
HLEDGER(1)                   hledger User Manuals                   HLEDGER(1)

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

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

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

       This  manual  is for hledger's command line interface, version 1.32.99.
       It also describes the common options, file formats and concepts used by
       all hledger programs.  It might accidentally teach you  some  bookkeep-
       ing/accounting  as  well!  You don't need to know everything in here to
       use hledger productively, but when you have a question about  function-
       ality,  this doc should answer it.  It is detailed, so do skip ahead or
       skim when needed.  You can read it on hledger.org, or as an info manual
       or man page on your system.  You can also get it  from  hledger  itself
       with
       hledger --man, hledger --info or hledger help [TOPIC].

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

       hledger usually reads from (and appends to) a journal file specified by
       the     LEDGER_FILE     environment     variable     (defaulting     to
       $HOME/.hledger.journal);  or you can specify files with -f options.  It
       can also read timeclock files, timedot files, or any  CSV/SSV/TSV  file
       with a date field.

       Here is a small journal file describing one transaction:

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

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

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

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

PART 1: USER INTERFACE
Input
       hledger  reads  one  or more data files, each time you run it.  You can
       specify a file with -f, like so

              $ hledger -f FILE print

       Files are most often in hledger's journal  format,  with  the  .journal
       file  extension (.hledger or .j also work); these files describe trans-
       actions, like an accounting general journal.

       When no file is specified, hledger looks for .hledger.journal  in  your
       home directory.

       But  most  people prefer to keep financial files in a dedicated folder,
       perhaps with version control.  Also, starting a new journal  file  each
       year  is  common (it's not required, but helps keep things fast and or-
       ganised).  So we usually configure a different journal file, by setting
       the  LEDGER_FILE  environment  variable,  to   something   like   ~/fi-
       nance/2023.journal.   For more about how to do that on your system, see
       Common tasks > Setting LEDGER_FILE.

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

       Reader:        Reads:                           Used for file extensions:
       -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
       journal        hledger journal files and some   .journal .j .hledger .ledger
                      Ledger  journals, for transac-
                      tions
       timeclock      timeclock files,  for  precise   .timeclock
                      time logging
       timedot        timedot files, for approximate   .timedot
                      time logging
       csv            CSV/SSV/TSV/character-sepa-      .csv  .ssv  .tsv  .csv.rules
                      rated values, for data import    .ssv.rules .tsv.rules

       These formats are described in more detail below.

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

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

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

   Standard input
       The file name - means standard input:

              $ cat FILE | hledger -f- print

       If reading non-journal data in this way, you'll need to add a file for-
       mat prefix, like:

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

   Multiple files
       You can specify multiple -f options, to read multiple files as one  big
       journal.  When doing this, note that certain features (described below)
       will be affected:

       o Balance  assertions will not see the effect of transactions in previ-
         ous files.  (Usually this doesn't matter as each file  will  set  the
         corresponding opening balances.)

       o Some directives will not affect previous or subsequent files.

       If  needed,  you  can  work  around these by using a single parent file
       which includes the others, or concatenating the files into one, eg: cat
       a.journal b.journal | hledger -f- CMD.

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

       o Are the input files parseable, with valid syntax ?

       o Are all transactions balanced ?

       o Do all balance assertions pass ?

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

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

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

       o Are all commodity conversions declared explicitly ?

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

Commands
       hledger  provides various subcommands for getting things done.  Most of
       these commands do not change the journal file; they just  read  it  and
       output  a report.  A few commands assist with adding data and file man-
       agement.

       To show the commands list, run hledger with no arguments.  The commands
       are described in detail in PART 4: COMMANDS, below.

       To use a particular command, run hledger CMD [CMDOPTS] [CMDARGS],

       o CMD is the full command name, or its standard abbreviation  shown  in
         the commands list, or any unambiguous prefix of the name.

       o CMDOPTS  are  command-specific options, if any.  Command-specific op-
         tions must be written after the command name.  Eg: hledger print -x.

       o CMDARGS are additional  arguments  to  the  command,  if  any.   Most
         hledger  commands accept arguments representing a query, to limit the
         data in some way.  Eg: hledger reg assets:checking.

       To list a command's options, arguments, and documentation in the termi-
       nal, run hledger CMD -h.  Eg: hledger bal -h.

   Add-on commands
       In addition to the built-in commands, you can install add-on  commands:
       programs  or  scripts named "hledger-SOMETHING", which will also appear
       in hledger's commands list.  If you used  the  hledger-install  script,
       you  will  have  several  add-ons  installed already.  Some more can be
       found    in     hledger's     bin/     directory,     documented     at
       https://hledger.org/scripts.html.

       More precisely, add-on commands are programs or scripts in your shell's
       PATH, whose name starts with "hledger-" and ends with no extension or a
       recognised  extension  (".bat",  ".com",  ".exe", ".hs", ".js", ".lhs",
       ".lua", ".php", ".pl", ".py", ".rb", ".rkt", or ".sh"),  and  (on  unix
       and mac) which has executable permission for the current user.

       You can run add-on commands using hledger, much like built-in commands:
       hledger ADDONCMD [-- ADDONCMDOPTS] [ADDONCMDARGS].  But note the double
       hyphen  argument, required before add-on-specific options.  Eg: hledger
       ui -- --watch or hledger web -- --serve.  If  this  causes  difficulty,
       you can always run the add-on directly, without using hledger: hledger-
       ui --watch or hledger-web --serve.

Options
       Run  hledger  -h  to see general command line help, and general options
       which are common to most hledger commands.  These options can be  writ-
       ten  anywhere  on the command line.  They can be grouped into help, in-
       put, and reporting options:

   General help options
       -h --help
              show general or COMMAND help

       --man  show general or COMMAND user manual with man

       --info show general or COMMAND user manual with info

       --version
              show general or ADDONCMD version

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

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

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

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

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

       --anon anonymize accounts and payees

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

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

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

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

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

       -D --daily
              multiperiod/multicolumn report by day

       -W --weekly
              multiperiod/multicolumn report by week

       -M --monthly
              multiperiod/multicolumn report by month

       -Q --quarterly
              multiperiod/multicolumn report by quarter

       -Y --yearly
              multiperiod/multicolumn report by year

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

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

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

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

       -P --pending
              include only pending postings/txns

       -C --cleared
              include only cleared postings/txns

       -R --real
              include only non-virtual postings

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

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

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

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

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

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

       --infer-equity
              infer conversion equity postings from costs

       --infer-costs
              infer costs from conversion equity postings

       --infer-market-prices
              use costs as additional market prices, as if they were P  direc-
              tives

       --forecast
              generate  transactions  from  periodic rules, between the latest
              recorded txn and 6 months from today, or  during  the  specified
              PERIOD  (=  is required).  Auto posting rules will be applied to
              these transactions as well.  Also, in  hledger-ui  make  future-
              dated transactions visible.

       --auto generate  extra  postings  by applying auto posting rules to all
              txns (not just forecast txns)

       --verbose-tags
              add visible tags indicating transactions or postings which  have
              been generated/modified

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

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

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

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

       Some reporting options can also be written as query arguments.

Command line tips
       Here  are  some  details useful to know about for hledger command lines
       (and elsewhere).  Feel free to skip this section until you need it.

   Option repetition
       If options are repeated in a command line, hledger will  generally  use
       the last (right-most) occurence.

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

              $ hledger register 'credit card'

       or:

              $ hledger register credit\ card

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

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

              $ hledger balance cur:'\$'

       or:

              $ hledger balance cur:\\$

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

              $ hledger ui cur:'\\$'

       or:

              $ hledger ui cur:\\\\$

       If you wondered why four backslashes, perhaps this helps:

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

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

              $ hledger-ui cur:\\$

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

       o an @argumentfile

       o hledger-ui's filter field

       o hledger-web's search form

       o GHCI's prompt (used by developers).

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

   Regular expressions
       A regular expression (regexp) is a small piece of  text  where  certain
       characters  (like  .,  ^, $, +, *, (), |, [], \) have special meanings,
       forming a tiny language for matching text precisely -  very  useful  in
       hledger  and elsewhere.  To learn all about them, visit regular-expres-
       sions.info.

       hledger supports regexps whenever you are entering a pattern  to  match
       something,  eg  in  query  arguments,  account  aliases,  CSV if rules,
       hledger-web's search form, hledger-ui's / search, etc.  You may need to
       wrap them in quotes, especially at the command line (see Special  char-
       acters above).  Here are some examples:

       Account name queries (quoted for command line use):

              Regular expression:  Matches:
              -------------------  ------------------------------------------------------------
              bank                 assets:bank, assets:bank:savings, expenses:art:banksy, ...
              :bank                assets:bank:savings, expenses:art:banksy
              :bank:               assets:bank:savings
              '^bank'              none of those ( ^ matches beginning of text )
              'bank$'              assets:bank   ( $ matches end of text )
              'big \$ bank'        big $ bank    ( \ disables following character's special meaning )
              '\bbank\b'           assets:bank, assets:bank:savings  ( \b matches word boundaries )
              '(sav|check)ing'     saving or checking  ( (|) matches either alternative )
              'saving|checking'    saving or checking  ( outer parentheses are not needed )
              'savings?'           saving or savings   ( ? matches 0 or 1 of the preceding thing )
              'my +bank'           my bank, my  bank, ... ( + matches 1 or more of the preceding thing )
              'my *bank'           mybank, my bank, my  bank, ... ( * matches 0 or more of the preceding thing )
              'b.nk'               bank, bonk, b nk, ... ( . matches any character )

       Some other queries:

              desc:'amazon|amzn|audible'  Amazon transactions
              cur:EUR              amounts with commodity symbol containing EUR
              cur:'\$'             amounts with commodity symbol containing $
              cur:'^\$$'           only $ amounts, not eg AU$ or CA$
              cur:....?            amounts with 4-or-more-character symbols
              tag:.=202[1-3]       things with any tag whose value contains 2021, 2022 or 2023

       Account name aliases: accept . instead of : as account separator:

              alias /\./=:         replaces all periods in account names with colons

       Show multiple top-level accounts combined as one:

              --alias='/^[^:]+/=combined'  ( [^:] matches any character other than : )

       Show accounts with the second-level part removed:

              --alias '/^([^:]+):[^:]+/ = \1'
                                   match a top-level account and a second-level account
                                   and replace those with just the top-level account
                                   ( \1 in the replacement text means "whatever was matched
                                   by the first parenthesised part of the regexp"

       CSV rules: match CSV records containing dining-related MCC codes:

              if \?MCC581[124]

       Match CSV records with a specific amount around the end/start of month:

              if %amount \b3\.99
              &  %date   (29|30|31|01|02|03)$

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

       1. they are case insensitive

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

       3. they are POSIX ERE (extended regular expressions)

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

       5. backreferences are supported when doing text replacement in  account
          aliases  or  CSV  rules, where backreferences can be used in the re-
          placement string to reference capturing groups in the search regexp.
          Otherwise, if you write \1, it will match the digit 1.

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

       Some things to note:

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

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

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

   Argument files
       You can save a set of command line options and arguments in a file, and
       then reuse them by writing @FILENAME as a command line  argument.   Eg:
       hledger bal @foo.args.

       Inside  the  argument file, each line should contain just one option or
       argument.  Don't use spaces except inside quotes (or you'll see a  con-
       fusing  error);  write  = (or nothing) between a flag and its argument.
       For the special characters mentioned above, use one less level of quot-
       ing than you would at the command prompt.

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

              $ hledger print > foo.txt

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

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

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

       -                  txt               csv/tsv          html               json    sql
       --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
       aregister          Y                 Y                Y                  Y
       balance            Y 1               Y 1              Y 1,2              Y
       balancesheet       Y 1               Y 1              Y 1                Y
       balancesheete-     Y 1               Y 1              Y 1                Y
       quity
       cashflow           Y 1               Y 1              Y 1                Y
       incomestatement    Y 1               Y 1              Y 1                Y
       print              Y                 Y                                   Y       Y
       register           Y                 Y                                   Y

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

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

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

              $ hledger print -O csv    # print CSV on stdout

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

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

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

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

       Some notes about the various output formats:

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

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

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

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

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

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

       o SQL  output is expected to work at least with SQLite, MySQL and Post-
         gres.

       o For SQLite, it will be more useful if you  modify  the  generated  id
         field to be a PRIMARY KEY.  Eg:

                $ hledger print -O sql | sed 's/id serial/id INTEGER PRIMARY KEY AUTOINCREMENT NOT NULL/g' | ...

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

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

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

              $ hledger print -c '$1.000,0'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

       o otherwise, unicode characters will not be used.

   Paging
       When  showing  long output in the terminal, hledger will try to use the
       pager specified by the PAGER environment variable, or  less,  or  more.
       (A  pager is a helper program that shows one page at a time rather than
       scrolling everything off screen).  Currently it does this only for help
       output, not for reports; specifically,

       o when listing commands, with hledger

       o when showing help with hledger [CMD] --help,

       o when viewing manuals with hledger help or hledger --man.

       Note the pager is expected to handle ANSI codes, which hledger uses  eg
       for bold emphasis.  For the common pager less (and its more compatibil-
       ity  mode), we add R to the LESS and MORE environment variables to make
       this work.  If you use a different pager, you might need  to  configure
       it similarly, to avoid seeing junk on screen (let us know).  Otherwise,
       you  can set the NO_COLOR environment variable to 1 to disable all ANSI
       output (see Colour).

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

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

Environment
       These environment variables affect hledger:

       COLUMNS This is normally set by your terminal;  some  hledger  commands
       (register)  will  format  their output to this width.  If not set, they
       will try to use the available terminal width.

       LEDGER_FILE The main journal  file  to  use  when  not  specified  with
       -f/--file.  Default: $HOME/.hledger.journal.

       NO_COLOR  If this environment variable is set (with any value), hledger
       will not use ANSI color codes in terminal output, unless overridden  by
       an explicit --color/--colour option.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

       hledger's journal format is compatible with most  of  Ledger's  journal
       format, but not all of it.  The differences and interoperation tips are
       described  at  hledger and Ledger.  With some care, and by avoiding in-
       compatible features, you can keep  your  hledger  journal  readable  by
       Ledger  and vice versa.  This can useful eg for comparing the behaviour
       of one app against the other.

       You can use hledger without learning any more about this file; just use
       the add or web or import commands to create and update it.

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

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

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

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

       o # for top-level notes

       o ; for commenting out things temporarily

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

       Eg:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

       Here's a simple journal file containing one transaction:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

       DATE should be a simple date; if the year is not specified it will  use
       the year of the transaction's date.
       The  date: tag must have a valid simple date value if it is present, eg
       a date: tag with no value is not allowed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

              assets
               bank
                checking
              expenses
               food

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

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

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

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

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

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

              1

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

              $1
              4000 AAPL
              3 "green apples"

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

              -$1
              $-1

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

              + $1
              $-      1

       Scientific E notation is allowed:

              1E-6
              EUR 1E3

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

              1.23
              1,23

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

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

       hledger is not biased towards period or comma decimal marks, so a  num-
       ber  containing  just  one period or comma, like 1,000 or 1.000, is am-
       biguous.  In such cases hledger assumes it is a decimal  mark,  parsing
       both of these as 1.

       To disambiguate these and ensure accurate number parsing, especially if
       you  use  digit  group  marks, we recommend declaring the decimal mark.
       You can declare it for each file with decimal-mark directives,  or  for
       each commodity with commodity directives (described below).

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

   Commodity display style
       For the amounts in each commodity, hledger chooses a consistent display
       style  (symbol placement, decimal mark and digit group marks, number of
       decimal digits) to use in most reports.  This is inferred as follows:

       First, if there's a D directive declaring  a  default  commodity,  that
       commodity  symbol and amount format is applied to all no-symbol amounts
       in the journal.

       Then each commodity's display style is determined  from  its  commodity
       directive.   We  recommend  always declaring commodities with commodity
       directives, since they help ensure consistent display styles and preci-
       sions, and bring other benefits such as error  checking  for  commodity
       symbols.

       But  if  a commodity directive is not present, hledger infers a commod-
       ity's display styles from its amounts as they are written in the  jour-
       nal  (excluding  cost amounts and amounts in periodic transaction rules
       or auto posting rules).  It uses

       o the symbol placement and decimal mark of the first amount seen

       o the digit group marks of the first amount with digit group marks

       o and the maximum number of decimal digits seen across all amounts.

       And as fallback if no applicable amounts are found, it would use a  de-
       fault style, like $1000.00 (symbol on the left with no space, period as
       decimal mark, and two decimal digits).

       Finally, commodity styles can be overridden by the -c/--commodity-style
       command line option.

   Rounding
       Amounts are stored internally as decimal numbers with up to 255 decimal
       places.   They  are displayed with their original journal precisions by
       print and print-like reports, and rounded to  their  display  precision
       (the number of decimal digits specified by the commodity display style)
       by  other  reports.   When rounding, hledger uses banker's rounding (it
       rounds to the nearest even digit).  So eg 0.5 displayed with zero deci-
       mal digits appears as "0".

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

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

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

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

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

                  2009/1/1
                    assets:euros     100 @ $1.35  ; one hundred euros purchased at $1.35 each
                    assets:dollars                 ; balancing amount is -$135.00

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

                  2009/1/1
                    assets:euros     100 @@ $135  ; one hundred euros purchased at $135 for the lot
                    assets:dollars

       3. Specify amounts for all postings, using exactly two commodities, and
          let hledger infer the price that balances the transaction.  Note the
          effect of posting order: the price is added to first posting, making
          it 100 @@ $135, as in example 2:

                  2009/1/1
                    assets:euros     100          ; one hundred euros purchased
                    assets:dollars  $-135          ; for $135

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

       Note  that  the  cost normally should be a positive amount, though it's
       not required to be.  This can be a little confusing, see discussion  at
       --infer-market-prices: market prices from transactions.

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

       o @ UNITCOST and @@ TOTALCOST

         o expresses a conversion rate, as in hledger

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

         o when buying, attaches this acquisition date to the lot

         o when selling, selects a lot by its acquisition date

       o (SOME TEXT) (lot note)

         o when buying, attaches this note to the lot

         o when selling, selects a lot by its note

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

       For Beancount users, the notation and behaviour is different:

       o @ UNITCOST and @@ TOTALCOST

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

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

       o {UNITCOST} and {{TOTALCOST}}

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

         o when selling (reducing),

           o selects a lot by its cost basis

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

           o expresses the selling price for transaction balancing

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

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

       Currently, hledger rejects these.

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

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

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

       After reading a journal file, hledger will check all balance assertions
       and  report  an error if any of them fail.  Balance assertions can pro-
       tect you from, eg, inadvertently disrupting reconciled  balances  while
       cleaning  up  old  entries.   You can disable them temporarily with the
       -I/--ignore-assertions flag, which can be useful for troubleshooting or
       for reading Ledger files.  (Note: this flag currently does not  disable
       balance assignments, described below).

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

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

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

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

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

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

   Assertions and commodities
       The asserted balance must be a simple single-commodity amount,  and  in
       fact  the  assertion  checks  only  this commodity's balance within the
       (possibly multi-commodity) account balance.   This  is  how  assertions
       work in Ledger also.  We could call this a "partial" balance assertion.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

              account assets:checking         ; accounttag:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

   Directives
       Besides  transactions, there is something else you can put in a journal
       file: directives.  These are declarations, beginning  with  a  keyword,
       that  modify  hledger's  behaviour.  Some directives can have more spe-
       cific subdirectives, indented below  them.   hledger's  directives  are
       similar to Ledger's in many cases, but there are also many differences.
       Directives  are not required, but can be useful.  Here are the main di-
       rectives:

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

   Directives and multiple files
       Directives vary in their scope, ie which journal entries and which  in-
       put files they affect.  Most often, a directive will affect the follow-
       ing  entries  and  included  files if any, until the end of the current
       file - and no further.  You might find this inconvenient!  For example,
       alias directives do not affect parent or sibling files.  But there  are
       usually workarounds; for example, put alias directives in your top-most
       file, before including other files.

       The  restriction,  though  it  may  be  annoying at first, is in a good
       cause; it allows reports to be stable and deterministic, independent of
       the order of input.  Without it, reports could show  different  numbers
       depending  on  the order of -f options, or the positions of include di-
       rectives in your files.

   Directive effects
       Here are all hledger's directives, with their effects  and  scope  sum-
       marised - nine main directives, plus four others which we consider non-
       essential:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

              account assets:bank:checking

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

              account (assets:bank:checking)

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

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

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

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

              account assets:bank:checking
                format subdirective is ignored

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

              account assets
              account liabilities
              account equity
              account revenues
              account expenses

       those accounts will be displayed in declaration order:

              $ hledger accounts -1
              assets
              liabilities
              equity
              revenues
              expenses

       Any undeclared accounts are displayed last, in alphabetical order.

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

              account other:zoo

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

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

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

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

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

       o A or Asset (things you own)

       o L or Liability (things you owe)

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

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

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

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

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

       o V  or  Conversion (a subtype of Equity, for conversions (see Cost re-
         porting).)

       Here is a typical set of account type declarations:

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

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

              account equity:conversion  ; type: V

       Here are some tips for working with account types.

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

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

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

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

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

         1. A type: declaration for this account.

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

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

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

         5. Otherwise, it will have no type.

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

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

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

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

       o adapting old journals to your current chart of accounts

       o experimenting with new account organisations, like a new hierarchy

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

       o customising reports

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

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

       See also Rewrite account names.

   Basic aliases
       To  set an account alias, use the alias directive in your journal file.
       This affects all subsequent journal entries in the current file or  its
       included  files  (but  note:  not sibling or parent files).  The spaces
       around the = are optional:

              alias OLD = NEW

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

       OLD and NEW are case sensitive full account names.   hledger  will  re-
       place  any occurrence of the old account name with the new one.  Subac-
       counts are also affected.  Eg:

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

   Regex aliases
       There is also a more powerful variant that uses a  regular  expression,
       indicated  by  wrapping  the  pattern in forward slashes.  (This is the
       only place where hledger requires forward slashes around a regular  ex-
       pression.)

       Eg:

              alias /REGEX/ = REPLACEMENT

       or:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

              hledger -f a.aliases -f b.journal

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

              include a.aliases

              2023-01-01  ; not affected by a.aliases
                foo  1
                bar

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

              alias foo=Foo
              alias bar=Bar

              2023-01-01  ; affected by aliases above
                foo  1
                bar

              include c.journal  ; also affected

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

              end aliases

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

              2021-01-01
                a:aa     1
                b

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

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

              2021-01-01
                old    1
                other

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

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

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

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

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

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

   commodity directive
       The commodity directive performs several functions:

       1. It declares which commodity symbols may be used in the journal,  en-
          abling  useful error checking with strict mode or the check command.
          (See Commodity error checking below.)

       2. It declares the precision with which this commodity's amounts should
          be compared when checking for balanced transactions.

       3. It declares how this commodity's amounts  should  be  displayed,  eg
          their  symbol placement, digit group mark if any, digit group sizes,
          decimal mark (period or comma), and the number  of  decimal  places.
          (See Commodity display style above.)

