
hledger_timedot(5)           hledger User Manuals           hledger_timedot(5)



NAME
       Timedot - hledger's human-friendly time logging format

DESCRIPTION
       Timedot  is  a plain text format for logging dated, categorised quanti-
       ties (eg time), supported by hledger.  It is convenient for approximate
       and  retroactive  time  logging,  eg  when  the  real-time clock-in/out
       required with a timeclock file is too precise or too interruptive.   It
       can  be formatted like a bar chart, making clear at a glance where time
       was spent.

       Though called "timedot", the format  does  not  specify  the  commodity
       being  logged, so could represent other dated, quantifiable things.  Eg
       you could record a single-entry journal of financial transactions, per-
       haps slightly more conveniently than with hledger_journal(5) format.

FILE FORMAT
       A  timedot  file  contains a series of day entries.  A day entry begins
       with a date, and is followed by category/quantity pairs, one per  line.
       Dates  are  hledger-style simple dates (see hledger_journal(5)).  Cate-
       gories are hledger-style account  names,  optionally  indented.   There
       must  be  at  least  two  spaces between the category and the quantity.
       Quantities can be written in two ways:

       1. a series of dots (period characters).  Each dot represents "a  quar-
          ter"  -  eg,  a quarter hour.  Spaces can be used to group dots into
          hours, for easier counting.

       2. a number (integer or decimal), representing "units" - eg, hours.   A
          good  alternative  when  dots  are  cumbersome.   (A number also can
          record negative quantities.)

       Blank lines and lines beginning with #, ; or * are ignored.   An  exam-
       ple:

              # on this day, 6h was spent on client work, 1.5h on haskell FOSS work, etc.
              2016/2/1
              inc:client1   .... .... .... .... .... ....
              fos:haskell   .... ..
              biz:research  .

              2016/2/2
              inc:client1   .... ....
              biz:research  .

       Or with numbers:

              2016/2/3
              inc:client1   4
              fos:hledger   3
              biz:research  1

       Reporting:

              $ hledger -f t.timedot print date:2016/2/2
              2016/02/02 *
                  (inc:client1)          2.00

              2016/02/02 *
                  (biz:research)          0.25

              $ hledger -f t.timedot bal --daily --tree
              Balance changes in 2016/02/01-2016/02/03:

                          ||  2016/02/01d  2016/02/02d  2016/02/03d
              ============++========================================
               biz        ||         0.25         0.25         1.00
                 research ||         0.25         0.25         1.00
               fos        ||         1.50            0         3.00
                 haskell  ||         1.50            0            0
                 hledger  ||            0            0         3.00
               inc        ||         6.00         2.00         4.00
                 client1  ||         6.00         2.00         4.00
              ------------++----------------------------------------
                          ||         7.75         2.25         8.00

       I  prefer to use period for separating account components.  We can make
       this work with an account alias:

              2016/2/4
              fos.hledger.timedot  4
              fos.ledger           ..

              $ hledger -f t.timedot --alias /\\./=: bal date:2016/2/4
                              4.50  fos
                              4.00    hledger:timedot
                              0.50    ledger
              --------------------
                              4.50

       Here is a sample.timedot.



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 1.3                        June 2017                hledger_timedot(5)
