
hledger(1)                   hledger User Manuals                   hledger(1)



NAME
       hledger - a command-line accounting tool

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

DESCRIPTION
       hledger  is  a  cross-platform program 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).
       Tested on unix, mac, windows, hledger aims to be a reliable,  practical
       tool for daily use.

       This is hledger's command-line interface (there are also curses and web
       interfaces).  Its basic function is to read a plain text file  describ-
       ing financial transactions (in accounting terms, a general journal) and
       print useful reports  on  standard  output,  or  export  them  as  CSV.
       hledger can also read some other file formats such as CSV files, trans-
       lating them to  journal  format.   Additionally,  hledger  lists  other
       hledger-*  executables found in the user's $PATH and can invoke them as
       subcommands.

       hledger reads data from one or more files  in  hledger  journal,  time-
       clock,  timedot,  or  CSV format specified with -f, or $LEDGER_FILE, or
       $HOME/.hledger.journal          (on          windows,           perhaps
       C:/Users/USER/.hledger.journal).  If using $LEDGER_FILE, note this must
       be a real environment variable, not a shell variable.  You can  specify
       standard input with -f-.

       Transactions  are  dated movements of money between two (or more) named
       accounts, and are recorded with journal entries like this:

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

       For more about this format, see hledger_journal(5).

       Most users use a text editor to edit the journal, usually with an  edi-
       tor mode such as ledger-mode for added convenience.  hledger's interac-
       tive add command is another way to record  new  transactions.   hledger
       never changes existing transactions.

       To  get  started,  you  can  either save some entries like the above in
       ~/.hledger.journal, or run hledger add and follow  the  prompts.   Then
       try  some  commands like hledger print or hledger balance.  Run hledger
       with no arguments for a list of commands.

EXAMPLES
       Two simple transactions in hledger journal format:

              2015/9/30 gift received
                assets:cash   $20
                income:gifts

              2015/10/16 farmers market
                expenses:food    $10
                assets:cash

       Some basic reports:

              $ hledger print
              2015/09/30 gift received
                  assets:cash            $20
                  income:gifts          $-20

              2015/10/16 farmers market
                  expenses:food           $10
                  assets:cash            $-10

              $ hledger accounts --tree
              assets
                cash
              expenses
                food
              income
                gifts

              $ hledger balance
                               $10  assets:cash
                               $10  expenses:food
                              $-20  income:gifts
              --------------------
                                 0

              $ hledger register cash
              2015/09/30 gift received   assets:cash               $20           $20
              2015/10/16 farmers market  assets:cash              $-10           $10

       More commands:

              $ hledger                                 # show available commands
              $ hledger add                             # add more transactions to the journal file
              $ hledger balance                         # all accounts with aggregated balances
              $ hledger balance --help                  # show detailed help for balance command
              $ hledger balance --depth 1               # only top-level accounts
              $ hledger register                        # show account postings, with running total
              $ hledger reg income                      # show postings to/from income accounts
              $ hledger reg 'assets:some bank:checking' # show postings to/from this checking account
              $ hledger print desc:shop                 # show transactions with shop in the description
              $ hledger activity -W                     # show transaction counts per week as a bar chart

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 usage (or after COMMAND, command usage)

       --version
              show 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
              ignore any failing balance assertions

       General reporting options:

       -b --begin=DATE
              include postings/txns on or after this date

       -e --end=DATE
              include postings/txns before this date

       -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 (overrides the flags above)

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

       -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 at  transaction  time  (using  the
              transaction price, if any)

       -V --value
              convert  amounts  to  their  market value on the report end date
              (using the most recent applicable market price, if any)

       --auto apply automated posting rules to modify transactions.

       --forecast
              apply periodic transaction rules  to  generate  future  transac-
              tions, to 6 months from now or report end date.

       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 addon,  you  may  need  to  put  its
       options  after a double-hyphen, eg: hledger ui -- --watch.  Or, you can
       run the addon 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.

   Argument files
       You can save a set of command line options/arguments in a file, one per
       line, and then reuse them by writing @FILENAME in a command  line.   To
       prevent this expansion of @-arguments, precede them with a -- argument.
       For more, see Save frequently used options.

   Special characters in arguments and queries
       In shell command lines, option and argument values which contain "prob-
       lematic" characters, ie spaces, and also characters significant to your
       shell such as <, >, (, ), | and $, should be escaped by enclosing  them
       in quotes or by writing backslashes before the characters.  Eg:

       hledger register -p 'last year' "accounts receivable (receiv-
       able|payable)" amt:\>100.

   More escaping
       Characters significant both to the shell and in regular expressions may
       need  one extra level of escaping.  These include parentheses, the pipe
       symbol and the dollar sign.  Eg, to match the dollar symbol, bash users
       should do:

       hledger balance cur:'\$'

       or:

       hledger balance cur:\\$

   Even more escaping
       When  hledger runs an addon executable (eg you type hledger ui, hledger
       runs hledger-ui), it  de-escapes  command-line  options  and  arguments
       once,  so  you might need to triple-escape.  Eg in bash, running the ui
       command and matching the dollar sign, it's:

       hledger ui cur:'\\$'

       or:

       hledger ui cur:\\\\$

       If you asked why four slashes above, this may help:


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

       (The number of backslashes in fish shell is left as an exercise for the
       reader.)

       You can always avoid the extra escaping for addons by running the addon
       directly:

       hledger-ui cur:\\$

   Less escaping
       Inside an argument file, or  in  the  search  field  of  hledger-ui  or
       hledger-web,  or  at a GHCI prompt, you need one less level of escaping
       than at the command line.  And backslashes may work better than quotes.
       Eg:

       ghci> :main balance cur:\$

   Command line tips
       If in doubt, keep things simple:

       o write options after the command (hledger CMD -OPTIONS ARGS)

       o run add-on executables directly (hledger-ui -OPTIONS ARGS)

       o enclose problematic args in single quotes

       o if needed, also add a backslash to escape regexp metacharacters

       To  find  out exactly how a command line is being parsed, add --debug=2
       to troubleshoot.

   Unicode characters
       hledger is expected to handle unicode (non-ascii) characters, but  this
       requires a well-configured environment.

       To  handle unicode characters in the command line or input data, a sys-
       tem locale that can decode them must be configured (POSIX's  default  C
       locale will not work).  Eg in bash, you could do:

              export LANG=en_US.UTF-8

       See Troubleshooting for more about this.

