-checking.csv.rules

              # skip the header line
              skip

              # name the csv fields, and assign some of them as journal entry fields
              fields  date, description, amount-out, amount-in, balance

              # We generate balance assertions by assigning to "balance"
              # above, but you may sometimes need to remove these because:
              #
              # - the CSV balance differs from the true balance,
              #   by up to 0.0000000000005 in my experience
              #
              # - it is sometimes calculated based on non-chronological ordering,
              #   eg when multiple transactions clear on the same day

              # date is in UK/Ireland format
              date-format  %d/%m/%Y

              # set the currency
              currency  EUR

              # set the base account for all txns
              account1  assets:bank:boi:checking

              $ hledger -f bankofireland-checking.csv print
              2012-12-07 LODGMENT       529898
                  assets:bank:boi:checking         EUR10.0 = EUR131.2
                  income:unknown                  EUR-10.0

              2012-12-07 PAYMENT
                  assets:bank:boi:checking         EUR-5.0 = EUR126.0
                  expenses:unknown                  EUR5.0

       The balance assertions don't raise an error above, because we're  read-
       ing  directly  from  CSV, but they will be checked if these entries are
       imported into a journal file.

   Coinbase
       A simple example with some  CSV  from  Coinbase.   The  spot  price  is
       recorded  using  cost  notation.   The  legacy amount field name conve-
       niently sets amount 2 (posting 2's amount) to the total cost.

              # Timestamp,Transaction Type,Asset,Quantity Transacted,Spot Price Currency,Spot Price at Transaction,Subtotal,Total (inclusive of fees and/or spread),Fees and/or Spread,Notes
              # 2021-12-30T06:57:59Z,Receive,USDC,100,GBP,0.740000,"","","","Received 100.00 USDC from an external account"

              # coinbase.csv.rules
              skip         1
              fields       Timestamp,Transaction_Type,Asset,Quantity_Transacted,Spot_Price_Currency,Spot_Price_at_Transaction,Subtotal,Total,Fees_Spread,Notes
              date         %Timestamp
              date-format  %Y-%m-%dT%T%Z
              description  %Notes
              account1     assets:coinbase:cc
              amount       %Quantity_Transacted %Asset @ %Spot_Price_at_Transaction %Spot_Price_Currency

              $ hledger print -f coinbase.csv
              2021-12-30 Received 100.00 USDC from an external account
                  assets:coinbase:cc    100 USDC @ 0.740000 GBP
                  income:unknown                 -74.000000 GBP

   Amazon
       Here we convert amazon.com order history, and use an if block to gener-
       ate  a third posting if there's a fee.  (In practice you'd probably get
       this data from your bank instead, but it's an example.)

              "Date","Type","To/From","Name","Status","Amount","Fees","Transaction ID"
              "Jul 29, 2012","Payment","To","Foo.","Completed","$20.00","$0.00","16000000000000DGLNJPI1P9B8DKPVHL"
              "Jul 30, 2012","Payment","To","Adapteva, Inc.","Completed","$25.00","$1.00","17LA58JSKRD4HDGLNJPI1P9B8DKPVHL"

              # amazon-orders.csv.rules

              # skip one header line
              skip 1

              # name the csv fields, and assign the transaction's date, amount and code.
              # Avoided the "status" and "amount" hledger field names to prevent confusion.
              fields date, _, toorfrom, name, amzstatus, amzamount, fees, code

              # how to parse the date
              date-format %b %-d, %Y

              # combine two fields to make the description
              description %toorfrom %name

              # save the status as a tag
              comment     status:%amzstatus

              # set the base account for all transactions
              account1    assets:amazon
              # leave amount1 blank so it can balance the other(s).
              # I'm assuming amzamount excludes the fees, don't remember

              # set a generic account2
              account2    expenses:misc
              amount2     %amzamount
              # and maybe refine it further:
              #include categorisation.rules

              # add a third posting for fees, but only if they are non-zero.
              if %fees [1-9]
               account3    expenses:fees
               amount3     %fees

              $ hledger -f amazon-orders.csv print
              2012-07-29 (16000000000000DGLNJPI1P9B8DKPVHL) To Foo.  ; status:Completed
                  assets:amazon
                  expenses:misc          $20.00

              2012-07-30 (17LA58JSKRD4HDGLNJPI1P9B8DKPVHL) To Adapteva, Inc.  ; status:Completed
                  assets:amazon
                  expenses:misc          $25.00
                  expenses:fees           $1.00

   Paypal
       Here's a real-world rules file for (customised) Paypal CSV,  with  some
       Paypal-specific rules, and a second rules file included:

              "Date","Time","TimeZone","Name","Type","Status","Currency","Gross","Fee","Net","From Email Address","To Email Address","Transaction ID","Item Title","Item ID","Reference Txn ID","Receipt ID","Balance","Note"
              "10/01/2019","03:46:20","PDT","Calm Radio","Subscription Payment","Completed","USD","-6.99","0.00","-6.99","simon@joyful.com","memberships@calmradio.com","60P57143A8206782E","MONTHLY - $1 for the first 2 Months: Me - Order 99309. Item total: $1.00 USD first 2 months, then $6.99 / Month","","I-R8YLY094FJYR","","-6.99",""
              "10/01/2019","03:46:20","PDT","","Bank Deposit to PP Account ","Pending","USD","6.99","0.00","6.99","","simon@joyful.com","0TU1544T080463733","","","60P57143A8206782E","","0.00",""
              "10/01/2019","08:57:01","PDT","Patreon","PreApproved Payment Bill User Payment","Completed","USD","-7.00","0.00","-7.00","simon@joyful.com","support@patreon.com","2722394R5F586712G","Patreon* Membership","","B-0PG93074E7M86381M","","-7.00",""
              "10/01/2019","08:57:01","PDT","","Bank Deposit to PP Account ","Pending","USD","7.00","0.00","7.00","","simon@joyful.com","71854087RG994194F","Patreon* Membership","","2722394R5F586712G","","0.00",""
              "10/19/2019","03:02:12","PDT","Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.","Subscription Payment","Completed","USD","-2.00","0.00","-2.00","simon@joyful.com","tle@wikimedia.org","K9U43044RY432050M","Monthly donation to the Wikimedia Foundation","","I-R5C3YUS3285L","","-2.00",""
              "10/19/2019","03:02:12","PDT","","Bank Deposit to PP Account ","Pending","USD","2.00","0.00","2.00","","simon@joyful.com","3XJ107139A851061F","","","K9U43044RY432050M","","0.00",""
              "10/22/2019","05:07:06","PDT","Noble Benefactor","Subscription Payment","Completed","USD","10.00","-0.59","9.41","noble@bene.fac.tor","simon@joyful.com","6L8L1662YP1334033","Joyful Systems","","I-KC9VBGY2GWDB","","9.41",""

              # paypal-custom.csv.rules

              # Tips:
              # Export from Activity -> Statements -> Custom -> Activity download
              # Suggested transaction type: "Balance affecting"
              # Paypal's default fields in 2018 were:
              # "Date","Time","TimeZone","Name","Type","Status","Currency","Gross","Fee","Net","From Email Address","To Email Address","Transaction ID","Shipping Address","Address Status","Item Title","Item ID","Shipping and Handling Amount","Insurance Amount","Sales Tax","Option 1 Name","Option 1 Value","Option 2 Name","Option 2 Value","Reference Txn ID","Invoice Number","Custom Number","Quantity","Receipt ID","Balance","Address Line 1","Address Line 2/District/Neighborhood","Town/City","State/Province/Region/County/Territory/Prefecture/Republic","Zip/Postal Code","Country","Contact Phone Number","Subject","Note","Country Code","Balance Impact"
              # This rules file assumes the following more detailed fields, configured in "Customize report fields":
              # "Date","Time","TimeZone","Name","Type","Status","Currency","Gross","Fee","Net","From Email Address","To Email Address","Transaction ID","Item Title","Item ID","Reference Txn ID","Receipt ID","Balance","Note"

              fields date, time, timezone, description_, type, status_, currency, grossamount, feeamount, netamount, fromemail, toemail, code, itemtitle, itemid, referencetxnid, receiptid, balance, note

              skip  1

              date-format  %-m/%-d/%Y

              # ignore some paypal events
              if
              In Progress
              Temporary Hold
              Update to
               skip

              # add more fields to the description
              description %description_ %itemtitle

              # save some other fields as tags
              comment  itemid:%itemid, fromemail:%fromemail, toemail:%toemail, time:%time, type:%type, status:%status_

              # convert to short currency symbols
              if %currency USD
               currency $
              if %currency EUR
               currency E
              if %currency GBP
               currency P

              # generate postings

              # the first posting will be the money leaving/entering my paypal account
              # (negative means leaving my account, in all amount fields)
              account1 assets:online:paypal
              amount1  %netamount

              # the second posting will be money sent to/received from other party
              # (account2 is set below)
              amount2  -%grossamount

              # if there's a fee, add a third posting for the money taken by paypal.
              if %feeamount [1-9]
               account3 expenses:banking:paypal
               amount3  -%feeamount
               comment3 business:

              # choose an account for the second posting

              # override the default account names:
              # if the amount is positive, it's income (a debit)
              if %grossamount ^[^-]
               account2 income:unknown
              # if negative, it's an expense (a credit)
              if %grossamount ^-
               account2 expenses:unknown

              # apply common rules for setting account2 & other tweaks
              include common.rules

              # apply some overrides specific to this csv

              # Transfers from/to bank. These are usually marked Pending,
              # which can be disregarded in this case.
              if
              Bank Account
              Bank Deposit to PP Account
               description %type for %referencetxnid %itemtitle
               account2 assets:bank:wf:pchecking
               account1 assets:online:paypal

              # Currency conversions
              if Currency Conversion
               account2 equity:currency conversion

              # common.rules

              if
              darcs
              noble benefactor
               account2 revenues:foss donations:darcshub
               comment2 business:

              if
              Calm Radio
               account2 expenses:online:apps

              if
              electronic frontier foundation
              Patreon
              wikimedia
              Advent of Code
               account2 expenses:dues

              if Google
               account2 expenses:online:apps
               description google | music

              $ hledger -f paypal-custom.csv  print
              2019-10-01 (60P57143A8206782E) Calm Radio MONTHLY - $1 for the first 2 Months: Me - Order 99309. Item total: $1.00 USD first 2 months, then $6.99 / Month  ; itemid:, fromemail:simon@joyful.com, toemail:memberships@calmradio.com, time:03:46:20, type:Subscription Payment, status:Completed
                  assets:online:paypal          $-6.99 = $-6.99
                  expenses:online:apps           $6.99

              2019-10-01 (0TU1544T080463733) Bank Deposit to PP Account for 60P57143A8206782E  ; itemid:, fromemail:, toemail:simon@joyful.com, time:03:46:20, type:Bank Deposit to PP Account, status:Pending
                  assets:online:paypal               $6.99 = $0.00
                  assets:bank:wf:pchecking          $-6.99

              2019-10-01 (2722394R5F586712G) Patreon Patreon* Membership  ; itemid:, fromemail:simon@joyful.com, toemail:support@patreon.com, time:08:57:01, type:PreApproved Payment Bill User Payment, status:Completed
                  assets:online:paypal          $-7.00 = $-7.00
                  expenses:dues                  $7.00

              2019-10-01 (71854087RG994194F) Bank Deposit to PP Account for 2722394R5F586712G Patreon* Membership  ; itemid:, fromemail:, toemail:simon@joyful.com, time:08:57:01, type:Bank Deposit to PP Account, status:Pending
                  assets:online:paypal               $7.00 = $0.00
                  assets:bank:wf:pchecking          $-7.00

              2019-10-19 (K9U43044RY432050M) Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. Monthly donation to the Wikimedia Foundation  ; itemid:, fromemail:simon@joyful.com, toemail:tle@wikimedia.org, time:03:02:12, type:Subscription Payment, status:Completed
                  assets:online:paypal             $-2.00 = $-2.00
                  expenses:dues                     $2.00
                  expenses:banking:paypal      ; business:

              2019-10-19 (3XJ107139A851061F) Bank Deposit to PP Account for K9U43044RY432050M  ; itemid:, fromemail:, toemail:simon@joyful.com, time:03:02:12, type:Bank Deposit to PP Account, status:Pending
                  assets:online:paypal               $2.00 = $0.00
                  assets:bank:wf:pchecking          $-2.00

              2019-10-22 (6L8L1662YP1334033) Noble Benefactor Joyful Systems  ; itemid:, fromemail:noble@bene.fac.tor, toemail:simon@joyful.com, time:05:07:06, type:Subscription Payment, status:Completed
                  assets:online:paypal                       $9.41 = $9.41
                  revenues:foss donations:darcshub         $-10.00  ; business:
                  expenses:banking:paypal                    $0.59  ; business:

Timeclock
       The time logging format of timeclock.el, as read by hledger.

       hledger  can read time logs in timeclock format.  As with Ledger, these
       are (a subset of) timeclock.el's format, containing clock-in and clock-
       out  entries  as in the example below.  The date is a simple date.  The
       time format is HH:MM[:SS][+-ZZZZ].  Seconds and timezone are  optional.
       The timezone, if present, must be four digits and is ignored (currently
       the time is always interpreted as a local time).  Lines beginning  with
       # or ; or *, and blank lines, are ignored.

              i 2015/03/30 09:00:00 some:account name  optional description after two spaces
              o 2015/03/30 09:20:00
              i 2015/03/31 22:21:45 another account
              o 2015/04/01 02:00:34

       hledger  treats  each  clock-in/clock-out pair as a transaction posting
       some number of hours to an account.  Or if the session spans more  than
       one  day, it is split into several transactions, one for each day.  For
       the above time log, hledger print generates these journal entries:

              $ hledger -f t.timeclock print
              2015-03-30 * optional description after two spaces
                  (some:account name)         0.33h

              2015-03-31 * 22:21-23:59
                  (another account)         1.64h

              2015-04-01 * 00:00-02:00
                  (another account)         2.01h

       Here is a sample.timeclock to download and some queries to try:

              $ hledger -f sample.timeclock balance                               # current time balances
              $ hledger -f sample.timeclock register -p 2009/3                    # sessions in march 2009
              $ hledger -f sample.timeclock register -p weekly --depth 1 --empty  # time summary by week

       To generate time logs, ie to clock in and clock out, you could:

       o use emacs and the built-in timeclock.el, or the  extended  timeclock-
         x.el and perhaps the extras in ledgerutils.el

       o at the command line, use these bash aliases: shell     alias ti="echo
         i `date '+%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S'` \$* >>$TIMELOG"      alias  to="echo  o
         `date '+%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S'` >>$TIMELOG"

       o or use the old ti and to scripts in the ledger 2.x repository.  These
         rely on a "timeclock" executable which I think is just the  ledger  2
         executable renamed.


Timedot
       timedot  format  is hledger's human-friendly time logging format.  Com-
       pared to timeclock format, it is

       o convenient for quick, approximate, and retroactive time logging

       o readable: you can see at a glance where time was spent.

       A timedot file contains a series of day entries, which might look  like
       this:

              2021-08-04
              hom:errands          .... ....
              fos:hledger:timedot  ..         ; docs
              per:admin:finance

       hledger  reads  this  as three time transactions on this day, with each
       dot representing a quarter-hour spent:

              $ hledger -f a.timedot print   # .timedot file extension activates the timedot reader
              2021-08-04 *
                  (hom:errands)            2.00

              2021-08-04 *
                  (fos:hledger:timedot)    0.50

              2021-08-04 *
                  (per:admin:finance)      0

       A day entry begins with a date line:

       o a non-indented simple date (Y-M-D, Y/M/D, or Y.M.D).

       Optionally this can be followed on the same line by

       o a common transaction description for this day

       o a common transaction comment for this day, after a semicolon (;).

       After the date line are zero or more optionally-indented time  transac-
       tion lines, consisting of:

       o an account name - any word or phrase, usually a hledger-style account
         name.

       o two or more spaces - a field  separator,  required  if  there  is  an
         amount (as in journal format).

       o a  timedot amount - dots representing quarter hours, or a number rep-
         resenting hours.

       o an optional comment beginning with semicolon.  This is ignored.

       In more detail, timedot amounts can be:

       o dots: zero or more period characters, each representing one  quarter-
         hour.   Spaces are ignored and can be used for grouping.  Eg: .... ..

       o a number, representing hours.  Eg: 1.5

       o a number immediately followed by a unit symbol s, m, h, d, w, mo,  or
         y, representing seconds, minutes, hours, days weeks, months or years.
         Eg 1.5h or 90m.  The following equivalencies are assumed:
       60s = 1m, 60m = 1h, 24h = 1d, 7d = 1w, 30d = 1mo,  365d  =  1y.   (This
       unit  will not be visible in the generated transaction amount, which is
       always in hours.)

       There is some added flexibility to help with keeping time log  data  in
       the same file as your notes, todo lists, etc.:

       o Blank lines and lines beginning with # or ; are ignored.

       o Before the first date line, lines beginning with * are ignored.  From
         the first date line onward, a sequence of *'s followed by a space  at
         beginning  of  lines (ie, the headline prefix used by Emacs Org mode)
         is ignored.  This means the time log can be kept under an  Org  head-
         line,  and date lines or time transaction lines can be Org headlines.

       o Lines not ending with a double-space and amount are parsed as  trans-
         actions  with  zero  amount.   (Most  hledger  reports  hide these by
         default; add -E to see them.)

       More examples:

              # on this day, 6h was spent on client work, 1.5h on haskell FOSS work, etc.
              2016/2/1
              inc:client1   .... .... .... .... .... ....
              fos:haskell   .... ..
              biz:research  .

              2016/2/2
              inc:client1   .... ....
              biz:research  .

              2016/2/3
              inc:client1   4
              fos:hledger   3
              biz:research  1

              * Time log
              ** 2020-01-01
              *** adm:time  .
              *** adm:finance  .

              * 2020 Work Diary
              ** Q1
              *** 2020-02-29
              **** DONE
              0700 yoga
              **** UNPLANNED
              **** BEGUN
              hom:chores
               cleaning  ...
               water plants
                outdoor - one full watering can
                indoor - light watering
              **** TODO
              adm:planning: trip
              *** LATER

       Reporting:

              $ hledger -f a.timedot print date:2016/2/2
              2016-02-02 *
                  (inc:client1)          2.00

              2016-02-02 *
                  (biz:research)          0.25

              $ hledger -f a.timedot bal --daily --tree
              Balance changes in 2016-02-01-2016-02-03:

                          ||  2016-02-01d  2016-02-02d  2016-02-03d
              ============++========================================
               biz        ||         0.25         0.25         1.00
                 research ||         0.25         0.25         1.00
               fos        ||         1.50            0         3.00
                 haskell  ||         1.50            0            0
                 hledger  ||            0            0         3.00
               inc        ||         6.00         2.00         4.00
                 client1  ||         6.00         2.00         4.00
              ------------++----------------------------------------
                          ||         7.75         2.25         8.00

       Using period instead of colon as account name separator:

              2016/2/4
              fos.hledger.timedot  4
              fos.ledger           ..

              $ hledger -f a.timedot --alias /\\./=: bal --tree
                              4.50  fos
                              4.00    hledger:timedot
                              0.50    ledger
              --------------------
                              4.50

       A sample.timedot file.

PART 3: REPORTING CONCEPTS
Time periods
   Report start & end date
       By default, most hledger reports will show the full span of time repre-
       sented  by  the  journal.   The  report start date will be the earliest
       transaction or posting date, and the report end date will be the latest
       transaction, posting, or market price date.

       Often  you  will  want  to see a shorter time span, such as the current
       month.  You can specify a  start  and/or  end  date  using  -b/--begin,
       -e/--end, -p/--period or a date: query (described below).  All of these
       accept the smart date syntax (below).

       Some notes:

       o End dates are exclusive, as in Ledger, so you should write  the  date
         after the last day you want to see in the report.

       o As  noted  in reporting options: among start/end dates specified with
         options, the last (i.e.  right-most) option takes precedence.

       o The effective report start and end dates are the intersection of  the
         start/end  dates  from options and that from date: queries.  That is,
         date:2019-01 date:2019 -p'2000 to  2030'  yields  January  2019,  the
         smallest common time span.

       o In  some  cases a report interval will adjust start/end dates to fall
         on interval boundaries (see below).