       4. It  sets which decimal mark (period or comma) to expect when parsing
          subsequent amounts in this commodity (if there  is  no  decimal-mark
          directive  in  effect.   See Decimal marks, digit group marks above.
          For related dev discussion, see #793.)

       Declaring commodities solves several common  parsing/display  problems,
       so  we  recommend it.  Generally you should put commodity directives at
       the top of your journal file (because  function  4  is  position-sensi-
       tive).

   Commodity directive syntax
       A commodity directive is normally the word commodity followed by a sam-
       ple  amount  (and  optionally a comment).  Only the amount's symbol and
       format is significant.  Eg:

              commodity $1000.00
              commodity 1.000,00 EUR
              commodity 1 000 000.0000   ; the no-symbol commodity

       Commodities do not have tags (tags in the comment will be ignored).

       A commodity directive's sample amount must always include a  period  or
       comma  decimal  mark  (this  rule  helps disambiguate decimal marks and
       digit group marks).  If you don't want  to  show  any  decimal  digits,
       write the decimal mark at the end:

              commodity 1000. AAAA       ; show AAAA with no decimals

       Commodity  symbols  containing  spaces, numbers, or punctuation must be
       enclosed in double quotes, as usual:

              commodity 1.0000 "AAAA 2023"

       Commodity directives normally include a sample amount, but can  declare
       only a symbol (ie, just function 1 above):

              commodity $
              commodity INR
              commodity "AAAA 2023"
              commodity ""               ; the no-symbol commodity

       Commodity directives may also be written with an indented format subdi-
       rective,  as in Ledger.  The symbol is repeated and must be the same in
       both places.  Other subdirectives are currently ignored:

              ; display indian rupees with currency name on the left,
              ; thousands, lakhs and crores comma-separated,
              ; period as decimal point, and two decimal places.
              commodity INR
                format INR 1,00,00,000.00
                an unsupported subdirective  ; ignored by hledger

   Commodity error checking
       In strict mode (-s/--strict) (or when you run  hledger  check  commodi-
       ties),  hledger  will report an error if an undeclared commodity symbol
       is used.  (With one exception: zero amounts are always allowed to  have
       no  commodity symbol.)  It works like account error checking (described
       above).

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

              decimal-mark .

       or

              decimal-mark ,

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

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

              include FILEPATH

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

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

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

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

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

       The path may also be prefixed to force a specific file format, overrid-
       ing  the  file  extension (as described in Data formats): include time-
       dot:~/notes/2023*.md.

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

       The format is:

              P DATE COMMODITY1SYMBOL COMMODITY2AMOUNT

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

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

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

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

   payee directive
       payee PAYEE NAME

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

              payee Whole Foods    ; a comment

       Payees do not have tags (tags in the comment will be ignored).

       To declare the empty payee name, use "".

              payee ""

       Ledger-style indented subdirectives, if any, are currently ignored.

   tag directive
       tag TAGNAME

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

              tag  item-id

       Any indented subdirectives are currently ignored.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

       5. period  expressions  can  be  tricky.  Their documentation needs im-
          provement, but is worth studying.

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

       7. Other period expressions with an interval are automatically expanded
          to  cover a whole number of that interval.  (This is done to improve
          reports, but it also affects periodic transactions.  Yes, it's a bit
          inconsistent with the above.)  Eg:  ~ every 10th day of  month  from
          2023/01,  which  is  equivalent  to   ~ every 10th day of month from
          2023/01/01, will be adjusted to start on 2019/12/10.

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

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

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

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

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

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

       2. or the date specified with --today

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

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

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

              ; 2 or more spaces needed here, so the period is not understood as "every 2 months in 2023"
              ;               ||
              ;               vv
              ~ every 2 months  in 2023, we will review
                  assets:bank:checking   $1500
                  income:acme inc

       So,

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

       o Don't accidentally write two spaces in the middle of your period  ex-
         pression.

   Auto postings
       The = directive declares a rule for generating temporary extra postings
       on transactions.  Wherever the rule matches an existing posting, it can
       add  one  or  more companion postings below that one, optionally influ-
       enced by the matched posting's amount.  This can be useful for generat-
       ing tax postings with a standard percentage, for example.

       Note that depending on  generated  data  is  not  ideal  for  financial
       records  (it's less portable, less future-proof, less auditable by oth-
       ers, and less robust, since other features like balance assertions will
       depend on using or not using --auto).

       An auto posting rule looks a bit like a transaction:

              = QUERY
                  ACCOUNT  AMOUNT
                  ...
                  ACCOUNT  [AMOUNT]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

       Some examples:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

       o but before balance assertions are checked.

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

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

   Auto posting tags
       Automated postings will have some extra tags:

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

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

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

       o modified: - this transaction was modified

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

   Auto postings on forecast transactions only
       Tip:  you can can make auto postings that will apply to forecast trans-
       actions but not recorded transactions, by adding  tag:_generated-trans-
       action  to their QUERY.  This can be useful when generating new journal
       entries to be saved in the journal.

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

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

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

       or when adjusting a balance to reality:

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

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

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

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

              2019/1/1
                (a)             = $1 @ 2

              $ hledger print --explicit
              2019-01-01
                  (a)         $1 @ 2 = $1 @ 2

   Balance assignments and multiple files
       Balance assignments handle  multiple  files  like  balance  assertions.
       They  see balance from other files previously included from the current
       file, but not from previous sibling or parent files.

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

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

   D directive
       D AMOUNT

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

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

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

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

       Interactions with other directives:

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

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

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

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

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

              apply account home

              2010/1/1
                  food    $10
                  cash

              end apply account

       is equivalent to:

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

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

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

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

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

   Y directive
       Y YEAR

       or (deprecated backward-compatible forms):

       year YEAR apply year YEAR

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

              Y2009  ; set default year to 2009

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

              year 2010  ; change default year to 2010

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

   Virtual postings
       A posting with parentheses around the account name ((some:account))  is
       called  a unbalanced virtual posting.  Such postings do not participate
       in transaction balancing.  (And if you write them without an amount,  a
       zero  amount is always inferred.)  These can occasionally be convenient
       for special circumstances, but they violate  double  entry  bookkeeping
       and  make  your  data less portable across applications, so many people
       avoid using them at all.

       A posting with brackets around the  account  name  ([some:account])  is
       called  a balanced virtual posting.  The balanced virtual postings in a
       transaction must add up to zero, just like ordinary postings, but sepa-
       rately from them.  These are not part of double entry  bookkeeping  ei-
       ther, but they are at least balanced.  An example:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

       source                     optionally declare which  file  to  read  data
                                  from
       separator                  declare  the field separator, instead of rely-
                                  ing on file extension
       skip                       skip one or more header lines at start of file
       date-format                declare how to parse CSV dates/date-times
       timezone                   declare the time zone of ambiguous  CSV  date-
                                  times
       newest-first               improve  txn  order  when:  there are multiple
                                  records, newest first, all with the same date
       intra-day-reversed         improve txn order when: same-day txns  are  in
                                  opposite order to the overall file
       decimal-mark               declare  the decimal mark used in CSV amounts,
                                  when ambiguous
       fields list                name CSV fields for easy  reference,  and  op-
                                  tionally assign their values to hledger fields
       Field assignment           assign  a CSV value or interpolated text value
                                  to a hledger field
       if block                   conditionally assign values to hledger fields,
                                  or skip a record or end (skip rest of file)
       if table                   conditionally assign values to hledger fields,
                                  using compact syntax
       balance-type               select which type  of  balance  assertions/as-
                                  signments to generate
       include                    inline another CSV rules file

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

   source
       If you tell hledger to read a csv file with -f foo.csv,  it  will  look
       for  rules  in  foo.csv.rules.   Or,  you can tell it to read the rules
       file, with -f foo.csv.rules, and it  will  look  for  data  in  foo.csv
       (since 1.30).

       These  are mostly equivalent, but the second method provides some extra
       features.  For one, the data file can be missing,  without  causing  an
       error;  it  is just considered empty.  And, you can specify a different
       data file by adding a "source" rule:

              source ./Checking1.csv

       If you specify just a file name with no path, hledger will look for  it
       in your system's downloads directory (~/Downloads, currently):

              source Checking1.csv

       And if you specify a glob pattern, hledger will read the most recent of
       the matched files (useful with repeated downloads):

              source Checking1*.csv

       See also "Working with CSV > Reading files specified by rule".

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

              separator ,

       or for semicolon-separated values (SSV):

              separator ;

       or for tab-separated values (TSV):

              separator TAB

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

   skip
              skip N

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

       skip  has  a second meaning: it can be used inside if blocks (described
       below), to skip one or more records whenever  the  condition  is  true.
       Records skipped in this way are ignored, except they are still required
       to be valid CSV.

   date-format
              date-format DATEFMT

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

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

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

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

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

   timezone
              timezone TIMEZONE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

   intra-day-reversed
       If  CSV records within a single day are ordered opposite to the overall
       record order, you can add the intra-day-reversed rule  to  improve  the
       order  of journal entries.  Eg, here the overall record order is newest
       first, but same-day records are oldest first:

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

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

   decimal-mark
              decimal-mark .

       or:

              decimal-mark ,

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

   fields list
              fields FIELDNAME1, FIELDNAME2, ...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

   Field assignment
              HLEDGERFIELD FIELDVALUE

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

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

       Some examples:

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

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

       Tips:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

           or directly in a fields list:

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

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

   date field
       Assigning to date sets the transaction date.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

       Comments can contain tags, as usual.

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

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

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

   amount field
       There  are several ways to set posting amounts from CSV, useful in dif-
       ferent situations.

       1. amount is the oldest and  simplest.   Assigning  to  this  sets  the
          amount of the first and second postings.  In the second posting, the
          amount  will be negated; also, if it has a cost attached, it will be
          converted to cost.

       2. amount-in and amount-out work exactly like the above, but should  be
          used  when  the  CSV  has  two  amount  fields  (such as "Debit" and
          "Credit", or "Inflow" and "Outflow").  Whichever field  has  a  non-
          zero  value will be used as the amount of the first and second post-
          ings.  Here are some tips to avoid confusion:

           o It's not "amount-in for posting 1 and amount-out for posting  2",
             it  is  "extract a single amount from the amount-in or amount-out
             field, and use that for posting 1 and (negated) for posting 2".

           o Don't use both amount and amount-in/amount-out in the same  rules
             file; choose based on whether the amount is in a single CSV field
             or spread across two fields.

           o In  each record, at most one of the two CSV fields should contain
             a non-zero amount; the other field must contain a zero  or  noth-
             ing.

           o hledger  assumes both CSV fields contain unsigned numbers, and it
             automatically negates the amount-out values.

           o If the data doesn't fit these requirements, you'll probably  need
             an if rule (see below).

       3. amountN (where N is a number from 1 to 99) sets the amount of only a
          single  posting: the Nth posting in the transaction.  You'll usually
          need at least two such assignments to make a  balanced  transaction.
          You can also generate more than two postings, to represent more com-
          plex  transactions.   The  posting numbers don't have to be consecu-
          tive; with if rules, higher posting numbers can be useful to  ensure
          a certain order of postings.

       4. amountN-in  and  amountN-out work exactly like the above, but should
          be used when the CSV has two amount fields.  This  is  analogous  to
          amount-in and amount-out, and those tips also apply here.

       5. Remember that a fields list can also do assignments.  So in a fields
          list  if  you name a CSV field "amount", that counts as assigning to
          amount.  (If you don't want that, call  it  something  else  in  the
          fields list, like "amount_".)

       6. The  above  don't handle every situation; if you need more flexibil-
          ity, use an if rule to set amounts conditionally.  See "Working with
          CSV > Setting amounts" below for more on this and on  amount-setting
          generally.

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

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

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

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

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

       See Tips below for more about setting amounts and currency.

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

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

              if MATCHER
               RULE

       or

              if
              MATCHER
              MATCHER
              MATCHER
               RULE
               RULE

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

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

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

       Some examples:

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

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

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

   Matchers
       There are two kinds:

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

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

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

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

              2023-01-01; "Acme, Inc.";  1,000

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

              2023-01-01,Acme, Inc.,  1,000

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

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

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

       o When a matcher is preceded by an exclamation mark (!), the matcher is
         negated (it may not match).

       Currently there is a limitation: you can't use both & and ! on the same
       line (you can't AND a negated matcher).

   Match groups
       Matchers can define match groups: parenthesised portions of the regular
       expression  which  are  available  for  reference in field assignments.
       Groups are enclosed in regular parentheses (( and )) and can be nested.
       Each group is available in field assignments using the token \N,  where
       N  is  an  index into the match groups for this conditional block (e.g.
       \1, \2, etc.).

       Example: Warp credit card payment postings  to  the  beginning  of  the
       billing period (Month start), to match how they are presented in state-
       ments, using posting dates:

              if %date (....-..)-..
                comment2 date:\1-01

       Another example: Read the expense account from the CSV field, but throw
       away a prefix:

              if %account1 liabilities:family:(expenses:.*)
                  account1 \1

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

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

       The first character after if is taken to be this if table's field sepa-
       rator.   It  is  unrelated  to  the separator used in the CSV file.  It
       should be a non-alphanumeric character like , or | that does not appear
       anywhere else in the table (it should not be used  in  field  names  or
       matchers or values, and it cannot be escaped with a backslash).

       Each  line must contain the same number of separators; empty values are
       allowed.  Whitespace can be used in the matcher lines  for  readability
       (but  not  in the if line, currently).  The table must be terminated by
       an empty line (or end of file).

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

              if MATCHERA
                HLEDGERFIELD1 VALUE1
                HLEDGERFIELD2 VALUE2
                ...

              if MATCHERB
                HLEDGERFIELD1 VALUE1
                HLEDGERFIELD2 VALUE2
                ...

              if MATCHERC
                HLEDGERFIELD1 VALUE1
                HLEDGERFIELD2 VALUE2
                ...

       Example:

              if,account2,comment
              atm transaction fee,expenses:business:banking,deductible? check it
              %description groceries,expenses:groceries,
              2023/01/12.*Plumbing LLC,expenses:house:upkeep,emergency plumbing call-out

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

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

       Here are the balance assertion types for quick reference:

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

   include
              include RULESFILE

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

              # someaccount.csv.rules

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

              ## common rules
              include categorisation.rules

   Working with CSV
       Some tips:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

              $ hledger -f ssv:foo.dat print

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

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

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

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

   Reading files specified by rule
       Instead of specifying a CSV file in the command line, you can specify a
       rules file, as in hledger -f foo.csv.rules CMD.  By default  this  will
       read  data from foo.csv in the same directory, but you can add a source
       rule to specify a different data file,  perhaps  located  in  your  web
       browser's download directory.

       This feature was added in hledger 1.30, so you won't see it in most CSV
       rules  examples.   But it helps remove some of the busywork of managing
       CSV downloads.  Most of your financial institutions's default CSV file-
       names are different and can be recognised by a glob  pattern.   So  you
       can  put  a  rule like source Checking1*.csv in foo-checking.csv.rules,
       and then periodically follow a workflow like:

       1. Download CSV from Foo's website, using your browser's defaults

       2. Run hledger import foo-checking.csv.rules to import any new transac-
          tions

       After import, you can: discard the CSV, or leave it where it is  for  a
       while,  or  move it into your archives, as you prefer.  If you do noth-
       ing, next time your browser will save something  like  Checking1-2.csv,
       and  hledger will use that because of the * wild card and because it is
       the most recent.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

   Setting amounts
       Continuing from amount field above, here are more tips for  amount-set-
       ting:

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

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

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

       2. If  the amount is in two CSV fields (such as Debit and Credit, or In
          and Out):
           a. If both fields are unsigned:
           Assign one field  to  amountN-in  and  the  other  to  amountN-out.
           hledger  will  automatically  negate  the "out" field, and will use
           whichever field value is non-zero as posting N's amount.

           b. If either field is signed:
           You will probably need to override hledger's sign for  one  or  the
           other field, as in the following example:

                  # Negate the -out value, but only if it is not empty:
                  fields date, description, amount1-in, amount1-out
                  if %amount1-out [1-9]
                   amount1-out -%amount1-out

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

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

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

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

   Amount signs
       There is some special handling making it easier to parse and to reverse
       amount signs.  (This only works for whole amounts, not for cost amounts
       such as COST in amount1  AMT @ COST):

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

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

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

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

       It's  not  possible (without preprocessing the CSV) to set an amount to
       its absolute value, ie discard its sign.

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

              2023-01-01,foo,$123.00

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

              fields date,description,amount

              2023-01-01 foo
                  expenses:unknown         $123.00
                  income:unknown          $-123.00

       If the currency is provided as a separate CSV field:

              2023-01-01,foo,USD,123.00

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

              fields date,description,currency,amount

              2023-01-01 foo
                  expenses:unknown       USD123.00
                  income:unknown        USD-123.00

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

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

              2023-01-01 foo
                  expenses:unknown        123.00 USD
                  income:unknown         -123.00 USD

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

              comment A
              comment B
              if something
               comment C

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

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

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

       o skip (at top level)

       o date-format

       o newest-first

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

       Then for each CSV record in turn:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

              # bankofireland-checking.csv.rules

              # skip the header line
              skip

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

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

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

              # set the currency
              currency  EUR

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

              # amazon-orders.csv.rules

              # skip one header line
              skip 1

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

              # paypal-custom.csv.rules

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

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

              skip  1

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

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

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

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

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

              # generate postings

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

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

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

              # choose an account for the second posting

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

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

              # apply some overrides specific to this csv

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

              # Currency conversions
              if Currency Conversion
               account2 equity:currency conversion

              # common.rules

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

              if
              Calm Radio
               account2 expenses:online:apps

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

              i 2015/03/30 09:00:00 some account  optional description after 2 spaces ; optional comment, tags:
              o 2015/03/30 09:20:00
              i 2015/03/31 22:21:45 another:account
              o 2015/04/01 02:00:34

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

              $ hledger -f t.timeclock print
              2015-03-30 * optional description after 2 spaces   ; optional comment, tags:
                  (some account)           0.33h

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Timedot
       timedot  format  is hledger's human-friendly time logging format.  Com-
       pared to timeclock format, it is more convenient  for  quick,  approxi-
       mate,  and  retroactive  time logging, and more human-readable (you can
       see at a glance where time was spent).  A quick example:

              2023-05-01
              hom:errands          .... ....  ; two hours; the space is ignored
              fos:hledger:timedot  ..         ; half an hour
              per:admin:finance               ; no time spent yet

       hledger reads this as a transaction on this day with three (unbalanced)
       postings, where each dot represents "0.25".  No commodity symbol is as-
       sumed, but we typically interpret it as hours.

              $ hledger -f a.timedot print   # .timedot file extension (or timedot: prefix) is required
              2023-05-01 *
                  (hom:errands)                    2.00  ; two hours
                  (fos:hledger:timedot)            0.50  ; half an hour
                  (per:admin:finance)                 0

       A timedot file contains a series of transactions (usually one per day).
       Each begins with a simple date (Y-M-D, Y/M/D, or Y.M.D), optionally  be
       followed on the same line by a transaction description, and/or a trans-
       action comment following a semicolon.

       After the date line are zero or more time postings, consisting of:

       o An  account  name  -  any  hledger-style account name, optionally in-
         dented.

       o Two or more spaces - required if there is an amount  (as  in  journal
         format).

       o A timedot amount, which can be

         o empty (representing zero)

         o a  number,  optionally  followed by a unit s, m, h, d, w, mo, or y,
           representing a precise number  of  seconds,  minutes,  hours,  days
           weeks, months or years (hours is assumed by default), which will be
           converted  to hours according to 60s = 1m, 60m = 1h, 24h = 1d, 7d =
           1w, 30d = 1mo, 365d = 1y.

         o one or more  dots  (period  characters),  each  representing  0.25.
           These  are  the  dots  in "timedot".  Spaces are ignored and can be
           used for grouping/alignment.

         o one or more letters.  These are like dots but they also generate  a
           tag t: (short for "type") with the letter as its value, and a sepa-
           rate posting for each of the values.  This provides a second dimen-
           sion of categorisation, viewable in reports with --pivot t.

       o An  optional  comment  following a semicolon (a hledger-style posting
         comment).

       There is some flexibility to help with keeping time log data and  notes
       in the same file:

       o Blank lines and lines beginning with # or ; are ignored.

       o After  the first date line, lines which do not contain a double space
         are parsed as postings with zero amount.  (hledger's register reports
         will show these if you add -E).

       o Before the first date line, lines beginning with * (eg org  headings)
         are  ignored.   And  from  the first date line onward, Emacs org mode
         heading prefixes at the start of lines (one or more *'s followed by a
         space) will be ignored.  This means the time log can also  be  a  org
         outline.

   Timedot examples
       Numbers:

              2016/2/3
              inc:client1   4
              fos:hledger   3h
              biz:research  60m

       Dots:

              # 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  .

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

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

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

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

       Letters:

              # Activity types:
              #  c cleanup/catchup/repair
              #  e enhancement
              #  s support
              #  l learning/research

              2023-11-01
              work:adm  ccecces

              $ hledger -f a.timedot print
              2023-11-01
                  (work:adm)  1     ; t:c
                  (work:adm)  0.5   ; t:e
                  (work:adm)  0.25  ; t:s

              $ hledger -f a.timedot bal
                              1.75  work:adm
              --------------------
                              1.75

              $ hledger -f a.timedot bal --pivot t
                              1.00  c
                              0.50  e
                              0.25  s
              --------------------
                              1.75

       Org:

              * 2023 Work Diary
              ** Q1
              *** 2023-02-29
              **** DONE
              0700 yoga
              **** UNPLANNED
              **** BEGUN
              hom:chores
               cleaning  ...
               water plants
                outdoor - one full watering can
                indoor - light watering
              **** TODO
              adm:planning: trip
              *** LATER

       Using . as account name separator:

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

              $ hledger -f a.timedot --alias '/\./=:' bal -t
                              4.50  fos
                              4.00    hledger:timedot
                              0.50    ledger
              --------------------
                              4.50

PART 3: REPORTING CONCEPTS
Amount formatting, parseability
       If you're wondering why your print report sometimes shows trailing dec-
       imal  marks,  with no decimal digits; it does this when showing amounts
       that have digit group marks but no decimal digits, to disambiguate them
       and allow them to be re-parsed reliably (see also Decimal marks,  digit
       group marks.  Eg:

              commodity $1,000.00

              2023-01-02
                  (a)      $1000

              $ hledger print
              2023-01-02
                  (a)        $1,000.