       Unicode  characters  should  appear correctly in hledger's output.  For
       the hledger and hledger-ui tools, this requires that

       o your terminal supports unicode

       o the terminal's font includes the required unicode glyphs

       o the terminal is configured to display  "wide"  characters  as  double
         width (otherwise report alignment will be off)

   Input files
       hledger reads transactions from a data file (and the add command writes
       to it).  By default this file is $HOME/.hledger.journal (or on Windows,
       something  like C:/Users/USER/.hledger.journal).  You can override this
       with the $LEDGER_FILE environment variable:

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

       or with the -f/--file option:

              $ hledger -f /some/file stats

       The file name - (hyphen) means standard input:

              $ cat some.journal | hledger -f-

       Usually the data file is in hledger's journal format, but it  can  also
       be  one  of  several  other formats, listed below.  hledger detects the
       format automatically based on the file extension, or  if  that  is  not
       recognised, by trying each built-in "reader" in turn:


       Reader:      Reads:                               Used for file extensions:
       -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
       journal      hledger's  journal  format,  also    .journal    .j    .hledger
                    some Ledger journals                 .ledger
       timeclock    timeclock   files  (precise  time    .timeclock
                    logging)
       timedot      timedot files  (approximate  time    .timedot
                    logging)
       csv          comma-separated    values   (data    .csv
                    interchange)

       If needed (eg to ensure correct error messages  when  a  file  has  the
       "wrong"  extension), you can force a specific reader/format by prepend-
       ing it to the file path with a colon.  Examples:

              $ hledger -f csv:/some/csv-file.dat stats
              $ echo 'i 2009/13/1 08:00:00' | hledger print -ftimeclock:-

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

       o directives in one file will not affect the other files

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

       If you need those, either use the include directive, or concatenate the
       files, eg: cat a.journal b.journal | hledger -f- CMD.

   Smart dates
       hledger's user interfaces accept a flexible "smart date" syntax (unlike
       dates in the journal file).  Smart dates allow some english words,  can
       be  relative  to today's date, and can have less-significant date parts
       omitted (defaulting to 1).

       Examples:


       2004/10/1,     2004-01-01,            exact  date, several sepa-
       2004.9.1                              rators allowed.   Year  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, tomorrow            -1, 0, 1 days from today
       last/this/next day/week/month/quar-   -1, 0, 1 periods from  the
       ter/year                              current period
       20181201                              8   digit   YYYYMMDD  with
                                             valid year month and day
       201812                                6 digit YYYYMM with  valid
                                             year and month

       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

   Report start & end date
       Most  hledger  reports  show  the  full span of time represented by the
       journal data, by default.  So, the effective report start and end dates
       will  be  the earliest and latest transaction or posting dates found in
       the journal.

       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.  One important thing to be aware of when
       specifying end dates: as in Ledger, end dates  are  exclusive,  so  you
       need to write the date after the last day you want to include.

       Examples:


       -b 2016/3/17      begin on St. Patrick's day
                         2016
       -e 12/1           end at the start of decem-
                         ber  1st  of  the  current
                         year (11/30  will  be  the
                         last date included)
       -b thismonth      all   transactions  on  or
                         after the 1st of the  cur-
                         rent month
       -p thismonth      all  transactions  in  the
                         current month
       date:2016/3/17-   the   above   written   as
                         queries instead
       date:-12/1
       date:thismonth-
       date:thismonth

   Report intervals
       A report interval can be specified so that commands like register, bal-
       ance and activity will divide their reports into  multiple  subperiods.
       The   basic   intervals   can  be  selected  with  one  of  -D/--daily,
       -W/--weekly, -M/--monthly, -Q/--quarterly, or -Y/--yearly.   More  com-
       plex  intervals  may  be  specified  with  a period expression.  Report
       intervals can not be specified with a query, currently.

   Period expressions
       The -p/--period option accepts period expressions, a shorthand  way  of
       expressing  a start date, end date, and/or report interval all at once.

       Here's a basic period expression specifying the first quarter of  2009.
       Note,  hledger  always treats start dates as inclusive and end dates as
       exclusive:

       -p "from 2009/1/1 to 2009/4/1"

       Keywords like "from" and "to" are optional, and so are the  spaces,  as
       long  as you don't run two dates together.  "to" can also be written as
       "-".  These 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,  the  above  can
       also be written as:


       -p "1/1 4/1"
       -p "january-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 in your journal:


       -p "from 2009/1/1"   everything  after  january
                            1, 2009
       -p "from 2009/1"     the same
       -p "from 2009"       the same
       -p "to 2009"         everything  before january
                            1, 2009

       A single date with no "from" or "to" defines both  the  start  and  end
       date like so:


       -p "2009"       the  year 2009; equivalent
                       to "2009/1/1 to 2010/1/1"
       -p "2009/1"     the month of jan;  equiva-
                       lent   to   "2009/1/1   to
                       2009/2/1"
       -p "2009/1/1"   just that day;  equivalent
                       to "2009/1/1 to 2009/1/2"

       The  argument  of  -p  can  also  begin  with, or be, a report interval
       expression.  The basic report intervals  are  daily,  weekly,  monthly,
       quarterly, or yearly, which have the same effect as the -D,-W,-M,-Q, or
       -Y flags.  Between report interval and start/end dates  (if  any),  the
       word in is optional.  Examples:


       -p "weekly from 2009/1/1 to 2009/4/1"
       -p "monthly in 2008"
       -p "quarterly"

       Note  that  weekly, monthly, quarterly and yearly intervals will always
       start on the first day on week, month, quarter or year accordingly, and
       will  end  on  the  last  day of same period, even if associated period
       expression specifies different explicit start and end date.

       For example:


       -p "weekly from 2009/1/1 to 2009/4/1" -
       starts  on 2008/12/29, closest preceed-
       ing Monday
       -p "monthly in 2008/11/25" - starts  on
       2018/11/01
       -p "quar-
       terly from 2009-05-05 to 2009-06-01"  -
       starts    on    2009/04/01,   ends   on
       2009/06/30, which are  first  and  last
       days of Q2 2009
       -p "yearly from 2009-12-29" - starts on
       2009/01/01, first day of 2009

       The  following  more  complex  report  intervals  are  also  supported:
       biweekly,         bimonthly,         every day|week|month|quarter|year,
       every N days|weeks|months|quarters|years.