       Examples:


       -b 2016/3/17       begin on St. Patrick's day 2016
       -e 12/1            end  at  the  start  of  december  1st of the current year
                          (11/30 will be the last date included)
       -b thismonth       all transactions on or after the 1st of the current month
       -p thismonth       all transactions in the current month
       date:2016/3/17..   the  above  written  as  queries  instead  (.. can also be
                          replaced with -)
       date:..12/1
       date:thismonth..
       date:thismonth

   Smart dates
       hledger's user interfaces accept a "smart date" syntax for added conve-
       nience.  Smart dates optionally can be relative  to  today's  date,  be
       written  with  english  words,  and have less-significant parts omitted
       (missing parts are inferred as 1).  Some examples:


       2004/10/1,   2004-01-01,   exact  date, several separators allowed.  Year
       2004.9.1                   is 4+ digits, month is 1-12, day is 1-31
       2004                       start of year
       2004/10                    start of month
       10/1                       month and day in current year
       21                         day in current month
       october, oct               start of month in current year
       yesterday, today, tomor-   -1, 0, 1 days from today
       row
       last/this/next             -1, 0, 1 periods from the current period
       day/week/month/quar-
       ter/year
       in                     n   n periods from the current period
       days/weeks/months/quar-
       ters/years
       n                          n periods from the current period
       days/weeks/months/quar-
       ters/years ahead
       n                          -n periods from the current period
       days/weeks/months/quar-
       ters/years ago
       20181201                   8 digit YYYYMMDD with valid year month and day
       201812                     6 digit YYYYMM with valid year and month

       Some counterexamples - malformed digit sequences might give  surprising
       results:


       201813        6  digits  with  an  invalid  month  is  parsed as start of
                     6-digit year
       20181301      8 digits with an  invalid  month  is  parsed  as  start  of
                     8-digit year
       20181232      8 digits with an invalid day gives an error
       201801012     9+ digits beginning with a valid YYYYMMDD gives an error

       "Today's  date" can be overridden with the --today option, in case it's
       needed for testing or for recreating old reports.  (Except for periodic
       transaction rules, which are not affected by --today.)

   Report intervals
       A  report interval can be specified so that reports like register, bal-
       ance or activity become multi-period, showing each subperiod as a sepa-
       rate row or column.

       The  following  standard  intervals  can  be  enabled with command-line
       flags:

       o -D/--daily

       o -W/--weekly

       o -M/--monthly

       o -Q/--quarterly

       o -Y/--yearly

       More complex intervals can be specified  using  -p/--period,  described
       below.

   Date adjustment
       With  a  report  interval  (other than daily), report start / end dates
       which have not been  specified  explicitly  and  in  full  (eg  not  -b
       2023-01-01,  but  -b  2023-01 or -b 2023 or unspecified) are considered
       flexible:

       o A flexible start date  will  be  automatically  adjusted  earlier  if
         needed to fall on a natural interval boundary.

       o Similarly,  a  flexible  end date will be adjusted later if needed to
         make the last period a whole interval (the same length  as  the  oth-
         ers).

       This is convenient for producing clean periodic reports (this is tradi-
       tional hledger behaviour).  By contrast,  fully-specified  exact  dates
       will not be adjusted (this is new in hledger 1.29).

       An example: with a journal whose first date is 2023-01-10 and last date
       is 2023-03-20:

       o hledger bal -M -b 2023/1/15 -e 2023/3/10
       The report periods will begin on the 15th day of each  month,  starting
       from  2023-01-15,  and  the  last period's last day will be 2023-03-09.
       (Exact start and end dates, neither is adjusted.)

       o hledger bal -M -b 2023-01 -e 2023-04 or hledger bal -M
       The report periods will begin on the 1st of each month,  starting  from
       2023-01-01, and the last period's last day will be 2023-03-31.  (Flexi-
       ble start and end dates, both are adjusted.)

   Period expressions
       The -p/--period option specifies a period expression, which is  a  com-
       pact  way of expressing a start date, end date, and/or report interval.

       Here's a period expression with a start and end  date  (specifying  the
       first quarter of 2009):


       -p "from 2009/1/1 to 2009/4/1"

       Several  keywords  like  "from" and "to" are supported for readability;
       these are optional.  "to" can also be written as ".." or "-".  The spa-
       ces are also optional, as long as you don't run two dates together.  So
       the following are equivalent to the above:


       -p "2009/1/1 2009/4/1"
       -p2009/1/1to2009/4/1
       -p2009/1/1..2009/4/1

       Dates are smart dates, so if the current year is 2009, these  are  also
       equivalent to the above:


       -p "1/1 4/1"
       -p "jan-apr"
       -p "this year to 4/1"

       If you specify only one date, the missing start or end date will be the
       earliest or latest transaction date in the journal:




       -p "from 2009/1/1"   everything  after  january
                            1, 2009
       -p "since 2009/1"    the  same, since is a syn-
                            onym
       -p "from 2009"       the same
       -p "to 2009"         everything before  january
                            1, 2009

       You can also specify a period by writing a single partial or full date:


       -p "2009"        the year 2009; equivalent to "2009/1/1 to 2010/1/1"
       -p "2009/1"      the month of january 2009; equivalent to  "2009/1/1  to
                        2009/2/1"
       -p "2009/1/1"    the  first  day  of  2009;  equivalent  to "2009/1/1 to
                        2009/1/2"

       or by using the "Q" quarter-year syntax (case insensitive):


       -p "2009Q1"       first quarter  of  2009,  equivalent  to  "2009/1/1  to
                         2009/4/1"
       -p "q4"           fourth quarter of the current year

   Period expressions with a report interval
       A  period  expression  can also begin with a report interval, separated
       from the start/end dates (if any) by a space or the word in:


       -p "weekly from 2009/1/1 to 2009/4/1"
       -p "monthly in 2008"
       -p "quarterly"

   More complex report intervals
       Some more complex intervals can be specified within period expressions,
       such as:

       o biweekly (every two weeks)

       o fortnightly

       o bimonthly (every two months)

       o every day|week|month|quarter|year

       o every N days|weeks|months|quarters|years

       Weekly on a custom day:

       o every  Nth  day of week (th, nd, rd, or st are all accepted after the
         number)

       o every WEEKDAYNAME (full or three-letter english  weekday  name,  case
         insensitive)

       Monthly on a custom day:

       o every Nth day [of month]

       o every Nth WEEKDAYNAME [of month]

       Yearly on a custom day:

       o every MM/DD [of year] (month number and day of month number)

       o every  MONTHNAME  DDth  [of year] (full or three-letter english month
         name, case insensitive, and day of month number)

       o every DDth MONTHNAME [of year] (equivalent to the above)

       Examples:


       -p "bimonthly from 2008"

       -p "every 2 weeks"
       -p  "every  5  months  from
       2009/03"
       -p "every 2nd day of week"    periods will go from Tue to Tue
       -p "every Tue"                same
       -p "every 15th day"           period  boundaries  will be on 15th of each
                                     month
       -p "every 2nd Monday"         period boundaries will be on second  Monday
                                     of each month
       -p "every 11/05"              yearly  periods  with  boundaries on 5th of
                                     November
       -p "every 5th November"       same
       -p "every Nov 5th"            same

       Show historical balances at end of the 15th day of each month (N is  an
       end date, exclusive as always):

              $ hledger balance -H -p "every 16th day"

       Group  postings  from  the  start  of wednesday to end of the following
       tuesday (N is both (inclusive) start date and (exclusive) end date):

              $ hledger register checking -p "every 3rd day of week"

   Multiple weekday intervals
       This special form is also supported:

       o every WEEKDAYNAME,WEEKDAYNAME,... (full or three-letter english week-
         day names, case insensitive)

       Also,  weekday and weekendday are shorthand for mon,tue,wed,thu,fri and
       sat,sun.

       This is mainly intended for use with --forecast, to  generate  periodic
       transactions on arbitrary days of the week.  It may be less useful with
       -p, since it divides each week into subperiods of unequal length, which
       is unusual.  (Related: #1632)

       Examples:


       -p          "every   dates will be Mon, Wed, Fri; periods  will  be  Mon-
       mon,wed,fri"         Tue, Wed-Thu, Fri-Sun
       -p "every weekday"   dates will be Mon, Tue, Wed, Thu, Fri; periods  will
                            be Mon, Tue, Wed, Thu, Fri-Sun
       -p "every weekend-   dates will be Sat, Sun; periods will be Sat, Sun-Fri
       day"

Depth
       With  the  --depth  NUM  option  (short  form: -NUM), reports will show
       accounts only to the specified depth, hiding deeper  subaccounts.   Use
       this  when you want a summary with less detail.  This flag has the same
       effect as a depth: query argument: depth:2, --depth=2 or -2 are equiva-
       lent.

Queries
       One of hledger's strengths is being able to quickly report on a precise
       subset of your data.  Most hledger commands accept optional query argu-
       ments to restrict their scope.  The syntax is as follows:

       o Zero  or  more  space-separated  query  terms.   These are most often
         account name substrings:

         utilities food:groceries

       o Terms with spaces or other special characters should be  enclosed  in
         quotes:

         "personal care"

       o Regular expressions are also supported:

         "^expenses\b" "accounts (payable|receivable)"

       o Add a query type prefix to match other parts of the data:

         date:202012- desc:amazon cur:USD amt:">100" status:

       o Add a not: prefix to negate a term:

         not:cur:USD

   Query types
       Here are the types of query term available.  Remember these can also be
       prefixed with not: to convert them into a negative match.

       acct:REGEX, REGEX
       Match account names containing this (case insensitive) regular  expres-
       sion.  This is the default query type when there is no prefix, and reg-
       ular expression syntax is typically not  needed,  so  usually  we  just
       write an account name substring, like expenses or food.

       amt:N, amt:<N, amt:<=N, amt:>N, amt:>=N
       Match  postings  with a single-commodity amount equal to, less than, or
       greater than N.  (Postings with multi-commodity amounts are not  tested
       and will always match.)  The comparison has two modes: if N is preceded
       by a + or - sign (or is 0), the two signed numbers are compared.   Oth-
       erwise, the absolute magnitudes are compared, ignoring sign.

       code:REGEX
       Match by transaction code (eg check number).

       cur:REGEX
       Match  postings  or  transactions  including  any  amounts  whose  cur-
       rency/commodity symbol is fully  matched  by  REGEX.   (For  a  partial
       match,  use  .*REGEX.*).   Note,  to match special characters which are
       regex-significant, you need to escape them with \.  And for  characters
       which  are  significant  to  your  shell you may need one more level of
       escaping.  So eg to match the dollar sign:
       hledger print cur:\\$.

       desc:REGEX
       Match transaction descriptions.

       date:PERIODEXPR
       Match dates (or with the --date2  flag,  secondary  dates)  within  the
       specified  period.   PERIODEXPR  is  a period expression with no report
       interval.  Examples:
       date:2016, date:thismonth, date:2/1-2/15, date:2021-07-27..nextquarter.

       date2:PERIODEXPR
       Match  secondary  dates within the specified period (independent of the
       --date2 flag).

       depth:N
       Match (or display, depending on command)  accounts  at  or  above  this
       depth.

       note:REGEX
       Match transaction notes (the part of the description right of |, or the
       whole description if there's no |).

       payee:REGEX
       Match transaction payee/payer names (the part of the  description  left
       of |, or the whole description if there's no |).

       real:, real:0
       Match real or virtual postings respectively.

       status:, status:!, status:*
       Match unmarked, pending, or cleared transactions respectively.

       type:TYPECODES
       Match  by account type (see Declaring accounts > Account types).  TYPE-
       CODES is one or more of the single-letter account type  codes  ALERXCV,
       case insensitive.  Note type:A and type:E will also match their respec-
       tive subtypes C (Cash) and V (Conversion).  Certain  kinds  of  account
       alias  can  disrupt account types, see Rewriting accounts > Aliases and
       account types.

       tag:REGEX[=REGEX]
       Match by tag name, and optionally also by tag value.  (To match only by
       value, use tag:.=REGEX.)

       When querying by tag, note that:

       o Accounts also inherit the tags of their parent accounts

       o Postings also inherit the tags of their account and their transaction

       o Transactions also acquire the tags of their postings.

       (inacct:ACCTNAME
       A special query term used  automatically  in  hledger-web  only:  tells
       hledger-web to show the transaction register for an account.)

   Combining query terms
       When  given  multiple  query  terms,  most commands select things which
       match:

       o any of the description terms AND

       o any of the account terms AND

       o any of the status terms AND

       o all the other terms.

       The print command is a little different, showing transactions which:

       o match any of the description terms AND

       o have any postings matching any of the positive account terms AND

       o have no postings matching any of the negative account terms AND

       o match all the other terms.

       Although these fixed rules are enough for many needs, we do not support
       full boolean expressions (#203), (and you should not write AND or OR in
       your queries).  This makes certain queries hard to  express,  but  here
       are some tricks that can help:

       1. Use a doubled not: prefix.  Eg, to print only the food expenses paid
          with cash:

                  $ hledger print food not:not:cash

       2. Or pre-filter the transactions with print, piping the result into  a
          second hledger command (with balance assertions disabled):

                  $ hledger print cash | hledger -f- -I balance food

   Queries and command options
       Some  queries can also be expressed as command-line options: depth:2 is
       equivalent to --depth 2, date:2020 is equivalent to -p 2020, etc.  When
       you  mix  command  options and query arguments, generally the resulting
       query is their intersection.

   Queries and valuation
       When amounts are converted  to  other  commodities  in  cost  or  value
       reports,  cur:  and  amt:  match  the  old commodity symbol and the old
       amount quantity, not the new ones (except in hledger 1.22.0 where  it's
       reversed, see #1625).

   Querying with account aliases
       When account names are rewritten with --alias or alias, note that acct:
       will match either the old or the new account name.

   Querying with cost or value
       When amounts are converted  to  other  commodities  in  cost  or  value
       reports,  note  that cur: matches the new commodity symbol, and not the
       old one, and amt: matches the new quantity, and not the old one.  Note:
       this  changed  in  hledger 1.22, previously it was the reverse, see the
       discussion at #1625.

Pivoting
       Normally, hledger groups and sums amounts  within  each  account.   The
       --pivot  FIELD  option  substitutes  some  other  transaction field for
       account names, causing amounts to be grouped and summed by that field's
       value  instead.   FIELD  can  be  any of the transaction fields status,
       code, description, payee, note, or a tag name.  When pivoting on a  tag
       and  a posting has multiple values of that tag, only the first value is
       displayed.  Values containing colon:separated:parts will  be  displayed
       hierarchically, like account names.

       Some examples:

              2016/02/16 Yearly Dues Payment
                  assets:bank account                 2 EUR
                  income:dues                        -2 EUR  ; member: John Doe

       Normal balance report showing account names:

              $ hledger balance
                             2 EUR  assets:bank account
                            -2 EUR  income:dues
              --------------------
                                 0

       Pivoted balance report, using member: tag values instead:

              $ hledger balance --pivot member
                             2 EUR
                            -2 EUR  John Doe
              --------------------
                                 0

       One way to show only amounts with a member: value (using a query):

              $ hledger balance --pivot member tag:member=.
                            -2 EUR  John Doe
              --------------------
                            -2 EUR

       Another  way  (the  acct:  query  matches  against the pivoted "account
       name"):

              $ hledger balance --pivot member acct:.
                            -2 EUR  John Doe
              --------------------
                            -2 EUR

Generating data
       Two features for generating transient  data  (visible  only  at  report
       time) are built in to hledger's journal format:

       o Auto  posting  rules  can generate extra postings on certain transac-
         tions.  They are activated by the --auto flag.

       o Periodic transaction rules can generate repeating transactions,  usu-
         ally  dated  in  the  future,  to help with forecasting or budgeting.
         They are activated by the --forecast  or  balance  --budget  options,
         described next.

Forecasting
       The  --forecast  flag  activates  any periodic transaction rules in the
       journal.  These will generate temporary additional  transactions,  usu-
       ally  recurring  and  in  the future, which will appear in all reports.
       hledger print --forecast is a good way to see them.

       This can be useful for estimating balances  into  the  future,  perhaps
       experimenting with different scenarios.

       It  could  also  be  useful for scripted data entry: you could describe
       recurring transactions, and every so often copy  the  output  of  print
       --forecast into the journal.

       The  generated  transactions  will  have  an extra tag, like generated-
       transaction:~ PERIODICEXPR, indicating which  periodic  rule  generated
       them.   There  is also a similar, hidden tag, named _generated-transac-
       tion:, which you can use to reliably match transactions generated "just
       now" (rather than printed in the past).

       The forecast transactions are generated within a forecast period, which
       is independent of the report period.  (Forecast period sets the  bounds
       for  generated  transactions, report period controls which transactions
       are reported.)  The forecast period begins on:

       o the start date provided within --forecast's argument, if any

       o otherwise, the later of

         o the report start date, if specified (with -b/-p/date:)

         o the day after the latest ordinary transaction in  the  journal,  if
           any

       o otherwise today.

       It ends on:

       o the end date provided within --forecast's argument, if any

       o otherwise, the report end date, if specified (with -e/-p/date:)

       o otherwise 180 days (6 months) from today.

       Note,  this  means  that  ordinary  transactions will suppress periodic
       transactions, by default; the  periodic  transactions  will  not  start
       until after the last ordinary transaction.  This is usually convenient,
       but you can get around it in two ways:

       o If you need to record some transactions  in  the  future,  make  them
         periodic  transactions  (with  a single occurrence, eg: ~ YYYY-MM-DD)
         rather than ordinary transactions.   That  way  they  won't  suppress
         other periodic transactions.

       o Or  give  --forecast a period expression argument.  A forecast period
         specified this way can overlap ordinary transactions, and need not be
         in the future.  Some things to note:

         o You must use = between flag and argument; a space won't work.

         o The period expression can specify the forecast period's start date,
           end date, or both.  See also Report start & end date.

         o The period expression should not specify a report interval.   (Each
           periodic transaction rule specifies its own interval.)

       Some   examples:   --forecast=202001-202004,  --forecast=jan-,  --fore-
       cast=2021.

Budgeting
       With the balance command's --budget report, each  periodic  transaction
       rule  generates recurring budget goals in specified accounts, and goals
       and actual performance can be compared.  See the balance command's  doc
       below.

       See also: Budgeting and Forecasting.

Cost reporting
       This  section  is  about  recording the cost of things, in transactions
       where one commodity is exchanged for another.  Eg an exchange  of  cur-
       rency, or a stock purchase or sale.  First, a quick glossary:

       o Conversion  -  an  exchange of one currency or commodity for another.
         Eg a foreign currency exchange, or a purchase or  sale  of  stock  or
         cryptocurrency.

       o Conversion  transaction - a transaction involving one or more conver-
         sions.

       o Conversion rate - the cost per unit of one commodity in the other, ie
         the exchange rate.

       o Cost  - how much of one commodity was paid to acquire the other.  And
         more generally, in hledger docs: the amount exchanged  in  the  "sec-
         ondary" commodity (usually your base currency), whether in a purchase
         or a sale, and whether expressed per unit or  in  total.   Also,  the
         "@/@@ PRICE" notation used to represent this.

   -B: Convert to cost
       As  discussed  in JOURNAL > Costs, when recording a transaction you can
       also record the amount's cost in another commodity, by adding  @  UNIT-
       PRICE or @@ TOTALPRICE.

       Then you can see a report with amounts converted to cost, by adding the
       -B/--cost flag.  (Mnemonic: "B" from "cost Basis", as in Ledger).  Eg:

              2022-01-01
                assets:dollars  $-135          ; 135 dollars is exchanged for..
                assets:euros     EUR100 @ $1.35  ; one hundred euros purchased at $1.35 each

              $ hledger bal -N
                             $-135  assets:dollars
                              EUR100  assets:euros
              $ hledger bal -N -B
                             $-135  assets:dollars
                              $135  assets:euros    # <- the euros' cost

       Notes:

       -B is sensitive to the order of postings when a cost is  inferred:  the
       inferred  price  will  be  in  the commodity of the last amount.  So if
       example 3's postings are reversed, while the transaction is equivalent,
       -B shows something different:

              2022-01-01
                assets:dollars  $-135              ; 135 dollars sold
                assets:euros     EUR100              ; for 100 euros

              $ hledger bal -N -B
                             EUR-100  assets:dollars  # <- the dollars' selling price
                              EUR100  assets:euros

       The  @/@@  cost notation is convenient, but has some drawbacks: it does
       not truly balance the transaction, so it disrupts the accounting  equa-
       tion and tends to causes a non-zero total in balance reports.