       If this is a problem (eg when exporting to Ledger), you can avoid it by
       disabling  digit group marks, eg with -c/--commodity (for each affected
       commodity):

              $ hledger print -c '$1000.00'
              2023-01-02
                  (a)          $1000

       or by forcing print to always show decimal digits, with --round:

              $ hledger print -c '$1,000.00' --round=soft
              2023-01-02
                  (a)      $1,000.00

       More generally: hledger output falls into three rough categories, which
       format amounts a little bit differently to suit different consumers:

       1.  "hledger-readable output" - should be readable by hledger  (and  by
       humans)

       o This  is  produced  by reports that show full journal entries: print,
         import, close, rewrite etc.

       o It shows amounts with their original journal  precisions,  which  may
         not be consistent.

       o It  adds a trailing decimal mark when needed to avoid showing ambigu-
         ous amounts.

       o It can be parsed reliably (by hledger and ledger2beancount at  least,
         but perhaps not by Ledger..)

       2.  "human-readable output" - usually for humans

       o This is produced by all other reports.

       o It shows amounts with standard display precisions, which will be con-
         sistent within each commodity.

       o It shows ambiguous amounts unmodified.

       o It  can be parsed reliably in the context of a known report (when you
         know decimals are consistently not being shown, you can assume a sin-
         gle mark is a digit group mark).

       3.  "machine-readable output" - usually for other software

       o This is produced by all reports when an output format like csv,  tsv,
         json, or sql is selected.

       o It shows amounts as 1 or 2 do, but without digit group marks.

       o It can be parsed reliably (if needed, the decimal mark can be changed
         with -c/--commodity-style).

Time periods
   Report start & end date
       By default, most hledger reports will show the full span of time repre-
       sented  by  the  journal.   The  report start date will be the earliest
       transaction or posting date, and the report end date will be the latest
       transaction, posting, or market price date.

       Often you will want to see a shorter time span,  such  as  the  current
       month.   You  can  specify  a  start  and/or end date using -b/--begin,
       -e/--end, -p/--period or a date: query (described below).  All of these
       accept the smart date syntax (below).

       Some notes:

       o End dates are exclusive, as in Ledger, so you should write  the  date
         after the last day you want to see in the report.

       o As  noted  in reporting options: among start/end dates specified with
         options, the last (i.e.  right-most) option takes precedence.

       o The effective report start and end dates are the intersection of  the
         start/end  dates  from options and that from date: queries.  That is,
         date:2019-01 date:2019 -p'2000 to  2030'  yields  January  2019,  the
         smallest common time span.

       o In  some  cases a report interval will adjust start/end dates to fall
         on interval boundaries (see below).

       Examples:

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

   Smart dates
       hledger's user interfaces accept a "smart date" syntax for added conve-
       nience.  Smart dates optionally can be relative  to  today's  date,  be
       written  with  english  words,  and have less-significant parts omitted
       (missing parts are inferred as 1).  Some examples:

       2004/10/1,   2004-01-01,   exact  date, several separators allowed.  Year
       2004.9.1                   is 4+ digits, month is 1-12, day is 1-31
       2004                       start of year
       2004/10                    start of month
       10/1                       month and day in current year
       21                         day in current month
       october, oct               start of month in current year
       yesterday, today, tomor-   -1, 0, 1 days from today
       row
       last/this/next             -1, 0, 1 periods from the current period
       day/week/month/quar-
       ter/year
       in                     n   n periods from the current period
       days/weeks/months/quar-
       ters/years
       n                          n periods from the current period
       days/weeks/months/quar-
       ters/years ahead
       n                          -n periods from the current period
       days/weeks/months/quar-
       ters/years ago
       20181201                   8 digit YYYYMMDD with valid year month and day
       201812                     6 digit YYYYMM with valid year and month

       Some  counterexamples - malformed digit sequences might give surprising
       results:

       201813        6 digits with an  invalid  month  is  parsed  as  start  of
                     6-digit year
       20181301      8  digits  with  an  invalid  month  is  parsed as start of
                     8-digit year
       20181232      8 digits with an invalid day gives an error
       201801012     9+ digits beginning with a valid YYYYMMDD gives an error

       "Today's date" can be overridden with the --today option, in case  it's
       needed for testing or for recreating old reports.  (Except for periodic
       transaction rules, which are not affected by --today.)

   Report intervals
       A  report interval can be specified so that reports like register, bal-
       ance or activity become multi-period, showing each subperiod as a sepa-
       rate row or column.

       The following standard  intervals  can  be  enabled  with  command-line
       flags:

       o -D/--daily

       o -W/--weekly

       o -M/--monthly

       o -Q/--quarterly

       o -Y/--yearly

       More  complex  intervals  can be specified using -p/--period, described
       below.

   Date adjustment
       When there is a report interval (other than  daily),  report  start/end
       dates  which have been inferred, eg from the journal, are automatically
       adjusted to natural period boundaries.  This is convenient for  produc-
       ing simple periodic reports.  More precisely:

       o an  inferred start date will be adjusted earlier if needed to fall on
         a natural period boundary

       o an inferred end date will be adjusted later if  needed  to  make  the
         last period the same length as the others.

       By contrast, start/end dates which have been specified explicitly, with
       -b,  -e,  -p or date:, will not be adjusted (since hledger 1.29).  This
       makes it possible to specify non-standard report periods, but  it  also
       means  that  if  you  are  specifying a start date, you should pick one
       that's on a period boundary if you want to  see  simple  report  period
       headings.

   Period expressions
       The  -p/--period  option specifies a period expression, which is a com-
       pact way of expressing a start date, end date, and/or report interval.

       Here's a period expression with a start and end  date  (specifying  the
       first quarter of 2009):

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

       Several  keywords  like  "from" and "to" are supported for readability;
       these are optional.  "to" can also be written  as  ".."  or  "-".   The
       spaces  are also optional, as long as you don't run two dates together.
       So the following are equivalent to the above:

       -p "2009/1/1 2009/4/1"
       -p2009/1/1to2009/4/1
       -p2009/1/1..2009/4/1

       Dates are smart dates, so if the current year is 2009, these  are  also
       equivalent to the above:

       -p "1/1 4/1"
       -p "jan-apr"
       -p "this year to 4/1"

       If you specify only one date, the missing start or end date will be the
       earliest or latest transaction date in the journal:

       -p "from 2009/1/1"   everything  after  january
                            1, 2009
       -p "since 2009/1"    the same, since is a  syn-
                            onym
       -p "from 2009"       the same
       -p "to 2009"         everything  before january
                            1, 2009

       You can also specify a period by writing a single partial or full date:

       -p "2009"        the year 2009; equivalent to "2009/1/1 to 2010/1/1"
       -p "2009/1"      the month of january 2009; equivalent to  "2009/1/1  to
                        2009/2/1"
       -p "2009/1/1"    the  first  day  of  2009;  equivalent  to "2009/1/1 to
                        2009/1/2"

       or by using the "Q" quarter-year syntax (case insensitive):

       -p "2009Q1"       first quarter  of  2009,  equivalent  to  "2009/1/1  to
                         2009/4/1"
       -p "q4"           fourth quarter of the current year

   Period expressions with a report interval
       A  period  expression  can also begin with a report interval, separated
       from the start/end dates (if any) by a space or the word in:

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

   More complex report intervals
       Some more complex intervals can be specified within period expressions,
       such as:

       o biweekly (every two weeks)

       o fortnightly

       o bimonthly (every two months)

       o every day|week|month|quarter|year

       o every N days|weeks|months|quarters|years

       Weekly on a custom day:

       o every Nth day of week (th, nd, rd, or st are all accepted  after  the
         number)

       o every  WEEKDAYNAME  (full  or three-letter english weekday name, case
         insensitive)

       Monthly on a custom day:

       o every Nth day [of month]

       o every Nth WEEKDAYNAME [of month]

       Yearly on a custom day:

       o every MM/DD [of year] (month number and day of month number)

       o every MONTHNAME DDth [of year] (full or  three-letter  english  month
         name, case insensitive, and day of month number)

       o every DDth MONTHNAME [of year] (equivalent to the above)

       Examples:

       -p "bimonthly from 2008"
       -p "every 2 weeks"
       -p  "every  5  months  from
       2009/03"
       -p "every 2nd day of week"    periods will go from Tue to Tue
       -p "every Tue"                same
       -p "every 15th day"           period boundaries will be on 15th  of  each
                                     month
       -p "every 2nd Monday"         period  boundaries will be on second Monday
                                     of each month
       -p "every 11/05"              yearly periods with boundaries  on  5th  of
                                     November
       -p "every 5th November"       same
       -p "every Nov 5th"            same

       Show  historical balances at end of the 15th day of each month (N is an
       end date, exclusive as always):

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

       Group postings from the start of wednesday  to  end  of  the  following
       tuesday (N is both (inclusive) start date and (exclusive) end date):

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

   Multiple weekday intervals
       This special form is also supported:

       o every WEEKDAYNAME,WEEKDAYNAME,... (full or three-letter english week-
         day names, case insensitive)

       Also,  weekday and weekendday are shorthand for mon,tue,wed,thu,fri and
       sat,sun.

       This is mainly intended for use with --forecast, to  generate  periodic
       transactions on arbitrary days of the week.  It may be less useful with
       -p, since it divides each week into subperiods of unequal length, which
       is unusual.  (Related: #1632)

       Examples:

       -p          "every   dates will be Mon, Wed, Fri; periods  will  be  Mon-
       mon,wed,fri"         Tue, Wed-Thu, Fri-Sun
       -p "every weekday"   dates  will be Mon, Tue, Wed, Thu, Fri; periods will
                            be Mon, Tue, Wed, Thu, Fri-Sun
       -p "every weekend-   dates will be Sat, Sun; periods will be Sat, Sun-Fri
       day"

Depth
       With the --depth NUM option (short form: -NUM), reports will  show  ac-
       counts  only  to  the  specified depth, hiding deeper subaccounts.  Use
       this when you want a summary with less detail.  This flag has the  same
       effect as a depth: query argument: depth:2, --depth=2 or -2 are equiva-
       lent.

Queries
       One of hledger's strengths is being able to quickly report on a precise
       subset of your data.  Most hledger commands accept optional query argu-
       ments to restrict their scope.  The syntax is as follows:

       o Zero  or  more space-separated query terms.  These are most often ac-
         count name substrings:

         utilities food:groceries

       o Terms with spaces or other special characters should be  enclosed  in
         quotes:

         "personal care"

       o Regular expressions are also supported:

         "^expenses\b"
         "accounts (payable|receivable)"

       o Add a query type prefix to match other parts of the data:

         date:202312-
         status:
         desc:amazon
         cur:USD
         "amt:>0"

       o Add a not: prefix to negate:

         not:cur:USD

       o Multiple unlike terms are AND-ed, multiple like terms are OR-ed

         date:2022 desc:amazon desc:amzn
         (all transactions with "amazon" or "amzn" in description during 2022)

   Query types
       Here are the types of query term available.  Remember these can also be
       prefixed with not: to convert them into a negative match.

       acct:REGEX, REGEX
       Match  account names containing this (case insensitive) regular expres-
       sion.  This is the default query type when there is no prefix, and reg-
       ular expression syntax is typically not  needed,  so  usually  we  just
       write an account name substring, like expenses or food.

       amt:N, amt:<N, amt:<=N, amt:>N, amt:>=N
       Match  postings  with a single-commodity amount equal to, less than, or
       greater than N. (Postings with multi-commodity amounts are  not  tested
       and will always match.)  The comparison has two modes: if N is preceded
       by  a + or - sign (or is 0), the two signed numbers are compared.  Oth-
       erwise, the absolute magnitudes are compared, ignoring sign.

       code:REGEX
       Match by transaction code (eg check number).

       cur:REGEX
       Match  postings  or  transactions  including  any  amounts  whose  cur-
       rency/commodity  symbol  is  fully  matched  by  REGEX.  (For a partial
       match, use .*REGEX.*).  Note, to match  special  characters  which  are
       regex-significant,  you need to escape them with \.  And for characters
       which are significant to your shell you may need one more level of  es-
       caping.  So eg to match the dollar sign:
       hledger print cur:\\$.

       desc:REGEX
       Match transaction descriptions.

       date:PERIODEXPR
       Match  dates  (or  with  the  --date2 flag, secondary dates) within the
       specified period.  PERIODEXPR is a period expression with no report in-
       terval.  Examples:
       date:2016, date:thismonth, date:2/1-2/15, date:2021-07-27..nextquarter.

       date2:PERIODEXPR
       Match secondary dates within the specified period (independent  of  the
       --date2 flag).

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

       expr:"TERM AND NOT (TERM OR TERM)" (eg)
       Match with a boolean combination of queries (which must be enclosed  in
       quotes).  See Combining query terms below.

       note:REGEX
       Match transaction notes (the part of the description right of |, or the
       whole description if there's no |).

       payee:REGEX
       Match  transaction  payee/payer names (the part of the description left
       of |, or the whole description if there's no |).

       real:, real:0
       Match real or virtual postings respectively.

       status:, status:!, status:*
       Match unmarked, pending, or cleared transactions respectively.

       type:TYPECODES
       Match by account type (see Declaring accounts > Account types).   TYPE-
       CODES  is  one or more of the single-letter account type codes ALERXCV,
       case insensitive.  Note type:A and type:E will also match their respec-
       tive subtypes C (Cash) and V (Conversion).  Certain  kinds  of  account
       alias  can  disrupt account types, see Rewriting accounts > Aliases and
       account types.

       tag:REGEX[=REGEX]
       Match by tag name, and optionally also by tag value.  (To match only by
       value, use tag:.=REGEX.)

       When querying by tag, note that:

       o Accounts also inherit the tags of their parent accounts

       o Postings also inherit the tags of their account and their transaction

       o Transactions also acquire the tags of their postings.

       (inacct:ACCTNAME
       A special query term used  automatically  in  hledger-web  only:  tells
       hledger-web to show the transaction register for an account.)

   Combining query terms
       When  given  multiple space-separated query terms, most commands select
       things which match:

       o any of the description terms AND

       o any of the account terms AND

       o any of the status terms AND

       o all the other terms.

       The print command is a little different, showing transactions which:

       o match any of the description terms AND

       o have any postings matching any of the positive account terms AND

       o have no postings matching any of the negative account terms AND

       o match all the other terms.

       We also support more complex boolean queries with the  'expr:'  prefix.
       This  allows  one to combine queries using one of three operators: AND,
       OR, and NOT, where NOT is different syntax for 'not:'.

       Examples of such queries are:

       o Match transactions with 'cool' in the description AND  with  the  'A'
         tag

         expr:"desc:cool AND tag:A"

       o Match transactions NOT to the 'expenses:food' account OR with the 'A'
         tag

         expr:"NOT expenses:food OR tag:A"

       o Match  transactions NOT involving the 'expenses:food' account OR with
         the 'A' tag AND involving the 'expenses:drink' account.  (the AND  is
         implicitly added by space-separation, following the rules above)

         expr:"expenses:food OR (tag:A expenses:drink)"

   Queries and command options
       Some  queries can also be expressed as command-line options: depth:2 is
       equivalent to --depth 2, date:2023 is equivalent to -p 2023, etc.  When
       you mix command options and query arguments,  generally  the  resulting
       query is their intersection.

   Queries and valuation
       When  amounts  are  converted to other commodities in cost or value re-
       ports, cur: and amt: match the old commodity symbol and the old  amount
       quantity,  not  the  new  ones (except in hledger 1.22.0 where it's re-
       versed, see #1625).

   Querying with account aliases
       When account names are rewritten with --alias or alias, note that acct:
       will match either the old or the new account name.

   Querying with cost or value
       When amounts are converted to other commodities in cost  or  value  re-
       ports, note that cur: matches the new commodity symbol, and not the old
       one,  and  amt:  matches  the new quantity, and not the old one.  Note:
       this changed in hledger 1.22, previously it was the  reverse,  see  the
       discussion at #1625.

Pivoting
       Normally,  hledger  groups  and  sums amounts within each account.  The
       --pivot FIELD option substitutes some other transaction field  for  ac-
       count  names,  causing amounts to be grouped and summed by that field's
       value instead.  FIELD can be any of the transaction fields  acct,  sta-
       tus,  code,  desc,  payee, note, or a tag name.  When pivoting on a tag
       and a posting has multiple values of that tag, only the first value  is
       displayed.   Values  containing colon:separated:parts will be displayed
       hierarchically, like account names.  Multiple,  colon-delimited  fields
       can be pivoted simultaneously, generating a hierarchical account name.

       Some examples:

              2016/02/16 Yearly Dues Payment
                  assets:bank account                 2 EUR
                  income:dues                        -2 EUR  ; member: John Doe, kind: Lifetime

       Normal balance report showing account names:

              $ hledger balance
                             2 EUR  assets:bank account
                            -2 EUR  income:dues
              --------------------
                                 0

       Pivoted balance report, using member: tag values instead:

              $ hledger balance --pivot member
                             2 EUR
                            -2 EUR  John Doe
              --------------------
                                 0

       One way to show only amounts with a member: value (using a query):

              $ hledger balance --pivot member tag:member=.
                            -2 EUR  John Doe
              --------------------
                            -2 EUR

       Another  way  (the  acct:  query  matches  against the pivoted "account
       name"):

              $ hledger balance --pivot member acct:.
                            -2 EUR  John Doe
              --------------------
                            -2 EUR

       Hierarchical reports can be generated with multiple pivots:

              $ hledger balance Income:Dues --pivot kind:member
                            -2 EUR  Lifetime:John Doe
              --------------------
                            -2 EUR

Generating data
       hledger has several features for generating data, such as:

       o Periodic transaction rules can generate single or repeating  transac-
         tions  following  a template.  These are usually dated in the future,
         eg to help with forecasting.  They are activated  by  the  --forecast
         option.

       o The  balance command's --budget option uses these same periodic rules
         to generate goals for the budget report.

       o Auto posting rules can generate extra  postings  on  certain  matched
         transactions.  They are always applied to forecast transactions; with
         the  --auto  flag  they  are  applied to transactions recorded in the
         journal as well.

       o The --infer-equity flag infers  missing  conversion  equity  postings
         from  @/@@  costs.  And the inverse --infer-costs flag infers missing
         @/@@ costs from conversion equity postings.

       Generated data of this kind is temporary, existing only at report time.
       But you can see it in the output of hledger print,  and  you  can  save
       that  to your journal, in effect converting it from temporary generated
       data to permanent recorded data.  This could be useful as a data  entry
       aid.

       If  you  are  wondering  what  data is being generated and why, add the
       --verbose-tags flag.  In hledger print output you will see  extra  tags
       like  generated-transaction,  generated-posting, and modified on gener-
       ated/modified data.  Also, even without --verbose-tags, generated  data
       always has equivalen hidden tags (with an underscore prefix), so eg you
       could match generated transactions with tag:_generated-transaction.

Forecasting
       Forecasting,  or  speculative future reporting, can be useful for esti-
       mating future balances, or for exploring different future scenarios.

       The simplest and most flexible way to do it with hledger is to manually
       record a bunch of future-dated transactions.  You could keep these in a
       separate future.journal and include that with -f only when you want  to
       see them.

   --forecast
       There  is another way: with the --forecast option, hledger can generate
       temporary "forecast transactions" for reporting purposes, according  to
       periodic  transaction rules defined in the journal.  Each rule can gen-
       erate multiple recurring transactions, so by changing one rule you  can
       change many forecasted transactions.  (These same rules can also gener-
       ate budget goals, described in Budgeting.)

       Forecast  transactions  usually  start after ordinary transactions end.
       By default, they begin after your latest-dated ordinary transaction, or
       today, whichever is later, and they end six months  from  today.   (The
       exact rules are a little more complicated, and are given below.)

       This is the "forecast period", which need not be the same as the report
       period.   You can override it - eg to forecast farther into the future,
       or to force forecast transactions to overlap your ordinary transactions
       - by giving the --forecast option a period  expression  argument,  like
       --forecast=..2099  or  --forecast=2023-02-15...  Note that the = is re-
       quired.

   Inspecting forecast transactions
       print is the best command for inspecting and  troubleshooting  forecast
       transactions.  Eg:

              ~ monthly from 2022-12-20    rent
                  assets:bank:checking
                  expenses:rent           $1000

              $ hledger print --forecast --today=2023/4/21
              2023-05-20 rent
                  ; generated-transaction: ~ monthly from 2022-12-20
                  assets:bank:checking
                  expenses:rent                  $1000

              2023-06-20 rent
                  ; generated-transaction: ~ monthly from 2022-12-20
                  assets:bank:checking
                  expenses:rent                  $1000

              2023-07-20 rent
                  ; generated-transaction: ~ monthly from 2022-12-20
                  assets:bank:checking
                  expenses:rent                  $1000

              2023-08-20 rent
                  ; generated-transaction: ~ monthly from 2022-12-20
                  assets:bank:checking
                  expenses:rent                  $1000

              2023-09-20 rent
                  ; generated-transaction: ~ monthly from 2022-12-20
                  assets:bank:checking
                  expenses:rent                  $1000

       Here there are no ordinary transactions, so the forecasted transactions
       begin  on  the first occurence after today's date.  (You won't normally
       use --today; it's just to make these examples reproducible.)

   Forecast reports
       Forecast transactions affect all reports, as you would expect.  Eg:

              $ hledger areg rent --forecast --today=2023/4/21
              Transactions in expenses:rent and subaccounts:
              2023-05-20 rent                 as:ba:checking               $1000         $1000
              2023-06-20 rent                 as:ba:checking               $1000         $2000
              2023-07-20 rent                 as:ba:checking               $1000         $3000
              2023-08-20 rent                 as:ba:checking               $1000         $4000
              2023-09-20 rent                 as:ba:checking               $1000         $5000

              $ hledger bal -M expenses --forecast --today=2023/4/21
              Balance changes in 2023-05-01..2023-09-30:

                             ||   May    Jun    Jul    Aug    Sep
              ===============++===================================
               expenses:rent || $1000  $1000  $1000  $1000  $1000
              ---------------++-----------------------------------
                             || $1000  $1000  $1000  $1000  $1000

   Forecast tags
       Forecast transactions generated by --forecast have a hidden tag,  _gen-
       erated-transaction.   So  if  you  ever need to match forecast transac-
       tions, you could use tag:_generated-transaction (or just tag:generated)
       in a query.

       For troubleshooting, you can add the --verbose-tags flag.  Then,  visi-
       ble generated-transaction tags will be added also, so you can view them
       with  the print command.  Their value indicates which periodic rule was
       responsible.

   Forecast period, in detail
       Forecast start/end dates are chosen so as to do something useful by de-
       fault in almost all situations, while also being  flexible.   Here  are
       (with luck) the exact rules, to help with troubleshooting:

       The forecast period starts on:

       o the later of

         o the start date in the periodic transaction rule

         o the start date in --forecast's argument

       o otherwise (if those are not available): the later of

         o the report start date specified with -b/-p/date:

         o the day after the latest ordinary transaction in the journal

       o otherwise (if none of these are available): today.

       The forecast period ends on:

       o the earlier of

         o the end date in the periodic transaction rule

         o the end date in --forecast's argument

       o otherwise: the report end date specified with -e/-p/date:

       o otherwise: 180 days (~6 months) from today.