       All of these will start on the first day of the  requested  period  and
       end on the last one, as described above.

       Examples:


       -p "bimonthly from 2008" - periods will
       have    boundaries    on    2008/01/01,
       2008/03/01, ...
       -p "every 2 weeks"  - starts on closest
       preceeding Monday
       -p "every 5 month from 2009/03" - peri-
       ods will have boundaries on 2009/03/01,
       2009/08/01, ...

       If you want intervals that start on arbitrary day of your choosing  and
       span a week, month or year, you need to use any of the following:

       every Nth day of week,    every <weekday>,    every Nth day [of month],
       every Nth weekday [of month],                    every MM/DD [of year],
       every Nth MMM [of year], every MMM Nth [of year].

       Examples:


       -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 bound-
       aries will be on second Monday of  each
       month
       -p "every 11/05"  - yearly periods with
       boundaries on 5th of Nov
       -p "every 5th Nov" - same
       -p "every Nov 5th" - same

       Show historical balances at end of 15th each month (N is exclusive  end
       date):

       hledger balance -H -p "every 16th day"

       Group  postings  from  start  of wednesday to end of next tuesday (N is
       start date and exclusive end date):

       hledger register checking -p "every 3rd day of week"

   Depth limiting
       With the --depth N option (short form: -N), commands like account, bal-
       ance  and register will show only the uppermost accounts in the account
       tree, down to level N.  Use this when you  want  a  summary  with  less
       detail.   This  flag has the same effect as a depth: query argument (so
       -2, --depth=2 or depth:2 are basically equivalent).

   Pivoting
       Normally hledger sums amounts, and organizes them in a hierarchy, based
       on  account  name.  The --pivot FIELD option causes it to sum and orga-
       nize hierarchy based on the value of some other field  instead.   FIELD
       can be: code, description, payee, note, or the full name (case insensi-
       tive) of any tag.  As with account names, values containing colon:sepa-
       rated:parts will be displayed hierarchically in reports.

       --pivot  is  a  general  option affecting all reports; you can think of
       hledger transforming the journal before any other processing, replacing
       every  posting's  account name with the value of the specified field on
       that posting, inheriting it from the transaction or using a blank value
       if it's not present.

       An example:

              2016/02/16 Member Fee Payment
                  assets:bank account                    2 EUR
                  income:member fees                    -2 EUR  ; member: John Doe

       Normal balance report showing account names:

              $ hledger balance
                             2 EUR  assets:bank account
                            -2 EUR  income:member fees
              --------------------
                                 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,
       described below):

              $ 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

   Cost
       The  -B/--cost flag converts amounts to their cost at transaction time,
       if they have a transaction price specified.

   Market value
       The -V/--value flag converts reported amounts to their  current  market
       value.
       Specifically,  when  there  is  a  market  price  (P directive) for the
       amount's commodity, dated on or before today's date (or the report  end
       date if specified), the amount will be converted to the price's commod-
       ity.

       When there are multiple applicable P directives, -V  chooses  the  most
       recent one, or in case of equal dates, the last-parsed one.

       For example:

              # one euro is worth this many dollars from nov 1
              P 2016/11/01  $1.10

              # purchase some euros on nov 3
              2016/11/3
                  assets:euros        100
                  assets:checking

              # the euro is worth fewer dollars by dec 21
              P 2016/12/21  $1.03

       How many euros do I have ?

              $ hledger -f t.j bal -N euros
                              100  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

       Currently, hledger's -V only uses market prices recorded with P  direc-
       tives, not transaction prices (unlike Ledger).

       Currently,  -V has a limitation in multicolumn balance reports: it uses
       the market prices on the report end date for all columns.  (Instead  of
       the prices on each column's end date.)

   Combining -B and -V
       Using  -B/-cost  and  -V/-value  together is currently allowed, but the
       results are probably not meaningful.  Let us know if you find a use for
       this.

   Output destination
       Some  commands (print, register, stats, the balance commands) can write
       their output to a destination other than the  console.   This  is  con-
       trolled by the -o/--output-file option.

              $ hledger balance -o -     # write to stdout (the default)
              $ hledger balance -o FILE  # write to FILE

   Output format
       Some  commands  can  write their output in other formats.  Eg print and
       register can output CSV, and the balance commands  can  output  CSV  or
       HTML.  This is controlled by the -O/--output-format option, or by spec-
       ifying a .csv or .html file extension with -o/--output-file.

              $ hledger balance -O csv       # write CSV to stdout
              $ hledger balance -o FILE.csv  # write CSV to FILE.csv

   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  directives  and options: alias /REGEX/ = REPLACEMENT,
         --alias /REGEX/=REPLACEMENT

       hledger's regular expressions come from  the  regex-tdfa  library.   In
       general they:

       o are case insensitive

       o are  infix  matching  (do  not  need  to match the entire thing being
         matched)

       o are POSIX extended regular expressions

       o also support GNU word boundaries (\<, \>, \b, \B)

       o and parenthesised capturing  groups  and  numeric  backreferences  in
         replacement strings

       o do not support mode modifiers like (?s)

       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.

QUERIES
       One  of  hledger's strengths is being able to quickly report on precise
       subsets of your data.  Most commands accept an optional  query  expres-
       sion,  written  as arguments after the command name, to filter the data
       by date, account name or other criteria.  The syntax is  similar  to  a
       web search: one or more space-separated search terms, quotes to enclose
       whitespace, prefixes to match specific fields, a not: prefix to  negate
       the match.

       We  do  not yet support arbitrary boolean combinations of search terms;
       instead most commands show transactions/postings/accounts  which  match
       (or negatively 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 instead shows 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.

       The  following  kinds  of search terms can be used.  Remember these can
       also be prefixed with not:, eg to exclude a particular subaccount.