   Equity conversion postings
       By contrast, conventional double entry bookkeeping (DEB) uses a differ-
       ent notation: an extra pair of equity postings  to  balance  conversion
       transactions.  In this style, the above entry might be written:

              2022-01-01 one hundred euros purchased at $1.35 each
                  assets:dollars      $-135
                  equity:conversion    $135
                  equity:conversion   EUR-100
                  assets:euros         EUR100

       This  style  is more correct, but it's also more verbose and makes cost
       reporting more difficult for PTA tools.

       Happily, current hledger can read either notation, or  convert  one  to
       the other when needed, so you can use the one you prefer.

       You  can  even  use cost notation and equivalent conversion postings at
       the same time, for clarity.  hledger will ignore the  redundancy.   But
       be  sure the cost and conversion posting amounts match, or you'll see a
       not-so-clear transaction balancing error message.

   Inferring equity postings from cost
       With --infer-equity, hledger detects transactions written with PTA cost
       notation and adds equity conversion postings to them:

              2022-01-01
                assets:dollars  -$135
                assets:euros     EUR100 @ $1.35

              $ hledger print --infer-equity
              2022-01-01
                  assets:dollars                    $-135
                  assets:euros               EUR100 @ $1.35
                  equity:conversion:$-EUR:EUR           EUR-100  ; generated-posting:
                  equity:conversion:$-EUR:$         $135.00  ; generated-posting:

       The conversion account names can be changed with the conversion account
       type declaration.

       --infer-equity is useful when  when  transactions  have  been  recorded
       using  cost notation, to help preserve the accounting equation and bal-
       ance reports' zero total,  or  to  produce  more  conventional  journal
       entries for sharing with non-PTA-users.

   Inferring cost from equity postings
       The  reverse  operation  is possible using --infer-costs, which detects
       transactions written with equity  conversion  postings  and  adds  cost
       notation to them:

              2022-01-01
                  assets:dollars            $-135
                  equity:conversion          $135
                  equity:conversion         EUR-100
                  assets:euros               EUR100

              $ hledger print --infer-costs
              2022-01-01
                  assets:dollars       $-135 @@ EUR100
                  equity:conversion             $135
                  equity:conversion            EUR-100
                  assets:euros                  EUR100

       --infer-costs  is  useful  when  combined with -B/--cost, allowing cost
       reporting even when transactions have been recorded using equity  post-
       ings:

              $ hledger print --infer-costs -B
              2009-01-01
                  assets:dollars           EUR-100
                  assets:euros              EUR100

       Notes:

       For --infer-costs to work, an exchange must consist of four postings:

       1. two non-equity postings

       2. two equity postings, next to one another

       3. the equity accounts must be declared, with account type V/Conversion
          (or if they are not declared, they must be named  equity:conversion,
          equity:trade, equity:trading or subaccounts of these)

       4. the equity postings' amounts must exactly match the non-equity post-
          ings' amounts.

       Multiple such exchanges can coexist within a single transaction.

       When inferring cost, the order of postings matters: the cost  is  added
       to  the  first  of the non-equity postings involved in the exchange, in
       the commodity of the last non-equity posting involved in the  exchange.
       If you don't want to write your postings in the required order, you can
       use explicit cost notation instead.

       --infer-equity and --infer-costs can be used together, if  you  have  a
       mixture of both notations in your journal.

   When to infer cost/equity
       Inferring  equity postings or costs is still fairly new, so not enabled
       by default.  We're not sure yet if that should change.   Here  are  two
       suggestions to try, experience reports welcome:

       1. When  you use -B, always use --infer-costs as well.  Eg: hledger bal
          -B --infer-costs

       2. Always run hledger with both flags enabled.  Eg:  alias  hl="hledger
          --infer-equity --infer-costs"

   How to record conversions
       Essentially  there  are four ways to record a conversion transaction in
       hledger.  Here are all of them, with pros and cons.

   Conversion with implicit cost
       Let's assume 100 EUR is converted to 120 USD.  You can just record  the
       outflow  (100  EUR)  and  inflow  (120  USD)  in  the appropriate asset
       account:

              2021-01-01
                  assets:cash    -100 EUR
                  assets:cash     120 USD

       hledger will assume this transaction is balanced,  inferring  that  the
       conversion  rate  must  be  1 EUR = 1.20 USD.  You can see the inferred
       rate by using hledger print -x.

       Pro:

       o Concise, easy

       Con:

       o Less error checking - typos in amounts or commodity symbols  may  not
         be detected

       o Conversion rate is not clear

       o Disturbs  the  accounting equation, unless you add the --infer-equity
         flag

       You can prevent accidental implicit conversions due to a mistyped  com-
       modity symbol, by using hledger check commodities.

       You  can  prevent implicit conversions entirely, by using hledger check
       balancednoautoconversion, or -s/--strict.

   Conversion with explicit cost
       You can add the conversion rate using @ notation:

              2021-01-01
                  assets:cash        -100 EUR @ 1.20 USD
                  assets:cash         120 USD

       Now hledger will check that 100 * 1.20 = 120, and would report an error
       otherwise.

       Pro:

       o Still concise

       o Makes the conversion rate clear

       o Provides more error checking

       Con:

       o Disturbs  the  accounting equation, unless you add the --infer-equity
         flag

   Conversion with equity postings
       In strict double entry bookkeeping, the above transaction is  not  bal-
       anced  in  EUR  or  in  USD,  since  some  EUR disappears, and some USD
       appears.  This violates the accounting equation (A+L+E=0), and prevents
       reports like balancesheetequity from showing a zero total.

       The  proper  way  to  make it balance is to add a balancing posting for
       each commodity, using an equity account:

              2021-01-01
                  assets:cash        -100 EUR
                  equity:conversion   100 EUR
                  equity:conversion  -120 USD
                  assets:cash         120 USD

       Pro:

       o Preserves the accounting equation

       o Keeps track of conversions and related gains/losses in one place

       o Standard, works in any double entry accounting system

       Con:

       o More verbose

       o Conversion rate is not obvious

       o Cost reporting requires adding the --infer-costs flag

   Conversion with equity postings and explicit cost
       Here both equity postings and @ notation are used together.

              2021-01-01
                  assets:cash        -100 EUR @ 1.20 USD
                  equity:conversion   100 EUR
                  equity:conversion  -120 USD
                  assets:cash         120 USD

       Pro:

       o Preserves the accounting equation

       o Keeps track of conversions and related gains/losses in one place

       o Makes the conversion rate clear

       o Provides more error checking

       Con:

       o Most verbose

       o Not compatible with ledger

   Cost tips
       o Recording the cost/conversion rate  explicitly  is  good  because  it
         makes that clear and helps detect errors.

       o Recording  equity  postings is good because it is correct bookkeeping
         and preserves the accounting equation.

       o Combining these is possible.

       o When you want to see the cost (or sale proceeds) of  things,  use  -B
         (short form of --cost).

       o If  you  use  conversion postings without cost notation, add --infer-
         costs also.

       o If you use cost notation without conversion postings, and you want to
         see  a  balanced  balance sheet or print correct journal entries, use
         --infer-equity.

       o Conversion to cost is performed before valuation (described next).

Valuation
       Instead of reporting amounts in their original commodity,  hledger  can
       convert them to cost/sale amount (using the conversion rate recorded in
       the transaction), and/or to market value (using some market price on  a
       certain  date).   This  is  controlled  by the --value=TYPE[,COMMODITY]
       option, which will be described below.  We also provide the simpler  -V
       and -X COMMODITY options, and often one of these is all you need:

   -V: Value
       The  -V/--market flag converts amounts to market value in their default
       valuation commodity, using the market prices in effect on the valuation
       date(s), if any.  More on these in a minute.

   -X: Value in specified commodity
       The -X/--exchange=COMM option is like -V, except you tell it which cur-
       rency you want to convert to, and it tries  to  convert  everything  to
       that.

   Valuation date
       Since  market  prices  can change from day to day, market value reports
       have a valuation date (or more than one), which determines which market
       prices will be used.

       For single period reports, if an explicit report end date is specified,
       that will be used as the valuation date; otherwise the  valuation  date
       is the journal's end date.

       For  multiperiod  reports, each column/period is valued on the last day
       of the period, by default.

   Finding market price
       To convert a commodity A to its market value in  another  commodity  B,
       hledger  looks  for a suitable market price (exchange rate) as follows,
       in this order of preference :

       1. A declared market price or inferred market price: A's latest  market
          price in B on or before the valuation date as declared by a P direc-
          tive, or (with the --infer-market-prices flag) inferred from  costs.

       2. A reverse market price: the inverse of a declared or inferred market
          price from B to A.

       3. A forward chain of market prices: a synthetic price formed  by  com-
          bining the shortest chain of "forward" (only 1 above) market prices,
          leading from A to B.

       4. Any chain of market prices: a chain of any market prices,  including
          both  forward  and reverse prices (1 and 2 above), leading from A to
          B.

       There is a limit to the  length  of  these  price  chains;  if  hledger
       reaches  that length without finding a complete chain or exhausting all
       possibilities, it will give up (with a "gave  up"  message  visible  in
       --debug=2 output).  That limit is currently 1000.

       Amounts  for  which no suitable market price can be found, are not con-
       verted.

   --infer-market-prices: market prices from transactions
       Normally, market value in hledger is fully controlled by, and requires,
       P directives in your journal.  Since adding and updating those can be a
       chore, and since transactions usually take place  at  close  to  market
       value,  why  not use the recorded costs as additional market prices (as
       Ledger does) ?  Adding the --infer-market-prices  flag  to  -V,  -X  or
       --value enables this.

       So  for  example,  hledger  bs -V --infer-market-prices will get market
       prices both from P directives and from transactions.  If both occur  on
       the same day, the P directive takes precedence.

       There is a downside: value reports can sometimes be affected in confus-
       ing/undesired ways by your journal entries.  If this  happens  to  you,
       read all of this Valuation section carefully, and try adding --debug or
       --debug=2 to troubleshoot.

       --infer-market-prices can infer market prices from:

       o multicommodity transactions with explicit prices (@/@@)

       o multicommodity transactions with implicit prices (no @, two  commodi-
         ties,  unbalanced).   (With  these,  the  order  of postings matters.
         hledger print -x can be useful for troubleshooting.)

       o multicommodity transactions with equity postings, if cost is inferred
         with --infer-costs.

       There  is  a  limitation (bug) currently: when a valuation commodity is
       not specified, prices inferred with --infer-market-prices do  not  help
       select a default valuation commodity, as P prices would.  So conversion
       might not happen because no valuation commodity was detected (--debug=2
       will show this).  To be safe, specify the valuation commmodity, eg:

       o -X EUR --infer-market-prices, not -V --infer-market-prices

       o --value=then,EUR --infer-market-prices, not --value=then --infer-mar-
         ket-prices

       Signed costs and market prices can be confusing.  For  reference,  here
       is  the current behaviour, since hledger 1.25.  (If you think it should
       work differently, see #1870.)

              2022-01-01 Positive Unit prices
                  a        A 1
                  b        B -1 @ A 1

              2022-01-01 Positive Total prices
                  a        A 1
                  b        B -1 @@ A 1


              2022-01-02 Negative unit prices
                  a        A 1
                  b        B 1 @ A -1

              2022-01-02 Negative total prices
                  a        A 1
                  b        B 1 @@ A -1


              2022-01-03 Double Negative unit prices
                  a        A -1
                  b        B -1 @ A -1

              2022-01-03 Double Negative total prices
                  a        A -1
                  b        B -1 @@ A -1

       All of the transactions above are considered balanced (and on each day,
       the  two  transactions are considered equivalent).  Here are the market
       prices inferred for B:

              $ hledger -f- --infer-market-prices prices
              P 2022-01-01 B A 1
              P 2022-01-01 B A 1.0
              P 2022-01-02 B A -1
              P 2022-01-02 B A -1.0
              P 2022-01-03 B A -1
              P 2022-01-03 B A -1.0

   Valuation commodity
       When you specify a valuation commodity (-X COMM or --value TYPE,COMM):
       hledger will convert all amounts to COMM, wherever it can find a  suit-
       able market price (including by reversing or chaining prices).

       When  you  leave  the  valuation  commodity  unspecified (-V or --value
       TYPE):
       For each commodity A, hledger picks a default  valuation  commodity  as
       follows, in this order of preference:

       1. The price commodity from the latest P-declared market price for A on
          or before valuation date.

       2. The price commodity from the latest P-declared market price for A on
          any  date.   (Allows  conversion  to proceed when there are inferred
          prices before the valuation date.)

       3. If there are no P directives at all (any commodity or date) and  the
          --infer-market-prices  flag  is  used:  the price commodity from the
          latest transaction-inferred price for A on or before valuation date.

       This means:

       o If  you  have  P directives, they determine which commodities -V will
         convert, and to what.

       o If you have no P directives, and use the --infer-market-prices  flag,
         costs determine it.

       Amounts  for  which  no  valuation  commodity can be found are not con-
       verted.

   Simple valuation examples
       Here are some quick examples of -V:

              ; one euro is worth this many dollars from nov 1
              P 2016/11/01 EUR $1.10

              ; purchase some euros on nov 3
              2016/11/3
                  assets:euros        EUR100
                  assets:checking

              ; the euro is worth fewer dollars by dec 21
              P 2016/12/21 EUR $1.03

       How many euros do I have ?

              $ hledger -f t.j bal -N euros
                              EUR100  assets:euros

       What are they worth at end of nov 3 ?

              $ hledger -f t.j bal -N euros -V -e 2016/11/4
                           $110.00  assets:euros

       What are they worth after 2016/12/21 ?  (no report end date  specified,
       defaults to today)

              $ hledger -f t.j bal -N euros -V
                           $103.00  assets:euros

   --value: Flexible valuation
       -V and -X are special cases of the more general --value option:

               --value=TYPE[,COMM]  TYPE is then, end, now or YYYY-MM-DD.
                                    COMM is an optional commodity symbol.
                                    Shows amounts converted to:
                                    - default valuation commodity (or COMM) using market prices at posting dates
                                    - default valuation commodity (or COMM) using market prices at period end(s)
                                    - default valuation commodity (or COMM) using current market prices
                                    - default valuation commodity (or COMM) using market prices at some date

       The TYPE part selects cost or value and valuation date:

       --value=then
              Convert  amounts to their value in the default valuation commod-
              ity, using market prices on each posting's date.

       --value=end
              Convert amounts to their value in the default valuation  commod-
              ity,  using  market  prices on the last day of the report period
              (or if unspecified, the journal's end date); or  in  multiperiod
              reports, market prices on the last day of each subperiod.

       --value=now
              Convert  amounts to their value in the default valuation commod-
              ity using current market prices (as of  when  report  is  gener-
              ated).

       --value=YYYY-MM-DD
              Convert  amounts to their value in the default valuation commod-
              ity using market prices on this date.

       To select a different valuation commodity, add the optional ,COMM part:
       a  comma,  then  the  target  commodity's symbol.  Eg: --value=now,EUR.
       hledger will do its best to convert amounts to this commodity, deducing
       market prices as described above.

   More valuation examples
       Here  are  some  examples  showing  the effect of --value, as seen with
       print:

              P 2000-01-01 A  1 B
              P 2000-02-01 A  2 B
              P 2000-03-01 A  3 B
              P 2000-04-01 A  4 B

              2000-01-01
                (a)      1 A @ 5 B

              2000-02-01
                (a)      1 A @ 6 B

              2000-03-01
                (a)      1 A @ 7 B

       Show the cost of each posting:

              $ hledger -f- print --cost
              2000-01-01
                  (a)             5 B

              2000-02-01
                  (a)             6 B

              2000-03-01
                  (a)             7 B

       Show the value as of the last day of the report period (2000-02-29):

              $ hledger -f- print --value=end date:2000/01-2000/03
              2000-01-01
                  (a)             2 B

              2000-02-01
                  (a)             2 B

       With no report period specified, that shows the value as  of  the  last
       day of the journal (2000-03-01):

              $ hledger -f- print --value=end
              2000-01-01
                  (a)             3 B

              2000-02-01
                  (a)             3 B

              2000-03-01
                  (a)             3 B

       Show the current value (the 2000-04-01 price is still in effect today):

              $ hledger -f- print --value=now
              2000-01-01
                  (a)             4 B

              2000-02-01
                  (a)             4 B

              2000-03-01
                  (a)             4 B

       Show the value on 2000/01/15:

              $ hledger -f- print --value=2000-01-15
              2000-01-01
                  (a)             1 B

              2000-02-01
                  (a)             1 B

              2000-03-01
                  (a)             1 B

       You may need to  explicitly  set  a  commodity's  display  style,  when
       reverse prices are used.  Eg this output might be surprising:

              P 2000-01-01 A 2B

              2000-01-01
                a  1B
                b

              $ hledger print -x -X A
              2000-01-01
                  a               0
                  b               0

       Explanation:  because there's no amount or commodity directive specify-
       ing a display style for A, 0.5A gets the default style, which shows  no
       decimal digits.  Because the displayed amount looks like zero, the com-
       modity symbol and minus sign are not displayed either.  Adding  a  com-
       modity directive sets a more useful display style for A:

              P 2000-01-01 A 2B
              commodity 0.00A

              2000-01-01
                a  1B
                b

              $ hledger print -X A
              2000-01-01
                  a           0.50A
                  b          -0.50A

   Interaction of valuation and queries
       When  matching  postings based on queries in the presence of valuation,
       the following happens.

       1. The query is separated into two parts:

           1. the currency (cur:) or amount (amt:).

           2. all other parts.

       2. The postings are matched to the currency and amount queries based on
          pre-valued amounts.

       3. Valuation is applied to the postings.

       4. The  postings  are  matched to the other parts of the query based on
          post-valued amounts.

       See: 1625

   Effect of valuation on reports
       Here is a reference for how valuation is supposed to affect  each  part
       of  hledger's  reports  (and  a  glossary).  (It's wide, you'll have to
       scroll sideways.)  It may be useful when troubleshooting.  If you  find
       problems,  please  report  them,  ideally  with a reproducible example.
       Related: #329, #1083.


       Report          -B, --cost     -V, -X         --value=then        --value=end    --value=DATE,
       type                                                                             --value=now
       -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
       print
       posting         cost           value     at   value at  posting   value     at   value      at
       amounts                        report   end   date                report    or   DATE/today
                                      or today                           journal end
       balance         unchanged      unchanged      unchanged           unchanged      unchanged
       asser-
       tions/assign-
       ments

       register
       starting bal-   cost           value     at   valued   at   day   value     at   value      at
       ance (-H)                      report    or   each   historical   report    or   DATE/today
                                      journal end    posting was made    journal end
       starting bal-   cost           value at day   valued   at   day   value at day   value      at
       ance     (-H)                  before         each   historical   before         DATE/today
       with   report                  report    or   posting was made    report    or
       interval                       journal                            journal
                                      start                              start
       posting         cost           value     at   value at  posting   value     at   value      at
       amounts                        report    or   date                report    or   DATE/today
                                      journal end                        journal end
       summary post-   summarised     value     at   sum  of  postings   value     at   value      at
       ing   amounts   cost           period ends    in interval, val-   period ends    DATE/today
       with   report                                 ued  at  interval
       interval                                      start
       running         sum/average    sum/average    sum/average    of   sum/average    sum/average
       total/average   of displayed   of displayed   displayed values    of displayed   of  displayed
                       values         values                             values         values

       balance  (bs,
       bse, cf, is)
       balance         sums      of   value     at   value at  posting   value     at   value      at
       changes         costs          report   end   date                report    or   DATE/today of
                                      or today  of                       journal  end   sums of post-
                                      sums      of                       of  sums  of   ings
                                      postings                           postings
       budget          like balance   like balance   like      balance   like    bal-   like  balance
       amounts         changes        changes        changes             ances          changes
       (--budget)
       grand total     sum  of dis-   sum  of dis-   sum  of displayed   sum of  dis-   sum  of  dis-
                       played  val-   played  val-   valued              played  val-   played values
                       ues            ues                                ues

       balance  (bs,
       bse,  cf, is)
       with   report
       interval
       starting bal-   sums      of   value     at   sums of values of   value     at   sums of post-
       ances (-H)      costs     of   report start   postings   before   report start   ings   before
                       postings       of  sums  of   report  start  at   of  sums  of   report start
                       before         all postings   respective  post-   all postings
                       report start   before         ing dates           before
                                      report start                       report start
       balance         sums      of   same      as   sums of values of   balance        value      at
       changes (bal,   costs     of   --value=end    postings       in   change    in   DATE/today of
       is,        bs   postings  in                  period at respec-   each period,   sums of post-
       --change,  cf   period                        tive      posting   valued    at   ings
       --change)                                     dates               period ends




       end  balances   sums      of   same      as   sums of values of   period   end   value      at
       (bal  -H,  is   costs     of   --value=end    postings     from   balances,      DATE/today of
       --H, bs, cf)    postings                      before     period   valued    at   sums of post-
                       from  before                  start  to  period   period ends    ings
                       report start                  end at respective
                       to    period                  posting dates
                       end
       budget          like balance   like balance   like      balance   like    bal-   like  balance
       amounts         changes/end    changes/end    changes/end  bal-   ances          changes/end
       (--budget)      balances       balances       ances                              balances
       row   totals,   sums,  aver-   sums,  aver-   sums, averages of   sums,  aver-   sums,   aver-
       row  averages   ages of dis-   ages of dis-   displayed values    ages of dis-   ages of  dis-
       (-T, -A)        played  val-   played  val-                       played  val-   played values
                       ues            ues                                ues
       column totals   sums of dis-   sums of dis-   sums of displayed   sums of dis-   sums of  dis-
                       played  val-   played  val-   values              played  val-   played values
                       ues            ues                                ues
       grand  total,   sum, average   sum, average   sum,  average  of   sum, average   sum,  average
       grand average   of    column   of    column   column totals       of    column   of     column
                       totals         totals                             totals         totals


       --cumulative is omitted to save space, it works like -H but with a zero
       starting balance.