   Forecast troubleshooting
       When  --forecast is not doing what you expect, one of these tips should
       help:

       o Remember to use the --forecast option.

       o Remember to have at least one periodic transaction rule in your jour-
         nal.

       o Test with print --forecast.

       o Check for typos or too-restrictive start/end dates in  your  periodic
         transaction rule.

       o Leave  at least 2 spaces between the rule's period expression and de-
         scription fields.

       o Check for future-dated ordinary transactions  suppressing  forecasted
         transactions.

       o Try setting explicit report start and/or end dates with -b, -e, -p or
         date:

       o Try  adding  the  -E  flag to encourage display of empty periods/zero
         transactions.

       o Try setting explicit forecast start and/or  end  dates  with  --fore-
         cast=START..END

       o Consult Forecast period, in detail, above.

       o Check inside the engine: add --debug=2 (eg).

Budgeting
       With  the  balance command's --budget report, each periodic transaction
       rule generates recurring budget goals in specified accounts, and  goals
       and  actual performance can be compared.  See the balance command's doc
       below.

       You can generate budget goals and forecast  transactions  at  the  same
       time,  from  the  same or different periodic transaction rules: hledger
       bal -M --budget --forecast ...

       See also: Budgeting and Forecasting.

Cost reporting
       In some transactions - for example a currency conversion, or a purchase
       or sale of stock - one commodity is exchanged for  another.   In  these
       transactions  there  is  a  conversion rate, also called the cost (when
       buying) or selling price (when selling).  In hledger docs we  just  say
       "cost", for convenience; feel free to mentally translate to "conversion
       rate" or "selling price" if helpful.

   Recording costs
       We'll  explore  several ways of recording transactions involving costs.
       These are also summarised at hledger Cookbook > Cost notation.

       Costs can be recorded explicitly in the journal, using the  @  UNITCOST
       or @@ TOTALCOST notation described in Journal > Costs:

       Variant 1

              2022-01-01
                assets:dollars    $-135
                assets:euros       100 @ $1.35   ; $1.35 per euro (unit cost)

       Variant 2

              2022-01-01
                assets:dollars    $-135
                assets:euros       100 @@ $135   ; $135 total cost

       Typically,  writing  the unit cost (variant 1) is preferable; it can be
       more effort, requiring more attention to decimal digits; but it reveals
       the per-unit cost basis, and makes stock sales easier.

       Costs can also be left implicit, and hledger will infer the  cost  that
       is consistent with a balanced transaction:

       Variant 3

              2022-01-01
                assets:dollars    $-135
                assets:euros       100

       Here,  hledger  will  attach a @@ 100 cost to the first amount (you can
       see it with hledger print -x).  This form looks convenient,  but  there
       are downsides:

       o It  sacrifices some error checking.  For example, if you accidentally
         wrote 10 instead of 100, hledger would not be able to detect the mis-
         take.

       o It is sensitive to the order of postings - if they were  reversed,  a
         different entry would be inferred and reports would be different.

       o The per-unit cost basis is not easy to read.

       So  generally this kind of entry is not recommended.  You can make sure
       you have none of these by using -s (strict mode), or by running hledger
       check balanced.

   Reporting at cost
       Now when you add the -B/--cost flag to reports ("B"  is  from  Ledger's
       -B/--basis/--cost  flag),  any  amounts  which have been annotated with
       costs will be converted to their cost's commodity (in the  report  out-
       put).  Ie they will be displayed "at cost" or "at sale price".

       Some things to note:

       o Costs  are  attached to specific posting amounts in specific transac-
         tions, and once recorded they do not  change.   This  contrasts  with
         market prices, which are ambient and fluctuating.

       o Conversion  to  cost  is  performed before conversion to market value
         (described below).

   Equity conversion postings
       There is a problem with the entries above - they are  not  conventional
       Double  Entry  Bookkeeping (DEB) notation, and because of the "magical"
       transformation of one commodity into another, they cause  an  imbalance
       in the Accounting Equation.  This shows up as a non-zero grand total in
       balance reports like hledger bse.

       For  most hledger users, this doesn't matter in practice and can safely
       be ignored !  But if you'd like to learn more, keep reading.

       Conventional DEB uses an extra pair of equity postings to  balance  the
       transaction.  Of course you can do this in hledger as well:

       Variant 4

              2022-01-01
                  assets:dollars      $-135
                  assets:euros         100
                  equity:conversion    $135
                  equity:conversion   -100

       Now  the  transaction  is perfectly balanced according to standard DEB,
       and hledger bse's total will not be disrupted.

       And, hledger can still infer the cost for cost reporting, but it's  not
       done by default - you must add the --infer-costs flag like so:

              $ hledger print --infer-costs
              2022-01-01 one hundred euros purchased at $1.35 each
                  assets:dollars       $-135 @@ 100
                  assets:euros                  100
                  equity:conversion             $135
                  equity:conversion            -100

              $ hledger bal --infer-costs -B
                             -100  assets:dollars
                              100  assets:euros
              --------------------
                                 0

       Here are some downsides of this kind of entry:

       o The per-unit cost basis is not easy to read.

       o Instead of -B you must remember to type -B --infer-costs.

       o --infer-costs  works  only  where  hledger  can  identify the two eq-
         uity:conversion postings and match them up with  the  two  non-equity
         postings.   So  writing  the journal entry in a particular format be-
         comes more important.  More on this below.

   Inferring equity conversion postings
       Can we go in the other direction ?  Yes, if you have transactions writ-
       ten with the @/@@ cost notation, hledger can infer the  missing  equity
       postings, if you add the --infer-equity flag.  Eg:

              2022-01-01
                assets:dollars  -$135
                assets:euros     100 @ $1.35

              $ hledger print --infer-equity
              2022-01-01
                  assets:dollars                    $-135
                  assets:euros               100 @ $1.35
                  equity:conversion:$-:           -100
                  equity:conversion:$-:$         $135.00

       The  equity  account  names  will be "equity:conversion:A-B:A" and "eq-
       uity:conversion:A-B:B" where A is the  alphabetically  first  commodity
       symbol.  You can customise the "equity:conversion" part by declaring an
       account with the V/Conversion account type.

   Combining costs and equity conversion postings
       Finally, you can use both the @/@@ cost notation and equity postings at
       the  same time.  This in theory gives the best of all worlds - preserv-
       ing the accounting equation, revealing the  per-unit  cost  basis,  and
       providing more flexibility in how you write the entry:

       Variant 5

              2022-01-01 one hundred euros purchased at $1.35 each
                  assets:dollars      $-135
                  equity:conversion    $135
                  equity:conversion   -100
                  assets:euros         100 @ $1.35

       All  the  other variants above can (usually) be rewritten to this final
       form with:

              $ hledger print -x --infer-costs --infer-equity

       Downsides:

       o This was added in hledger-1.29 and is still somewhat experimental.

       o The precise format of the journal entry becomes more  important.   If
         hledger  can't  detect  and match up the cost and equity postings, it
         will give a transaction balancing error.

       o The add command does not yet accept this kind of entry (#2056).

       o This is the most verbose form.

   Requirements for detecting equity conversion postings
       --infer-costs has certain requirements  (unlike  --infer-equity,  which
       always works).  It will infer costs only in transactions with:

       o Two  non-equity  postings,  in different commodities.  Their order is
         significant: the cost will be added to the first of them.

       o Two postings to equity conversion  accounts,  next  to  one  another,
         which balance the two non-equity postings.  This balancing is checked
         to  the same precision (number of decimal places) used in the conver-
         sion posting's amount.  Equity conversion accounts are:

         o any accounts declared with account type V/Conversion, or their sub-
           accounts

         o otherwise, accounts named equity:conversion, equity:trade,  or  eq-
           uity:trading, or their subaccounts.

       And  multiple  such  four-posting  groups  can  coexist within a single
       transaction.  When --infer-costs fails, it does not  infer  a  cost  in
       that  transaction,  and  does  not  raise an error (ie, it infers costs
       where it can).

       Reading variant 5 journal entries, combining cost notation  and  equity
       postings,  has  all  the same requirements.  When reading such an entry
       fails, hledger raises an "unbalanced transaction" error.

   Infer cost and equity by default ?
       Should --infer-costs and --infer-equity be enabled by  default  ?   Try
       using them always, eg with a shell alias:

              alias h="hledger --infer-equity --infer-costs"

       and let us know what problems you find.

Value reporting
       Instead  of  reporting amounts in their original commodity, hledger can
       convert them to cost/sale amount (using the conversion rate recorded in
       the transaction), and/or to market value (using some market price on  a
       certain  date).  This is controlled by the --value=TYPE[,COMMODITY] op-
       tion, which will be described below.  We also provide  the  simpler  -V
       and -X COMMODITY options, and often one of these is all you need:

   -V: Value
       The  -V/--market flag converts amounts to market value in their default
       valuation commodity, using the market prices in effect on the valuation
       date(s), if any.  More on these in a minute.

   -X: Value in specified commodity
       The -X/--exchange=COMM option is like -V, except you tell it which cur-
       rency you want to convert to, and it tries  to  convert  everything  to
       that.

   Valuation date
       Market  prices can change from day to day.  hledger will use the prices
       on a particular valuation date (or on more than one date).  By  default
       hledger uses "end" dates for valuation.  More specifically:

       o For  single  period  reports (including normal print and register re-
         ports):

         o If an explicit report end date is specified, that is used

         o Otherwise the latest transaction date or P directive date  is  used
           (even if it's in the future)

       o For multiperiod reports, each period is valued on its last day.

       This  can  be customised with the --value option described below, which
       can select either "then", "end", "now", or "custom" dates.  (Note, this
       has a bug in hledger-ui <=1.31: turning on valuation with the V key al-
       ways resets it to "end".)

   Finding market price
       To convert a commodity A to its market value in  another  commodity  B,
       hledger  looks  for a suitable market price (exchange rate) as follows,
       in this order of preference:

       1. A declared market price or inferred market price: A's latest  market
          price in B on or before the valuation date as declared by a P direc-
          tive, or (with the --infer-market-prices flag) inferred from costs.

       2. A reverse market price: the inverse of a declared or inferred market
          price from B to A.

       3. A  forward  chain of market prices: a synthetic price formed by com-
          bining the shortest chain of "forward" (only 1 above) market prices,
          leading from A to B.

       4. Any chain of market prices: a chain of any market prices,  including
          both  forward  and reverse prices (1 and 2 above), leading from A to
          B.

       There is a limit to the  length  of  these  price  chains;  if  hledger
       reaches  that length without finding a complete chain or exhausting all
       possibilities, it will give up (with a "gave  up"  message  visible  in
       --debug=2 output).  That limit is currently 1000.

       Amounts  for  which no suitable market price can be found, are not con-
       verted.

   --infer-market-prices: market prices from transactions
       Normally, market value in hledger is fully controlled by, and requires,
       P directives in your journal.  Since adding and updating those can be a
       chore, and since transactions usually take place  at  close  to  market
       value,  why  not use the recorded costs as additional market prices (as
       Ledger does) ?  Adding the --infer-market-prices  flag  to  -V,  -X  or
       --value enables this.

       So  for  example,  hledger  bs -V --infer-market-prices will get market
       prices both from P directives and from transactions.  If both occur  on
       the same day, the P directive takes precedence.

       There is a downside: value reports can sometimes be affected in confus-
       ing/undesired  ways  by  your journal entries.  If this happens to you,
       read all of this Value reporting  section  carefully,  and  try  adding
       --debug or --debug=2 to troubleshoot.

       --infer-market-prices can infer market prices from:

       o multicommodity transactions with explicit prices (@/@@)

       o multicommodity  transactions with implicit prices (no @, two commodi-
         ties, unbalanced).  (With  these,  the  order  of  postings  matters.
         hledger print -x can be useful for troubleshooting.)

       o multicommodity transactions with equity postings, if cost is inferred
         with --infer-costs.

       There  is  a  limitation (bug) currently: when a valuation commodity is
       not specified, prices inferred with --infer-market-prices do  not  help
       select a default valuation commodity, as P prices would.  So conversion
       might not happen because no valuation commodity was detected (--debug=2
       will show this).  To be safe, specify the valuation commmodity, eg:

       o -X EUR --infer-market-prices, not -V --infer-market-prices

       o --value=then,EUR --infer-market-prices, not --value=then --infer-mar-
         ket-prices

       Signed  costs  and market prices can be confusing.  For reference, here
       is the current behaviour, since hledger 1.25.  (If you think it  should
       work differently, see #1870.)

              2022-01-01 Positive Unit prices
                  a        A 1
                  b        B -1 @ A 1

              2022-01-01 Positive Total prices
                  a        A 1
                  b        B -1 @@ A 1


              2022-01-02 Negative unit prices
                  a        A 1
                  b        B 1 @ A -1

              2022-01-02 Negative total prices
                  a        A 1
                  b        B 1 @@ A -1


              2022-01-03 Double Negative unit prices
                  a        A -1
                  b        B -1 @ A -1

              2022-01-03 Double Negative total prices
                  a        A -1
                  b        B -1 @@ A -1

       All of the transactions above are considered balanced (and on each day,
       the  two  transactions are considered equivalent).  Here are the market
       prices inferred for B:

              $ hledger -f- --infer-market-prices prices
              P 2022-01-01 B A 1
              P 2022-01-01 B A 1.0
              P 2022-01-02 B A -1
              P 2022-01-02 B A -1.0
              P 2022-01-03 B A -1
              P 2022-01-03 B A -1.0

   Valuation commodity
       When you specify a valuation commodity (-X COMM or --value TYPE,COMM):
       hledger will convert all amounts to COMM, wherever it can find a  suit-
       able market price (including by reversing or chaining prices).

       When  you  leave  the  valuation  commodity  unspecified (-V or --value
       TYPE):
       For each commodity A, hledger picks a default  valuation  commodity  as
       follows, in this order of preference:

       1. The price commodity from the latest P-declared market price for A on
          or before valuation date.

       2. The price commodity from the latest P-declared market price for A on
          any  date.   (Allows  conversion  to proceed when there are inferred
          prices before the valuation date.)

       3. If there are no P directives at all (any commodity or date) and  the
          --infer-market-prices  flag  is  used:  the price commodity from the
          latest transaction-inferred price for A on or before valuation date.

       This means:

       o If you have P directives, they determine which  commodities  -V  will
         convert, and to what.

       o If  you have no P directives, and use the --infer-market-prices flag,
         costs determine it.

       Amounts for which no valuation commodity can  be  found  are  not  con-
       verted.

   Simple valuation examples
       Here are some quick examples of -V:

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

   --value: Flexible valuation
       -V and -X are special cases of the more general --value option:

               --value=TYPE[,COMM]  TYPE is then, end, now or YYYY-MM-DD.
                                    COMM is an optional commodity symbol.
                                    Shows amounts converted to:
                                    - default valuation commodity (or COMM) using market prices at posting dates
                                    - default valuation commodity (or COMM) using market prices at period end(s)
                                    - default valuation commodity (or COMM) using current market prices
                                    - default valuation commodity (or COMM) using market prices at some date

       The TYPE part selects cost or value and valuation date:

       --value=then
              Convert amounts to their value in the default valuation  commod-
              ity, using market prices on each posting's date.

       --value=end
              Convert  amounts to their value in the default valuation commod-
              ity, using market prices on the last day of  the  report  period
              (or  if  unspecified, the journal's end date); or in multiperiod
              reports, market prices on the last day of each subperiod.

       --value=now
              Convert amounts to their value in the default valuation  commod-
              ity  using  current  market  prices (as of when report is gener-
              ated).

       --value=YYYY-MM-DD
              Convert amounts to their value in the default valuation  commod-
              ity using market prices on this date.

       To select a different valuation commodity, add the optional ,COMM part:
       a  comma,  then  the  target  commodity's symbol.  Eg: --value=now,EUR.
       hledger will do its best to convert amounts to this commodity, deducing
       market prices as described above.

   More valuation examples
       Here are some examples showing the effect  of  --value,  as  seen  with
       print:

              P 2000-01-01 A  1 B
              P 2000-02-01 A  2 B
              P 2000-03-01 A  3 B
              P 2000-04-01 A  4 B

              2000-01-01
                (a)      1 A @ 5 B

              2000-02-01
                (a)      1 A @ 6 B

              2000-03-01
                (a)      1 A @ 7 B

       Show the cost of each posting:

              $ hledger -f- print --cost
              2000-01-01
                  (a)             5 B

              2000-02-01
                  (a)             6 B

              2000-03-01
                  (a)             7 B

       Show the value as of the last day of the report period (2000-02-29):

              $ hledger -f- print --value=end date:2000/01-2000/03
              2000-01-01
                  (a)             2 B

              2000-02-01
                  (a)             2 B

       With  no  report  period specified, that shows the value as of the last
       day of the journal (2000-03-01):

              $ hledger -f- print --value=end
              2000-01-01
                  (a)             3 B

              2000-02-01
                  (a)             3 B

              2000-03-01
                  (a)             3 B

       Show the current value (the 2000-04-01 price is still in effect today):

              $ hledger -f- print --value=now
              2000-01-01
                  (a)             4 B

              2000-02-01
                  (a)             4 B

              2000-03-01
                  (a)             4 B

       Show the value on 2000/01/15:

              $ hledger -f- print --value=2000-01-15
              2000-01-01
                  (a)             1 B

              2000-02-01
                  (a)             1 B

              2000-03-01
                  (a)             1 B

   Interaction of valuation and queries
       When matching postings based on queries in the presence  of  valuation,
       the following happens.

       1. The query is separated into two parts:

           1. the currency (cur:) or amount (amt:).

           2. all other parts.

       2. The postings are matched to the currency and amount queries based on
          pre-valued amounts.

       3. Valuation is applied to the postings.

       4. The  postings  are  matched to the other parts of the query based on
          post-valued amounts.

       See: 1625

   Effect of valuation on reports
       Here is a reference for how valuation is supposed to affect  each  part
       of  hledger's  reports  (and  a  glossary).  (It's wide, you'll have to
       scroll sideways.)  It may be useful when troubleshooting.  If you  find
       problems, please report them, ideally with a reproducible example.  Re-
       lated: #329, #1083.

       Report      -B, --cost     -V, -X         --value=then         --value=end    --value=DATE,
       type                                                                          --value=now
       --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
       print
       posting     cost           value at re-   value at  posting    value at re-   value      at
       amounts                    port  end or   date                 port      or   DATE/today
                                  today                               journal end
       balance     unchanged      unchanged      unchanged            unchanged      unchanged
       asser-
       tions/as-
       signments

       register
       starting    cost           value at re-   valued   at   day    value at re-   value      at
       balance                    port      or   each   historical    port      or   DATE/today
       (-H)                       journal end    posting was made     journal end
       starting    cost           value at day   valued   at   day    value at day   value      at
       balance                    before   re-   each   historical    before   re-   DATE/today
       (-H) with                  port      or   posting was made     port      or
       report                     journal                             journal
       interval                   start                               start
       posting     cost           value at re-   value at  posting    value at re-   value      at
       amounts                    port      or   date                 port      or   DATE/today
                                  journal end                         journal end
       summary     summarised     value at pe-   sum  of  postings    value at pe-   value      at
       posting     cost           riod ends      in interval, val-    riod ends      DATE/today
       amounts                                   ued  at  interval
       with  re-                                 start
       port  in-
       terval
       running     sum/average    sum/average    sum/average    of    sum/average    sum/average
       total/av-   of displayed   of displayed   displayed values     of displayed   of  displayed
       erage       values         values                              values         values

       balance
       (bs, bse,
       cf, is)
       balance     sums      of   value at re-   value at  posting    value at re-   value      at
       changes     costs          port  end or   date                 port      or   DATE/today of
                                  today     of                        journal  end   sums of post-
                                  sums      of                        of  sums  of   ings
                                  postings                            postings
       budget      like balance   like balance   like      balance    like    bal-   like  balance
       amounts     changes        changes        changes              ances          changes
       (--bud-
       get)
       grand to-   sum of  dis-   sum of  dis-   sum of  displayed    sum  of dis-   sum  of  dis-
       tal         played  val-   played  val-   valued               played  val-   played values
                   ues            ues                                 ues

       balance
       (bs, bse,
       cf,   is)
       with  re-
       port  in-
       terval
       starting    sums      of   value at re-   sums of values of    value at re-   sums of post-
       balances    costs     of   port   start   postings   before    port   start   ings   before
       (-H)        postings be-   of  sums  of   report  start  at    of  sums  of   report start
                   fore  report   all postings   respective  post-    all postings
                   start          before   re-   ing dates            before   re-
                                  port start                          port start
       balance     sums      of   same      as   sums of values of    balance        value      at
       changes     costs     of   --value=end    postings  in  pe-    change    in   DATE/today of
       (bal, is,   postings  in                  riod  at  respec-    each period,   sums of post-
       bs          period                        tive      posting    valued    at   ings
       --change,                                 dates                period ends
       cf
       --change)
       end  bal-   sums      of   same      as   sums of values of    period   end   value      at
       ances       costs     of   --value=end    postings from be-    balances,      DATE/today of
       (bal  -H,   postings                      fore period start    valued    at   sums of post-
       is   --H,   from  before                  to period end  at    period ends    ings
       bs, cf)     report start                  respective  post-
                   to    period                  ing dates
                   end
       budget      like balance   like balance   like      balance    like    bal-   like  balance
       amounts     changes/end    changes/end    changes/end  bal-    ances          changes/end
       (--bud-     balances       balances       ances                               balances
       get)
       row   to-   sums,  aver-   sums,  aver-   sums, averages of    sums,  aver-   sums,   aver-
       tals, row   ages of dis-   ages of dis-   displayed values     ages of dis-   ages  of dis-
       averages    played  val-   played  val-                        played  val-   played values
       (-T, -A)    ues            ues                                 ues
       column      sums of dis-   sums of dis-   sums of displayed    sums of dis-   sums  of dis-
       totals      played  val-   played  val-   values               played  val-   played values
                   ues            ues                                 ues
       grand to-   sum, average   sum, average   sum,  average  of    sum, average   sum,  average
       tal,        of    column   of    column   column totals        of    column   of column to-
       grand av-   totals         totals                              totals         tals
       erage


       --cumulative is omitted to save space, it works like -H but with a zero
       starting balance.

       Glossary:

       cost   calculated using price(s) recorded in the transaction(s).

       value  market  value  using available market price declarations, or the
              unchanged amount if no conversion rate can be found.

       report start
              the first day of the report period specified with -b  or  -p  or
              date:, otherwise today.

       report or journal start
              the  first  day  of the report period specified with -b or -p or
              date:, otherwise the earliest transaction date in  the  journal,
              otherwise today.

       report end
              the  last  day  of  the report period specified with -e or -p or
              date:, otherwise today.

       report or journal end
              the last day of the report period specified with  -e  or  -p  or
              date:,  otherwise  the  latest  transaction date in the journal,
              otherwise today.

       report interval
              a flag (-D/-W/-M/-Q/-Y) or period expression that activates  the
              report's multi-period mode (whether showing one or many subperi-
              ods).