       REGEX, acct:REGEX
              match account names by this regular expression.  (With  no  pre-
              fix, acct: is assumed.)
       same as above

       amt:N, amt:<N, amt:<=N, amt:>N, amt:>=N
              match  postings with a single-commodity amount that is equal to,
              less than, or greater than N.  (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.  Otherwise, 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 par-
              tial match, use .*REGEX.*).  Note, to match characters which are
              regex-significant, like the dollar sign ($), you need to prepend
              \.  And when using the command line you need  to  add  one  more
              level  of  quoting  to  hide  it  from  the  shell,  so  eg  do:
              hledger print cur:'\$' or hledger print cur:\\$.

       desc:REGEX
              match transaction descriptions.

       date:PERIODEXPR
              match dates within the specified period.  PERIODEXPR is a period
              expression  (with  no  report  interval).   Examples: date:2016,
              date:thismonth,  date:2000/2/1-2/15,  date:lastweek-.   If   the
              --date2  command  line  flag  is present, this matches secondary
              dates instead.

       date2:PERIODEXPR
              match secondary dates within the specified period.

       depth:N
              match (or display, depending on command) accounts  at  or  above
              this depth

       note:REGEX
              match  transaction  notes  (part  of  description right of |, or
              whole description when there's no |)

       payee:REGEX
              match transaction payee/payer names (part of description left of
              |, or whole description when there's no |)

       real:, real:0
              match real or virtual postings respectively

       status:, status:!, status:*
              match unmarked, pending, or cleared transactions respectively

       tag:REGEX[=REGEX]
              match  by  tag  name,  and optionally also by tag value.  Note a
              tag: query is considered to match a transaction  if  it  matches
              any  of  the  postings.  Also remember that postings inherit the
              tags of their parent transaction.

       The following special search term is used automatically in hledger-web,
       only:

       inacct:ACCTNAME
              tells  hledger-web  to  show  the  transaction register for this
              account.  Can be filtered further with acct etc.

       Some of these can also be expressed as command-line options (eg depth:2
       is  equivalent  to --depth 2).  Generally you can mix options and query
       arguments, and the resulting query will be their intersection  (perhaps
       excluding the -p/--period option).

COMMANDS
       hledger  provides  a  number  of subcommands; hledger with no arguments
       shows a list.

       If you install additional hledger-* packages, or if you put programs or
       scripts  named  hledger-NAME in your PATH, these will also be listed as
       subcommands.

       Run  a  subcommand  by  writing  its  name  as   first   argument   (eg
       hledger incomestatement).  You can also write one of the standard short
       aliases displayed in parentheses in the command  list  (hledger b),  or
       any any unambiguous prefix of a command name (hledger inc).

       Here  are  all  the  builtin  commands in alphabetical order.  See also
       hledger for a more  organised  command  list,  and  hledger CMD -h  for
       detailed command help.

   accounts
       Show account names.  Alias: a.

       --declared
              show account names declared with account directives

       --used show account names posted to by transactions

       --tree show short account names and their parents, as a tree

       --flat show full account names, as a list (default)

       --drop=N
              in flat mode: omit N leading account name parts

       This  command  lists account names, either declared with account direc-
       tives (-declared), posted to (-used), or both  (default).   With  query
       arguments,  only  matched account names and account names referenced by
       matched postings are shown.  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  compo-
       nents.  Account names can be depth-clipped with --depth N or depth:N.

       Examples:

              $ hledger accounts --tree
              assets
                bank
                  checking
                  saving
                cash
              expenses
                food
                supplies
              income
                gifts
                salary
              liabilities
                debts

              $ hledger accounts --drop 1
              bank:checking
              bank:saving
              cash
              food
              supplies
              gifts
              salary
              debts

              $ hledger accounts
              assets:bank:checking
              assets:bank:saving
              assets:cash
              expenses:food
              expenses:supplies
              income:gifts
              income:salary
              liabilities:debts

   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.

              $ 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.

       --no-new-accounts
              don't  allow  creating  new  accounts;  helps prevent typos when
              entering account names

       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 journal file (if there are multiple
       -f FILE options, the first file is used.) Existing transactions are not
       changed.   This  is the only hledger command that writes to the journal
       file.

       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  recent
         transaction (by description) 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, descrip-
         tions, 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 restart the  transac-
         tion.

       o Input  prompts  are displayed in a different colour when the terminal
         supports it.

       Example (see the tutorial for a detailed explanation):

              $ 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 restart the transaction.
              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> $

   balance
       Show accounts and their balances.  Aliases: b, bal.

       --change
              show balance change in each period (default)

       --cumulative
              show balance change accumulated across periods  (in  multicolumn
              reports)

       -H --historical
              show historical ending balance in each period (includes postings
              before report start date)

       --tree show accounts as a tree; amounts include subaccounts (default in
              simple reports)

       --flat show accounts as a list; amounts exclude subaccounts except when
              account is depth-clipped (default in multicolumn reports)

       -A --average
              show a row average column (in multicolumn mode)

       -T --row-total
              show a row total column (in multicolumn mode)

       -N --no-total
              don't show the final total row

       --drop=N
              omit N leading account name parts (in flat mode)

       --no-elide
              don't squash boring parent accounts (in tree mode)

       --format=LINEFORMAT
              in single-column balance reports: use this custom line format

       -O FMT --output-format=FMT
              select the output format.  Supported formats: txt, csv, html.

       -o FILE --output-file=FILE
              write output to FILE.  A file  extension  matching  one  of  the
              above formats selects that format.

       --pretty-tables
              use unicode to display prettier tables.

       --sort-amount
              sort  by  amount  instead  of  account code/name (in flat mode).
              With multiple columns, sorts by the row total, or by row average
              if that is displayed.

       --invert
              display all amounts with reversed sign

       --budget
              show  performance  compared  to budget goals defined by periodic
              transactions

       --show-unbudgeted
              with -budget, show unbudgeted accounts also

       The balance command is hledger's most versatile command.  Note, despite
       the  name,  it  is  not always used for showing real-world account bal-
       ances; the more accounting-aware balancesheet and  incomestatement  may
       be more convenient for that.

       By default, it displays all accounts, and each account's change in bal-
       ance during the entire period of the journal.  Balance changes are cal-
       culated  by  adding up the postings in each account.  You can limit the
       postings matched, by a query, to see fewer  accounts,  changes  over  a
       different time period, changes from only cleared transactions, etc.

       If you include an account's complete history of postings in the report,
       the balance change is equivalent to the account's current  ending  bal-
       ance.   For a real-world account, typically you won't have all transac-
       tions in the journal; instead you'll have all transactions after a cer-
       tain  date,  and  an "opening balances" transaction setting the correct
       starting balance on that date.  Then  the  balance  command  will  show
       real-world  account balances.  In some cases the -H/-historical flag is
       used to ensure this (more below).