       Glossary:

       cost   calculated using price(s) recorded in the transaction(s).

       value  market value using available market price declarations,  or  the
              unchanged amount if no conversion rate can be found.

       report start
              the  first  day  of the report period specified with -b or -p or
              date:, otherwise today.

       report or journal start
              the first day of the report period specified with -b  or  -p  or
              date:,  otherwise  the earliest transaction date in the journal,
              otherwise today.

       report end
              the last day of the report period specified with  -e  or  -p  or
              date:, otherwise today.

       report or journal end
              the  last  day  of  the report period specified with -e or -p or
              date:, otherwise the latest transaction  date  in  the  journal,
              otherwise today.

       report interval
              a  flag (-D/-W/-M/-Q/-Y) or period expression that activates the
              report's multi-period mode (whether showing one or many subperi-
              ods).

PART 4: COMMANDS
   Commands overview
       Here are the built-in commands:

   DATA ENTRY
       These data entry commands are the only ones which can modify your jour-
       nal file.

       o add - add transactions using terminal prompts

       o import - add new transactions from other files, eg CSV files

   DATA CREATION
       o close - generate balance-zeroing/restoring transactions

       o rewrite - generate auto postings, like print --auto

   DATA MANAGEMENT
       o check - check for various kinds of error in the data

       o diff - compare account transactions in two journal files

   REPORTS, FINANCIAL
       o aregister (areg) - show transactions in a particular account

       o balancesheet (bs) - show assets, liabilities and net worth

       o balancesheetequity (bse) - show assets, liabilities and equity

       o cashflow (cf) - show changes in liquid assets

       o incomestatement (is) - show revenues and expenses

   REPORTS, VERSATILE
       o balance (bal) - show balance changes, end balances, budgets,  gains..

       o print - show transactions or export journal data

       o register  (reg)  -  show  postings  in one or more accounts & running
         total

       o roi - show return on investments

   REPORTS, BASIC
       o accounts - show account names

       o activity - show bar charts of posting counts per period

       o codes - show transaction codes

       o commodities - show commodity/currency symbols

       o descriptions - show transaction descriptions

       o files - show input file paths

       o notes - show note parts of transaction descriptions

       o payees - show payee parts of transaction descriptions

       o prices - show market prices

       o stats - show journal statistics

       o tags - show tag names

       o test - run self tests

   HELP
       o help - show the hledger manual with info/man/pager


   ADD-ONS
       And here are some typical add-on commands.  Some of these are installed
       by  the  hledger-install  script.   If  installed,  they will appear in
       hledger's commands list:

       o ui - run hledger's terminal UI

       o web - run hledger's web UI

       o iadd - add transactions using a TUI (currently hard to build)

       o interest - generate interest transactions

       o stockquotes - download market prices from AlphaVantage

       o Scripts and add-ons - check-fancyassertions, edit, fifo,  git,  move,
         pijul, plot, and more..

       Next, each command is described in detail, in alphabetical order.

   accounts
       Show account names.

       This  command  lists  account  names.   By  default  it shows all known
       accounts, either used in transactions or declared with  account  direc-
       tives.

       With query arguments, only matched account names and account names ref-
       erenced by matched postings are shown.

       Or it can  show  just  the  used  accounts  (--used/-u),  the  declared
       accounts   (--declared/-d),   the   accounts   declared  but  not  used
       (--unused), the accounts used but not declared (--undeclared),  or  the
       first account matched by an account name pattern, if any (--find).

       It  shows  a flat list by default.  With --tree, it uses indentation to
       show the account hierarchy.  In flat mode you can add --drop N to  omit
       the  first  few  account  name components.  Account names can be depth-
       clipped with depth:N or --depth N or -N.

       With --types, it also shows each account's type, if it's  known.   (See
       Declaring accounts > Account types.)

       With  --positions,  it  also  shows  the  file  and line number of each
       account's declaration, if any, and the  account's  overall  declaration
       order;  these may be useful when troubleshooting account display order.

       With --directives, it adds the account keyword, showing  valid  account
       directives  which  can  be  pasted into a journal file.  This is useful
       together with --undeclared when updating your account  declarations  to
       satisfy hledger check accounts.

       The  --find  flag  can be used to look up a single account name, in the
       same way that the aregister command does.  It returns the  alphanumeri-
       cally-first  matched  account  name,  or if none can be found, it fails
       with a non-zero exit code.

       Examples:

              $ hledger accounts
              assets:bank:checking
              assets:bank:saving
              assets:cash
              expenses:food
              expenses:supplies
              income:gifts
              income:salary
              liabilities:debts

              $ hledger accounts --undeclared --directives >> $LEDGER_FILE
              $ hledger check accounts

   activity
       Show an ascii barchart of posting counts per interval.

       The activity command displays an ascii  histogram  showing  transaction
       counts  by  day, week, month or other reporting interval (by day is the
       default).  With query arguments, it counts only matched transactions.

       Examples:

              $ hledger activity --quarterly
              2008-01-01 **
              2008-04-01 *******
              2008-07-01
              2008-10-01 **

   add
       Prompt for transactions and add them to  the  journal.   Any  arguments
       will be used as default inputs for the first N prompts.

       Many  hledger users edit their journals directly with a text editor, or
       generate them from CSV.  For more interactive data entry, there is  the
       add  command, which prompts interactively on the console for new trans-
       actions, and appends them 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
       import).

       To use it, just run hledger add and follow the prompts.  You can add as
       many transactions as you like; when you are finished, enter . or  press
       control-d or control-c to exit.

       Features:

       o add  tries  to  provide  useful  defaults, using the most similar (by
         description) recent transaction (filtered by the query, if any) as  a
         template.

       o You can also set the initial defaults with command line arguments.

       o Readline-style edit keys can be used during data entry.

       o The  tab  key  will  auto-complete whenever possible - accounts, pay-
         ees/descriptions, dates (yesterday, today, tomorrow).  If  the  input
         area is empty, it will insert the default value.

       o If  the  journal defines a default commodity, it will be added to any
         bare numbers entered.

       o A parenthesised transaction code may be entered following a date.

       o Comments and tags may be entered following a description or amount.

       o If you make a mistake, enter < at any prompt to go one step backward.

       o Input  prompts  are displayed in a different colour when the terminal
         supports it.

       Example (see https://hledger.org/add.html for a detailed tutorial):

              $ hledger add
              Adding transactions to journal file /src/hledger/examples/sample.journal
              Any command line arguments will be used as defaults.
              Use tab key to complete, readline keys to edit, enter to accept defaults.
              An optional (CODE) may follow transaction dates.
              An optional ; COMMENT may follow descriptions or amounts.
              If you make a mistake, enter < at any prompt to go one step backward.
              To end a transaction, enter . when prompted.
              To quit, enter . at a date prompt or press control-d or control-c.
              Date [2015/05/22]:
              Description: supermarket
              Account 1: expenses:food
              Amount  1: $10
              Account 2: assets:checking
              Amount  2 [$-10.0]:
              Account 3 (or . or enter to finish this transaction): .
              2015/05/22 supermarket
                  expenses:food             $10
                  assets:checking        $-10.0

              Save this transaction to the journal ? [y]:
              Saved.
              Starting the next transaction (. or ctrl-D/ctrl-C to quit)
              Date [2015/05/22]: <CTRL-D> $

       On Microsoft Windows, the add command makes sure that no  part  of  the
       file path ends with a period, as that would cause problems (#1056).

   aregister
       (areg)

       Show  the  transactions  and  running  historical  balance  of a single
       account, with each transaction displayed as one line.

       aregister shows the overall transactions affecting a particular account
       (and  any subaccounts).  Each report line represents one transaction in
       this account.  Transactions before the report  start  date  are  always
       included in the running balance (--historical mode is always on).

       This  is  a more "real world", bank-like view than the register command
       (which shows individual postings, possibly from multiple accounts,  not
       necessarily in historical mode).  As a quick rule of thumb: - use areg-
       ister for reviewing and reconciling real-world asset/liability accounts
       - use register for reviewing detailed revenues/expenses.

       aregister  requires  one  argument:  the account to report on.  You can
       write either the full  account  name,  or  a  case-insensitive  regular
       expression  which will select the alphabetically first matched account.

       When there are multiple matches, the alphabetically-first choice can be
       surprising;  eg if you have assets:per:checking 1 and assets:biz:check-
       ing 2 accounts, hledger areg checking would select  assets:biz:checking
       2.   It's  just a convenience to save typing, so if in doubt, write the
       full account name, or a distinctive substring that matches uniquely.

       Transactions involving subaccounts of this account will also be  shown.
       aregister  ignores depth limits, so its final total will always match a
       balance report with similar arguments.

       Any additional arguments form a query which will  filter  the  transac-
       tions shown.  Note some queries will disturb the running balance, caus-
       ing it to be different from the account's real-world running balance.

       An example: this shows the transactions and historical running  balance
       during july, in the first account whose name contains "checking":

              $ hledger areg checking date:jul

       Each aregister line item shows:

       o the  transaction's date (or the relevant posting's date if different,
         see below)

       o the names of all the other account(s) involved  in  this  transaction
         (probably abbreviated)

       o the total change to this account's balance from this transaction

       o the account's historical running balance after this transaction.

       Transactions  making a net change of zero are not shown by default; add
       the -E/--empty flag to show them.

       For performance reasons, column widths are chosen based  on  the  first
       1000  lines;  this means unusually wide values in later lines can cause
       visual discontinuities as column widths are adjusted.  If you  want  to
       ensure  perfect alignment, at the cost of more time and memory, use the
       --align-all flag.

       This command also supports the output  destination  and  output  format
       options.  The output formats supported are txt, csv, and json.

   aregister and custom posting dates
       Transactions  whose  date  is  outside  the  report period can still be
       shown, if they have a posting to this account dated inside  the  report
       period.   (And in this case it's the posting date that is shown.)  This
       ensures that aregister can show an accurate historical running balance,
       matching the one shown by register -H with the same arguments.

       To  filter  strictly  by  transaction date instead, add the --txn-dates
       flag.  If you use this flag and  some  of  your  postings  have  custom
       dates, it's probably best to assume the running balance is wrong.

   balance
       (bal)

       Show accounts and their balances.

       balance  is  one  of  hledger's oldest and most versatile commands, for
       listing account balances, balance changes, values,  value  changes  and
       more, during one time period or many.  Generally it shows a table, with
       rows representing accounts, and columns representing periods.

       Note there are some higher-level variants of the balance  command  with
       convenient  defaults,  which  can be simpler to use: balancesheet, bal-
       ancesheetequity, cashflow and incomestatement.  When you need more con-
       trol, then use balance.

   balance features
       Here's  a quick overview of the balance command's features, followed by
       more detailed descriptions and examples.  Many of these work  with  the
       higher-level commands as well.

       balance can show..

       o accounts as a list (-l) or a tree (-t)

       o optionally depth-limited (-[1-9])

       o sorted by declaration order and name, or by amount

       ..and their..

       o balance changes (the default)

       o or actual and planned balance changes (--budget)

       o or value of balance changes (-V)

       o or change of balance values (--valuechange)

       o or unrealised capital gain/loss (--gain)

       ..in..

       o one time period (the whole journal period by default)

       o or multiple periods (-D, -W, -M, -Q, -Y, -p INTERVAL)

       ..either..

       o per period (the default)

       o or accumulated since report start date (--cumulative)

       o or accumulated since account creation (--historical/-H)

       ..possibly converted to..

       o cost (--value=cost[,COMM]/--cost/-B)

       o or market value, as of transaction dates (--value=then[,COMM])

       o or at period ends (--value=end[,COMM])

       o or now (--value=now)

       o or at some other date (--value=YYYY-MM-DD)

       ..with..

       o totals   (-T),   averages   (-A),  percentages  (-%),  inverted  sign
         (--invert)

       o rows and columns swapped (--transpose)

       o another field used as account name (--pivot)

       o custom-formatted line items (single-period reports only) (--format)

       o commodities displayed on the same line or multiple lines (--layout)

       This command supports the output destination and output format options,
       with  output  formats  txt, csv, json, and (multi-period reports only:)
       html.  In txt output in a colour-supporting terminal, negative  amounts
       are shown in red.

       The  --related/-r  flag  shows the balance of the other postings in the
       transactions of the postings which would normally be shown.

   Simple balance report
       With no arguments, balance shows a  list  of  all  accounts  and  their
       change  of  balance  - ie, the sum of posting amounts, both inflows and
       outflows - during the entire period of  the  journal.   ("Simple"  here
       means  just  one  column of numbers, covering a single period.  You can
       also have multi-period reports, described later.)

       For real-world accounts, these numbers will normally be their end  bal-
       ance at the end of the journal period; more on this below.

       Accounts  are  sorted  by declaration order if any, and then alphabeti-
       cally by account name.  For instance (using examples/sample.journal):

              $ hledger -f examples/sample.journal bal
                                $1  assets:bank:saving
                               $-2  assets:cash
                                $1  expenses:food
                                $1  expenses:supplies
                               $-1  income:gifts
                               $-1  income:salary
                                $1  liabilities:debts
              --------------------
                                 0

       Accounts with a zero balance (and no non-zero subaccounts, in tree mode
       -  see  below)  are  hidden  by  default.   Use -E/--empty to show them
       (revealing assets:bank:checking here):

              $ hledger -f examples/sample.journal bal  -E
                                 0  assets:bank:checking
                                $1  assets:bank:saving
                               $-2  assets:cash
                                $1  expenses:food
                                $1  expenses:supplies
                               $-1  income:gifts
                               $-1  income:salary
                                $1  liabilities:debts
              --------------------
                                 0

       The total of the amounts displayed is shown as the  last  line,  unless
       -N/--no-total is used.

   Balance report line format
       For single-period balance reports displayed in the terminal (only), you
       can use --format FMT to customise the format and content of each  line.
       Eg:

              $ hledger -f examples/sample.journal balance --format "%20(account) %12(total)"
                            assets          $-1
                       bank:saving           $1
                              cash          $-2
                          expenses           $2
                              food           $1
                          supplies           $1
                            income          $-2
                             gifts          $-1
                            salary          $-1
                 liabilities:debts           $1
              ---------------------------------
                                              0

       The  FMT  format  string  specifies  the  formatting  applied  to  each
       account/balance pair.  It may contain  any  suitable  text,  with  data
       fields interpolated like so:

       %[MIN][.MAX](FIELDNAME)

       o MIN pads with spaces to at least this width (optional)

       o MAX truncates at this width (optional)

       o FIELDNAME must be enclosed in parentheses, and can be one of:

         o depth_spacer  - a number of spaces equal to the account's depth, or
           if MIN is specified, MIN * depth spaces.

         o account - the account's name

         o total - the account's balance/posted total, right justified

       Also, FMT can begin with an optional prefix to control  how  multi-com-
       modity amounts are rendered:

       o %_ - render on multiple lines, bottom-aligned (the default)

       o %^ - render on multiple lines, top-aligned

       o %, - render on one line, comma-separated

       There  are  some  quirks.   Eg in one-line mode, %(depth_spacer) has no
       effect, instead %(account) has indentation built  in.   Experimentation
       may be needed to get pleasing results.

       Some example formats:

       o %(total) - the account's total

       o %-20.20(account)  -  the account's name, left justified, padded to 20
         characters and clipped at 20 characters

       o %,%-50(account)  %25(total) - account name padded to  50  characters,
         total  padded to 20 characters, with multiple commodities rendered on
         one line

       o %20(total)  %2(depth_spacer)%-(account) - the default format for  the
         single-column balance report

   Filtered balance report
       You  can  show  fewer  accounts,  a  different time period, totals from
       cleared transactions only, etc.  by using query arguments or options to
       limit the postings being matched.  Eg:

              $ hledger -f examples/sample.journal bal --cleared assets date:200806
                               $-2  assets:cash
              --------------------
                               $-2

   List or tree mode
       By  default,  or with -l/--flat, accounts are shown as a flat list with
       their full names visible, as in the examples above.

       With -t/--tree, the  account  hierarchy  is  shown,  with  subaccounts'
       "leaf" names indented below their parent:

              $ hledger -f examples/sample.journal balance
                               $-1  assets
                                $1    bank:saving
                               $-2    cash
                                $2  expenses
                                $1    food
                                $1    supplies
                               $-2  income
                               $-1    gifts
                               $-1    salary
                                $1  liabilities:debts
              --------------------
                                 0

       Notes:

       o "Boring" accounts are combined with their subaccount for more compact
         output, unless --no-elide is used.  Boring accounts have  no  balance
         of  their own and just one subaccount (eg assets:bank and liabilities
         above).

       o All balances shown are "inclusive", ie including  the  balances  from
         all  subaccounts.   Note  this  means  some repetition in the output,
         which requires explanation when sharing reports with non-plaintextac-
         counting-users.   A  tree mode report's final total is the sum of the
         top-level balances shown, not of all the balances shown.

       o Each group of sibling accounts (ie, under a common parent) is  sorted
         separately.

   Depth limiting
       With  a  depth:NUM  query, or --depth NUM option, or just -NUM (eg: -3)
       balance reports will show accounts only to the specified depth,  hiding
       the  deeper  subaccounts.   This  can be useful for getting an overview
       without too much detail.

       Account balances at the depth limit always include  the  balances  from
       any deeper subaccounts (even in list mode).  Eg, limiting to depth 1:

              $ hledger -f examples/sample.journal balance -1
                               $-1  assets
                                $2  expenses
                               $-2  income
                                $1  liabilities
              --------------------
                                 0

   Dropping top-level accounts
       You  can  also  hide  one  or  more top-level account name parts, using
       --drop NUM.  This can be useful for hiding repetitive top-level account
       names:

              $ hledger -f examples/sample.journal bal expenses --drop 1
                                $1  food
                                $1  supplies
              --------------------
                                $2


   Showing declared accounts
       With  --declared,  accounts  which  have  been declared with an account
       directive will be included in the balance report, even if they have  no
       transactions.  (Since they will have a zero balance, you will also need
       -E/--empty to see them.)

       More precisely, leaf declared accounts (with no  subaccounts)  will  be
       included, since those are usually the more useful in reports.

       The  idea  of  this  is  to  be able to see a useful "complete" balance
       report, even when you don't have transactions in all of  your  declared
       accounts yet.

   Sorting by amount
       With  -S/--sort-amount,  accounts with the largest (most positive) bal-
       ances are shown first.  Eg: hledger bal expenses -MAS shows  your  big-
       gest  averaged monthly expenses first.  When more than one commodity is
       present, they will be sorted by the alphabetically  earliest  commodity
       first,  and  then  by subsequent commodities (if an amount is missing a
       commodity, it is treated as 0).

       Revenues and liability balances are typically negative, however, so  -S
       shows  these  in  reverse  order.   To  work  around  this, you can add
       --invert to flip the signs.  (Or, use one of the higher-level  reports,
       which  flip the sign automatically.  Eg: hledger incomestatement -MAS).