PART 4: COMMANDS
   Commands overview
       Here are the built-in commands:

   DATA ENTRY
       These data entry commands are the only ones which can modify your jour-
       nal file.

       o add - add transactions using terminal prompts

       o import - add new transactions from other files, eg CSV files

   DATA CREATION
       o close - generate balance-zeroing/restoring transactions

       o rewrite - generate auto postings, like print --auto

   DATA MANAGEMENT
       o check - check for various kinds of error in the data

       o diff - compare account transactions in two journal files

   REPORTS, FINANCIAL
       o aregister (areg) - show transactions in a particular account

       o balancesheet (bs) - show assets, liabilities and net worth

       o balancesheetequity (bse) - show assets, liabilities and equity

       o cashflow (cf) - show changes in liquid assets

       o incomestatement (is) - show revenues and expenses

   REPORTS, VERSATILE
       o balance (bal) - show balance changes, end balances, budgets, gains..

       o print - show transactions or export journal data

       o register  (reg) - show postings in one or more accounts & running to-
         tal

       o roi - show return on investments

   REPORTS, BASIC
       o accounts - show account names

       o activity - show bar charts of posting counts per period

       o codes - show transaction codes

       o commodities - show commodity/currency symbols

       o descriptions - show transaction descriptions

       o files - show input file paths

       o notes - show note parts of transaction descriptions

       o payees - show payee parts of transaction descriptions

       o prices - show market prices

       o stats - show journal statistics

       o tags - show tag names

       o test - run self tests

   HELP
       o help - show the hledger manual with info/man/pager

       o demo - show small hledger demos in the terminal

   ADD-ONS
       And here are some typical add-on commands.  Some of these are installed
       by the hledger-install script.   If  installed,  they  will  appear  in
       hledger's commands list:

       o ui - run hledger's terminal UI

       o web - run hledger's web UI

       o iadd - add transactions using a TUI (currently hard to build)

       o interest - generate interest transactions

       o stockquotes - download market prices from AlphaVantage

       o Scripts  and  add-ons - check-fancyassertions, edit, fifo, git, move,
         pijul, plot, and more..

       Next, each command is described in detail, in alphabetical order.

   accounts
       Show account names.

       This command lists account names.  By default it shows  all  known  ac-
       counts,  either  used  in  transactions or declared with account direc-
       tives.

       With query arguments, only matched account names and account names ref-
       erenced by matched postings are shown.

       Or it can show just the used accounts  (--used/-u),  the  declared  ac-
       counts  (--declared/-d), the accounts declared but not used (--unused),
       the accounts used but not declared (--undeclared), or the first account
       matched by an account name pattern, if any (--find).

       It shows a flat list by default.  With --tree, it uses  indentation  to
       show  the account hierarchy.  In flat mode you can add --drop N to omit
       the first few account name components.  Account  names  can  be  depth-
       clipped with depth:N or --depth N or -N.

       With  --types,  it also shows each account's type, if it's known.  (See
       Declaring accounts > Account types.)

       With --positions, it also shows the file and line number  of  each  ac-
       count's  declaration, if any, and the account's overall declaration or-
       der; these may be useful when troubleshooting account display order.

       With --directives, it adds the account keyword, showing  valid  account
       directives which can be pasted into a journal file.  This is useful to-
       gether  with  --undeclared  when  updating your account declarations to
       satisfy hledger check accounts.

       The --find flag can be used to look up a single account  name,  in  the
       same  way that the aregister command does.  It returns the alphanumeri-
       cally-first matched account name, or if none can  be  found,  it  fails
       with a non-zero exit code.

       Examples:

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

              $ hledger accounts --undeclared --directives >> $LEDGER_FILE
              $ hledger check accounts

   activity
       Show an ascii barchart of posting counts per interval.

       The  activity  command  displays an ascii histogram showing transaction
       counts by day, week, month or other reporting interval (by day  is  the
       default).  With query arguments, it counts only matched transactions.

       Examples:

              $ hledger activity --quarterly
              2008-01-01 **
              2008-04-01 *******
              2008-07-01
              2008-10-01 **

   add
       Prompt  for  transactions  and  add them to the journal.  Any arguments
       will be used as default inputs for the first N prompts.

       Many hledger users edit their journals directly with a text editor,  or
       generate  them from CSV.  For more interactive data entry, there is the
       add command, which prompts interactively on the console for new  trans-
       actions,  and appends them to the main journal file (which should be in
       journal format).  Existing transactions are not changed.  This  is  one
       of  the  few hledger commands that writes to the journal file (see also
       import).

       To use it, just run hledger add and follow the prompts.  You can add as
       many transactions as you like; when you are finished, enter . or  press
       control-d or control-c to exit.

       Features:

       o add  tries to provide useful defaults, using the most similar (by de-
         scription) recent transaction (filtered by the query, if  any)  as  a
         template.

       o You can also set the initial defaults with command line arguments.

       o Readline-style edit keys can be used during data entry.

       o The  tab  key  will  auto-complete whenever possible - accounts, pay-
         ees/descriptions, dates (yesterday, today, tomorrow).  If  the  input
         area is empty, it will insert the default value.

       o If  the  journal defines a default commodity, it will be added to any
         bare numbers entered.

       o A parenthesised transaction code may be entered following a date.

       o Comments and tags may be entered following a description or amount.

       o If you make a mistake, enter < at any prompt to go one step backward.

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

       Example (see https://hledger.org/add.html for a detailed tutorial):

              $ hledger add
              Adding transactions to journal file /src/hledger/examples/sample.journal
              Any command line arguments will be used as defaults.
              Use tab key to complete, readline keys to edit, enter to accept defaults.
              An optional (CODE) may follow transaction dates.
              An optional ; COMMENT may follow descriptions or amounts.
              If you make a mistake, enter < at any prompt to go one step backward.
              To end a transaction, enter . when prompted.
              To quit, enter . at a date prompt or press control-d or control-c.
              Date [2015/05/22]:
              Description: supermarket
              Account 1: expenses:food
              Amount  1: $10
              Account 2: assets:checking
              Amount  2 [$-10.0]:
              Account 3 (or . or enter to finish this transaction): .
              2015/05/22 supermarket
                  expenses:food             $10
                  assets:checking        $-10.0

              Save this transaction to the journal ? [y]:
              Saved.
              Starting the next transaction (. or ctrl-D/ctrl-C to quit)
              Date [2015/05/22]: <CTRL-D> $

       On  Microsoft  Windows,  the add command makes sure that no part of the
       file path ends with a period, as that would cause problems (#1056).

   aregister
       (areg)

       Show the transactions and running historical balance of  a  single  ac-
       count, with each transaction displayed as one line.

       aregister shows the overall transactions affecting a particular account
       (and  any subaccounts).  Each report line represents one transaction in
       this account.  Transactions before the report start date are always in-
       cluded in the running balance (--historical mode is always on).

       This is a more "real world", bank-like view than the  register  command
       (which  shows individual postings, possibly from multiple accounts, not
       necessarily in historical mode).  As a quick rule of thumb: - use areg-
       ister for reviewing and reconciling real-world asset/liability accounts
       - use register for reviewing detailed revenues/expenses.

       aregister requires one argument: the account to  report  on.   You  can
       write  either  the full account name, or a case-insensitive regular ex-
       pression which will select the alphabetically first matched account.

       When there are multiple matches, the alphabetically-first choice can be
       surprising; eg if you have assets:per:checking 1 and  assets:biz:check-
       ing  2 accounts, hledger areg checking would select assets:biz:checking
       2.  It's just a convenience to save typing, so if in doubt,  write  the
       full account name, or a distinctive substring that matches uniquely.

       Transactions  involving subaccounts of this account will also be shown.
       aregister ignores depth limits, so its final total will always match  a
       balance report with similar arguments.

       Any  additional  arguments  form a query which will filter the transac-
       tions shown.  Note some queries will disturb the running balance, caus-
       ing it to be different from the account's real-world running balance.

       An example: this shows the transactions and historical running  balance
       during july, in the first account whose name contains "checking":

              $ hledger areg checking date:jul

       Each aregister line item shows:

       o the  transaction's date (or the relevant posting's date if different,
         see below)

       o the names of all the other account(s) involved  in  this  transaction
         (probably abbreviated)

       o the total change to this account's balance from this transaction

       o the account's historical running balance after this transaction.

       Transactions  making a net change of zero are not shown by default; add
       the -E/--empty flag to show them.

       For performance reasons, column widths are chosen based  on  the  first
       1000  lines;  this means unusually wide values in later lines can cause
       visual discontinuities as column widths are adjusted.  If you  want  to
       ensure  perfect alignment, at the cost of more time and memory, use the
       --align-all flag.

       This command also supports the output destination and output format op-
       tions.  The output formats supported are txt, csv, tsv, and json.

   aregister and posting dates
       aregister always shows one line (and date and amount) per  transaction.
       But  sometimes  transactions have postings with different dates.  Also,
       not all of a transaction's postings may be within  the  report  period.
       To resolve this, aregister shows the earliest of the transaction's date
       and posting dates that is in-period, and the sum of the in-period post-
       ings.   In  other words it will show a combined line item with just the
       earliest date, and the running balance  will  (temporarily,  until  the
       transaction's last posting) be inaccurate.  Use register -H if you need
       to see the individual postings.

       There is also a --txn-dates flag, which filters strictly by transaction
       date, ignoring posting dates.  This too can cause an inaccurate running
       balance.

   balance
       (bal)

       Show accounts and their balances.

       balance  is  one  of  hledger's oldest and most versatile commands, for
       listing account balances, balance changes, values,  value  changes  and
       more, during one time period or many.  Generally it shows a table, with
       rows representing accounts, and columns representing periods.

       Note  there  are some higher-level variants of the balance command with
       convenient defaults, which can be simpler to  use:  balancesheet,  bal-
       ancesheetequity, cashflow and incomestatement.  When you need more con-
       trol, then use balance.

   balance features
       Here's  a quick overview of the balance command's features, followed by
       more detailed descriptions and examples.  Many of these work  with  the
       higher-level commands as well.

       balance can show..

       o accounts as a list (-l) or a tree (-t)

       o optionally depth-limited (-[1-9])

       o sorted by declaration order and name, or by amount

       ..and their..

       o balance changes (the default)

       o or actual and planned balance changes (--budget)

       o or value of balance changes (-V)

       o or change of balance values (--valuechange)

       o or unrealised capital gain/loss (--gain)

       o or postings count (--count)

       ..in..

       o one time period (the whole journal period by default)

       o or multiple periods (-D, -W, -M, -Q, -Y, -p INTERVAL)

       ..either..

       o per period (the default)

       o or accumulated since report start date (--cumulative)

       o or accumulated since account creation (--historical/-H)

       ..possibly converted to..

       o cost (--value=cost[,COMM]/--cost/-B)

       o or market value, as of transaction dates (--value=then[,COMM])

       o or at period ends (--value=end[,COMM])

       o or now (--value=now)

       o or at some other date (--value=YYYY-MM-DD)

       ..with..

       o totals  (-T),  averages  (-A), percentages (-%), inverted sign (--in-
         vert)

       o rows and columns swapped (--transpose)

       o another field used as account name (--pivot)

       o custom-formatted line items (single-period reports only) (--format)

       o commodities displayed on the same line or multiple lines (--layout)

       This command supports the output destination and output format options,
       with output formats txt, csv,  tsv,  json,  and  (multi-period  reports
       only:)  html.   In txt output in a colour-supporting terminal, negative
       amounts are shown in red.

       The --related/-r flag shows the balance of the other  postings  in  the
       transactions of the postings which would normally be shown.

   Simple balance report
       With  no  arguments,  balance  shows  a  list of all accounts and their
       change of balance - ie, the sum of posting amounts,  both  inflows  and
       outflows  -  during  the  entire period of the journal.  ("Simple" here
       means just one column of numbers, covering a single  period.   You  can
       also have multi-period reports, described later.)

       For  real-world accounts, these numbers will normally be their end bal-
       ance at the end of the journal period; more on this below.

       Accounts are sorted by declaration order if any,  and  then  alphabeti-
       cally by account name.  For instance (using examples/sample.journal):

              $ hledger -f examples/sample.journal bal
                                $1  assets:bank:saving
                               $-2  assets:cash
                                $1  expenses:food
                                $1  expenses:supplies
                               $-1  income:gifts
                               $-1  income:salary
                                $1  liabilities:debts
              --------------------
                                 0

       Accounts with a zero balance (and no non-zero subaccounts, in tree mode
       -  see  below) are hidden by default.  Use -E/--empty to show them (re-
       vealing assets:bank:checking here):

              $ hledger -f examples/sample.journal bal  -E
                                 0  assets:bank:checking
                                $1  assets:bank:saving
                               $-2  assets:cash
                                $1  expenses:food
                                $1  expenses:supplies
                               $-1  income:gifts
                               $-1  income:salary
                                $1  liabilities:debts
              --------------------
                                 0

       The total of the amounts displayed is shown as the  last  line,  unless
       -N/--no-total is used.

   Balance report line format
       For single-period balance reports displayed in the terminal (only), you
       can  use --format FMT to customise the format and content of each line.
       Eg:

              $ hledger -f examples/sample.journal balance --format "%20(account) %12(total)"
                            assets          $-1
                       bank:saving           $1
                              cash          $-2
                          expenses           $2
                              food           $1
                          supplies           $1
                            income          $-2
                             gifts          $-1
                            salary          $-1
                 liabilities:debts           $1
              ---------------------------------
                                              0

       The FMT format string specifies the  formatting  applied  to  each  ac-
       count/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 ef-
       fect,  instead  %(account)  has indentation built in.   Experimentation
       may be needed to get pleasing results.

       Some example formats:

       o %(total) - the account's total

       o %-20.20(account) - the account's name, left justified, padded  to  20
         characters and clipped at 20 characters

       o %,%-50(account)   %25(total)  - account name padded to 50 characters,
         total padded to 20 characters, with multiple commodities rendered  on
         one line

       o %20(total)   %2(depth_spacer)%-(account) - the default format for the
         single-column balance report

   Filtered balance report
       You can show fewer accounts,  a  different  time  period,  totals  from
       cleared transactions only, etc.  by using query arguments or options to
       limit the postings being matched.  Eg:

              $ hledger -f examples/sample.journal bal --cleared assets date:200806
                               $-2  assets:cash
              --------------------
                               $-2

   List or tree mode
       By  default,  or with -l/--flat, accounts are shown as a flat list with
       their full names visible, as in the examples above.

       With -t/--tree, the  account  hierarchy  is  shown,  with  subaccounts'
       "leaf" names indented below their parent:

              $ hledger -f examples/sample.journal balance
                               $-1  assets
                                $1    bank:saving
                               $-2    cash
                                $2  expenses
                                $1    food
                                $1    supplies
                               $-2  income
                               $-1    gifts
                               $-1    salary
                                $1  liabilities:debts
              --------------------
                                 0

       Notes:

       o "Boring" accounts are combined with their subaccount for more compact
         output,  unless  --no-elide is used.  Boring accounts have no balance
         of their own and just one subaccount (eg assets:bank and  liabilities
         above).

       o All  balances  shown  are "inclusive", ie including the balances from
         all subaccounts.  Note this means  some  repetition  in  the  output,
         which requires explanation when sharing reports with non-plaintextac-
         counting-users.   A  tree mode report's final total is the sum of the
         top-level balances shown, not of all the balances shown.

       o Each group of sibling accounts (ie, under a common parent) is  sorted
         separately.

   Depth limiting
       With  a  depth:NUM  query, or --depth NUM option, or just -NUM (eg: -3)
       balance reports will show accounts only to the specified depth,  hiding
       the  deeper  subaccounts.   This  can be useful for getting an overview
       without too much detail.

       Account balances at the depth limit always include  the  balances  from
       any deeper subaccounts (even in list mode).  Eg, limiting to depth 1:

              $ hledger -f examples/sample.journal balance -1
                               $-1  assets
                                $2  expenses
                               $-2  income
                                $1  liabilities
              --------------------
                                 0

   Dropping top-level accounts
       You  can  also  hide  one  or  more top-level account name parts, using
       --drop NUM.  This can be useful for hiding repetitive top-level account
       names:

              $ hledger -f examples/sample.journal bal expenses --drop 1
                                $1  food
                                $1  supplies
              --------------------
                                $2

   Showing declared accounts
       With --declared, accounts which have been declared with an account  di-
       rective  will  be  included in the balance report, even if they have no
       transactions.  (Since they will have a zero balance, you will also need
       -E/--empty to see them.)

       More precisely, leaf declared accounts (with no  subaccounts)  will  be
       included, since those are usually the more useful in reports.

       The  idea  of this is to be able to see a useful "complete" balance re-
       port, even when you don't have transactions in all of your declared ac-
       counts yet.

   Sorting by amount
       With -S/--sort-amount, accounts with the largest (most  positive)  bal-
       ances  are  shown  first.   Eg:  hledger  bal  expenses -MAS shows your
       biggest averaged monthly expenses first.  When more than one  commodity
       is  present, they will be sorted by the alphabetically earliest commod-
       ity first, and then by subsequent commodities (if an amount is  missing
       a commodity, it is treated as 0).

       Revenues  and liability balances are typically negative, however, so -S
       shows these in reverse order.  To work around this, you can  add  --in-
       vert  to  flip  the  signs.   (Or, use one of the higher-level reports,
       which flip the sign automatically.  Eg: hledger incomestatement -MAS).

   Percentages
       With -%/--percent, balance reports show each account's value  expressed
       as a percentage of the (column) total.

       Note it is not useful to calculate percentages if the amounts in a col-
       umn  have  mixed  signs.  In this case, make a separate report for each
       sign, eg:

              $ hledger bal -% amt:`>0`
              $ hledger bal -% amt:`<0`

       Similarly, if the amounts in a column have mixed  commodities,  convert
       them  to  one  commodity with -B, -V, -X or --value, or make a separate
       report for each commodity:

              $ hledger bal -% cur:\\$
              $ hledger bal -% cur:

   Multi-period balance report
       With  a  report  interval  (set   by   the   -D/--daily,   -W/--weekly,
       -M/--monthly,  -Q/--quarterly,  -Y/--yearly, or -p/--period flag), bal-
       ance shows a tabular report, with columns representing successive  time
       periods (and a title):

              $ hledger -f examples/sample.journal bal --quarterly income expenses -E
              Balance changes in 2008:

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

       Notes:

       o The report's start/end dates will be expanded, if necessary, to fully
         encompass the displayed subperiods (so that the first and last subpe-
         riods have the same duration as the others).

       o Leading  and trailing periods (columns) containing all zeroes are not
         shown, unless -E/--empty is used.

       o Accounts  (rows)  containing  all  zeroes  are  not   shown,   unless
         -E/--empty is used.

       o Amounts  with  many commodities are shown in abbreviated form, unless
         --no-elide is used.  (experimental)

       o Average and/or total columns can be added with the  -A/--average  and
         -T/--row-total flags.

       o The --transpose flag can be used to exchange rows and columns.

       o The  --pivot  FIELD option causes a different transaction field to be
         used as "account name".  See PIVOTING.

       Multi-period reports with many periods can be too wide for easy viewing
       in the terminal.  Here are some ways to handle that:

       o Hide the totals row with -N/--no-total

       o Convert to a single currency with -V

       o Maximize the terminal window

       o Reduce the terminal's font size

       o View with a pager like less, eg: hledger bal -D  --color=yes  |  less
         -RS

       o Output  as  CSV and use a CSV viewer like visidata (hledger bal -D -O
         csv | vd -f csv), Emacs' csv-mode  (M-x  csv-mode,  C-c  C-a),  or  a
         spreadsheet (hledger bal -D -o a.csv && open a.csv)

       o Output  as  HTML and view with a browser: hledger bal -D -o a.html &&
         open a.html

   Balance change, end balance
       It's important to be clear on the meaning of the numbers shown in  bal-
       ance reports.  Here is some terminology we use:

       A  balance  change  is the net amount added to, or removed from, an ac-
       count during some period.

       An end balance is the amount accumulated in an account as of some  date
       (and  some  time,  but hledger doesn't store that; assume end of day in
       your timezone).  It is the sum of previous balance changes.

       We call it a historical end balance if it includes all balance  changes
       since the account was created.  For a real world account, this means it
       will  match  the  "historical record", eg the balances reported in your
       bank statements or bank web UI.  (If they are correct!)

       In general, balance changes are what you want  to  see  when  reviewing
       revenues and expenses, and historical end balances are what you want to
       see when reviewing or reconciling asset, liability and equity accounts.

       balance  shows  balance changes by default.  To see accurate historical
       end balances:

       1. Initialise account starting  balances  with  an  "opening  balances"
          transaction  (a  transfer  from  equity  to the account), unless the
          journal covers the account's full lifetime.

       2. Include all of of the account's prior postings in the report, by not
          specifying a report start date,  or  by  using  the  -H/--historical
          flag.  (-H causes report start date to be ignored when summing post-
          ings.)

   Balance report types
       The  balance  command is quite flexible; here is the full detail on how
       to control what it reports.  If the following seems complicated,  don't
       worry  -  this is for advanced reporting, and it does take time and ex-
       perimentation to get familiar with all the report modes.

       There are three important option groups:

       hledger balance  [CALCULATIONTYPE]  [ACCUMULATIONTYPE]  [VALUATIONTYPE]
       ...

   Calculation type
       The basic calculation to perform for each table cell.  It is one of:

       o --sum : sum the posting amounts (default)

       o --budget : sum the amounts, but also show the budget goal amount (for
         each account/period)

       o --valuechange : show the change in period-end historical balance val-
         ues  (caused  by  deposits, withdrawals, and/or market price fluctua-
         tions)

       o --gain : show the unrealised capital gain/loss, (the  current  valued
         balance minus each amount's original cost)

       o --count : show the count of postings

   Accumulation type
       How  amounts  should  accumulate across report periods.  Another way to
       say it: which time period's postings should contribute to  each  cell's
       calculation.  It is one of:

       o --change  :  calculate with postings from column start to column end,
         ie "just this column".   Typically  used  to  see  revenues/expenses.
         (default for balance, incomestatement)

       o --cumulative  :  calculate  with postings from report start to column
         end, ie "previous columns plus this column".  Typically used to  show
         changes accumulated since the report's start date.  Not often used.

       o --historical/-H  : calculate with postings from journal start to col-
         umn end, ie "all postings from before report start  date  until  this
         column's  end".  Typically used to see historical end balances of as-
         sets/liabilities/equity.  (default for  balancesheet,  balancesheete-
         quity, cashflow)

   Valuation type
       Which  kind  of value or cost conversion should be applied, if any, be-
       fore displaying the report.  It is one of:

       o no valuation type : don't convert to cost or value (default)

       o --value=cost[,COMM] : convert amounts to  cost  (then  optionally  to
         some other commodity)

       o --value=then[,COMM]  : convert amounts to market value on transaction
         dates

       o --value=end[,COMM] : convert amounts to market value  on  period  end
         date(s)
       (default with --valuechange, --gain)

       o --value=now[,COMM] : convert amounts to market value on today's date

       o --value=YYYY-MM-DD[,COMM]  :  convert  amounts to market value on an-
         other date

       or one of the equivalent simpler flags:

       o -B/--cost : like --value=cost (though, note --cost  and  --value  are
         independent options which can both be used at once)

       o -V/--market : like --value=end

       o -X COMM/--exchange COMM : like --value=end,COMM

       See Cost reporting and Value reporting for more about these.