       The balance command can produce several styles of report:

   Classic balance report
       This is the original balance report, as found in  Ledger.   It  usually
       looks like this:

              $ hledger balance
                               $-1  assets
                                $1    bank:saving
                               $-2    cash
                                $2  expenses
                                $1    food
                                $1    supplies
                               $-2  income
                               $-1    gifts
                               $-1    salary
                                $1  liabilities:debts
              --------------------
                                 0

       By  default,  accounts  are  displayed hierarchically, with subaccounts
       indented below their parent.  At each level of the tree,  accounts  are
       sorted  by  account  code  if  any,  then  by  account  name.   Or with
       -S/--sort-amount, by their balance amount.

       "Boring" accounts, which contain a single interesting subaccount and no
       balance  of their own, are elided into the following line for more com-
       pact output.  (Eg above, the "liabilities" account.) Use --no-elide  to
       prevent this.

       Account  balances  are  "inclusive"  - they include the balances of any
       subaccounts.

       Accounts which have zero balance  (and  no  non-zero  subaccounts)  are
       omitted.  Use -E/--empty to show them.

       A  final  total  is displayed by default; use -N/--no-total to suppress
       it, eg:

              $ hledger balance -p 2008/6 expenses --no-total
                                $2  expenses
                                $1    food
                                $1    supplies

   Customising the classic balance report
       You can customise the layout of classic  balance  reports  with  --for-
       mat FMT:

              $ hledger 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 (plus a newline) 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

   Colour support
       The balance command shows negative amounts in red, if:

       o the TERM environment variable is not set to dumb

       o the output is not being redirected or piped anywhere

   Flat mode
       To see a flat list instead of the  default  hierarchical  display,  use
       --flat.   In this mode, accounts (unless depth-clipped) show their full
       names and "exclusive" balance, excluding any subaccount  balances.   In
       this mode, you can also use --drop N to omit the first few account name
       components.

              $ hledger balance -p 2008/6 expenses -N --flat --drop 1
                                $1  food
                                $1  supplies

   Depth limited balance reports
       With --depth N or depth:N or just -N,  balance  reports  show  accounts
       only  to the specified numeric depth.  This is very useful to summarise
       a complex set of accounts and get an overview.

              $ hledger balance -N -1
                               $-1  assets
                                $2  expenses
                               $-2  income
                                $1  liabilities

       Flat-mode balance reports, which normally show exclusive balances, show
       inclusive balances at the depth limit.

   Multicolumn balance report
       Multicolumn  or  tabular balance reports are a very useful hledger fea-
       ture, and usually the preferred style.  They share many  of  the  above
       features,  but they show the report as a table, with columns represent-
       ing time periods.  This mode is  activated  by  providing  a  reporting
       interval.

       There  are three types of multicolumn balance report, showing different
       information:

       1. By default: each column shows the sum of postings in that period, ie
          the  account's  change of balance in that period.  This is useful eg
          for a monthly income statement:

                  $ hledger balance --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

       2. With --cumulative: each column shows the  ending  balance  for  that
          period,  accumulating the changes across periods, starting from 0 at
          the report start date:

                  $ hledger balance --quarterly income expenses -E --cumulative
                  Ending balances (cumulative) in 2008:

                                     ||  2008/03/31  2008/06/30  2008/09/30  2008/12/31
                  ===================++=================================================
                   expenses:food     ||           0          $1          $1          $1
                   expenses:supplies ||           0          $1          $1          $1
                   income:gifts      ||           0         $-1         $-1         $-1
                   income:salary     ||         $-1         $-1         $-1         $-1
                  -------------------++-------------------------------------------------
                                     ||         $-1           0           0           0

       3. With --historical/-H: each column shows the actual historical ending
          balance  for  that  period, accumulating the changes across periods,
          starting from the actual balance at the report start date.  This  is
          useful eg for a multi-period balance sheet, and when you are showing
          only the data after a certain start date:

                  $ hledger balance ^assets ^liabilities --quarterly --historical --begin 2008/4/1
                  Ending balances (historical) in 2008/04/01-2008/12/31:

                                        ||  2008/06/30  2008/09/30  2008/12/31
                  ======================++=====================================
                   assets:bank:checking ||          $1          $1           0
                   assets:bank:saving   ||          $1          $1          $1
                   assets:cash          ||         $-2         $-2         $-2
                   liabilities:debts    ||           0           0          $1
                  ----------------------++-------------------------------------
                                        ||           0           0           0

       Multicolumn balance reports display accounts in flat mode  by  default;
       to see the hierarchy, use --tree.

       With   a  reporting  interval  (like  --quarterly  above),  the  report
       start/end dates will be adjusted if necessary so  that  they  encompass
       the displayed report periods.  This is so that the first and last peri-
       ods will be "full" and comparable to the others.

       The -E/--empty flag does two things  in  multicolumn  balance  reports:
       first,  the  report  will  show all columns within the specified report
       period (without -E, leading and trailing columns with  all  zeroes  are
       not  shown).   Second,  all  accounts which existed at the report start
       date will be considered, not just the ones  with  activity  during  the
       report period (use -E to include low-activity accounts which would oth-
       erwise would be omitted).

       The -T/--row-total flag adds an additional column showing the total for
       each row.

       The  -A/--average  flag adds a column showing the average value in each
       row.

       Here's an example of all three:

              $ hledger balance -Q income expenses --tree -ETA
              Balance changes in 2008:

                          ||  2008q1  2008q2  2008q3  2008q4    Total  Average
              ============++===================================================
               expenses   ||       0      $2       0       0       $2       $1
                 food     ||       0      $1       0       0       $1        0
                 supplies ||       0      $1       0       0       $1        0
               income     ||     $-1     $-1       0       0      $-2      $-1
                 gifts    ||       0     $-1       0       0      $-1        0
                 salary   ||     $-1       0       0       0      $-1        0
              ------------++---------------------------------------------------
                          ||     $-1      $1       0       0        0        0

              # Average is rounded to the dollar here since all journal amounts are

       Limitations:

       In multicolumn reports the -V/--value flag uses the market price on the
       report  end  date,  for all columns (not the price on each column's end
       date).

       Eliding of boring parent accounts in tree mode, as in the classic  bal-
       ance report, is not yet supported in multicolumn reports.