   Percentages
       With -%/--percent, balance reports show each account's value  expressed
       as a percentage of the (column) total.

       Note it is not useful to calculate percentages if the amounts in a col-
       umn have mixed signs.  In this case, make a separate  report  for  each
       sign, eg:

              $ hledger bal -% amt:`>0`
              $ hledger bal -% amt:`<0`

       Similarly,  if  the amounts in a column have mixed commodities, convert
       them to one commodity with -B, -V, -X or --value, or  make  a  separate
       report for each commodity:

              $ hledger bal -% cur:\\$
              $ hledger bal -% cur:EUR

   Multi-period balance report
       With   a   report   interval   (set  by  the  -D/--daily,  -W/--weekly,
       -M/--monthly, -Q/--quarterly, -Y/--yearly, or -p/--period  flag),  bal-
       ance  shows a tabular report, with columns representing successive time
       periods (and a title):

              $ hledger -f examples/sample.journal bal --quarterly income expenses -E
              Balance changes in 2008:

                                 ||  2008q1  2008q2  2008q3  2008q4
              ===================++=================================
               expenses:food     ||       0      $1       0       0
               expenses:supplies ||       0      $1       0       0
               income:gifts      ||       0     $-1       0       0
               income:salary     ||     $-1       0       0       0
              -------------------++---------------------------------
                                 ||     $-1      $1       0       0

       Notes:

       o The report's start/end dates will be expanded, if necessary, to fully
         encompass the displayed subperiods (so that the first and last subpe-
         riods have the same duration as the others).

       o Leading and trailing periods (columns) containing all zeroes are  not
         shown, unless -E/--empty is used.

       o Accounts   (rows)   containing  all  zeroes  are  not  shown,  unless
         -E/--empty is used.

       o Amounts with many commodities are shown in abbreviated  form,  unless
         --no-elide is used.  (experimental)

       o Average  and/or  total columns can be added with the -A/--average and
         -T/--row-total flags.

       o The --transpose flag can be used to exchange rows and columns.

       o The --pivot FIELD option causes a different transaction field  to  be
         used as "account name".  See PIVOTING.

       Multi-period reports with many periods can be too wide for easy viewing
       in the terminal.  Here are some ways to handle that:

       o Hide the totals row with -N/--no-total

       o Convert to a single currency with -V

       o Maximize the terminal window

       o Reduce the terminal's font size

       o View with a pager like less, eg: hledger bal -D  --color=yes  |  less
         -RS

       o Output  as  CSV and use a CSV viewer like visidata (hledger bal -D -O
         csv | vd -f csv), Emacs' csv-mode  (M-x  csv-mode,  C-c  C-a),  or  a
         spreadsheet (hledger bal -D -o a.csv && open a.csv)

       o Output  as  HTML and view with a browser: hledger bal -D -o a.html &&
         open a.html

   Balance change, end balance
       It's important to be clear on the meaning of the numbers shown in  bal-
       ance reports.  Here is some terminology we use:

       A  balance  change  is  the  net  amount  added to, or removed from, an
       account during some period.

       An end balance is the amount accumulated in an account as of some  date
       (and  some  time,  but hledger doesn't store that; assume end of day in
       your timezone).  It is the sum of previous balance changes.

       We call it a historical end balance if it includes all balance  changes
       since the account was created.  For a real world account, this means it
       will match the "historical record", eg the balances  reported  in  your
       bank statements or bank web UI.  (If they are correct!)

       In  general,  balance  changes  are what you want to see when reviewing
       revenues and expenses, and historical end balances are what you want to
       see when reviewing or reconciling asset, liability and equity accounts.

       balance shows balance changes by default.  To see  accurate  historical
       end balances:

       1. Initialise  account  starting  balances  with  an "opening balances"
          transaction (a transfer from equity  to  the  account),  unless  the
          journal covers the account's full lifetime.

       2. Include all of of the account's prior postings in the report, by not
          specifying a report start date,  or  by  using  the  -H/--historical
          flag.  (-H causes report start date to be ignored when summing post-
          ings.)

   Balance report types
       The balance command is quite flexible; here is the full detail  on  how
       to  control what it reports.  If the following seems complicated, don't
       worry - this is for advanced reporting, and it does typically take some
       time and experimentation to get clear on all these report modes.

       There are three important option groups:

       hledger  balance  [CALCULATIONTYPE]  [ACCUMULATIONTYPE] [VALUATIONTYPE]
       ...

   Calculation type
       The basic calculation to perform for each table cell.  It is one of:

       o --sum : sum the posting amounts (default)

       o --budget : sum the amounts, but also show the budget goal amount (for
         each account/period)

       o --valuechange : show the change in period-end historical balance val-
         ues (caused by deposits, withdrawals, and/or  market  price  fluctua-
         tions)

       o --gain  :  show the unrealised capital gain/loss, (the current valued
         balance minus each amount's original cost)

   Accumulation type
       How amounts should accumulate across report periods.   Another  way  to
       say  it:  which time period's postings should contribute to each cell's
       calculation.  It is one of:

       o --change : calculate with postings from column start to  column  end,
         ie  "just  this  column".   Typically  used to see revenues/expenses.
         (default for balance, incomestatement)

       o --cumulative : calculate with postings from report  start  to  column
         end,  ie "previous columns plus this column".  Typically used to show
         changes accumulated since the report's start date.  Not often used.

       o --historical/-H : calculate with postings from journal start to  col-
         umn  end,  ie  "all postings from before report start date until this
         column's end".  Typically used to  see  historical  end  balances  of
         assets/liabilities/equity.  (default for balancesheet, balancesheete-
         quity, cashflow)

   Valuation type
       Which kind of value or cost  conversion  should  be  applied,  if  any,
       before displaying the report.  It is one of:

       o no valuation type : don't convert to cost or value (default)

       o --value=cost[,COMM]  :  convert  amounts  to cost (then optionally to
         some other commodity)

       o --value=then[,COMM] : convert amounts to market value on  transaction
         dates

       o --value=end[,COMM]  :  convert  amounts to market value on period end
         date(s)
       (default with --valuechange, --gain)

       o --value=now[,COMM] : convert amounts to market value on today's date

       o --value=YYYY-MM-DD[,COMM]  :  convert  amounts  to  market  value  on
         another date

       or one of the equivalent simpler flags:

       o -B/--cost  :  like  --value=cost (though, note --cost and --value are
         independent options which can both be used at once)

       o -V/--market : like --value=end

       o -X COMM/--exchange COMM : like --value=end,COMM

       See Cost reporting and Valuation for more about these.

   Combining balance report types
       Most combinations of these options should produce  reasonable  reports,
       but  if  you  find any that seem wrong or misleading, let us know.  The
       following restrictions are applied:

       o --valuechange implies --value=end

       o --valuechange makes --change the default  when  used  with  the  bal-
         ancesheet/balancesheetequity commands

       o --cumulative or --historical disables --row-total/-T

       For reference, here is what the combinations of accumulation and valua-
       tion show:


       Valua-     no valuation       --value= then       --value= end      --value= YYYY-
       tion:>                                                              MM-DD /now
       Accumu-
       lation:v
       -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
       --change   change in period   sum  of  posting-   period-end        DATE-value  of
                                     date market  val-   value of change   change      in
                                     ues in period       in period         period
       --cumu-    change      from   sum  of  posting-   period-end        DATE-value  of
       lative     report  start to   date  market val-   value of change   change    from
                  period end         ues  from  report   from     report   report   start
                                     start  to  period   start to period   to period end
                                     end                 end
       --his-     change      from   sum  of  posting-   period-end        DATE-value  of
       torical    journal start to   date market  val-   value of change   change    from
       /-H        period end (his-   ues  from journal   from    journal   journal  start
                  torical end bal-   start  to  period   start to period   to period end
                  ance)              end                 end

   Budget report
       The --budget report type activates extra  columns  showing  any  budget
       goals  for  each  account  and period.  The budget goals are defined by
       periodic transactions.  This is useful for comparing planned and actual
       income, expenses, time usage, etc.

       For  example,  you  can  take  average  monthly  expenses in the common
       expense categories to construct a minimal monthly budget:

              ;; Budget
              ~ monthly
                income  $2000
                expenses:food    $400
                expenses:bus     $50
                expenses:movies  $30
                assets:bank:checking

              ;; Two months worth of expenses
              2017-11-01
                income  $1950
                expenses:food    $396
                expenses:bus     $49
                expenses:movies  $30
                expenses:supplies  $20
                assets:bank:checking

              2017-12-01
                income  $2100
                expenses:food    $412
                expenses:bus     $53
                expenses:gifts   $100
                assets:bank:checking

       You can now see a monthly budget report:

              $ hledger balance -M --budget
              Budget performance in 2017/11/01-2017/12/31:

                                    ||                      Nov                       Dec
              ======================++====================================================
               assets               || $-2445 [  99% of $-2480]  $-2665 [ 107% of $-2480]
               assets:bank          || $-2445 [  99% of $-2480]  $-2665 [ 107% of $-2480]
               assets:bank:checking || $-2445 [  99% of $-2480]  $-2665 [ 107% of $-2480]
               expenses             ||   $495 [ 103% of   $480]    $565 [ 118% of   $480]
               expenses:bus         ||    $49 [  98% of    $50]     $53 [ 106% of    $50]
               expenses:food        ||   $396 [  99% of   $400]    $412 [ 103% of   $400]
               expenses:movies      ||    $30 [ 100% of    $30]       0 [   0% of    $30]
               income               ||  $1950 [  98% of  $2000]   $2100 [ 105% of  $2000]
              ----------------------++----------------------------------------------------
                                    ||      0 [              0]       0 [              0]

       This is different from a normal balance report in several ways:

       o Only accounts with budget goals during the report period  are  shown,
         by default.

       o In  each  column,  in square brackets after the actual amount, budget
         goal amounts are shown, and the actual/goal percentage.  (Note:  bud-
         get goals should be in the same commodity as the actual amount.)

       o All  parent accounts are always shown, even in list mode.  Eg assets,
         assets:bank, and expenses above.

       o Amounts always include all subaccounts, budgeted or unbudgeted,  even
         in list mode.

       This  means  that  the  numbers  displayed  will not always add up!  Eg
       above, the expenses actual  amount  includes  the  gifts  and  supplies
       transactions, but the expenses:gifts and expenses:supplies accounts are
       not shown, as they have no budget amounts declared.

       This can be confusing.  When you need to make things clearer,  use  the
       -E/--empty  flag,  which  will reveal all accounts including unbudgeted
       ones, giving the full picture.  Eg:

              $ hledger balance -M --budget --empty
              Budget performance in 2017/11/01-2017/12/31:

                                    ||                      Nov                       Dec
              ======================++====================================================
               assets               || $-2445 [  99% of $-2480]  $-2665 [ 107% of $-2480]
               assets:bank          || $-2445 [  99% of $-2480]  $-2665 [ 107% of $-2480]
               assets:bank:checking || $-2445 [  99% of $-2480]  $-2665 [ 107% of $-2480]
               expenses             ||   $495 [ 103% of   $480]    $565 [ 118% of   $480]
               expenses:bus         ||    $49 [  98% of    $50]     $53 [ 106% of    $50]
               expenses:food        ||   $396 [  99% of   $400]    $412 [ 103% of   $400]
               expenses:gifts       ||      0                      $100
               expenses:movies      ||    $30 [ 100% of    $30]       0 [   0% of    $30]
               expenses:supplies    ||    $20                         0
               income               ||  $1950 [  98% of  $2000]   $2100 [ 105% of  $2000]
              ----------------------++----------------------------------------------------
                                    ||      0 [              0]       0 [              0]

       You can roll over unspent budgets to next period with --cumulative:

              $ hledger balance -M --budget --cumulative
              Budget performance in 2017/11/01-2017/12/31:

                                    ||                      Nov                       Dec
              ======================++====================================================
               assets               || $-2445 [  99% of $-2480]  $-5110 [ 103% of $-4960]
               assets:bank          || $-2445 [  99% of $-2480]  $-5110 [ 103% of $-4960]
               assets:bank:checking || $-2445 [  99% of $-2480]  $-5110 [ 103% of $-4960]
               expenses             ||   $495 [ 103% of   $480]   $1060 [ 110% of   $960]
               expenses:bus         ||    $49 [  98% of    $50]    $102 [ 102% of   $100]
               expenses:food        ||   $396 [  99% of   $400]    $808 [ 101% of   $800]
               expenses:movies      ||    $30 [ 100% of    $30]     $30 [  50% of    $60]
               income               ||  $1950 [  98% of  $2000]   $4050 [ 101% of  $4000]
              ----------------------++----------------------------------------------------
                                    ||      0 [              0]       0 [              0]

       It's common to limit budgets/budget reports to just expenses

              hledger bal -M --budget expenses

       or just revenues and expenses (eg, using account types):

              hledger bal -M --budget type:rx

       It's also common  to  limit  or  convert  them  to  a  single  currency
       (cur:COMM  or  -X  COMM  [--infer-market-prices]).  If showing multiple
       currencies, --layout bare or --layout tall can help.

       For more examples and notes, see Budgeting.

   Budget report start date
       This might be a bug, but for now: when making budget  reports,  it's  a
       good idea to explicitly set the report's start date to the first day of
       a reporting period, because a periodic rule like  ~  monthly  generates
       its  transactions  on the 1st of each month, and if your journal has no
       regular transactions on the 1st, the default report  start  date  could
       exclude  that  budget  goal, which can be a little surprising.  Eg here
       the default report period is just the day of 2020-01-15:

              ~ monthly in 2020
                (expenses:food)  $500

              2020-01-15
                expenses:food    $400
                assets:checking

              $ hledger bal expenses --budget
              Budget performance in 2020-01-15:

                            || 2020-01-15
              ==============++============
               <unbudgeted> ||       $400
              --------------++------------
                            ||       $400

       To avoid this, specify the budget report's  period,  or  at  least  the
       start  date, with -b/-e/-p/date:, to ensure it includes the budget goal
       transactions (periodic transactions) that  you  want.   Eg,  adding  -b
       2020/1/1 to the above:

              $ hledger bal expenses --budget -b 2020/1/1
              Budget performance in 2020-01-01..2020-01-15:

                             || 2020-01-01..2020-01-15
              ===============++========================
               expenses:food ||     $400 [80% of $500]
              ---------------++------------------------
                             ||     $400 [80% of $500]

   Budgets and subaccounts
       You  can  add budgets to any account in your account hierarchy.  If you
       have budgets on both parent account and some of its children, then bud-
       get(s)  of  the  child account(s) would be added to the budget of their
       parent, much like account balances behave.

       In the most simple case this means that once you add a  budget  to  any
       account, all its parents would have budget as well.

       To illustrate this, consider the following budget:

              ~ monthly from 2019/01
                  expenses:personal             $1,000.00
                  expenses:personal:electronics    $100.00
                  liabilities

       With  this,  monthly  budget  for electronics is defined to be $100 and
       budget for personal expenses is an additional $1000,  which  implicitly
       means that budget for both expenses:personal and expenses is $1100.

       Transactions  in  expenses:personal:electronics  will  be  counted both
       towards its $100 budget and $1100 of expenses:personal ,  and  transac-
       tions  in  any  other  subaccount of expenses:personal would be counted
       towards only towards the budget of expenses:personal.

       For example, let's consider these transactions:

              ~ monthly from 2019/01
                  expenses:personal             $1,000.00
                  expenses:personal:electronics    $100.00
                  liabilities

              2019/01/01 Google home hub
                  expenses:personal:electronics          $90.00
                  liabilities                           $-90.00

              2019/01/02 Phone screen protector
                  expenses:personal:electronics:upgrades          $10.00
                  liabilities

              2019/01/02 Weekly train ticket
                  expenses:personal:train tickets       $153.00
                  liabilities

              2019/01/03 Flowers
                  expenses:personal          $30.00
                  liabilities

       As you can see, we  have  transactions  in  expenses:personal:electron-
       ics:upgrades  and  expenses:personal:train  tickets,  and since both of
       these accounts are without explicitly defined  budget,  these  transac-
       tions would be counted towards budgets of expenses:personal:electronics
       and expenses:personal accordingly:

              $ hledger balance --budget -M
              Budget performance in 2019/01:

                                             ||                           Jan
              ===============================++===============================
               expenses                      ||  $283.00 [  26% of  $1100.00]
               expenses:personal             ||  $283.00 [  26% of  $1100.00]
               expenses:personal:electronics ||  $100.00 [ 100% of   $100.00]
               liabilities                   || $-283.00 [  26% of $-1100.00]
              -------------------------------++-------------------------------
                                             ||        0 [                 0]

       And with --empty, we can get a better picture of budget allocation  and
       consumption:

              $ hledger balance --budget -M --empty
              Budget performance in 2019/01:

                                                      ||                           Jan
              ========================================++===============================
               expenses                               ||  $283.00 [  26% of  $1100.00]
               expenses:personal                      ||  $283.00 [  26% of  $1100.00]
               expenses:personal:electronics          ||  $100.00 [ 100% of   $100.00]
               expenses:personal:electronics:upgrades ||   $10.00
               expenses:personal:train tickets        ||  $153.00
               liabilities                            || $-283.00 [  26% of $-1100.00]
              ----------------------------------------++-------------------------------
                                                      ||        0 [                 0]

   Selecting budget goals
       The budget report evaluates periodic transaction rules to generate spe-
       cial "goal transactions", which generate  the  goal  amounts  for  each
       account  in  each  report subperiod.  When troubleshooting, you can use
       print --forecast to show these as forecasted transactions:

              $ hledger print --forecast=BUDGETREPORTPERIOD tag:generated

       By default, the budget report uses all available  periodic  transaction
       rules  to  generate goals.  This includes rules with a different report
       interval from your report.  Eg if you have daily,  weekly  and  monthly
       periodic  rules, all of these will contribute to the goals in a monthly
       budget report.

       You can select a subset of periodic rules by providing an  argument  to
       the  --budget  flag.   --budget=DESCPAT  will  match all periodic rules
       whose description contains DESCPAT, a case-insensitive substring (not a
       regular  expression  or  query).  This means you can give your periodic
       rules descriptions (remember that two  spaces  are  needed),  and  then
       select from multiple budgets defined in your journal.

   Budget vs forecast
       hledger  --forecast  ...  and hledger balance --budget ... are separate
       features, though both  of  them  use  the  periodic  transaction  rules
       defined  in  the  journal, and both of them generate temporary transac-
       tions for reporting purposes ("forecast transactions" and "budget  goal
       transactions",  respectively).   You  can use both features at the same
       time if you want.  Here  are  some  differences  between  them,  as  of
       hledger 1.29:

       CLI:

       o --forecast is a general hledger option, usable with any command

       o --budget  is a balance command option, usable only with that command.

       Visibility of generated transactions:

       o forecast transactions are visible in any report, like ordinary trans-
         actions

       o budget  goal  transactions  are invisible except for the goal amounts
         they produce in --budget reports.

       Periodic transaction rules:

       o --forecast uses all available periodic transaction rules

       o --budget uses all periodic rules  (--budget)  or  a  selected  subset
         (--budget=DESCPAT)

       Period of generated transactions:

       o --forecast generates forecast transactions

         o from  after  the  last regular transaction to the end of the report
           period (--forecast)

         o or, during a specified period (--forecast=PERIODEXPR)

         o possibly further restricted by a period specified in  the  periodic
           transaction rule

         o and always restricted within the bounds of the report period

       o --budget generates budget goal transactions

         o throughout the report period

         o possibly  restricted by a period specified in the periodic transac-
           tion rule.