   Combining balance report types
       Most  combinations  of these options should produce reasonable reports,
       but if you find any that seem wrong or misleading, let  us  know.   The
       following restrictions are applied:

       o --valuechange implies --value=end

       o --valuechange  makes  --change  the  default  when used with the bal-
         ancesheet/balancesheetequity commands

       o --cumulative or --historical disables --row-total/-T

       For reference, here is what the combinations of accumulation and valua-
       tion show:

       Valua-     no valuation       --value= then       --value= end      --value= YYYY-
       tion:>                                                              MM-DD /now
       Accumu-
       lation:v
       -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
       --change   change in period   sum  of  posting-   period-end        DATE-value  of
                                     date  market val-   value of change   change  in pe-
                                     ues in period       in period         riod
       --cumu-    change from  re-   sum  of  posting-   period-end        DATE-value  of
       lative     port   start  to   date  market val-   value of change   change    from
                  period end         ues  from  report   from     report   report   start
                                     start  to  period   start to period   to period end
                                     end                 end
       --his-     change      from   sum  of  posting-   period-end        DATE-value  of
       torical    journal start to   date market  val-   value of change   change    from
       /-H        period end (his-   ues  from journal   from    journal   journal  start
                  torical end bal-   start  to  period   start to period   to period end
                  ance)              end                 end

   Budget report
       The  --budget  report  type  activates extra columns showing any budget
       goals for each account and period.  The budget goals are defined by pe-
       riodic transactions.  This is useful for comparing planned  and  actual
       income, expenses, time usage, etc.

       For  example,  you  can take average monthly expenses in the common ex-
       pense categories to construct a minimal monthly budget:

              ;; Budget
              ~ monthly
                income  $2000
                expenses:food    $400
                expenses:bus     $50
                expenses:movies  $30
                assets:bank:checking

              ;; Two months worth of expenses
              2017-11-01
                income  $1950
                expenses:food    $396
                expenses:bus     $49
                expenses:movies  $30
                expenses:supplies  $20
                assets:bank:checking

              2017-12-01
                income  $2100
                expenses:food    $412
                expenses:bus     $53
                expenses:gifts   $100
                assets:bank:checking

       You can now see a monthly budget report:

              $ hledger balance -M --budget
              Budget performance in 2017/11/01-2017/12/31:

                                    ||                      Nov                       Dec
              ======================++====================================================
               assets               || $-2445 [  99% of $-2480]  $-2665 [ 107% of $-2480]
               assets:bank          || $-2445 [  99% of $-2480]  $-2665 [ 107% of $-2480]
               assets:bank:checking || $-2445 [  99% of $-2480]  $-2665 [ 107% of $-2480]
               expenses             ||   $495 [ 103% of   $480]    $565 [ 118% of   $480]
               expenses:bus         ||    $49 [  98% of    $50]     $53 [ 106% of    $50]
               expenses:food        ||   $396 [  99% of   $400]    $412 [ 103% of   $400]
               expenses:movies      ||    $30 [ 100% of    $30]       0 [   0% of    $30]
               income               ||  $1950 [  98% of  $2000]   $2100 [ 105% of  $2000]
              ----------------------++----------------------------------------------------
                                    ||      0 [              0]       0 [              0]

       This is different from a normal balance report in several  ways.   Cur-
       rently:

       o Accounts  with  budget goals during the report period, and their par-
         ents, are shown.

       o Their subaccounts are not shown (regardless of the depth setting).

       o Accounts without budget goals, if any, are aggregated  and  shown  as
         "<unbudgeted>".

       o Amounts  are  always  inclusive  (subaccount-including), even in list
         mode.

       o After each actual amount, the corresponding goal amount and  percent-
         age of goal reached are also shown, in square brackets.

       This  means  that  the  numbers  displayed  will not always add up!  Eg
       above, the expenses actual  amount  includes  the  gifts  and  supplies
       transactions, but the expenses:gifts and expenses:supplies accounts are
       not shown, as they have no budget amounts declared.

       This  can  be confusing.  When you need to make things clearer, use the
       -E/--empty flag, which will reveal all  accounts  including  unbudgeted
       ones, giving the full picture.  Eg:

              $ hledger balance -M --budget --empty
              Budget performance in 2017/11/01-2017/12/31:

                                    ||                      Nov                       Dec
              ======================++====================================================
               assets               || $-2445 [  99% of $-2480]  $-2665 [ 107% of $-2480]
               assets:bank          || $-2445 [  99% of $-2480]  $-2665 [ 107% of $-2480]
               assets:bank:checking || $-2445 [  99% of $-2480]  $-2665 [ 107% of $-2480]
               expenses             ||   $495 [ 103% of   $480]    $565 [ 118% of   $480]
               expenses:bus         ||    $49 [  98% of    $50]     $53 [ 106% of    $50]
               expenses:food        ||   $396 [  99% of   $400]    $412 [ 103% of   $400]
               expenses:gifts       ||      0                      $100
               expenses:movies      ||    $30 [ 100% of    $30]       0 [   0% of    $30]
               expenses:supplies    ||    $20                         0
               income               ||  $1950 [  98% of  $2000]   $2100 [ 105% of  $2000]
              ----------------------++----------------------------------------------------
                                    ||      0 [              0]       0 [              0]

       You can roll over unspent budgets to next period with --cumulative:

              $ hledger balance -M --budget --cumulative
              Budget performance in 2017/11/01-2017/12/31:

                                    ||                      Nov                       Dec
              ======================++====================================================
               assets               || $-2445 [  99% of $-2480]  $-5110 [ 103% of $-4960]
               assets:bank          || $-2445 [  99% of $-2480]  $-5110 [ 103% of $-4960]
               assets:bank:checking || $-2445 [  99% of $-2480]  $-5110 [ 103% of $-4960]
               expenses             ||   $495 [ 103% of   $480]   $1060 [ 110% of   $960]
               expenses:bus         ||    $49 [  98% of    $50]    $102 [ 102% of   $100]
               expenses:food        ||   $396 [  99% of   $400]    $808 [ 101% of   $800]
               expenses:movies      ||    $30 [ 100% of    $30]     $30 [  50% of    $60]
               income               ||  $1950 [  98% of  $2000]   $4050 [ 101% of  $4000]
              ----------------------++----------------------------------------------------
                                    ||      0 [              0]       0 [              0]

       It's common to limit budgets/budget reports to just expenses

              hledger bal -M --budget expenses

       or just revenues and expenses (eg, using account types):

              hledger bal -M --budget type:rx

       It's  also  common  to  limit  or  convert  them  to  a single currency
       (cur:COMM or -X COMM  [--infer-market-prices]).   If  showing  multiple
       currencies, --layout bare or --layout tall can help.

       For more examples and notes, see Budgeting.

   Budget report start date
       This  might  be  a bug, but for now: when making budget reports, it's a
       good idea to explicitly set the report's start date to the first day of
       a reporting period, because a periodic rule like  ~  monthly  generates
       its  transactions  on the 1st of each month, and if your journal has no
       regular transactions on the 1st, the default report  start  date  could
       exclude  that  budget  goal, which can be a little surprising.  Eg here
       the default report period is just the day of 2020-01-15:

              ~ monthly in 2020
                (expenses:food)  $500

              2020-01-15
                expenses:food    $400
                assets:checking

              $ hledger bal expenses --budget
              Budget performance in 2020-01-15:

                            || 2020-01-15
              ==============++============
               <unbudgeted> ||       $400
              --------------++------------
                            ||       $400

       To avoid this, specify the budget report's  period,  or  at  least  the
       start  date, with -b/-e/-p/date:, to ensure it includes the budget goal
       transactions (periodic transactions) that  you  want.   Eg,  adding  -b
       2020/1/1 to the above:

              $ hledger bal expenses --budget -b 2020/1/1
              Budget performance in 2020-01-01..2020-01-15:

                             || 2020-01-01..2020-01-15
              ===============++========================
               expenses:food ||     $400 [80% of $500]
              ---------------++------------------------
                             ||     $400 [80% of $500]

   Budgets and subaccounts
       You  can  add budgets to any account in your account hierarchy.  If you
       have budgets on both parent account and some of its children, then bud-
       get(s) of the child account(s) would be added to the  budget  of  their
       parent, much like account balances behave.

       In  the  most  simple case this means that once you add a budget to any
       account, all its parents would have budget as well.

       To illustrate this, consider the following budget:

              ~ monthly from 2019/01
                  expenses:personal             $1,000.00
                  expenses:personal:electronics    $100.00
                  liabilities

       With this, monthly budget for electronics is defined  to  be  $100  and
       budget  for  personal expenses is an additional $1000, which implicitly
       means that budget for both expenses:personal and expenses is $1100.

       Transactions in expenses:personal:electronics will be counted both  to-
       wards its $100 budget and $1100 of expenses:personal , and transactions
       in  any  other subaccount of expenses:personal would be counted towards
       only towards the budget of expenses:personal.

       For example, let's consider these transactions:

              ~ monthly from 2019/01
                  expenses:personal             $1,000.00
                  expenses:personal:electronics    $100.00
                  liabilities

              2019/01/01 Google home hub
                  expenses:personal:electronics          $90.00
                  liabilities                           $-90.00

              2019/01/02 Phone screen protector
                  expenses:personal:electronics:upgrades          $10.00
                  liabilities

              2019/01/02 Weekly train ticket
                  expenses:personal:train tickets       $153.00
                  liabilities

              2019/01/03 Flowers
                  expenses:personal          $30.00
                  liabilities

       As you can see, we  have  transactions  in  expenses:personal:electron-
       ics:upgrades  and  expenses:personal:train  tickets,  and since both of
       these accounts are without explicitly defined  budget,  these  transac-
       tions would be counted towards budgets of expenses:personal:electronics
       and expenses:personal accordingly:

              $ hledger balance --budget -M
              Budget performance in 2019/01:

                                             ||                           Jan
              ===============================++===============================
               expenses                      ||  $283.00 [  26% of  $1100.00]
               expenses:personal             ||  $283.00 [  26% of  $1100.00]
               expenses:personal:electronics ||  $100.00 [ 100% of   $100.00]
               liabilities                   || $-283.00 [  26% of $-1100.00]
              -------------------------------++-------------------------------
                                             ||        0 [                 0]

       And  with --empty, we can get a better picture of budget allocation and
       consumption:

              $ hledger balance --budget -M --empty
              Budget performance in 2019/01:

                                                      ||                           Jan
              ========================================++===============================
               expenses                               ||  $283.00 [  26% of  $1100.00]
               expenses:personal                      ||  $283.00 [  26% of  $1100.00]
               expenses:personal:electronics          ||  $100.00 [ 100% of   $100.00]
               expenses:personal:electronics:upgrades ||   $10.00
               expenses:personal:train tickets        ||  $153.00
               liabilities                            || $-283.00 [  26% of $-1100.00]
              ----------------------------------------++-------------------------------
                                                      ||        0 [                 0]

   Selecting budget goals
       The budget report evaluates periodic transaction rules to generate spe-
       cial "goal transactions", which generate the goal amounts for each  ac-
       count  in  each  report  subperiod.   When troubleshooting, you can use
       print --forecast to show these as forecasted transactions:

              $ hledger print --forecast=BUDGETREPORTPERIOD tag:generated

       By default, the budget report uses all available  periodic  transaction
       rules  to  generate goals.  This includes rules with a different report
       interval from your report.  Eg if you have daily,  weekly  and  monthly
       periodic  rules, all of these will contribute to the goals in a monthly
       budget report.

       You can select a subset of periodic rules by providing an  argument  to
       the  --budget  flag.   --budget=DESCPAT  will  match all periodic rules
       whose description contains DESCPAT, a case-insensitive substring (not a
       regular expression or query).  This means you can  give  your  periodic
       rules  descriptions (remember that two spaces are needed), and then se-
       lect from multiple budgets defined in your journal.

   Budget vs forecast
       hledger --forecast ... and hledger balance --budget  ...  are  separate
       features,  though  both  of them use the periodic transaction rules de-
       fined in the journal, and both of them generate temporary  transactions
       for reporting purposes ("forecast transactions" and "budget goal trans-
       actions", respectively).  You can use both features at the same time if
       you want.  Here are some differences between them, as of hledger 1.29:

       CLI:

       o --forecast is a general hledger option, usable with any command

       o --budget is a balance command option, usable only with that command.

       Visibility of generated transactions:

       o forecast transactions are visible in any report, like ordinary trans-
         actions

       o budget  goal  transactions  are invisible except for the goal amounts
         they produce in --budget reports.

       Periodic transaction rules:

       o --forecast uses all available periodic transaction rules

       o --budget uses all periodic rules  (--budget)  or  a  selected  subset
         (--budget=DESCPAT)

       Period of generated transactions:

       o --forecast generates forecast transactions

         o from  after  the  last regular transaction to the end of the report
           period (--forecast)

         o or, during a specified period (--forecast=PERIODEXPR)

         o possibly further restricted by a period specified in  the  periodic
           transaction rule

         o and always restricted within the bounds of the report period

       o --budget generates budget goal transactions

         o throughout the report period

         o possibly  restricted by a period specified in the periodic transac-
           tion rule.

   Balance report layout
       The --layout option affects how balance  reports  show  multi-commodity
       amounts  and  commodity symbols, which can improve readability.  It can
       also normalise the data for easy consumption by other programs.  It has
       four possible values:

       o --layout=wide[,WIDTH]: commodities are shown on a  single  line,  op-
         tionally elided to WIDTH

       o --layout=tall: each commodity is shown on a separate line

       o --layout=bare: commodity symbols are in their own column, amounts are
         bare numbers

       o --layout=tidy:  data  is  normalised  to easily-consumed "tidy" form,
         with one row per data value

       Here are the --layout modes supported by each output format; note  only
       CSV output supports all of them:

       -      txt   csv   html   json   sql
       -------------------------------------
       wide   Y     Y     Y
       tall   Y     Y     Y
       bare   Y     Y     Y
       tidy         Y

       Examples:

       o Wide layout.  With many commodities, reports can be very wide:

                $ hledger -f examples/bcexample.hledger bal assets:us:etrade -3 -T -Y --layout=wide
                Balance changes in 2012-01-01..2014-12-31:

                                  ||                                          2012                                                     2013                                             2014                                                      Total
                ==================++====================================================================================================================================================================================================================
                 Assets:US:ETrade || 10.00 ITOT, 337.18 USD, 12.00 VEA, 106.00 VHT  70.00 GLD, 18.00 ITOT, -98.12 USD, 10.00 VEA, 18.00 VHT  -11.00 ITOT, 4881.44 USD, 14.00 VEA, 170.00 VHT  70.00 GLD, 17.00 ITOT, 5120.50 USD, 36.00 VEA, 294.00 VHT
                ------------------++--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                  || 10.00 ITOT, 337.18 USD, 12.00 VEA, 106.00 VHT  70.00 GLD, 18.00 ITOT, -98.12 USD, 10.00 VEA, 18.00 VHT  -11.00 ITOT, 4881.44 USD, 14.00 VEA, 170.00 VHT  70.00 GLD, 17.00 ITOT, 5120.50 USD, 36.00 VEA, 294.00 VHT

       o Limited  wide layout.  A width limit reduces the width, but some com-
         modities will be hidden:

                $ hledger -f examples/bcexample.hledger bal assets:us:etrade -3 -T -Y --layout=wide,32
                Balance changes in 2012-01-01..2014-12-31:

                                  ||                             2012                             2013                   2014                            Total
                ==================++===========================================================================================================================
                 Assets:US:ETrade || 10.00 ITOT, 337.18 USD, 2 more..  70.00 GLD, 18.00 ITOT, 3 more..  -11.00 ITOT, 3 more..  70.00 GLD, 17.00 ITOT, 3 more..
                ------------------++---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                  || 10.00 ITOT, 337.18 USD, 2 more..  70.00 GLD, 18.00 ITOT, 3 more..  -11.00 ITOT, 3 more..  70.00 GLD, 17.00 ITOT, 3 more..

       o Tall layout.  Each commodity gets a new line  (may  be  different  in
         each column), and account names are repeated:

                $ hledger -f examples/bcexample.hledger bal assets:us:etrade -3 -T -Y --layout=tall
                Balance changes in 2012-01-01..2014-12-31:

                                  ||       2012        2013         2014        Total
                ==================++==================================================
                 Assets:US:ETrade || 10.00 ITOT   70.00 GLD  -11.00 ITOT    70.00 GLD
                 Assets:US:ETrade || 337.18 USD  18.00 ITOT  4881.44 USD   17.00 ITOT
                 Assets:US:ETrade ||  12.00 VEA  -98.12 USD    14.00 VEA  5120.50 USD
                 Assets:US:ETrade || 106.00 VHT   10.00 VEA   170.00 VHT    36.00 VEA
                 Assets:US:ETrade ||              18.00 VHT                294.00 VHT
                ------------------++--------------------------------------------------
                                  || 10.00 ITOT   70.00 GLD  -11.00 ITOT    70.00 GLD
                                  || 337.18 USD  18.00 ITOT  4881.44 USD   17.00 ITOT
                                  ||  12.00 VEA  -98.12 USD    14.00 VEA  5120.50 USD
                                  || 106.00 VHT   10.00 VEA   170.00 VHT    36.00 VEA
                                  ||              18.00 VHT                294.00 VHT

       o Bare  layout.  Commodity symbols are kept in one column, each commod-
         ity gets its own report row, account names are repeated:

                $ hledger -f examples/bcexample.hledger bal assets:us:etrade -3 -T -Y --layout=bare
                Balance changes in 2012-01-01..2014-12-31:

                                  || Commodity    2012    2013     2014    Total
                ==================++=============================================
                 Assets:US:ETrade || GLD             0   70.00        0    70.00
                 Assets:US:ETrade || ITOT        10.00   18.00   -11.00    17.00
                 Assets:US:ETrade || USD        337.18  -98.12  4881.44  5120.50
                 Assets:US:ETrade || VEA         12.00   10.00    14.00    36.00
                 Assets:US:ETrade || VHT        106.00   18.00   170.00   294.00
                ------------------++---------------------------------------------
                                  || GLD             0   70.00        0    70.00
                                  || ITOT        10.00   18.00   -11.00    17.00
                                  || USD        337.18  -98.12  4881.44  5120.50
                                  || VEA         12.00   10.00    14.00    36.00
                                  || VHT        106.00   18.00   170.00   294.00

       o Bare layout also affects CSV output, which is  useful  for  producing
         data that is easier to consume, eg for making charts:

                $ hledger -f examples/bcexample.hledger bal assets:us:etrade -3 -O csv --layout=bare
                "account","commodity","balance"
                "Assets:US:ETrade","GLD","70.00"
                "Assets:US:ETrade","ITOT","17.00"
                "Assets:US:ETrade","USD","5120.50"
                "Assets:US:ETrade","VEA","36.00"
                "Assets:US:ETrade","VHT","294.00"
                "total","GLD","70.00"
                "total","ITOT","17.00"
                "total","USD","5120.50"
                "total","VEA","36.00"
                "total","VHT","294.00"

       o Note: bare layout will sometimes display an extra row for the no-sym-
         bol commodity, because of zero amounts (hledger treats zeroes as com-
         modity-less,   usually).   This  can  break  hledger-bar  confusingly
         (workaround: add a cur: query to exclude the no-symbol row).

       o Tidy layout produces normalised "tidy data", where every variable has
         its own column and each row represents  a  single  data  point.   See
         https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/tidyr/vignettes/tidy-
         data.html for more.  This is the easiest kind of data for other soft-
         ware to consume.  Here's how it looks:

                $ hledger -f examples/bcexample.hledger bal assets:us:etrade -3 -Y -O csv --layout=tidy
                "account","period","start_date","end_date","commodity","value"
                "Assets:US:ETrade","2012","2012-01-01","2012-12-31","GLD","0"
                "Assets:US:ETrade","2012","2012-01-01","2012-12-31","ITOT","10.00"
                "Assets:US:ETrade","2012","2012-01-01","2012-12-31","USD","337.18"
                "Assets:US:ETrade","2012","2012-01-01","2012-12-31","VEA","12.00"
                "Assets:US:ETrade","2012","2012-01-01","2012-12-31","VHT","106.00"
                "Assets:US:ETrade","2013","2013-01-01","2013-12-31","GLD","70.00"
                "Assets:US:ETrade","2013","2013-01-01","2013-12-31","ITOT","18.00"
                "Assets:US:ETrade","2013","2013-01-01","2013-12-31","USD","-98.12"
                "Assets:US:ETrade","2013","2013-01-01","2013-12-31","VEA","10.00"
                "Assets:US:ETrade","2013","2013-01-01","2013-12-31","VHT","18.00"
                "Assets:US:ETrade","2014","2014-01-01","2014-12-31","GLD","0"
                "Assets:US:ETrade","2014","2014-01-01","2014-12-31","ITOT","-11.00"
                "Assets:US:ETrade","2014","2014-01-01","2014-12-31","USD","4881.44"
                "Assets:US:ETrade","2014","2014-01-01","2014-12-31","VEA","14.00"
                "Assets:US:ETrade","2014","2014-01-01","2014-12-31","VHT","170.00"

   Useful balance reports
       Some frequently used balance options/reports are:

       o bal -M revenues expenses
       Show  revenues/expenses  in each month.  Also available as the incomes-
       tatement command.

       o bal -M -H assets liabilities
       Show historical asset/liability  balances  at  each  month  end.   Also
       available as the balancesheet command.

       o bal -M -H assets liabilities equity
       Show  historical  asset/liability/equity  balances  at  each month end.
       Also available as the balancesheetequity command.

       o bal -M assets not:receivable
       Show changes to liquid assets in each month.   Also  available  as  the
       cashflow command.

       Also:

       o bal -M expenses -2 -SA
       Show  monthly  expenses  summarised  to  depth  2 and sorted by average
       amount.

       o bal -M --budget expenses
       Show monthly expenses and budget goals.

       o bal -M --valuechange investments
       Show monthly change in market value of investment assets.

       o bal  investments  --valuechange  -D  date:lastweek  amt:'>1000'  -STA
         [--invert]
       Show top gainers [or losers] last week

   balancesheet
       (bs)

       This  command  displays a balance sheet, showing historical ending bal-
       ances of asset and liability accounts.  (To see equity as well, use the
       balancesheetequity command.)  Amounts are shown  with  normal  positive
       sign, as in conventional financial statements.

       This  report  shows accounts declared with the Asset, Cash or Liability
       type (see account types).  Or if no  such  accounts  are  declared,  it
       shows  top-level  accounts  named asset or liability (case insensitive,
       plurals allowed) and their subaccounts.