   Budget report
       With  --budget,  extra  columns  are displayed showing budget goals for
       each account and period, if any.  Budget goals are defined by  periodic
       transactions.   This  is  very  useful for comparing planned and actual
       income, expenses, time usage, etc.  -budget is most often combined with
       a report interval.

       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:

                                    ||                2017/11                  2017/12
              ======================++=================================================
               <unbudgeted>         ||                    $20                     $100
               assets:bank:checking || $-2445 [99% of $-2480]  $-2665 [107% of $-2480]
               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

       By default, only accounts with budget goals during  the  report  period
       are  shown.   --show-unbudgeted  shows  unbudgeted  accounts  as  well.
       Top-level accounts with no budget goals anywhere below them are grouped
       under <unbudgeted>.

       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:

                                    ||             2017/11/30               2017/12/31
              ======================++=================================================
               <unbudgeted>         ||                    $20                     $120
               assets:bank:checking || $-2445 [99% of $-2480]  $-5110 [103% of $-4960]
               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

       Note,  the -S/--sort-amount flag is not yet fully supported with --bud-
       get.

       For more examples, see Budgeting and Forecasting.

   Output format
       The balance command  supports  output  destination  and  output  format
       selection.

   balancesheet
       This command displays a simple balance sheet, showing historical ending
       balances of asset and liability accounts  (ignoring  any  report  begin
       date).   It  assumes that these accounts are under a top-level asset or
       liability account (case insensitive, plural forms also allowed).   Note
       this  report shows all account balances with normal positive sign (like
       conventional  financial  statements,   unlike   balance/print/register)
       (experimental).  (bs)

       --change
              show balance change in each period, instead of historical ending
              balances

       --cumulative
              show balance change accumulated across periods  (in  multicolumn
              reports), instead of historical ending balances

       -H --historical
              show historical ending balance in each period (includes postings
              before report start date) (default)

       --tree show accounts as a tree; amounts include subaccounts (default in
              simple reports)

       --flat show accounts as a list; amounts exclude subaccounts except when
              account is depth-clipped (default in multicolumn reports)

       -A --average
              show a row average column (in multicolumn mode)

       -T --row-total
              show a row total column (in multicolumn mode)

       -N --no-total
              don't show the final total row

       --drop=N
              omit N leading account name parts (in flat mode)

       --no-elide
              don't squash boring parent accounts (in tree mode)

       --format=LINEFORMAT
              in single-column balance reports: use this custom line format

       --sort-amount
              sort by amount instead of account code/name

       Example:

              $ hledger balancesheet
              Balance Sheet

              Assets:
                               $-1  assets
                                $1    bank:saving
                               $-2    cash
              --------------------
                               $-1

              Liabilities:
                                $1  liabilities:debts
              --------------------
                                $1

              Total:
              --------------------
                                 0

       With a reporting interval, multiple columns will be shown, one for each
       report  period.  As with multicolumn balance reports, you can alter the
       report mode  with  --change/--cumulative/--historical.   Normally  bal-
       ancesheet  shows historical ending balances, which is what you need for
       a balance sheet; note this means it ignores report begin dates.

       This command also supports output destination and output format  selec-
       tion.

   balancesheetequity
       Just  like  balancesheet,  but also reports Equity (which it assumes is
       under a top-level equity account).

       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

   cashflow
       This command displays a simple cashflow statement, showing  changes  in
       "cash"  accounts.  It assumes that these accounts are under a top-level
       asset account (case insensitive, plural forms also allowed) and do  not
       contain  receivable  or  A/R in their name.  Note this report shows all
       account balances with normal positive sign (like conventional financial
       statements, unlike balance/print/register) (experimental).  (cf)

       --change
              show balance change in each period (default)

       --cumulative
              show  balance  change accumulated across periods (in multicolumn
              reports), instead of changes during periods

       -H --historical
              show historical ending balance in each period (includes postings
              before report start date), instead of changes during each period

       --tree show accounts as a tree; amounts include subaccounts (default in
              simple reports)

       --flat show accounts as a list; amounts exclude subaccounts except when
              account is depth-clipped (default in multicolumn reports)

       -A --average
              show a row average column (in multicolumn mode)

       -T --row-total
              show a row total column (in multicolumn mode)

       -N --no-total
              don't show the final total row (in simple reports)

       --drop=N
              omit N leading account name parts (in flat mode)

       --no-elide
              don't squash boring parent accounts (in tree mode)

       --format=LINEFORMAT
              in single-column balance reports: use this custom line format

       --sort-amount
              sort by amount instead of account code/name

       Example:

              $ hledger cashflow
              Cashflow Statement

              Cash flows:
                               $-1  assets
                                $1    bank:saving
                               $-2    cash
              --------------------
                               $-1

              Total:
              --------------------
                               $-1

       With a reporting interval, multiple columns will be shown, one for each
       report  period.   Normally cashflow shows changes in assets per period,
       though as with multicolumn balance reports you  can  alter  the  report
       mode with --change/--cumulative/--historical.

       This  command also supports output destination and output format selec-
       tion.

   check-dates
       Check that transactions are sorted by increasing date.  With  a  query,
       only matched transactions' dates are checked.

   check-dupes
       Report  account  names having the same leaf but different prefixes.  An
       example: http://stefanorodighiero.net/software/hledger-dupes.html

   close
       Print closing/opening transactions that bring some or all account  bal-
       ances  to  zero  and  back.  Can be useful for bringing asset/liability
       balances across file boundaries, or for closing out income/expenses for
       a  period.   This  was formerly called "equity", as in Ledger, and that
       alias is also accepted.  See close -help for more.

   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 any of the hledger manuals.

       The help command displays any of the main hledger manuals,  in  one  of
       several  ways.  Run it with no argument to list the manuals, or provide
       a full or partial manual name to select one.

       hledger manuals are available in several formats.   hledger  help  will
       use  the  first  of  these  display  methods  that it finds: info, man,
       $PAGER, less, stdout (or when non-interactive, just stdout).   You  can
       force a particular viewer with the --info, --man, --pager, --cat flags.