   Data layout
       The --layout option affects how balance  reports  show  multi-commodity
       amounts  and  commodity symbols, which can improve readability.  It can
       also normalise the data for easy consumption by other programs.  It has
       four possible values:

       o --layout=wide[,WIDTH]:  commodities  are  shown  on  a  single  line,
         optionally elided to WIDTH

       o --layout=tall: each commodity is shown on a separate line

       o --layout=bare: commodity symbols are in their own column, amounts are
         bare numbers

       o --layout=tidy:  data  is  normalised  to easily-consumed "tidy" form,
         with one row per data value

       Here are the --layout modes supported by each output format; note  only
       CSV output supports all of them:


       -      txt   csv   html   json   sql
       -------------------------------------
       wide   Y     Y     Y
       tall   Y     Y     Y
       bare   Y     Y     Y
       tidy         Y

       Examples:

       o Wide layout.  With many commodities, reports can be very wide:

                $ hledger -f examples/bcexample.hledger bal assets:us:etrade -3 -T -Y --layout=wide
                Balance changes in 2012-01-01..2014-12-31:

                                  ||                                          2012                                                     2013                                             2014                                                      Total
                ==================++====================================================================================================================================================================================================================
                 Assets:US:ETrade || 10.00 ITOT, 337.18 USD, 12.00 VEA, 106.00 VHT  70.00 GLD, 18.00 ITOT, -98.12 USD, 10.00 VEA, 18.00 VHT  -11.00 ITOT, 4881.44 USD, 14.00 VEA, 170.00 VHT  70.00 GLD, 17.00 ITOT, 5120.50 USD, 36.00 VEA, 294.00 VHT
                ------------------++--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                  || 10.00 ITOT, 337.18 USD, 12.00 VEA, 106.00 VHT  70.00 GLD, 18.00 ITOT, -98.12 USD, 10.00 VEA, 18.00 VHT  -11.00 ITOT, 4881.44 USD, 14.00 VEA, 170.00 VHT  70.00 GLD, 17.00 ITOT, 5120.50 USD, 36.00 VEA, 294.00 VHT

       o Limited  wide layout.  A width limit reduces the width, but some com-
         modities will be hidden:

                $ hledger -f examples/bcexample.hledger bal assets:us:etrade -3 -T -Y --layout=wide,32
                Balance changes in 2012-01-01..2014-12-31:

                                  ||                             2012                             2013                   2014                            Total
                ==================++===========================================================================================================================
                 Assets:US:ETrade || 10.00 ITOT, 337.18 USD, 2 more..  70.00 GLD, 18.00 ITOT, 3 more..  -11.00 ITOT, 3 more..  70.00 GLD, 17.00 ITOT, 3 more..
                ------------------++---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                  || 10.00 ITOT, 337.18 USD, 2 more..  70.00 GLD, 18.00 ITOT, 3 more..  -11.00 ITOT, 3 more..  70.00 GLD, 17.00 ITOT, 3 more..

       o Tall layout.  Each commodity gets a new line  (may  be  different  in
         each column), and account names are repeated:

                $ hledger -f examples/bcexample.hledger bal assets:us:etrade -3 -T -Y --layout=tall
                Balance changes in 2012-01-01..2014-12-31:

                                  ||       2012        2013         2014        Total
                ==================++==================================================
                 Assets:US:ETrade || 10.00 ITOT   70.00 GLD  -11.00 ITOT    70.00 GLD
                 Assets:US:ETrade || 337.18 USD  18.00 ITOT  4881.44 USD   17.00 ITOT
                 Assets:US:ETrade ||  12.00 VEA  -98.12 USD    14.00 VEA  5120.50 USD
                 Assets:US:ETrade || 106.00 VHT   10.00 VEA   170.00 VHT    36.00 VEA
                 Assets:US:ETrade ||              18.00 VHT                294.00 VHT
                ------------------++--------------------------------------------------
                                  || 10.00 ITOT   70.00 GLD  -11.00 ITOT    70.00 GLD
                                  || 337.18 USD  18.00 ITOT  4881.44 USD   17.00 ITOT
                                  ||  12.00 VEA  -98.12 USD    14.00 VEA  5120.50 USD
                                  || 106.00 VHT   10.00 VEA   170.00 VHT    36.00 VEA
                                  ||              18.00 VHT                294.00 VHT

       o Bare  layout.  Commodity symbols are kept in one column, each commod-
         ity gets its own report row, account names are repeated:

                $ hledger -f examples/bcexample.hledger bal assets:us:etrade -3 -T -Y --layout=bare
                Balance changes in 2012-01-01..2014-12-31:

                                  || Commodity    2012    2013     2014    Total
                ==================++=============================================
                 Assets:US:ETrade || GLD             0   70.00        0    70.00
                 Assets:US:ETrade || ITOT        10.00   18.00   -11.00    17.00
                 Assets:US:ETrade || USD        337.18  -98.12  4881.44  5120.50
                 Assets:US:ETrade || VEA         12.00   10.00    14.00    36.00
                 Assets:US:ETrade || VHT        106.00   18.00   170.00   294.00
                ------------------++---------------------------------------------
                                  || GLD             0   70.00        0    70.00
                                  || ITOT        10.00   18.00   -11.00    17.00
                                  || USD        337.18  -98.12  4881.44  5120.50
                                  || VEA         12.00   10.00    14.00    36.00
                                  || VHT        106.00   18.00   170.00   294.00

       o Bare layout also affects CSV output, which is  useful  for  producing
         data that is easier to consume, eg for making charts:

                $ hledger -f examples/bcexample.hledger bal assets:us:etrade -3 -O csv --layout=bare
                "account","commodity","balance"
                "Assets:US:ETrade","GLD","70.00"
                "Assets:US:ETrade","ITOT","17.00"
                "Assets:US:ETrade","USD","5120.50"
                "Assets:US:ETrade","VEA","36.00"
                "Assets:US:ETrade","VHT","294.00"
                "total","GLD","70.00"
                "total","ITOT","17.00"
                "total","USD","5120.50"
                "total","VEA","36.00"
                "total","VHT","294.00"

       o Tidy layout produces normalised "tidy data", where every variable has
         its own column and each row represents  a  single  data  point.   See
         https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/tidyr/vignettes/tidy-
         data.html for more.  This is the easiest kind of data for other soft-
         ware to consume.  Here's how it looks:

                $ hledger -f examples/bcexample.hledger bal assets:us:etrade -3 -Y -O csv --layout=tidy
                "account","period","start_date","end_date","commodity","value"
                "Assets:US:ETrade","2012","2012-01-01","2012-12-31","GLD","0"
                "Assets:US:ETrade","2012","2012-01-01","2012-12-31","ITOT","10.00"
                "Assets:US:ETrade","2012","2012-01-01","2012-12-31","USD","337.18"
                "Assets:US:ETrade","2012","2012-01-01","2012-12-31","VEA","12.00"
                "Assets:US:ETrade","2012","2012-01-01","2012-12-31","VHT","106.00"
                "Assets:US:ETrade","2013","2013-01-01","2013-12-31","GLD","70.00"
                "Assets:US:ETrade","2013","2013-01-01","2013-12-31","ITOT","18.00"
                "Assets:US:ETrade","2013","2013-01-01","2013-12-31","USD","-98.12"
                "Assets:US:ETrade","2013","2013-01-01","2013-12-31","VEA","10.00"
                "Assets:US:ETrade","2013","2013-01-01","2013-12-31","VHT","18.00"
                "Assets:US:ETrade","2014","2014-01-01","2014-12-31","GLD","0"
                "Assets:US:ETrade","2014","2014-01-01","2014-12-31","ITOT","-11.00"
                "Assets:US:ETrade","2014","2014-01-01","2014-12-31","USD","4881.44"
                "Assets:US:ETrade","2014","2014-01-01","2014-12-31","VEA","14.00"
                "Assets:US:ETrade","2014","2014-01-01","2014-12-31","VHT","170.00"

   Useful balance reports
       Some frequently used balance options/reports are:

       o bal -M revenues expenses
       Show  revenues/expenses  in each month.  Also available as the incomes-
       tatement command.

       o bal -M -H assets liabilities
       Show historical asset/liability  balances  at  each  month  end.   Also
       available as the balancesheet command.

       o bal -M -H assets liabilities equity
       Show  historical  asset/liability/equity  balances  at  each month end.
       Also available as the balancesheetequity command.

       o bal -M assets not:receivable
       Show changes to liquid assets in each month.   Also  available  as  the
       cashflow command.

       Also:

       o bal -M expenses -2 -SA
       Show  monthly  expenses  summarised  to  depth  2 and sorted by average
       amount.

       o bal -M --budget expenses
       Show monthly expenses and budget goals.

       o bal -M --valuechange investments
       Show monthly change in market value of investment assets.

       o bal  investments  --valuechange  -D  date:lastweek  amt:'>1000'  -STA
         [--invert]
       Show top gainers [or losers] last week

   balancesheet
       (bs)

       This  command  displays a balance sheet, showing historical ending bal-
       ances of asset and liability accounts.  (To see equity as well, use the
       balancesheetequity  command.)   Amounts  are shown with normal positive
       sign, as in conventional financial statements.

       This report shows accounts declared with the Asset, Cash  or  Liability
       type  (see  account  types).   Or  if no such accounts are declared, it
       shows top-level accounts named asset or  liability  (case  insensitive,
       plurals allowed) and their subaccounts.

       Example:

              $ hledger balancesheet
              Balance Sheet

              Assets:
                               $-1  assets
                                $1    bank:saving
                               $-2    cash
              --------------------
                               $-1

              Liabilities:
                                $1  liabilities:debts
              --------------------
                                $1

              Total:
              --------------------
                                 0

       This command is a higher-level variant of the balance command, and sup-
       ports many of that command's features, such  as  multi-period  reports.
       It  is  similar  to  hledger  balance  -H  assets liabilities, but with
       smarter account detection, and liabilities displayed  with  their  sign
       flipped.

       This  command  also  supports  the output destination and output format
       options The output formats supported are txt, csv, html,  and  (experi-
       mental) json.

   balancesheetequity
       (bse)

       This  command  displays a balance sheet, showing historical ending bal-
       ances of asset, liability and equity accounts.  Amounts are shown  with
       normal positive sign, as in conventional financial statements.

       This  report shows accounts declared with the Asset, Cash, Liability or
       Equity type (see account types).  Or if no such accounts are  declared,
       it  shows  top-level  accounts  named  asset, liability or equity (case
       insensitive, plurals allowed) and their subaccounts.

       Example:

              $ hledger balancesheetequity
              Balance Sheet With Equity

              Assets:
                               $-2  assets
                                $1    bank:saving
                               $-3    cash
              --------------------
                               $-2

              Liabilities:
                                $1  liabilities:debts
              --------------------
                                $1

              Equity:
                        $1  equity:owner
              --------------------
                        $1

              Total:
              --------------------
                                 0

       This command is a higher-level variant of the balance command, and sup-
       ports  many  of  that command's features, such as multi-period reports.
       It is similar to hledger balance -H assets liabilities equity, but with
       smarter  account detection, and liabilities/equity displayed with their
       sign flipped.

       This command also supports the output  destination  and  output  format
       options  The  output formats supported are txt, csv, html, and (experi-
       mental) json.

   cashflow
       (cf)

       This command displays a cashflow statement,  showing  the  inflows  and
       outflows  affecting  "cash"  (ie,  liquid,  easily convertible) assets.
       Amounts are shown with normal positive sign, as in conventional  finan-
       cial statements.

       This  report  shows  accounts  declared with the Cash type (see account
       types).  Or if no such accounts are declared, it shows accounts

       o under a top-level  account  named  asset  (case  insensitive,  plural
         allowed)

       o whose name contains some variation of cash, bank, checking or saving.

       More precisely: all accounts matching  this  case  insensitive  regular
       expression:

       ^assets?(:.+)?:(cash|bank|che(ck|que?)(ing)?|savings?|currentcash)(:|$)

       and their subaccounts.

       An example cashflow report:

              $ hledger cashflow
              Cashflow Statement

              Cash flows:
                               $-1  assets
                                $1    bank:saving
                               $-2    cash
              --------------------
                               $-1

              Total:
              --------------------
                               $-1

       This command is a higher-level variant of the balance command, and sup-
       ports  many  of  that command's features, such as multi-period reports.
       It is  similar  to  hledger  balance  assets  not:fixed  not:investment
       not:receivable, but with smarter account detection.

       This  command  also  supports  the output destination and output format
       options The output formats supported are txt, csv, html,  and  (experi-
       mental) json.

   check
       Check for various kinds of errors in your data.

       hledger  provides  a  number  of  built-in error checks to help prevent
       problems in your data.  Some of these are run  automatically;  or,  you
       can  use this check command to run them on demand, with no output and a
       zero exit code if all is well.  Specify their names (or  a  prefix)  as
       argument(s).

       Some examples:

              hledger check      # basic checks
              hledger check -s   # basic + strict checks
              hledger check ordereddates payees  # basic + two other checks

       If  you  are  an Emacs user, you can also configure flycheck-hledger to
       run these checks, providing instant feedback as you edit the journal.

       Here are the checks currently available:

   Basic checks
       These checks are always run automatically, by (almost) all hledger com-
       mands, including check:

       o parseable - data files are well-formed and can be successfully parsed

       o balancedwithautoconversion - all transactions are balanced, inferring
         missing  amounts where necessary, and possibly converting commodities
         using costs or automatically-inferred costs

       o assertions - all balance  assertions  in  the  journal  are  passing.
         (This check can be disabled with -I/--ignore-assertions.)

   Strict checks
       These additional checks are run when the -s/--strict (strict mode) flag
       is used.  Or, they can be run by giving their  names  as  arguments  to
       check:

       o accounts - all account names used by transactions have been declared

       o commodities - all commodity symbols used have been declared

       o balancednoautoconversion  - transactions are balanced, possibly using
         explicit costs but not inferred ones

   Other checks
       These checks can be run only by giving  their  names  as  arguments  to
       check.   They  are  more  specialised  and  not desirable for everyone,
       therefore optional:

       o ordereddates - transactions are ordered by date within each file

       o payees - all payees used by transactions have been declared

       o recentassertions - all accounts with balance assertions have  a  bal-
         ance assertion no more than 7 days before their latest posting

       o tags - all tags used by transactions have been declared

       o uniqueleafnames - all account leaf names are unique

   Custom checks
       A  few  more  checks  are are available as separate add-on commands, in
       https://github.com/simonmichael/hledger/tree/master/bin:

       o hledger-check-tagfiles - all  tag  values  containing  /  (a  forward
         slash) exist as file paths

       o hledger-check-fancyassertions  -  more complex balance assertions are
         passing

       You could make similar scripts to perform your own custom checks.  See:
       Cookbook -> Scripting.

   More about specific checks
       hledger  check  recentassertions  will complain if any balance-asserted
       account does not have a balance assertion within 7 days before its lat-
       est  posting.   This  aims to prevent the situation where you are regu-
       larly updating your journal, but  forgetting  to  check  your  balances
       against  the  real  world, then one day must dig back through months of
       data to find an error.  It assumes  that  adding  a  balance  assertion
       requires/reminds  you to check the real-world balance.  That may not be
       true if you auto-generate balance assertions from bank  data;  in  that
       case,  I  recommend to import transactions uncleared, then use the man-
       ual-review-and-mark-cleared phase as a reminder  to  check  the  latest
       assertions against real-world balances.

   close
       close [--retain | --migrate | --open] [QUERY]

       By  default:  prints  a  transaction  that  zeroes  out  ("closes") all
       accounts, transferring their balances  to  an  equity  account.   Query
       arguments can be added to override the accounts selection.  Three other
       modes are supported:

       --retain: prints a transaction closing revenue  and  expense  balances.
       This  is traditionally done by businesses at the end of each accounting
       period; it is less necessary in personal and computer-based accounting,
       but it can help balance the accounting equation A=L+E.

       --migrate:  prints  a  transaction  to  close asset, liability and most
       equity balances, and another transaction to re-open them.  This can  be
       useful  when  starting a new file (for performance or data protection).
       Adding the closing transaction to the old file allows old and new files
       to be combined.

       --open: as above, but prints just the opening transaction.  This can be
       useful for starting a new file, leaving the old file unchanged.   Simi-
       lar to Ledger's equity command.

       You  can  change  the  equity  account name with --close-acct ACCT.  It
       defaults to equity:retained earnings  with  --retain,  or  equity:open-
       ing/closing balances otherwise.

       You  can change the transaction description(s) with --close-desc 'DESC'
       and --open-desc 'DESC'.  It defaults to retain earnings with  --retain,
       or closing balances and opening balances otherwise.

       Just one posting to the equity account will be used by default, with an
       implicit amount.

       With --x/--explicit the amount will be  shown  explicitly,  and  if  it
       involves multiple commodities, a separate posting will be generated for
       each commodity.

       With --interleaved, each equity posting is shown  next  to  the  corre-
       sponding source/destination posting.

       The  default  closing  date  is  yesterday,  or the journal's end date,
       whichever is later.  You can change this by  specifying  a  report  end
       date;  (The  report  start  date does not matter.)  The last day of the
       report period will be the closing date; eg  -e  2022  means  "close  on
       2022-12-31".   The  opening  date  is  always the day after the closing
       date.

   close and costs
       With --show-costs, any amount costs are shown, with  separate  postings
       for each cost.  (This currently the best way to view investment assets,
       showing lots and cost bases.)  If you have many currency conversion  or
       investment transactions, it can generate very large journal entries.

   close and balance assertions
       Balance  assertions will be generated, verifying that the accounts have
       been reset to zero (and then restored to their  previous  balances,  if
       there is an opening transaction).

       These  provide useful error checking, but you can ignore them temporar-
       ily with -I, or remove them if you prefer.

       You probably should avoid filtering transactions by status or  realness
       (-C,  -R, status:), or generating postings (--auto), with this command,
       since the balance assertions would depend on these.

       Note custom posting dates spanning the file boundary will  disrupt  the
       balance assertions:

              2023-12-30 a purchase made in december, cleared in january
                  expenses:food          5
                  assets:bank:checking  -5  ; date: 2023-01-02

       To  solve  that  you  can  transfer  the  money to and from a temporary
       account, in effect splitting the multi-day transaction into two single-
       day transactions:

              ; in 2022.journal:
              2022-12-30 a purchase made in december, cleared in january
                  expenses:food          5
                  equity:pending        -5

              ; in 2023.journal:
              2023-01-02 last year's transaction cleared
                  equity:pending         5 = 0
                  assets:bank:checking  -5

   Example: retain earnings
       Record  2022's  revenues/expenses  as  retained earnings on 2022-12-31,
       appending the generated transaction to the journal:

              $ hledger close --retain -f 2022.journal -p 2022 >> 2022.journal

       Now 2022's income statement will show only zeroes.  To  see  it  again,
       exclude the retain transaction.  Eg:

              $ hledger -f 2022.journal is not:desc:'retain earnings'

   Example: migrate balances to a new file
       Close  assets/liabilities/equity  on  2022-12-31  and  re-open  them on
       2023-01-01:

              $ hledger close --migrate -f 2022.journal -p 2022
              # copy/paste the closing transaction to the end of 2022.journal
              # copy/paste the opening transaction to the start of 2023.journal

       Now 2022's balance sheet will show only zeroes, indicating  a  balanced
       accounting  equation.   (Unless  you  are using @/@@ notation - in that
       case, try adding --infer-equity.)  To see it again, exclude the closing
       transaction.  Eg:

              $ hledger -f 2022.journal bs not:desc:'closing balances'

   Example: excluding closing/opening transactions
       When  combining  many files for multi-year reports, the closing/opening
       transactions cause some noise in reports like print and register.   You
       can exclude them as shown above, but not:desc:... could be fragile, and
       also you will need to avoid excluding the very first  opening  transac-
       tion,  which  can  be awkward.  Here is a way to do it, using tags: add
       clopen: tags to all opening/closing balances  transactions  except  the
       first, like this:

              ; 2021.journal
              2021-06-01 first opening balances
              ...
              2021-12-31 closing balances  ; clopen:2022
              ...

              ; 2022.journal
              2022-01-01 opening balances  ; clopen:2022
              ...
              2022-12-31 closing balances  ; clopen:2023
              ...

              ; 2023.journal
              2023-01-01 opening balances  ; clopen:2023
              ...

       Now, assuming a combined journal like:

              ; all.journal
              include 2021.journal
              include 2022.journal
              include 2023.journal

       The  clopen: tag can exclude all but the first opening transaction.  To
       show a clean multi-year checking register:

              $ hledger -f all.journal areg checking not:tag:clopen

       And the year values allow more precision.  To show 2022's year-end bal-
       ance sheet:

              $ hledger -f all.journal bs -e2023 not:tag:clopen=2023

   codes
       List the codes seen in transactions, in the order parsed.

       This  command prints the value of each transaction's code field, in the
       order transactions were parsed.  The transaction code  is  an  optional
       value  written  in  parentheses between the date and description, often
       used to store a cheque number, order number or similar.

       Transactions aren't required to have a code, and missing or empty codes
       will  not  be shown by default.  With the -E/--empty flag, they will be
       printed as blank lines.