       Example:

              $ hledger balancesheet
              Balance Sheet

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

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

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

       This command is a higher-level variant of the balance command, and sup-
       ports many of that command's features, such  as  multi-period  reports.
       It  is  similar  to  hledger  balance  -H  assets liabilities, but with
       smarter account detection, and liabilities displayed  with  their  sign
       flipped.

       This command also supports the output destination and output format op-
       tions The output formats supported are txt, csv, tsv, html, and (exper-
       imental) json.

   balancesheetequity
       (bse)

       This  command  displays a balance sheet, showing historical ending bal-
       ances of asset, liability and equity accounts.  Amounts are shown  with
       normal positive sign, as in conventional financial statements.

       This  report shows accounts declared with the Asset, Cash, Liability or
       Equity type (see account types).  Or if no such accounts are  declared,
       it  shows top-level accounts named asset, liability or equity (case in-
       sensitive, plurals allowed) and their subaccounts.

       Example:

              $ hledger balancesheetequity
              Balance Sheet With Equity

              Assets:
                               $-2  assets
                                $1    bank:saving
                               $-3    cash
              --------------------
                               $-2

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

              Equity:
                        $1  equity:owner
              --------------------
                        $1

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

       This command is a higher-level variant of the balance command, and sup-
       ports many of that command's features, such  as  multi-period  reports.
       It is similar to hledger balance -H assets liabilities equity, but with
       smarter  account detection, and liabilities/equity displayed with their
       sign flipped.

       This command also supports the output destination and output format op-
       tions The output formats supported are txt, csv, tsv, html, and (exper-
       imental) json.

   cashflow
       (cf)

       This command displays a cashflow statement,  showing  the  inflows  and
       outflows  affecting  "cash"  (ie,  liquid,  easily convertible) assets.
       Amounts are shown with normal positive sign, as in conventional  finan-
       cial statements.

       This  report  shows  accounts  declared with the Cash type (see account
       types).  Or if no such accounts are declared, it shows accounts

       o under a top-level account named asset (case insensitive,  plural  al-
         lowed)

       o whose name contains some variation of cash, bank, checking or saving.

       More precisely: all accounts matching this case insensitive regular ex-
       pression:

       ^assets?(:.+)?:(cash|bank|che(ck|que?)(ing)?|savings?|currentcash)(:|$)

       and their subaccounts.

       An example cashflow report:

              $ hledger cashflow
              Cashflow Statement

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

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

       This command is a higher-level variant of the balance command, and sup-
       ports  many  of  that command's features, such as multi-period reports.
       It is  similar  to  hledger  balance  assets  not:fixed  not:investment
       not:receivable, but with smarter account detection.

       This command also supports the output destination and output format op-
       tions The output formats supported are txt, csv, tsv, html, and (exper-
       imental) json.

   check
       Check for various kinds of errors in your data.

       hledger  provides  a  number  of  built-in error checks to help prevent
       problems in your data.  Some of these are run  automatically;  or,  you
       can  use this check command to run them on demand, with no output and a
       zero exit code if all is well.  Specify their names (or  a  prefix)  as
       argument(s).

       Some examples:

              hledger check      # basic checks
              hledger check -s   # basic + strict checks
              hledger check ordereddates payees  # basic + two other checks

       If  you  are  an Emacs user, you can also configure flycheck-hledger to
       run these checks, providing instant feedback as you edit the journal.

       Here are the checks currently available:

   Default checks
       These checks are run automatically by (almost) all hledger commands:

       o parseable - data files are in a supported format, with no syntax  er-
         rors and no invalid include directives.

       o autobalanced  -  all  transactions  are balanced, after converting to
         cost.  Missing amounts and missing costs are  inferred  automatically
         where possible.

       o assertions  -  all  balance  assertions  in  the journal are passing.
         (This check can be disabled with -I/--ignore-assertions.)

   Strict checks
       These additional checks are run when the -s/--strict (strict mode) flag
       is used.  Or, they can be run by giving their  names  as  arguments  to
       check:

       o balanced  -  all  transactions are balanced after converting to cost,
         without inferring missing costs.  If conversion costs  are  required,
         they must be explicit.

       o accounts - all account names used by transactions have been declared

       o commodities - all commodity symbols used have been declared

   Other checks
       These  checks  can  be  run  only by giving their names as arguments to
       check.  They are more specialised and not desirable for everyone:

       o ordereddates - transactions are ordered by date within each file

       o payees - all payees used by transactions have been declared

       o recentassertions - all accounts with balance assertions have  a  bal-
         ance assertion within 7 days of their latest posting

       o tags - all tags used by transactions have been declared

       o uniqueleafnames - all account leaf names are unique

   Custom checks
       A  few  more  checks  are are available as separate add-on commands, in
       https://github.com/simonmichael/hledger/tree/master/bin:

       o hledger-check-tagfiles - all  tag  values  containing  /  (a  forward
         slash) exist as file paths

       o hledger-check-fancyassertions  -  more complex balance assertions are
         passing

       You could make similar scripts to perform your own custom checks.  See:
       Cookbook -> Scripting.

   More about specific checks
       hledger check recentassertions will complain  if  any  balance-asserted
       account  has  postings more than 7 days after its latest balance asser-
       tion.  This aims to prevent the situation where you are  regularly  up-
       dating  your journal, but forgetting to check your balances against the
       real world, then one day must dig back through months of data  to  find
       an  error.  It assumes that adding a balance assertion requires/reminds
       you to check the real-world balance.  (That may  not  be  true  if  you
       auto-generate balance assertions from bank data; in that case, I recom-
       mend to import transactions uncleared, and when you manually review and
       clear them, also check the latest assertion against the real-world bal-
       ance.)

   close
       (equity)

       Generate  transactions  which  transfer account balances to and/or from
       another account (typically equity).  This can be useful  for  migrating
       balances  to a new journal file, or for merging earnings into equity at
       end of accounting period.

       By default, it prints a transaction that zeroes out ALE  accounts  (as-
       set, liability, equity accounts; this requires account types to be con-
       figured); or if ACCTQUERY is provided, the accounts matched by that.

       (experimental)

       This  command has four main modes, corresponding to the most common use
       cases:

       1. With --close (default), it prints a "closing  balances"  transaction
          that  zeroes  out ALE (asset, liability, equity) accounts by default
          (this requires account types to be inferred or  declared);  or,  the
          accounts matched by the provided ACCTQUERY arguments.

       2. With  --open,  it  prints an opposite "opening balances" transaction
          that restores those balances from zero.  This is similar to Ledger's
          equity command.

       3. With --migrate, it prints both the closing and opening transactions.
          This is the preferred way to migrate balances to  a  new  file:  run
          hledger  close  --migrate, add the closing transaction at the end of
          the old file, and add the opening transaction at the  start  of  the
          new  file.   The  matching  closing/opening transactions cancel each
          other out, preserving correct balances during multi-file reporting.

       4. With --retain, it prints a "retain earnings" transaction that trans-
          fers RX (revenue and expense) balances to equity:retained  earnings.
          Businesses  traditionally  do this at the end of each accounting pe-
          riod; it is less necessary with computer-based  accounting,  but  it
          could  still  be  useful  if you want to see the accounting equation
          (A=L+E) satisfied.

       In all modes, the defaults can be overridden:

       o the transaction descriptions can be  changed  with  --close-desc=DESC
         and --open-desc=DESC

       o the account to transfer to/from can be changed with --close-acct=ACCT
         and --open-acct=ACCT

       o the  accounts  to be closed/opened can be changed with ACCTQUERY (ac-
         count query arguments).

       o the closing/opening dates can be changed with -e DATE (a  report  end
         date)

       By  default  just one destination/source posting will be used, with its
       amount left implicit.  With --x/--explicit, the amount  will  be  shown
       explicitly, and if it involves multiple commodities, a separate posting
       will be generated for each of them (similar to print -x).

       With  --show-costs,  any amount costs are shown, with separate postings
       for each cost.  This is currently the best way to view investment lots.
       If you have many currency conversion or investment transactions, it can
       generate very large journal entries.

       With --interleaved, each individual transfer is shown with  source  and
       destination  postings  next  to  each  other.  This could be useful for
       troubleshooting.

       The default closing date is  yesterday,  or  the  journal's  end  date,
       whichever  is  later.   You  can change this by specifying a report end
       date with -e.  The last day of the report period will  be  the  closing
       date,  eg -e 2024 means "close on 2023-12-31".  The opening date is al-
       ways the day after the closing date.

   close and balance assertions
       Balance assertions will be generated, verifying that the accounts  have
       been  reset  to  zero (and then restored to their previous balances, if
       there is an opening transaction).

       These provide useful error checking, but you can ignore them  temporar-
       ily with -I, or remove them if you prefer.

       You  probably should avoid filtering transactions by status or realness
       (-C, -R, status:), or generating postings (--auto), with this  command,
       since the balance assertions would depend on these.

       Note  custom  posting dates spanning the file boundary will disrupt the
       balance assertions:

              2023-12-30 a purchase made in december, cleared in january
                  expenses:food          5
                  assets:bank:checking  -5  ; date: 2023-01-02

       To solve that you can transfer the money to and from  a  temporary  ac-
       count,  in  effect splitting the multi-day transaction into two single-
       day transactions:

              ; in 2022.journal:
              2022-12-30 a purchase made in december, cleared in january
                  expenses:food          5
                  equity:pending        -5

              ; in 2023.journal:
              2023-01-02 last year's transaction cleared
                  equity:pending         5 = 0
                  assets:bank:checking  -5

   Example: retain earnings
       Record 2022's revenues/expenses as retained earnings on 2022-12-31, ap-
       pending the generated transaction to the journal:

              $ hledger close --retain -f 2022.journal -p 2022 >> 2022.journal

       Note 2022's income statement will now show only  zeroes,  because  rev-
       enues  and  expenses  have  been moved entirely to equity.  To see them
       again, you could exclude the retain transaction:

              $ hledger -f 2022.journal is not:desc:'retain earnings'

   Example: migrate balances to a new file
       Close assets/liabilities/equity  on  2022-12-31  and  re-open  them  on
       2023-01-01:

              $ hledger close --migrate -f 2022.journal -p 2022
              # copy/paste the closing transaction to the end of 2022.journal
              # copy/paste the opening transaction to the start of 2023.journal

       Now  2022's  balance sheet will show only zeroes, indicating a balanced
       accounting equation.  (Unless you are using @/@@  notation  -  in  that
       case,  try  adding  --infer-equity.)   To  see the end-of-year balances
       again, you could exclude the closing transaction:

              $ hledger -f 2022.journal bs not:desc:'closing balances'

   Example: excluding closing/opening transactions
       When combining many files for multi-year reports,  the  closing/opening
       transactions  cause  some  noise  in  transaction-oriented reports like
       print  and  register.   You  can  exclude  them  as  shown  above,  but
       not:desc:...  is  not  ideal  as it depends on consistent descriptions;
       also you will want to avoid excluding the very first  opening  transac-
       tion, which could be awkward.  Here is one alternative, using tags:

       Add  clopen:  tags  to all opening/closing balances transactions except
       the first, like this:

              ; 2021.journal
              2021-06-01 first opening balances
              ...
              2021-12-31 closing balances  ; clopen:2022
              ...

              ; 2022.journal
              2022-01-01 opening balances  ; clopen:2022
              ...
              2022-12-31 closing balances  ; clopen:2023
              ...

              ; 2023.journal
              2023-01-01 opening balances  ; clopen:2023
              ...

       Now, assuming a combined journal like:

              ; all.journal
              include 2021.journal
              include 2022.journal
              include 2023.journal

       The clopen: tag can exclude all but the first opening transaction.   To
       show a clean multi-year checking register:

              $ hledger -f all.journal areg checking not:tag:clopen

       And the year values allow more precision.  To show 2022's year-end bal-
       ance sheet:

              $ hledger -f all.journal bs -e2023 not:tag:clopen=2023

   codes
       List the codes seen in transactions, in the order parsed.

       This  command prints the value of each transaction's code field, in the
       order transactions were parsed.  The transaction code  is  an  optional
       value  written  in  parentheses between the date and description, often
       used to store a cheque number, order number or similar.

       Transactions aren't required to have a code, and missing or empty codes
       will not be shown by default.  With the -E/--empty flag, they  will  be
       printed as blank lines.

       You can add a query to select a subset of transactions.

       Examples:

              2022/1/1 (123) Supermarket
               Food       $5.00
               Checking

              2022/1/2 (124) Post Office
               Postage    $8.32
               Checking

              2022/1/3 Supermarket
               Food      $11.23
               Checking

              2022/1/4 (126) Post Office
               Postage    $3.21
               Checking

              $ hledger codes
              123
              124
              126

              $ hledger codes -E
              123
              124

              126

   commodities
       List all commodity/currency symbols used or declared in the journal.

   demo
       Play demos of hledger usage in the terminal, if asciinema is installed.

       Run  this  command with no argument to list the demos.  To play a demo,
       write its number or a prefix or substring of its title.  Tips:

       Make your terminal window large enough to see the demo clearly.

       Use the -s/--speed SPEED option to set your preferred  playback  speed,
       eg -s4 to play at 4x original speed or -s.5 to play at half speed.  The
       default speed is 2x.

       Other  asciinema  options  can  be added following a double dash, eg --
       -i.1 to limit pauses or -- -h to list asciinema's other options.

       During playback, several keys are available: SPACE to pause/unpause,  .
       to step forward (while paused), CTRL-c quit.

       Examples:

              $ hledger demo               # list available demos
              $ hledger demo 1             # play the first demo at default speed (2x)
              $ hledger demo install -s4   # play the "install" demo at 4x speed

   descriptions
       List the unique descriptions that appear in transactions.

       This command lists the unique descriptions that appear in transactions,
       in  alphabetic order.  You can add a query to select a subset of trans-
       actions.

       Example:

              $ hledger descriptions
              Store Name
              Gas Station | Petrol
              Person A

   diff
       Compares a particular account's transactions in two  input  files.   It
       shows any transactions to this account which are in one file but not in
       the other.

       More precisely, for each posting affecting this account in either file,
       it  looks for a corresponding posting in the other file which posts the
       same amount to the same  account  (ignoring  date,  description,  etc.)
       Since postings not transactions are compared, this also works when mul-
       tiple bank transactions have been combined into a single journal entry.

       This is useful eg if you have downloaded an account's transactions from
       your  bank (eg as CSV data).  When hledger and your bank disagree about
       the account balance, you can compare the bank data with your journal to
       find out the cause.

       Examples:

              $ hledger diff -f $LEDGER_FILE -f bank.csv assets:bank:giro
              These transactions are in the first file only:

              2014/01/01 Opening Balances
                  assets:bank:giro              EUR ...
                  ...
                  equity:opening balances       EUR -...

              These transactions are in the second file only:

   files
       List all files included in the journal.  With a  REGEX  argument,  only
       file names matching the regular expression (case sensitive) are shown.

   help
       Show  the  hledger  user  manual  in the terminal, with info, man, or a
       pager.  With a TOPIC argument, open  it  at  that  topic  if  possible.
       TOPIC  can  be any heading in the manual, or a heading prefix, case in-
       sensitive.  Eg: commands, print, forecast, journal, amount, "auto post-
       ings".

       This command shows the hledger manual built in to your hledger version.
       It can be useful when offline, or when you prefer the terminal to a web
       browser, or when the appropriate hledger manual or  viewing  tools  are
       not installed on your system.

       By  default  it chooses the best viewer found in $PATH, trying (in this
       order): info, man, $PAGER, less, more.  You can force the use of  info,
       man,  or  a  pager  with  the  -i, -m, or -p flags, If no viewer can be
       found, or the command is run non-interactively, it just prints the man-
       ual to stdout.

       If using info, note that version 6  or  greater  is  needed  for  TOPIC
       lookup.   If  you  are on mac you will likely have info 4.8, and should
       consider installing a newer  version,  eg  with  brew  install  texinfo
       (#1770).

       Examples

              $ hledger help --help      # show how the help command works
              $ hledger help             # show the hledger manual with info, man or $PAGER
              $ hledger help journal     # show the journal topic in the hledger manual
              $ hledger help -m journal  # show it with man, even if info is installed

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

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

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

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

   Deduplication
       import  does  time-based deduplication, to detect only the new transac-
       tions since the last successful import.  (This does  not  mean  "ignore
       transactions  that look the same", but rather "ignore transactions that
       have been seen before".)  This is intended for when  you  are  periodi-
       cally  importing downloaded data, which may overlap with previous down-
       loads.  Eg if every week (or every day)  you  download  a  bank's  last
       three months of CSV data, you can safely run hledger import thebank.csv
       each time and only new transactions will be imported.

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

       1. new items always have the newest dates

       2. item dates do not change across reads

       3. and  items  with  the  same  date  remain in the same relative order
          across reads.

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

       hledger  remembers the latest date processed in each input file by sav-
       ing a hidden ".latest.FILE" file in FILE's directory (after a succesful
       import).

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

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

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

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

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

       or (live updating):

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

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

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

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

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

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

   incomestatement
       (is)

       This  command  displays  an  income statement, showing revenues and ex-
       penses during one or more periods.  Amounts are shown with normal posi-
       tive sign, as in conventional financial statements.

       This report shows accounts declared with the Revenue  or  Expense  type
       (see  account  types).   Or  if no such accounts are declared, it shows
       top-level accounts named revenue or income or  expense  (case  insensi-
       tive, plurals allowed) and their subaccounts.

       Example:

              $ hledger incomestatement
              Income Statement

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

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

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

       This command is a higher-level variant of the balance command, and sup-
       ports  many  of  that command's features, such as multi-period reports.
       It is similar to hledger balance '(revenues|income)' expenses, but with
       smarter account detection, and  revenues/income  displayed  with  their
       sign flipped.

       This command also supports the output destination and output format op-
       tions The output formats supported are txt, csv, tsv, html, and (exper-
       imental) json.

   notes
       List the unique notes that appear in transactions.

       This command lists the unique notes that appear in transactions, in al-
       phabetic  order.   You  can  add a query to select a subset of transac-
       tions.  The note is the part of the transaction description after  a  |
       character (or if there is no |, the whole description).

       Example:

              $ hledger notes
              Petrol
              Snacks

   payees
       List the unique payee/payer names that appear in transactions.

       This  command  lists  unique payee/payer names which have been declared
       with payee directives (--declared), used  in  transaction  descriptions
       (--used), or both (the default).

       The  payee/payer  is the part of the transaction description before a |
       character (or if there is no |, the whole description).

       You can add query arguments to select a subset of  transactions.   This
       implies --used.

       Example:

              $ hledger payees
              Store Name
              Gas Station
              Person A

   prices
       Print  the market prices declared with P directives.  With --infer-mar-
       ket-prices, also show any additional prices inferred from costs.   With
       --show-reverse, also show additional prices inferred by reversing known
       prices.

       Price  amounts  are  always displayed with their full precision, except
       for reverse prices which are limited to 8 decimal digits.

       Prices can be filtered by a date:, cur: or amt: query.

       Generally if you run this command with --infer-market-prices --show-re-
       verse, it will show the same prices used internally to calculate  value
       reports.   But  if  in doubt, you can inspect those directly by running
       the value report with --debug=2.

   print
       Show transaction journal entries, sorted by date.

       The print command displays full journal entries (transactions) from the
       journal file, sorted by date (or with --date2, by secondary date).

       Directives and inter-transaction comments  are  not  shown,  currently.
       This means the print command is somewhat lossy, and if you are using it
       to  reformat/regenerate  your journal you should take care to also copy
       over the directives and inter-transaction comments.

       Eg:

              $ hledger print -f examples/sample.journal date:200806
              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

   print explicitness
       Normally, whether posting amounts are  implicit  or  explicit  is  pre-
       served.  For example, when an amount is omitted in the journal, it will
       not  appear  in the output.  Similarly, if a conversion cost is implied
       but not written, it will not appear in the output.

       You can use the -x/--explicit flag to force  explicit  display  of  all
       amounts  and costs.  This can be useful for troubleshooting or for mak-
       ing your journal more readable and robust against  data  entry  errors.
       -x is also implied by using any of -B,-V,-X,--value.

       The  -x/--explicit  flag will cause any postings with a multi-commodity
       amount (which can arise when a multi-commodity transaction has  an  im-
       plicit  amount)  to  be  split into multiple single-commodity postings,
       keeping the output parseable.

   print amount style
       Amounts are  shown  right-aligned  within  each  transaction  (but  not
       aligned  across  all  transactions; you can do that with ledger-mode in
       Emacs).

       Amounts will be (mostly) normalised to their commodity  display  style:
       their  symbol  placement,  decimal  mark, and digit group marks will be
       made consistent.  By default, decimal digits  are  shown  as  they  are
       written in the journal.

       With  the  --round  option, print will try increasingly hard to display
       decimal digits according to the commodity display styles:

       o --round=none show amounts with original precisions (default)

       o --round=soft add/remove decimal zeros in amounts (except costs)

       o --round=hard round amounts (except costs), possibly  hiding  signifi-
         cant digits

       o --round=all round all amounts and costs

       soft  is  good  for  non-lossy cleanup, formatting amounts more consis-
       tently where it's safe to do so.

       hard and all can cause print to show  invalid  unbalanced  journal  en-
       tries;  they  may be useful eg for stronger cleanup, with manual fixups
       when needed.

   print parseability
       print's output is usually a valid hledger journal, and you can  process
       it again with a second hledger command.  This can be useful for certain
       kinds  of  search  (though  the same can be achieved with expr: queries
       now):

              # Show running total of food expenses paid from cash.
              # -f- reads from stdin. -I/--ignore-assertions is sometimes needed.
              $ hledger print assets:cash | hledger -f- -I reg expenses:food

       There are some situations where print's output can become unparseable:

       o Value reporting affects posting amounts but not balance assertion  or
         balance assignment amounts, potentially causing those to fail.

       o Auto postings can generate postings with too many missing amounts.

       o Account aliases can generate bad account names.

   print, other features
       With -B/--cost, amounts with costs are shown converted to cost.

       With --new, print shows only transactions it has not seen on a previous
       run.   This  uses  the same deduplication system as the import command.
       (See import's docs for details.)

       With -m DESC/--match=DESC, print shows one recent transaction whose de-
       scription is most similar to DESC.  DESC should contain  at  least  two
       characters.   If  there is no similar-enough match, no transaction will
       be shown and the program exit code will be non-zero.

   print output format
       This command also supports the output destination and output format op-
       tions The output formats supported are txt, beancount, csv,  tsv,  json
       and sql.

       Experimental:  The beancount format tries to produce Beancount-compati-
       ble output, as follows:

       o Transaction and  postings  with  unmarked  status  are  converted  to
         cleared (*) status.

       o Transactions'  payee and note are backslash-escaped and double-quote-
         escaped and wrapped in double quotes.

       o Transaction tags are copied to Beancount #tag format.

       o Commodity symbols are converted to upper case, and a small number  of
         currency  symbols  like $ are converted to the corresponding currency
         names.

       o Account name parts are capitalised and unsupported characters are re-
         placed with -.  If an account name part does not begin with a letter,
         or if the first part is not Assets, Liabilities, Equity,  Income,  or
         Expenses, an error is raised.  (Use --alias options to bring your ac-
         counts into compliance.)

       o An open directive is generated for each account used, on the earliest
         transaction date.