              $ hledger help
              Please choose a manual by typing "hledger help MANUAL" (a substring is ok).
              Manuals: hledger hledger-ui hledger-web hledger-api journal csv timeclock timedot

              $ hledger help h --man

              hledger(1)                    hledger User Manuals                    hledger(1)

              NAME
                     hledger - a command-line accounting tool

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

              DESCRIPTION
                     hledger  is  a  cross-platform  program  for tracking money, time, or any
              ...

   import
       Read new transactions added to each FILE since last run, and  add  them
       to the main journal file.

       --dry-run
              just show the transactions to be imported

       The input files are specified as arguments - no need to write -f before
       each one.  So eg to add new transactions from all CSV files to the main
       journal, it's just: hledger import *.csv

       New  transactions are detected in the same way as print -new: by assum-
       ing transactions are always added to the input files in increasing date
       order, and by saving .latest.FILE state files.

       The  -dry-run  output is in journal format, so you can filter it, eg to
       see only uncategorised transactions:

              $ hledger import --dry ... | hledger -f- print unknown --ignore-assertions

   incomestatement
       This command displays a simple income statement, showing  revenues  and
       expenses  during  a period.  It assumes that these accounts are under a
       top-level revenue or income or expense account (case insensitive,  plu-
       ral  forms  also allowed).  Note this report shows all account balances
       with normal positive  sign  (like  conventional  financial  statements,
       unlike balance/print/register) (experimental).  (is)

       --change
              show balance change in each period (default)

       --cumulative
              show  balance  change accumulated across periods (in multicolumn
              reports), instead of changes during periods

       -H --historical
              show historical ending balance in each period (includes postings
              before report start date), instead of changes during each period

       --tree show accounts as a tree; amounts include subaccounts (default in
              simple reports)

       --flat show accounts as a list; amounts exclude subaccounts except when
              account is depth-clipped (default in multicolumn reports)

       -A --average
              show a row average column (in multicolumn mode)

       -T --row-total
              show a row total column (in multicolumn mode)

       -N --no-total
              don't show the final total row

       --drop=N
              omit N leading account name parts (in flat mode)

       --no-elide
              don't squash boring parent accounts (in tree mode)

       --format=LINEFORMAT
              in single-column balance reports: use this custom line format

       --sort-amount
              sort by amount instead of account code/name

       This command displays a simple income statement.  It currently  assumes
       that  you have top-level accounts named income (or revenue) and expense
       (plural forms also allowed.)

              $ hledger incomestatement
              Income Statement

              Revenues:
                               $-2  income
                               $-1    gifts
                               $-1    salary
              --------------------
                               $-2

              Expenses:
                                $2  expenses
                                $1    food
                                $1    supplies
              --------------------
                                $2

              Total:
              --------------------
                                 0

       With a reporting interval, multiple columns will be shown, one for each
       report  period.   Normally  incomestatement shows revenues/expenses per
       period, though as with multicolumn balance reports you  can  alter  the
       report mode with --change/--cumulative/--historical.

       This  command also supports output destination and output format selec-
       tion.

   prices
       Print market price directives from  the  journal.   With  -costs,  also
       print  synthetic  market  prices  based  on  transaction  prices.  With
       -inverted-costs, also print inverse prices based on transaction prices.
       Prices (and postings providing prices) can be filtered by a query.

   print
       Show transactions from the journal.  Aliases: p, txns.

       -m STR --match=STR
              show  the  transaction whose description is most similar to STR,
              and is most recent

       --new  show only newer-dated transactions added in each file since last
              run

       -x     --explicit
              show all amounts explicitly

       -O FMT --output-format=FMT
              select the output format.  Supported formats: txt, csv.

       -o FILE --output-file=FILE
              write  output  to  FILE.   A  file extension matching one of the
              above formats selects that format.

              $ 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

       The print command displays full journal entries (transactions) from the
       journal file in date order, tidily formatted.  print's output is always
       a valid hledger journal.  It preserves all transaction information, but
       it does not preserve directives or inter-transaction comments

       Normally, the journal entry's explicit or implicit amount style is pre-
       served.  Ie when an amount is omitted in the journal, it will be  omit-
       ted  in  the  output.   You  can use the -x/--explicit flag to make all
       amounts explicit, which can be useful for troubleshooting or for making
       your journal more readable and robust against data entry errors.  Note,
       -x will cause postings with a multi-commodity amount (these  can  arise
       when  a  multi-commodity  transaction  has  an implicit amount) will be
       split into multiple single-commodity postings, for valid  journal  out-
       put.

       With  -B/--cost,  amounts with transaction prices are converted to cost
       using that price.  This can be used for troubleshooting.

       With -m/--match and a STR argument, print will show at most one  trans-
       action:  the  one  one whose description is most similar to STR, and is
       most recent.  STR should contain at least two characters.  If there  is
       no similar-enough match, no transaction will be shown.

       With --new, for each FILE being read, hledger reads (and writes) a spe-
       cial state file (.latest.FILE in the same  directory),  containing  the
       latest  transaction  date(s)  that  were  seen last time FILE was read.
       When this file is found, only transactions with newer  dates  (and  new
       transactions  on  the  latest  date)  are  printed.  This is useful for
       ignoring already-seen entries in import data, such  as  downloaded  CSV
       files.  Eg:

              $ hledger -f bank1.csv print --new
              # shows transactions added since last print --new on this file

       This  assumes  that  transactions  added  to  FILE  always have same or
       increasing dates, and that transactions on the  same  day  do  not  get
       reordered.  See also the import command.

       This  command also supports output destination and output format selec-
       tion.  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.)

   print-unique
       Print transactions which do not reuse an already-seen description.

   register
       Show postings and their running total.  Aliases: r, reg.

       --cumulative
              show running total from report start date (default)

       -H --historical
              show historical running total/balance (includes postings  before
              report start date)

       -A --average
              show  running  average  of  posting  amounts  instead  of  total
              (implies -empty)

       -r --related
              show postings' siblings instead

       -w N --width=N
              set output width (default: terminal  width  or  COLUMNS.   -wN,M
              sets description width as well)

       -O FMT --output-format=FMT
              select the output format.  Supported formats: txt, csv.

       -o FILE --output-file=FILE
              write  output  to  FILE.   A  file extension matching one of the
              above formats selects that format.

       The register command displays postings, one per line, and their running
       total.   This  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

       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.

       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.