       You can add a query to select a subset of transactions.

       Examples:

              2022/1/1 (123) Supermarket
               Food       $5.00
               Checking

              2022/1/2 (124) Post Office
               Postage    $8.32
               Checking

              2022/1/3 Supermarket
               Food      $11.23
               Checking

              2022/1/4 (126) Post Office
               Postage    $3.21
               Checking

              $ hledger codes
              123
              124
              126

              $ hledger codes -E
              123
              124

              126

   commodities
       List all commodity/currency symbols used or declared in the journal.

   descriptions
       List the unique descriptions that appear in transactions.

       This command lists the unique descriptions that appear in transactions,
       in  alphabetic order.  You can add a query to select a subset of trans-
       actions.

       Example:

              $ hledger descriptions
              Store Name
              Gas Station | Petrol
              Person A

   diff
       Compares a particular account's transactions in two  input  files.   It
       shows any transactions to this account which are in one file but not in
       the other.

       More precisely, for each posting affecting this account in either file,
       it  looks for a corresponding posting in the other file which posts the
       same amount to the same  account  (ignoring  date,  description,  etc.)
       Since postings not transactions are compared, this also works when mul-
       tiple bank transactions have been combined into a single journal entry.

       This is useful eg if you have downloaded an account's transactions from
       your bank (eg as CSV data).  When hledger and your bank disagree  about
       the account balance, you can compare the bank data with your journal to
       find out the cause.

       Examples:

              $ hledger diff -f $LEDGER_FILE -f bank.csv assets:bank:giro
              These transactions are in the first file only:

              2014/01/01 Opening Balances
                  assets:bank:giro              EUR ...
                  ...
                  equity:opening balances       EUR -...

              These transactions are in the second file only:

   files
       List all files included in the journal.  With a  REGEX  argument,  only
       file  names matching the regular expression (case sensitive) are shown.

   help
       Show the hledger user manual in the terminal,  with  info,  man,  or  a
       pager.   With  a  TOPIC  argument,  open  it at that topic if possible.
       TOPIC can be any heading in the  manual,  or  a  heading  prefix,  case
       insensitive.   Eg:  commands,  print,  forecast, journal, amount, "auto
       postings".

       This command shows the hledger manual built in to your hledger version.
       It can be useful when offline, or when you prefer the terminal to a web
       browser, or when the appropriate hledger manual or  viewing  tools  are
       not installed on your system.

       By  default  it chooses the best viewer found in $PATH (preferring info
       since the hledger manual is large).  You can select a particular viewer
       with the -i, -m, or -p flags.

       Examples

              $ hledger help --help    # show how the help command works
              $ hledger help           # show the hledger manual with info, man or $PAGER
              $ hledger help journal   # show the journal topic in the hledger manual

   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' trans-
       actions as imported, without actually importing any.

       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 out-
       put 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  idem-
       potent.)

       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  sav-
       ing a hidden ".latest" state file in the same directory.  Eg when read-
       ing finance/bank.csv, it will look for  and  update  the  finance/.lat-
       est.bank.csv  state file.  The format is simple: one or more lines con-
       taining the same ISO-format date (YYYY-MM-DD),  meaning  "I  have  pro-
       cessed  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  cer-
       tain date.

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

   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 possi-
       ble 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.

   incomestatement
       (is)

       This  command  displays  an  income  statement,  showing  revenues  and
       expenses  during  one  or  more periods.  Amounts are shown with normal
       positive sign, as in conventional financial statements.

       This report shows accounts declared with the Revenue  or  Expense  type
       (see  account  types).   Or  if no such accounts are declared, it shows
       top-level accounts named revenue or income or  expense  (case  insensi-
       tive, plurals allowed) and their subaccounts.

       Example:

              $ hledger incomestatement
              Income Statement

              Revenues:
                               $-2  income
                               $-1    gifts
                               $-1    salary
              --------------------
                               $-2

              Expenses:
                                $2  expenses
                                $1    food
                                $1    supplies
              --------------------
                                $2

              Total:
              --------------------
                                 0

       This command is a higher-level variant of the balance command, and sup-
       ports many of that command's features, such  as  multi-period  reports.
       It is similar to hledger balance '(revenues|income)' expenses, but with
       smarter account detection, and  revenues/income  displayed  with  their
       sign flipped.

       This  command  also  supports  the output destination and output format
       options The output formats supported are txt, csv, html,  and  (experi-
       mental) json.

   notes
       List the unique notes that appear in transactions.

       This  command  lists  the  unique notes that appear in transactions, in
       alphabetic order.  You can add a query to select a subset  of  transac-
       tions.   The  note is the part of the transaction description after a |
       character (or if there is no |, the whole description).

       Example:

              $ hledger notes
              Petrol
              Snacks

   payees
       List the unique payee/payer names that appear in transactions.

       This command lists unique payee/payer names which  have  been  declared
       with  payee  directives  (--declared), used in transaction descriptions
       (--used), or both (the default).

       The payee/payer is the part of the transaction description before  a  |
       character (or if there is no |, the whole description).

       You  can  add query arguments to select a subset of transactions.  This
       implies --used.

       Example:

              $ hledger payees
              Store Name
              Gas Station
              Person A

   prices
       Print market price directives from the journal.   With  --infer-market-
       prices,  generate  additional  market prices from costs.  With --infer-
       reverse-prices, also generate market prices by inverting known  prices.
       Prices  can  be  filtered by a query.  Price amounts are displayed with
       their full precision.

   print
       Show transaction journal entries, sorted by date.

       The print command displays full journal entries (transactions) from the
       journal file, sorted by date (or with --date2, by secondary date).

       Amounts  are shown mostly normalised to commodity display style, eg the
       placement of commodity symbols will be consistent.  All of their  deci-
       mal places are shown, as in the original journal entry (with one alter-
       ation: in some cases trailing zeroes are added.)

       Amounts are shown right-aligned within each transaction (but not across
       all transactions).

       Directives  and  inter-transaction  comments  are not shown, currently.
       This means the print command is somewhat lossy, and if you are using it
       to  reformat  your  journal  you should take care to also copy over the
       directives and file-level comments.

       Eg:

              $ hledger print
              2008/01/01 income
                  assets:bank:checking            $1
                  income:salary                  $-1

              2008/06/01 gift
                  assets:bank:checking            $1
                  income:gifts                   $-1

              2008/06/02 save
                  assets:bank:saving              $1
                  assets:bank:checking           $-1

              2008/06/03 * eat & shop
                  expenses:food                $1
                  expenses:supplies            $1
                  assets:cash                 $-2

              2008/12/31 * pay off
                  liabilities:debts               $1
                  assets:bank:checking           $-1

       print's output is usually a valid hledger journal, and you can  process
       it again with a second hledger command.  This can be useful for certain
       kinds of search, eg:

              # Show running total of food expenses paid from cash.
              # -f- reads from stdin. -I/--ignore-assertions is sometimes needed.
              $ hledger print assets:cash | hledger -f- -I reg expenses:food

       There are some situations where print's output can become unparseable:

       o Valuation affects posting amounts but not balance assertion  or  bal-
         ance assignment amounts, potentially causing those to fail.

       o Auto postings can generate postings with too many missing amounts.

       o Account aliases can generate bad account names.

       Normally, the journal entry's explicit or implicit amount style is pre-
       served.  For example, when an amount is omitted in the journal, it will
       not  appear  in  the output.  Similarly, when a cost is implied but not
       written,  it  will  not  appear  in  the  output.   You  can  use   the
       -x/--explicit flag to make all amounts and costs explicit, which can be
       useful for troubleshooting or for making your journal more readable and
       robust  against  data entry errors.  -x is also implied by using any of
       -B,-V,-X,--value.

       Note, -x/--explicit will cause postings with a  multi-commodity  amount
       (these  can  arise  when  a multi-commodity transaction has an implicit
       amount) to be split into multiple  single-commodity  postings,  keeping
       the output parseable.

       With  -B/--cost,  amounts  with  costs are converted to cost using that
       price.  This can be used for troubleshooting.

       With -m DESC/--match=DESC, print does a fuzzy  search  for  one  recent
       transaction  whose  description  is  most similar to DESC.  DESC should
       contain at least two characters.  If there is no similar-enough  match,
       no  transaction  will  be  shown and the program exit code will be non-
       zero.

       With --new, hledger prints only transactions it has not seen on a  pre-
       vious  run.  This uses the same deduplication system as the import com-
       mand.  (See import's docs for details.)

       This command also supports the output  destination  and  output  format
       options  The  output formats supported are txt, csv, and (experimental)
       json and sql.

       Here's an example of print's CSV output:

              $ hledger print -Ocsv
              "txnidx","date","date2","status","code","description","comment","account","amount","commodity","credit","debit","posting-status","posting-comment"
              "1","2008/01/01","","","","income","","assets:bank:checking","1","$","","1","",""
              "1","2008/01/01","","","","income","","income:salary","-1","$","1","","",""
              "2","2008/06/01","","","","gift","","assets:bank:checking","1","$","","1","",""
              "2","2008/06/01","","","","gift","","income:gifts","-1","$","1","","",""
              "3","2008/06/02","","","","save","","assets:bank:saving","1","$","","1","",""
              "3","2008/06/02","","","","save","","assets:bank:checking","-1","$","1","","",""
              "4","2008/06/03","","*","","eat & shop","","expenses:food","1","$","","1","",""
              "4","2008/06/03","","*","","eat & shop","","expenses:supplies","1","$","","1","",""
              "4","2008/06/03","","*","","eat & shop","","assets:cash","-2","$","2","","",""
              "5","2008/12/31","","*","","pay off","","liabilities:debts","1","$","","1","",""
              "5","2008/12/31","","*","","pay off","","assets:bank:checking","-1","$","1","","",""

       o There is one CSV record per posting, with  the  parent  transaction's
         fields repeated.

       o The "txnidx" (transaction index) field shows which postings belong to
         the same transaction.  (This number might change if transactions  are
         reordered  within  the file, files are parsed/included in a different
         order, etc.)

       o The amount is separated into "commodity" (the  symbol)  and  "amount"
         (numeric quantity) fields.

       o The numeric amount is repeated in either the "credit" or "debit" col-
         umn, for convenience.  (Those names are not accurate in the  account-
         ing  sense;  it  just  puts negative amounts under credit and zero or
         greater amounts under debit.)

   register
       (reg)

       Show postings and their running total.

       The register command displays matched postings, across all accounts, in
       date  order,  with  their  running total or running historical balance.
       (See also the aregister command, which shows matched transactions in  a
       specific account.)

       register normally shows line per posting, but note that multi-commodity
       amounts will occupy multiple lines (one line per commodity).

       It is typically used with a query selecting a  particular  account,  to
       see that account's activity:

              $ hledger register checking
              2008/01/01 income               assets:bank:checking            $1           $1
              2008/06/01 gift                 assets:bank:checking            $1           $2
              2008/06/02 save                 assets:bank:checking           $-1           $1
              2008/12/31 pay off              assets:bank:checking           $-1            0

       With --date2, it shows and sorts by secondary date instead.

       For  performance  reasons,  column widths are chosen based on the first
       1000 lines; this means unusually wide values in later lines  can  cause
       visual  discontinuities  as column widths are adjusted.  If you want to
       ensure perfect alignment, at the cost of more time and memory, use  the
       --align-all flag.

       The  --historical/-H  flag  adds the balance from any undisplayed prior
       postings to the running total.  This is useful when  you  want  to  see
       only recent activity, with a historically accurate running balance:

              $ hledger register checking -b 2008/6 --historical
              2008/06/01 gift                 assets:bank:checking            $1           $2
              2008/06/02 save                 assets:bank:checking           $-1           $1
              2008/12/31 pay off              assets:bank:checking           $-1            0

       The --depth option limits the amount of sub-account detail displayed.

       The  --average/-A flag shows the running average posting amount instead
       of the running total (so, the final number displayed is the average for
       the  whole  report period).  This flag implies --empty (see below).  It
       is affected by --historical.  It  works  best  when  showing  just  one
       account and one commodity.

       The  --related/-r  flag shows the other postings in the transactions of
       the postings which would normally be shown.

       The --invert flag negates all amounts.  For example, it can be used  on
       an income account where amounts are normally displayed as negative num-
       bers.  It's also useful  to  show  postings  on  the  checking  account
       together with the related account:

              $ hledger register --related --invert assets:checking

       With  a  reporting  interval,  register shows summary postings, one per
       interval, aggregating the postings to each account:

              $ hledger register --monthly income
              2008/01                 income:salary                          $-1          $-1
              2008/06                 income:gifts                           $-1          $-2

       Periods with no activity, and summary postings with a zero amount,  are
       not shown by default; use the --empty/-E flag to see them:

              $ hledger register --monthly income -E
              2008/01                 income:salary                          $-1          $-1
              2008/02                                                          0          $-1
              2008/03                                                          0          $-1
              2008/04                                                          0          $-1
              2008/05                                                          0          $-1
              2008/06                 income:gifts                           $-1          $-2
              2008/07                                                          0          $-2
              2008/08                                                          0          $-2
              2008/09                                                          0          $-2
              2008/10                                                          0          $-2
              2008/11                                                          0          $-2
              2008/12                                                          0          $-2

       Often,  you'll  want  to  see  just one line per interval.  The --depth
       option helps with this, causing subaccounts to be aggregated:

              $ hledger register --monthly assets --depth 1h
              2008/01                 assets                                  $1           $1
              2008/06                 assets                                 $-1            0
              2008/12                 assets                                 $-1          $-1

       Note when using report intervals, if you specify start/end dates  these
       will  be  adjusted  outward  if  necessary to contain a whole number of
       intervals.  This ensures that the first and  last  intervals  are  full
       length and comparable to the others in the report.

       With  -m DESC/--match=DESC, register does a fuzzy search for one recent
       posting whose description is most similar to DESC.  DESC should contain
       at least two characters.  If there is no similar-enough match, no post-
       ing will be shown and the program exit code will be non-zero.

   Custom register output
       register uses the full terminal width by default,  except  on  windows.
       You  can override this by setting the COLUMNS environment variable (not
       a bash shell variable) or by using the --width/-w option.

       The description and account columns normally share  the  space  equally
       (about  half  of  (width  - 40) each).  You can adjust this by adding a
       description width  as  part  of  --width's  argument,  comma-separated:
       --width W,D .  Here's a diagram (won't display correctly in --help):

              <--------------------------------- width (W) ---------------------------------->
              date (10)  description (D)       account (W-41-D)     amount (12)   balance (12)
              DDDDDDDDDD dddddddddddddddddddd  aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa  AAAAAAAAAAAA  AAAAAAAAAAAA

       and some examples:

              $ hledger reg                     # use terminal width (or 80 on windows)
              $ hledger reg -w 100              # use width 100
              $ COLUMNS=100 hledger reg         # set with one-time environment variable
              $ export COLUMNS=100; hledger reg # set till session end (or window resize)
              $ hledger reg -w 100,40           # set overall width 100, description width 40
              $ hledger reg -w $COLUMNS,40      # use terminal width, & description width 40

       This  command  also  supports  the output destination and output format
       options The output formats supported are txt, csv,  and  (experimental)
       json.

   rewrite
       Print all transactions, rewriting the postings of matched transactions.
       For now the only rewrite available is adding new postings,  like  print
       --auto.

       This is a start at a generic rewriter of transaction entries.  It reads
       the default journal and prints the transactions, like print,  but  adds
       one or more specified postings to any transactions matching QUERY.  The
       posting amounts can be fixed, or a multiplier of the existing  transac-
       tion's first posting amount.

       Examples:

              $ hledger-rewrite.hs ^income --add-posting '(liabilities:tax)  *.33  ; income tax' --add-posting '(reserve:gifts)  $100'
              $ hledger-rewrite.hs expenses:gifts --add-posting '(reserve:gifts)  *-1"'
              $ hledger-rewrite.hs -f rewrites.hledger

       rewrites.hledger may consist of entries like:

              = ^income amt:<0 date:2017
                (liabilities:tax)  *0.33  ; tax on income
                (reserve:grocery)  *0.25  ; reserve 25% for grocery
                (reserve:)  *0.25  ; reserve 25% for grocery

       Note  the  single  quotes to protect the dollar sign from bash, and the
       two spaces between account and amount.

       More:

              $ hledger rewrite -- [QUERY]        --add-posting "ACCT  AMTEXPR" ...
              $ hledger rewrite -- ^income        --add-posting '(liabilities:tax)  *.33'
              $ hledger rewrite -- expenses:gifts --add-posting '(budget:gifts)  *-1"'
              $ hledger rewrite -- ^income        --add-posting '(budget:foreign currency)  *0.25 JPY; diversify'

       Argument for --add-posting option is a  usual  posting  of  transaction
       with  an  exception  for amount specification.  More precisely, you can
       use '*' (star symbol) before the amount to indicate that that this is a
       factor  for  an  amount  of  original  matched  posting.  If the amount
       includes a commodity name, the new posting amount will be  in  the  new
       commodity;  otherwise,  it will be in the matched posting amount's com-
       modity.

   Re-write rules in a file
       During the run this tool will execute  so  called  "Automated  Transac-
       tions" found in any journal it process.  I.e instead of specifying this
       operations in command line you can put them in a journal file.

              $ rewrite-rules.journal

       Make contents look like this:

              = ^income
                  (liabilities:tax)  *.33

              = expenses:gifts
                  budget:gifts  *-1
                  assets:budget  *1

       Note that '=' (equality symbol) that is used instead of date in  trans-
       actions you usually write.  It indicates the query by which you want to
       match the posting to add new ones.

              $ hledger rewrite -- -f input.journal -f rewrite-rules.journal > rewritten-tidy-output.journal

       This is something similar to the commands pipeline:

              $ hledger rewrite -- -f input.journal '^income' --add-posting '(liabilities:tax)  *.33' \
                | hledger rewrite -- -f - expenses:gifts      --add-posting 'budget:gifts  *-1'       \
                                                              --add-posting 'assets:budget  *1'       \
                > rewritten-tidy-output.journal

       It is important to understand that relative order of  such  entries  in
       journal  is important.  You can re-use result of previously added post-
       ings.

   Diff output format
       To use this tool for batch modification of your journal files  you  may
       find useful output in form of unified diff.

              $ hledger rewrite -- --diff -f examples/sample.journal '^income' --add-posting '(liabilities:tax)  *.33'

       Output might look like:

              --- /tmp/examples/sample.journal
              +++ /tmp/examples/sample.journal
              @@ -18,3 +18,4 @@
               2008/01/01 income
              -    assets:bank:checking  $1
              +    assets:bank:checking            $1
                   income:salary
              +    (liabilities:tax)                0
              @@ -22,3 +23,4 @@
               2008/06/01 gift
              -    assets:bank:checking  $1
              +    assets:bank:checking            $1
                   income:gifts
              +    (liabilities:tax)                0

       If you'll pass this through patch tool you'll get transactions contain-
       ing the posting that matches your query be updated.  Note that multiple
       files  might  be  update according to list of input files specified via
       --file options and include directives inside of these files.

       Be careful.  Whole transaction being re-formatted in a style of  output
       from hledger print.

       See also:

       https://github.com/simonmichael/hledger/issues/99

   rewrite vs. print --auto
       This  command  predates  print --auto, and currently does much the same
       thing, but with these differences:

       o with multiple files, rewrite lets rules in any file affect all  other
         files.   print  --auto  uses standard directive scoping; rules affect
         only child files.

       o rewrite's query limits which transactions can be rewritten;  all  are
         printed.  print --auto's query limits which transactions are printed.

       o rewrite applies rules specified on command line or  in  the  journal.
         print --auto applies rules specified in the journal.

   roi
       Shows  the  time-weighted (TWR) and money-weighted (IRR) rate of return
       on your investments.

       At a minimum, you need to supply  a  query  (which  could  be  just  an
       account  name)  to  select  your  investment(s) with --inv, and another
       query to identify your profit and loss transactions with --pnl.

       If you do not record changes in the value of your investment  manually,
       or  do  not  require  computation  of time-weighted return (TWR), --pnl
       could be an empty query (--pnl "" or --pnl STR where STR does not match
       any of your accounts).

       This  command  will compute and display the internalized rate of return
       (IRR) and time-weighted rate of return (TWR) for your  investments  for
       the  time period requested.  Both rates of return are annualized before
       display, regardless of the length of reporting interval.

       Price directives will be taken into account if you  supply  appropriate
       --cost or --value flags (see VALUATION).

       Note, in some cases this report can fail, for these reasons:

       o Error  (NotBracketed): No solution for Internal Rate of Return (IRR).
         Possible causes: IRR  is  huge  (>1000000%),  balance  of  investment
         becomes negative at some point in time.

       o Error  (SearchFailed):  Failed  to find solution for Internal Rate of
         Return (IRR).  Either search does not converge to a solution, or con-
         verges too slowly.

       Examples:

       o Using   roi   to  compute  total  return  of  investment  in  stocks:
         https://github.com/simonmichael/hledger/blob/master/examples/invest-
         ing/roi-unrealised.ledger

       o Cookbook > Return on Investment: https://hledger.org/roi.html

   Spaces and special characters in --inv and --pnl
       Note that --inv and --pnl's argument is a query, and queries could have
       several space-separated terms (see QUERIES).

       To indicate that all search terms form  single  command-line  argument,
       you will need to put them in quotes (see Special characters):

              $ hledger roi --inv 'term1 term2 term3 ...'

       If  any  query  terms contain spaces themselves, you will need an extra
       level of nested quoting, eg:

              $ hledger roi --inv="'Assets:Test 1'" --pnl="'Equity:Unrealized Profit and Loss'"

   Semantics of --inv and --pnl
       Query supplied to --inv has to match all transactions that are  related
       to your investment.  Transactions not matching --inv will be ignored.

       In these transactions, ROI will conside postings that match --inv to be
       "investment postings" and other postings (not matching --inv)  will  be
       sorted  into  two categories: "cash flow" and "profit and loss", as ROI
       needs to know which part of the investment value is your  contributions
       and which is due to the return on investment.

       o "Cash  flow"  is  depositing  or withdrawing money, buying or selling
         assets, or otherwise converting between your investment commodity and
         any other commodity.  Example:

                2019-01-01 Investing in Snake Oil
                  assets:cash          -$100
                  investment:snake oil

                2020-01-01 Selling my Snake Oil
                  assets:cash           $10
                  investment:snake oil  = 0

       o "Profit and loss" is change in the value of your investment:

                2019-06-01 Snake Oil falls in value
                  investment:snake oil  = $57
                  equity:unrealized profit or loss

       All  non-investment postings are assumed to be "cash flow", unless they
       match --pnl query.  Changes in value of your investment due to  "profit
       and  loss"  postings  will  be  considered  as  part of your investment
       return.

       Example: if you use --inv snake --pnl equity:unrealized, then  postings
       in the example below would be classifed as:

              2019-01-01 Snake Oil #1
                assets:cash          -$100   ; cash flow posting
                investment:snake oil         ; investment posting

              2019-03-01 Snake Oil #2
                equity:unrealized pnl  -$100 ; profit and loss posting
                snake oil                    ; investment posting

              2019-07-01 Snake Oil #3
                equity:unrealized pnl        ; profit and loss posting
                cash          -$100          ; cash flow posting
                snake oil     $50            ; investment posting

   IRR and TWR explained
       "ROI"  stands  for "return on investment".  Traditionally this was com-
       puted as a difference between current value of investment and its  ini-
       tial value, expressed in percentage of the initial value.

       However, this approach is only practical in simple cases, where invest-
       ments receives no in-flows or out-flows of money,  and  where  rate  of
       growth is fixed over time.  For more complex scenarios you need differ-
       ent ways to compute rate of return, and this command implements two  of
       them: IRR and TWR.

       Internal  rate of return, or "IRR" (also called "money-weighted rate of
       return")  takes  into  account  effects  of  in-flows  and   out-flows.
       Naively, if you are withdrawing from your investment, your future gains
       would be smaller (in absolute numbers), and will be a smaller  percent-
       age  of  your initial investment, and if you are adding to your invest-
       ment, you will receive bigger absolute gains (but probably at the  same
       rate  of  return).   IRR  is  a  way to compute rate of return for each
       period between in-flow or out-flow of money, and then combine them in a
       way  that gives you a compound annual rate of return that investment is
       expected to generate.

       As mentioned before, in-flows and out-flows would be any cash that  you
       personally put in or withdraw, and for the "roi" command, these are the
       postings that match the query in the--inv argument and  NOT  match  the
       query in the--pnl argument.

       If  you  manually  record  changes  in  the value of your investment as
       transactions that balance them against "profit and loss"  (or  "unreal-
       ized  gains") account or use price directives, then in order for IRR to
       compute the precise effect of your in-flows and out-flows on  the  rate
       of  return, you will need to record the value of your investement on or
       close to the days when in- or out-flows occur.

       In technical terms, IRR uses the same approach as  computation  of  net
       present value, and tries to find a discount rate that makes net present
       value of all the cash flows of your investment to add up to zero.  This
       could  be hard to wrap your head around, especially if you haven't done
       discounted cash flow analysis before.  Implementation of IRR in hledger
       should produce results that match the XIRR formula in Excel.

       Second  way  to  compute  rate of return that roi command implements is
       called "time-weighted rate of return" or "TWR".  Like IRR, it will also
       break  the  history  of  your investment into periods between in-flows,
       out-flows and value changes, to compute rate of return per each  period
       and  then a compound rate of return.  However, internal workings of TWR
       are quite different.

       TWR represents your investment as an imaginary "unit  fund"  where  in-
       flows/  out-flows  lead to buying or selling "units" of your investment
       and changes in its value change the value of "investment unit".  Change
       in  "unit  price" over the reporting period gives you rate of return of
       your investment.

       References:

       o Explanation of rate of return

       o Explanation of IRR

       o Explanation of TWR

       o Examples of computing IRR and TWR and discussion of  the  limitations
         of both metrics

   stats
       Show journal and performance statistics.

       The  stats  command displays summary information for the whole journal,
       or a matched part of it.  With a reporting interval, it shows a  report
       for each report period.

       At  the end, it shows (in the terminal) the overall run time and number
       of transactions processed per second.  Note these are  approximate  and
       will  vary  based on machine, current load, data size, hledger version,
       haskell lib versions, GHC version..  but they may be of interest.   The
       stats  command's run time is similar to that of a single-column balance
       report.

       Example:

              $ hledger stats -f examples/1000x1000x10.journal
              Main file                : /Users/simon/src/hledger/examples/1000x1000x10.journal
              Included files           :
              Transactions span        : 2000-01-01 to 2002-09-27 (1000 days)
              Last transaction         : 2002-09-26 (6995 days ago)
              Transactions             : 1000 (1.0 per day)
              Transactions last 30 days: 0 (0.0 per day)
              Transactions last 7 days : 0 (0.0 per day)
              Payees/descriptions      : 1000
              Accounts                 : 1000 (depth 10)
              Commodities              : 26 (A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, X, Y, Z)
              Market prices            : 1000 (A)

              Run time                 : 0.12 s
              Throughput               : 8342 txns/s

       This command supports the -o/--output-file option (but not -O/--output-
       format selection).

   tags
       List the tags used in the journal, or their values.

       This command lists the tag names used in the journal, whether on trans-
       actions, postings, or account declarations.

       With a TAGREGEX argument, only tag names matching this regular  expres-
       sion (case insensitive, infix matched) are shown.

       With  QUERY  arguments,  only  transactions  and accounts matching this
       query are considered.  If the query involves transaction fields (date:,
       desc:, amt:, ...), the search is restricted to the matched transactions
       and their accounts.

       With the --values flag, the tags' unique non-empty  values  are  listed
       instead.  With -E/--empty, blank/empty values are also shown.

       With  --parsed, tags or values are shown in the order they were parsed,
       with duplicates included.  (Except, tags from account declarations  are
       always shown first.)

       Tip:  remember, accounts also acquire tags from their parents, postings
       also acquire tags from their account and transaction, transactions also
       acquire tags from their postings.

   test
       Run built-in unit tests.

       This  command  runs the unit tests built in to hledger and hledger-lib,
       printing the results on stdout.  If any test fails, the exit code  will
       be non-zero.

       This  is  mainly used by hledger developers, but you can also use it to
       sanity-check the installed hledger executable on  your  platform.   All
       tests  are  expected to pass - if you ever see a failure, please report
       as a bug!

       This command also accepts tasty test runner options, written after a --
       (double hyphen).  Eg to run only the tests in Hledger.Data.Amount, with
       ANSI colour codes disabled:

              $ hledger test -- -pData.Amount --color=never

       For help on these, see  https://github.com/feuerbach/tasty#options  (--
       --help currently doesn't show them).


PART 5: COMMON TASKS
       Here  are  some  quick  examples  of  how  to  do some basic tasks with
       hledger.

   Getting help
       Here's how to list commands and view options and command docs:

              $ hledger                # show available commands
              $ hledger --help         # show common options
              $ hledger CMD --help     # show CMD's options, common options and CMD's documentation

       You can also view your hledger version's manual in several  formats  by
       using the help command.  Eg:

              $ hledger help           # show the hledger manual with info, man or $PAGER (best available)
              $ hledger help journal   # show the journal topic in the hledger manual
              $ hledger help --help    # find out more about the help command

       To   view   manuals   and   introductory   docs   on   the  web,  visit
       https://hledger.org.  Chat and mail list  support  and  discussion  ar-
       chives can be found at https://hledger.org/support.

   Constructing command lines
       hledger  has  a  flexible command line interface.  We strive to keep it
       simple and ergonomic, but if you  run  into  one  of  the  sharp  edges
       described in OPTIONS, here are some tips that might help:

       o command-specific  options must go after the command (it's fine to put
         common options there too: hledger CMD OPTS ARGS)

       o running add-on executables directly simplifies command  line  parsing
         (hledger-ui OPTS ARGS)

       o enclose "problematic" args in single quotes

       o if  needed, also add a backslash to hide regular expression metachar-
         acters from the shell

       o to see how a misbehaving command line is being parsed, add --debug=2.

   Starting a journal file
       hledger   looks   for   your   accounting   data  in  a  journal  file,
       $HOME/.hledger.journal by default:

              $ hledger stats
              The hledger journal file "/Users/simon/.hledger.journal" was not found.
              Please create it first, eg with "hledger add" or a text editor.
              Or, specify an existing journal file with -f or LEDGER_FILE.

       You can override this by setting the LEDGER_FILE environment  variable.
       It's a good practice to keep this important file under version control,
       and to start a new file each year.  So  you  could  do  something  like
       this:

              $ mkdir ~/finance
              $ cd ~/finance
              $ git init
              Initialized empty Git repository in /Users/simon/finance/.git/
              $ touch 2020.journal
              $ echo "export LEDGER_FILE=$HOME/finance/2020.journal" >> ~/.bashrc
              $ source ~/.bashrc
              $ hledger stats
              Main file                : /Users/simon/finance/2020.journal
              Included files           :
              Transactions span        :  to  (0 days)
              Last transaction         : none
              Transactions             : 0 (0.0 per day)
              Transactions last 30 days: 0 (0.0 per day)
              Transactions last 7 days : 0 (0.0 per day)
              Payees/descriptions      : 0
              Accounts                 : 0 (depth 0)
              Commodities              : 0 ()
              Market prices            : 0 ()

   Setting opening balances
       Pick  a  starting  date  for which you can look up the balances of some
       real-world assets (bank accounts, wallet..)   and  liabilities  (credit
       cards..).

       To  avoid  a  lot of data entry, you may want to start with just one or
       two accounts, like your checking account or cash  wallet;  and  pick  a
       recent  starting  date,  like  today or the start of the week.  You can
       always come back later and add more accounts and older transactions, eg
       going back to january 1st.

       Add  an opening balances transaction to the journal, declaring the bal-
       ances on this date.  Here are two ways to do it:

       o The first way: open the journal in any text editor and save an  entry
         like this:

                2020-01-01 * opening balances
                    assets:bank:checking                $1000   = $1000
                    assets:bank:savings                 $2000   = $2000
                    assets:cash                          $100   = $100
                    liabilities:creditcard               $-50   = $-50
                    equity:opening/closing balances

         These  are  start-of-day  balances, ie whatever was in the account at
         the end of the previous day.

         The * after the date is an  optional  status  flag.   Here  it  means
         "cleared & confirmed".

         The  currency symbols are optional, but usually a good idea as you'll
         be dealing with multiple currencies sooner or later.

         The = amounts are optional balance assertions, providing extra  error
         checking.

       o The  second  way:  run hledger add and follow the prompts to record a
         similar transaction:

                $ hledger add
                Adding transactions to journal file /Users/simon/finance/2020.journal
                Any command line arguments will be used as defaults.
                Use tab key to complete, readline keys to edit, enter to accept defaults.
                An optional (CODE) may follow transaction dates.
                An optional ; COMMENT may follow descriptions or amounts.
                If you make a mistake, enter < at any prompt to go one step backward.
                To end a transaction, enter . when prompted.
                To quit, enter . at a date prompt or press control-d or control-c.
                Date [2020-02-07]: 2020-01-01
                Description: * opening balances
                Account 1: assets:bank:checking
                Amount  1: $1000
                Account 2: assets:bank:savings
                Amount  2 [$-1000]: $2000
                Account 3: assets:cash
                Amount  3 [$-3000]: $100
                Account 4: liabilities:creditcard
                Amount  4 [$-3100]: $-50
                Account 5: equity:opening/closing balances
                Amount  5 [$-3050]:
                Account 6 (or . or enter to finish this transaction): .
                2020-01-01 * opening balances
                    assets:bank:checking                      $1000
                    assets:bank:savings                       $2000
                    assets:cash                                $100
                    liabilities:creditcard                     $-50
                    equity:opening/closing balances          $-3050

                Save this transaction to the journal ? [y]:
                Saved.
                Starting the next transaction (. or ctrl-D/ctrl-C to quit)
                Date [2020-01-01]: .

       If you're using version control, this could be a good  time  to  commit
       the journal.  Eg:

              $ git commit -m 'initial balances' 2020.journal

   Recording transactions
       As  you spend or receive money, you can record these transactions using
       one of the methods above (text editor, hledger add)  or  by  using  the
       hledger-iadd  or hledger-web add-ons, or by using the import command to
       convert CSV data downloaded from your bank.

       Here are some simple transactions, see  the  hledger_journal(5)  manual
       and hledger.org for more ideas:

              2020/1/10 * gift received
                assets:cash   $20
                income:gifts

              2020.1.12 * farmers market
                expenses:food    $13
                assets:cash

              2020-01-15 paycheck
                income:salary
                assets:bank:checking    $1000

   Reconciling
       Periodically  you should reconcile - compare your hledger-reported bal-
       ances against external sources of truth, like bank statements  or  your
       bank's  website - to be sure that your ledger accurately represents the
       real-world balances (and, that the  real-world  institutions  have  not
       made  a  mistake!).   This gets easy and fast with (1) practice and (2)
       frequency.  If you do it daily, it can take 2-10 minutes.  If  you  let
       it  pile  up, expect it to take longer as you hunt down errors and dis-
       crepancies.

       A typical workflow:

       1. Reconcile cash.  Count what's in your  wallet.   Compare  with  what
          hledger  reports  (hledger bal cash).  If they are different, try to
          remember the missing transaction, or  look  for  the  error  in  the
          already-recorded  transactions.   A  register  report can be helpful
          (hledger reg cash).  If you can't find the error, add an  adjustment
          transaction.  Eg if you have $105 after the above, and can't explain
          the missing $2, it could be:

                  2020-01-16 * adjust cash
                      assets:cash    $-2 = $105
                      expenses:misc

       2. Reconcile checking.  Log in to your bank's website.  Compare today's
          (cleared) balance with hledger's cleared balance (hledger bal check-
          ing -C).  If they are different, track down the error or record  the
          missing  transaction(s) or add an adjustment transaction, similar to
          the above.  Unlike the cash case, you can usually compare the trans-
          action  history  and  running  balance  from  your bank with the one
          reported by hledger reg checking -C.  This will  be  easier  if  you
          generally  record  transaction  dates  quite  similar to your bank's
          clearing dates.

       3. Repeat for other asset/liability accounts.

       Tip: instead of the register command, use hledger-ui  to  see  a  live-
       updating register while you edit the journal: hledger-ui --watch --reg-
       ister checking -C

       After reconciling, it could be a  good  time  to  mark  the  reconciled
       transactions'  status  as "cleared and confirmed", if you want to track
       that, by adding the * marker.  Eg in the  paycheck  transaction  above,
       insert * between 2020-01-15 and paycheck

       If  you're using version control, this can be another good time to com-
       mit:

              $ git commit -m 'txns' 2020.journal

   Reporting
       Here are some basic reports.

       Show all transactions:

              $ hledger print
              2020-01-01 * opening balances
                  assets:bank:checking                      $1000
                  assets:bank:savings                       $2000
                  assets:cash                                $100
                  liabilities:creditcard                     $-50
                  equity:opening/closing balances          $-3050

              2020-01-10 * gift received
                  assets:cash              $20
                  income:gifts

              2020-01-12 * farmers market
                  expenses:food             $13
                  assets:cash

              2020-01-15 * paycheck
                  income:salary
                  assets:bank:checking           $1000

              2020-01-16 * adjust cash
                  assets:cash               $-2 = $105
                  expenses:misc

       Show account names, and their hierarchy:

              $ hledger accounts --tree
              assets
                bank
                  checking
                  savings
                cash
              equity
                opening/closing balances
              expenses
                food
                misc
              income
                gifts
                salary
              liabilities
                creditcard

       Show all account totals:

              $ hledger balance
                             $4105  assets
                             $4000    bank
                             $2000      checking
                             $2000      savings
                              $105    cash
                            $-3050  equity:opening/closing balances
                               $15  expenses
                               $13    food
                                $2    misc
                            $-1020  income
                              $-20    gifts
                            $-1000    salary
                              $-50  liabilities:creditcard
              --------------------
                                 0

       Show only asset and liability balances, as  a  flat  list,  limited  to
       depth 2:

              $ hledger bal assets liabilities -2
                             $4000  assets:bank
                              $105  assets:cash
                              $-50  liabilities:creditcard
              --------------------
                             $4055

       Show  the  same  thing  without negative numbers, formatted as a simple
       balance sheet:

              $ hledger bs -2
              Balance Sheet 2020-01-16

                                      || 2020-01-16
              ========================++============
               Assets                 ||
              ------------------------++------------
               assets:bank            ||      $4000
               assets:cash            ||       $105
              ------------------------++------------
                                      ||      $4105
              ========================++============
               Liabilities            ||
              ------------------------++------------
               liabilities:creditcard ||        $50
              ------------------------++------------
                                      ||        $50
              ========================++============
               Net:                   ||      $4055

       The final total is your "net worth" on the end date.  (Or use bse for a
       full balance sheet with equity.)

       Show income and expense totals, formatted as an income statement:

              hledger is
              Income Statement 2020-01-01-2020-01-16

                             || 2020-01-01-2020-01-16
              ===============++=======================
               Revenues      ||
              ---------------++-----------------------
               income:gifts  ||                   $20
               income:salary ||                 $1000
              ---------------++-----------------------
                             ||                 $1020
              ===============++=======================
               Expenses      ||
              ---------------++-----------------------
               expenses:food ||                   $13
               expenses:misc ||                    $2
              ---------------++-----------------------
                             ||                   $15
              ===============++=======================
               Net:          ||                 $1005

       The final total is your net income during this period.

       Show transactions affecting your wallet, with running total:

              $ hledger register cash
              2020-01-01 opening balances     assets:cash                   $100          $100
              2020-01-10 gift received        assets:cash                    $20          $120
              2020-01-12 farmers market       assets:cash                   $-13          $107
              2020-01-16 adjust cash          assets:cash                    $-2          $105

       Show weekly posting counts as a bar chart:

              $ hledger activity -W
              2019-12-30 *****
              2020-01-06 ****
              2020-01-13 ****

   Migrating to a new file
       At  the end of the year, you may want to continue your journal in a new
       file, so that old transactions don't slow down or clutter your reports,
       and  to  help ensure the integrity of your accounting history.  See the
       close command.

       If using version control, don't forget to git add the new file.



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


AUTHORS
       Simon Michael <simon@joyful.com> and contributors.
       See http://hledger.org/CREDITS.html


COPYRIGHT
       Copyright 2007-2023 Simon Michael and contributors.


LICENSE
       Released under GNU GPL v3 or later.


SEE ALSO
       hledger(1), hledger-ui(1), hledger-web(1), ledger(1)



hledger-1.29.99                   March 2023                        HLEDGER(1)