   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:

              <--------------------------------- 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, and set description width

       This command also supports output destination and output format  selec-
       tion.

   register-match
       Print the one posting whose transaction description is closest to DESC,
       in the style of the register  command.   Helps  ledger-autosync  detect
       already-seen transactions when importing.

   rewrite
       Print all transactions, adding custom postings to the matched ones.

   roi
       Shows  time-weighted  (TWR)  and money-weighted (IRR) rate of return on
       your investments.  See roi --help for more.

   stats
       Show some journal statistics.

       -o FILE --output-file=FILE
              write output to FILE.  A file  extension  matching  one  of  the
              above formats selects that format.

              $ hledger stats
              Main journal file        : /src/hledger/examples/sample.journal
              Included journal files   :
              Transactions span        : 2008-01-01 to 2009-01-01 (366 days)
              Last transaction         : 2008-12-31 (2333 days ago)
              Transactions             : 5 (0.0 per day)
              Transactions last 30 days: 0 (0.0 per day)
              Transactions last 7 days : 0 (0.0 per day)
              Payees/descriptions      : 5
              Accounts                 : 8 (depth 3)
              Commodities              : 1 ($)

       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.

       This  command also supports output destination and output format selec-
       tion.

   tags
       List all the tag names used in the journal.  With a TAGREGEX  argument,
       only  tag  names matching the regular expression (case insensitive) are
       shown.  With additional QUERY arguments, only transactions matching the
       query are considered.

   test
       Run built-in unit tests.

       Prints  test  names  and their results on stdout.  If any test fails or
       gives an error, the exit code will be non-zero.

       Test names include a group prefix.  If a (exact, case sensitive)  group
       prefix,  or  a  full  test name is provided as the first argument, only
       that group or test is run.

       If a numeric second argument is provided, it will  set  the  randomness
       seed,  for  repeatable  results  from tests using randomness (currently
       none of them).

       This is mainly used by developers, but it's nice to  be  able  to  san-
       ity-check your installed hledger executable at any time.  All tests are
       expected to pass - if you ever see otherwise, something has gone wrong,
       please report a bug!

ADD-ON COMMANDS
       hledger  also  searches  for external add-on commands, and will include
       these in the commands list.  These are programs or scripts in your PATH
       whose  name starts with hledger- and ends with a recognised file exten-
       sion (currently: no extension, bat,com,exe, hs,lhs,pl,py,rb,rkt,sh).

       Add-ons can be invoked like any hledger command, but there  are  a  few
       things to be aware of.  Eg if the hledger-web add-on is installed,

       o hledger -h web  shows  hledger's  help,  while  hledger web -h  shows
         hledger-web's help.

       o Flags specific to the add-on must have a preceding --  to  hide  them
         from  hledger.   So hledger web --serve --port 9000 will be rejected;
         you must use hledger web -- --serve --port 9000.

       o You   can    always    run    add-ons    directly    if    preferred:
         hledger-web --serve --port 9000.

       Add-ons  are  a relatively easy way to add local features or experiment
       with new ideas.  They can be  written  in  any  language,  but  haskell
       scripts  have  a  big  advantage:  they  can  use the same hledger (and
       haskell) library functions that built-in commands do, for  command-line
       options, journal parsing, reporting, etc.

       Here are some hledger add-ons available:

   Official add-ons
       These are maintained and released along with hledger.

   api
       hledger-api serves hledger data as a JSON web API.

   ui
       hledger-ui provides an efficient curses-style interface.

   web
       hledger-web provides a simple web interface.

   Third party add-ons
       These  are  maintained  separately, and usually updated shortly after a
       hledger release.

   diff
       hledger-diff shows differences in an account's transactions between one
       journal file and another.

   iadd
       hledger-iadd  is  a  curses-style, more interactive replacement for the
       add command.

   interest
       hledger-interest generates interest transactions for an account accord-
       ing to various schemes.

   irr
       hledger-irr  calculates  the  internal  rate of return of an investment
       account, but it's superseded now by the built-in roi command.

   Experimental add-ons
       These are available in source form in the hledger  repo's  bin/  direc-
       tory; installing them is pretty easy.  They may be less mature and doc-
       umented than built-in commands.  Reading and tweaking these is  a  good
       way to start making your own!

   autosync
       hledger-autosync is a symbolic link for easily running ledger-autosync,
       if installed.  ledger-autosync does  deduplicating  conversion  of  OFX
       data  and some CSV formats, and can also download the data if your bank
       offers OFX Direct Connect.

   chart
       hledger-chart.hs is an old pie chart generator, in need of some love.

   check
       hledger-check.hs checks more powerful account balance assertions.

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

       LEDGER_FILE The journal file path when not specified with -f.  Default:
       ~/.hledger.journal (on  windows,  perhaps  C:/Users/USER/.hledger.jour-
       nal).

FILES
       Reads  data from one or more files in hledger journal, timeclock, time-
       dot,  or  CSV  format  specified   with   -f,   or   $LEDGER_FILE,   or
       $HOME/.hledger.journal           (on          windows,          perhaps
       C:/Users/USER/.hledger.journal).

BUGS
       The need to precede addon 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.

       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 file format
       differences.

       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.

       "Illegal byte sequence" or "Invalid or  incomplete  multibyte  or  wide
       character" errors
       In order to handle non-ascii letters and symbols (like ), hledger needs
       an appropriate locale.  This is usually configured system-wide; you can
       also configure it temporarily.  The locale may need to be one that sup-
       ports UTF-8, if you built hledger with GHC < 7.2 (or  possibly  always,
       I'm not sure yet).

       Here's  an  example  of  setting  the  locale  temporarily,  on  ubuntu
       gnu/linux:

              $ file my.journal
              my.journal: UTF-8 Unicode text                 # <- the file is UTF8-encoded
              $ locale -a
              C
              en_US.utf8                             # <- a UTF8-aware locale is available
              POSIX
              $ LANG=en_US.utf8 hledger -f my.journal print   # <- use it for this command

       Here's one way to set it permanently, there are probably better ways:

              $ echo "export LANG=en_US.UTF-8" >>~/.bash_profile
              $ bash --login

       If we preferred to use eg fr_FR.utf8, we might  have  to  install  that
       first:

              $ 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

       Note some platforms allow variant locale spellings, but not all (ubuntu
       accepts fr_FR.UTF8, mac osx requires exactly fr_FR.UTF-8).



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


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


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


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

       http://hledger.org



hledger 1.12                     December 2018                      hledger(1)