       Some limitations:

       o Balance assertions are removed.

       o Balance assignments become missing amounts.

       o Virtual and balanced virtual postings become regular postings.

       o Directives are not converted.

       Here's an example of print's CSV output:

              $ hledger print -Ocsv
              "txnidx","date","date2","status","code","description","comment","account","amount","commodity","credit","debit","posting-status","posting-comment"
              "1","2008/01/01","","","","income","","assets:bank:checking","1","$","","1","",""
              "1","2008/01/01","","","","income","","income:salary","-1","$","1","","",""
              "2","2008/06/01","","","","gift","","assets:bank:checking","1","$","","1","",""
              "2","2008/06/01","","","","gift","","income:gifts","-1","$","1","","",""
              "3","2008/06/02","","","","save","","assets:bank:saving","1","$","","1","",""
              "3","2008/06/02","","","","save","","assets:bank:checking","-1","$","1","","",""
              "4","2008/06/03","","*","","eat & shop","","expenses:food","1","$","","1","",""
              "4","2008/06/03","","*","","eat & shop","","expenses:supplies","1","$","","1","",""
              "4","2008/06/03","","*","","eat & shop","","assets:cash","-2","$","2","","",""
              "5","2008/12/31","","*","","pay off","","liabilities:debts","1","$","","1","",""
              "5","2008/12/31","","*","","pay off","","assets:bank:checking","-1","$","1","","",""

       o There  is  one  CSV record per posting, with the parent transaction's
         fields repeated.

       o The "txnidx" (transaction index) field shows which postings belong to
         the same transaction.  (This number might change if transactions  are
         reordered  within  the file, files are parsed/included in a different
         order, etc.)

       o The amount is separated into "commodity" (the  symbol)  and  "amount"
         (numeric quantity) fields.

       o The numeric amount is repeated in either the "credit" or "debit" col-
         umn,  for convenience.  (Those names are not accurate in the account-
         ing sense; it just puts negative amounts under  credit  and  zero  or
         greater amounts under debit.)

   register
       (reg)

       Show postings and their running total.

       The register command displays matched postings, across all accounts, in
       date  order,  with  their  running total or running historical balance.
       (See also the aregister command, which shows matched transactions in  a
       specific account.)

       register normally shows line per posting, but note that multi-commodity
       amounts will occupy multiple lines (one line per commodity).

       It  is  typically  used with a query selecting a particular account, to
       see that account's activity:

              $ hledger register checking
              2008/01/01 income               assets:bank:checking            $1           $1
              2008/06/01 gift                 assets:bank:checking            $1           $2
              2008/06/02 save                 assets:bank:checking           $-1           $1
              2008/12/31 pay off              assets:bank:checking           $-1            0

       With --date2, it shows and sorts by secondary date instead.

       For performance reasons, column widths are chosen based  on  the  first
       1000  lines;  this means unusually wide values in later lines can cause
       visual discontinuities as column widths are adjusted.  If you  want  to
       ensure  perfect alignment, at the cost of more time and memory, use the
       --align-all flag.

       The --historical/-H flag adds the balance from  any  undisplayed  prior
       postings  to  the  running  total.  This is useful when you want to see
       only recent activity, with a historically accurate running balance:

              $ hledger register checking -b 2008/6 --historical
              2008/06/01 gift                 assets:bank:checking            $1           $2
              2008/06/02 save                 assets:bank:checking           $-1           $1
              2008/12/31 pay off              assets:bank:checking           $-1            0

       The --depth option limits the amount of sub-account detail displayed.

       The --average/-A flag shows the running average posting amount  instead
       of the running total (so, the final number displayed is the average for
       the  whole  report period).  This flag implies --empty (see below).  It
       is affected by --historical.  It works best when showing just  one  ac-
       count and one commodity.

       The  --related/-r  flag shows the other postings in the transactions of
       the postings which would normally be shown.

       The --invert flag negates all amounts.  For example, it can be used  on
       an income account where amounts are normally displayed as negative num-
       bers.   It's  also  useful to show postings on the checking account to-
       gether with the related account:

              $ hledger register --related --invert assets:checking

       With a reporting interval, register shows summary postings, one per in-
       terval, 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 op-
       tion 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 in-
       tervals.  This ensures that the  first  and  last  intervals  are  full
       length and comparable to the others in the report.

       With  -m DESC/--match=DESC, register does a fuzzy search for one recent
       posting whose description is most similar to DESC.  DESC should contain
       at least two characters.  If there is no similar-enough match, no post-
       ing will be shown and the program exit code will be non-zero.

   Custom register output
       register uses the full terminal width by default,  except  on  windows.
       You  can override this by setting the COLUMNS environment variable (not
       a bash shell variable) or by using the --width/-w option.

       The description and account columns normally share  the  space  equally
       (about half of (width - 40) each).  You can adjust this by adding a de-
       scription width as part of --width's argument, comma-separated: --width
       W,D .  Here's a diagram (won't display correctly in --help):

              <--------------------------------- width (W) ---------------------------------->
              date (10)  description (D)       account (W-41-D)     amount (12)   balance (12)
              DDDDDDDDDD dddddddddddddddddddd  aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa  AAAAAAAAAAAA  AAAAAAAAAAAA

       and some examples:

              $ hledger reg                     # use terminal width (or 80 on windows)
              $ hledger reg -w 100              # use width 100
              $ COLUMNS=100 hledger reg         # set with one-time environment variable
              $ export COLUMNS=100; hledger reg # set till session end (or window resize)
              $ hledger reg -w 100,40           # set overall width 100, description width 40
              $ hledger reg -w $COLUMNS,40      # use terminal width, & description width 40

       This command also supports the output destination and output format op-
       tions  The  output formats supported are txt, csv, tsv, and (experimen-
       tal) json.

   rewrite
       Print all transactions, rewriting the postings of matched transactions.
       For now the only rewrite available is adding new postings,  like  print
       --auto.

       This is a start at a generic rewriter of transaction entries.  It reads
       the  default  journal and prints the transactions, like print, but adds
       one or more specified postings to any transactions matching QUERY.  The
       posting amounts can be fixed, or a multiplier of the existing  transac-
       tion's first posting amount.

       Examples:

              $ hledger-rewrite.hs ^income --add-posting '(liabilities:tax)  *.33  ; income tax' --add-posting '(reserve:gifts)  $100'
              $ hledger-rewrite.hs expenses:gifts --add-posting '(reserve:gifts)  *-1"'
              $ hledger-rewrite.hs -f rewrites.hledger

       rewrites.hledger may consist of entries like:

              = ^income amt:<0 date:2017
                (liabilities:tax)  *0.33  ; tax on income
                (reserve:grocery)  *0.25  ; reserve 25% for grocery
                (reserve:)  *0.25  ; reserve 25% for grocery

       Note  the  single  quotes to protect the dollar sign from bash, and the
       two spaces between account and amount.

       More:

              $ hledger rewrite -- [QUERY]        --add-posting "ACCT  AMTEXPR" ...
              $ hledger rewrite -- ^income        --add-posting '(liabilities:tax)  *.33'
              $ hledger rewrite -- expenses:gifts --add-posting '(budget:gifts)  *-1"'
              $ hledger rewrite -- ^income        --add-posting '(budget:foreign currency)  *0.25 JPY; diversify'

       Argument for --add-posting option is a  usual  posting  of  transaction
       with  an  exception  for amount specification.  More precisely, you can
       use '*' (star symbol) before the amount to indicate that that this is a
       factor for an amount of original matched posting.  If  the  amount  in-
       cludes a commodity name, the new posting amount will be in the new com-
       modity;  otherwise,  it will be in the matched posting amount's commod-
       ity.

   Re-write rules in a file
       During the run this tool will execute  so  called  "Automated  Transac-
       tions" found in any journal it process.  I.e instead of specifying this
       operations in command line you can put them in a journal file.

              $ rewrite-rules.journal

       Make contents look like this:

              = ^income
                  (liabilities:tax)  *.33

              = expenses:gifts
                  budget:gifts  *-1
                  assets:budget  *1

       Note  that '=' (equality symbol) that is used instead of date in trans-
       actions you usually write.  It indicates the query by which you want to
       match the posting to add new ones.

              $ hledger rewrite -- -f input.journal -f rewrite-rules.journal > rewritten-tidy-output.journal

       This is something similar to the commands pipeline:

              $ hledger rewrite -- -f input.journal '^income' --add-posting '(liabilities:tax)  *.33' \
                | hledger rewrite -- -f - expenses:gifts      --add-posting 'budget:gifts  *-1'       \
                                                              --add-posting 'assets:budget  *1'       \
                > rewritten-tidy-output.journal

       It is important to understand that relative order of  such  entries  in
       journal  is important.  You can re-use result of previously added post-
       ings.

   Diff output format
       To use this tool for batch modification of your journal files  you  may
       find useful output in form of unified diff.

              $ hledger rewrite -- --diff -f examples/sample.journal '^income' --add-posting '(liabilities:tax)  *.33'

       Output might look like:

              --- /tmp/examples/sample.journal
              +++ /tmp/examples/sample.journal
              @@ -18,3 +18,4 @@
               2008/01/01 income
              -    assets:bank:checking  $1
              +    assets:bank:checking            $1
                   income:salary
              +    (liabilities:tax)                0
              @@ -22,3 +23,4 @@
               2008/06/01 gift
              -    assets:bank:checking  $1
              +    assets:bank:checking            $1
                   income:gifts
              +    (liabilities:tax)                0

       If you'll pass this through patch tool you'll get transactions contain-
       ing the posting that matches your query be updated.  Note that multiple
       files  might  be  update according to list of input files specified via
       --file options and include directives inside of these files.

       Be careful.  Whole transaction being re-formatted in a style of  output
       from hledger print.

       See also:

       https://github.com/simonmichael/hledger/issues/99

   rewrite vs. print --auto
       This  command  predates  print --auto, and currently does much the same
       thing, but with these differences:

       o with multiple files, rewrite lets rules in any file affect all  other
         files.   print  --auto  uses standard directive scoping; rules affect
         only child files.

       o rewrite's query limits which transactions can be rewritten;  all  are
         printed.  print --auto's query limits which transactions are printed.

       o rewrite  applies  rules  specified on command line or in the journal.
         print --auto applies rules specified in the journal.

   roi
       Shows the time-weighted (TWR) and money-weighted (IRR) rate  of  return
       on your investments.

       At  a  minimum,  you need to supply a query (which could be just an ac-
       count name) to select your investment(s) with --inv, and another  query
       to identify your profit and loss transactions with --pnl.

       If  you do not record changes in the value of your investment manually,
       or do not require computation  of  time-weighted  return  (TWR),  --pnl
       could be an empty query (--pnl "" or --pnl STR where STR does not match
       any of your accounts).

       This  command  will compute and display the internalized rate of return
       (IRR, also known as money-weighted rate of  return)  and  time-weighted
       rate  of  return  (TWR)  for  your  investments for the time period re-
       quested.  IRR is always annualized due to the way it is  computed,  but
       TWR  is reported both as a rate over the chosen reporting period and as
       an annual rate.

       Price directives will be taken into account if you  supply  appropriate
       --cost or --value flags (see VALUATION).

       Note, in some cases this report can fail, for these reasons:

       o Error  (NotBracketed): No solution for Internal Rate of Return (IRR).
         Possible causes: IRR is huge (>1000000%), balance of  investment  be-
         comes negative at some point in time.

       o Error  (SearchFailed):  Failed  to find solution for Internal Rate of
         Return (IRR).  Either search does not converge to a solution, or con-
         verges too slowly.

       Examples:

       o Using  roi  to  compute  total  return  of  investment   in   stocks:
         https://github.com/simonmichael/hledger/blob/master/examples/invest-
         ing/roi-unrealised.ledger

       o Cookbook > Return on Investment: https://hledger.org/roi.html

   Spaces and special characters in --inv and --pnl
       Note that --inv and --pnl's argument is a query, and queries could have
       several space-separated terms (see QUERIES).

       To  indicate  that  all search terms form single command-line argument,
       you will need to put them in quotes (see Special characters):

              $ hledger roi --inv 'term1 term2 term3 ...'

       If any query terms contain spaces themselves, you will  need  an  extra
       level of nested quoting, eg:

              $ hledger roi --inv="'Assets:Test 1'" --pnl="'Equity:Unrealized Profit and Loss'"

   Semantics of --inv and --pnl
       Query  supplied to --inv has to match all transactions that are related
       to your investment.  Transactions not matching --inv will be ignored.

       In these transactions, ROI will conside postings that match --inv to be
       "investment postings" and other postings (not matching --inv)  will  be
       sorted  into  two categories: "cash flow" and "profit and loss", as ROI
       needs to know which part of the investment value is your  contributions
       and which is due to the return on investment.

       o "Cash flow" is depositing or withdrawing money, buying or selling as-
         sets,  or  otherwise converting between your investment commodity and
         any other commodity.  Example:

                2019-01-01 Investing in Snake Oil
                  assets:cash          -$100
                  investment:snake oil

                2020-01-01 Selling my Snake Oil
                  assets:cash           $10
                  investment:snake oil  = 0

       o "Profit and loss" is change in the value of your investment:

                2019-06-01 Snake Oil falls in value
                  investment:snake oil  = $57
                  equity:unrealized profit or loss

       All non-investment postings are assumed to be "cash flow", unless  they
       match  --pnl query.  Changes in value of your investment due to "profit
       and loss" postings will be considered as part of  your  investment  re-
       turn.

       Example:  if you use --inv snake --pnl equity:unrealized, then postings
       in the example below would be classifed as:

              2019-01-01 Snake Oil #1
                assets:cash          -$100   ; cash flow posting
                investment:snake oil         ; investment posting

              2019-03-01 Snake Oil #2
                equity:unrealized pnl  -$100 ; profit and loss posting
                snake oil                    ; investment posting

              2019-07-01 Snake Oil #3
                equity:unrealized pnl        ; profit and loss posting
                cash          -$100          ; cash flow posting
                snake oil     $50            ; investment posting

   IRR and TWR explained
       "ROI" stands for "return on investment".  Traditionally this  was  com-
       puted  as a difference between current value of investment and its ini-
       tial value, expressed in percentage of the initial value.

       However, this approach is only practical in simple cases, where invest-
       ments receives no in-flows or out-flows of money,  and  where  rate  of
       growth is fixed over time.  For more complex scenarios you need differ-
       ent  ways to compute rate of return, and this command implements two of
       them: IRR and TWR.

       Internal rate of return, or "IRR" (also called "money-weighted rate  of
       return")  takes into account effects of in-flows and out-flows, and the
       time between them.  Investment at a particular fixed interest  rate  is
       going  to  give  you more interest than the same amount invested at the
       same interest rate, but made later in time.   If  you  are  withdrawing
       from  your  investment, your future gains would be smaller (in absolute
       numbers), and will be a smaller percentage of your initial  investment,
       so your IRR will be smaller.  And if you are adding to your investment,
       you will receive bigger absolute gains, which will be a bigger percent-
       age of your initial investment, so your IRR will be larger.

       As  mentioned before, in-flows and out-flows would be any cash that you
       personally put in or withdraw, and for the "roi" command, these are the
       postings that match the query in the--inv argument and  NOT  match  the
       query in the--pnl argument.

       If  you  manually  record  changes  in  the value of your investment as
       transactions that balance them against "profit and loss"  (or  "unreal-
       ized  gains") account or use price directives, then in order for IRR to
       compute the precise effect of your in-flows and out-flows on  the  rate
       of  return, you will need to record the value of your investement on or
       close to the days when in- or out-flows occur.

       In technical terms, IRR uses the same approach as  computation  of  net
       present value, and tries to find a discount rate that makes net present
       value of all the cash flows of your investment to add up to zero.  This
       could  be hard to wrap your head around, especially if you haven't done
       discounted cash flow analysis before.  Implementation of IRR in hledger
       should produce results that match the =XIRR formula in Excel.

       Second way to compute rate of return that  roi  command  implements  is
       called  "time-weighted rate of return" or "TWR".  Like IRR, it will ac-
       count for the effect of your in-flows and out-flows, but unlike IRR  it
       will  try  to  compute the true rate of return of the underlying asset,
       compensating for the effect that deposits and withdrawas  have  on  the
       apparent rate of growth of your investment.

       TWR  represents  your  investment as an imaginary "unit fund" where in-
       flows/ out-flows lead to buying or selling "units" of  your  investment
       and changes in its value change the value of "investment unit".  Change
       in  "unit  price" over the reporting period gives you rate of return of
       your investment, and make TWR less sensitive than IRR to the effects of
       cash in-flows and out-flows.

       References:

       o Explanation of rate of return

       o Explanation of IRR

       o Explanation of TWR

       o IRR vs TWR

       o Examples of computing IRR and TWR and discussion of  the  limitations
         of both metrics

   stats
       Show journal and performance statistics.

       The  stats  command displays summary information for the whole journal,
       or a matched part of it.  With a reporting interval, it shows a  report
       for each report period.

       At  the end, it shows (in the terminal) the overall run time and number
       of transactions processed per second.  Note these are  approximate  and
       will  vary  based on machine, current load, data size, hledger version,
       haskell lib versions, GHC version..  but they may be of interest.   The
       stats  command's run time is similar to that of a single-column balance
       report.

       Example:

              $ hledger stats -f examples/1000x1000x10.journal
              Main file                : /Users/simon/src/hledger/examples/1000x1000x10.journal
              Included files           :
              Transactions span        : 2000-01-01 to 2002-09-27 (1000 days)
              Last transaction         : 2002-09-26 (6995 days ago)
              Transactions             : 1000 (1.0 per day)
              Transactions last 30 days: 0 (0.0 per day)
              Transactions last 7 days : 0 (0.0 per day)
              Payees/descriptions      : 1000
              Accounts                 : 1000 (depth 10)
              Commodities              : 26 (A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, X, Y, Z)
              Market prices            : 1000 (A)

              Run time                 : 0.12 s
              Throughput               : 8342 txns/s

       This command supports the -o/--output-file option (but not -O/--output-
       format selection).

   tags
       List the tags used in the journal, or their values.

       This command lists the tag names used in the journal, whether on trans-
       actions, postings, or account declarations.

       With a TAGREGEX argument, only tag names matching this regular  expres-
       sion (case insensitive, infix matched) are shown.

       With  QUERY  arguments,  only  transactions  and accounts matching this
       query are considered.  If the query involves transaction fields (date:,
       desc:, amt:, ...), the search is restricted to the matched transactions
       and their accounts.

       With the --values flag, the tags' unique non-empty  values  are  listed
       instead.  With -E/--empty, blank/empty values are also shown.

       With  --parsed, tags or values are shown in the order they were parsed,
       with duplicates included.  (Except, tags from account declarations  are
       always shown first.)

       Tip:  remember, accounts also acquire tags from their parents, postings
       also acquire tags from their account and transaction, transactions also
       acquire tags from their postings.

   test
       Run built-in unit tests.

       This command runs the unit tests built in to hledger  and  hledger-lib,
       printing  the results on stdout.  If any test fails, the exit code will
       be non-zero.

       This is mainly used by hledger developers, but you can also use  it  to
       sanity-check  the  installed  hledger executable on your platform.  All
       tests are expected to pass - if you ever see a failure,  please  report
       as a bug!

       This command also accepts tasty test runner options, written after a --
       (double hyphen).  Eg to run only the tests in Hledger.Data.Amount, with
       ANSI colour codes disabled:

              $ hledger test -- -pData.Amount --color=never

       For  help  on these, see https://github.com/feuerbach/tasty#options (--
       --help currently doesn't show them).

PART 5: COMMON TASKS
       Here are some quick examples  of  how  to  do  some  basic  tasks  with
       hledger.

   Getting help
       Here's how to list commands and view options and command docs:

              $ hledger                # show available commands
              $ hledger --help         # show common options
              $ hledger CMD --help     # show CMD's options, common options and CMD's documentation

       You  can  also view your hledger version's manual in several formats by
       using the help command.  Eg:

              $ hledger help           # show the hledger manual with info, man or $PAGER (best available)
              $ hledger help journal   # show the journal topic in the hledger manual
              $ hledger help --help    # find out more about the help command

       To  view  manuals   and   introductory   docs   on   the   web,   visit
       https://hledger.org.    Chat  and  mail  list  support  and  discussion
       archives can be found at https://hledger.org/support.

   Constructing command lines
       hledger has a flexible command line interface.  We strive  to  keep  it
       simple  and  ergonomic,  but if you run into one of the sharp edges de-
       scribed in OPTIONS, here are some tips that might help:

       o command-specific options must go after the command (it's fine to  put
         common options there too: hledger CMD OPTS ARGS)

       o running  add-on  executables directly simplifies command line parsing
         (hledger-ui OPTS ARGS)

       o enclose "problematic" args in single quotes

       o if needed, also add a backslash to hide regular expression  metachar-
         acters from the shell

       o to see how a misbehaving command line is being parsed, add --debug=2.

   Starting a journal file
       hledger   looks   for   your   accounting   data  in  a  journal  file,
       $HOME/.hledger.journal by default:

              $ hledger stats
              The hledger journal file "/Users/simon/.hledger.journal" was not found.
              Please create it first, eg with "hledger add" or a text editor.
              Or, specify an existing journal file with -f or LEDGER_FILE.

       You can override this by setting the LEDGER_FILE  environment  variable
       (see  below).   It's  a good practice to keep this important file under
       version control, and to start a new file each year.  So  you  could  do
       something like this:

              $ mkdir ~/finance
              $ cd ~/finance
              $ git init
              Initialized empty Git repository in /Users/simon/finance/.git/
              $ touch 2023.journal
              $ echo "export LEDGER_FILE=$HOME/finance/2023.journal" >> ~/.profile
              $ source ~/.profile
              $ hledger stats
              Main file                : /Users/simon/finance/2023.journal
              Included files           :
              Transactions span        :  to  (0 days)
              Last transaction         : none
              Transactions             : 0 (0.0 per day)
              Transactions last 30 days: 0 (0.0 per day)
              Transactions last 7 days : 0 (0.0 per day)
              Payees/descriptions      : 0
              Accounts                 : 0 (depth 0)
              Commodities              : 0 ()
              Market prices            : 0 ()

   Setting LEDGER_FILE
       How to set LEDGER_FILE permanently depends on your setup:

       On  unix  and mac, running these commands in the terminal will work for
       many people; adapt as needed:

              $ echo 'export LEDGER_FILE=~/finance/2023.journal' >> ~/.profile
              $ source ~/.profile

       When correctly  configured,  in  a  new  terminal  window  env  |  grep
       LEDGER_FILE will show your file, and so will hledger files.

       On  mac,  this  additional  step  might be helpful for GUI applications
       (like Emacs started from the dock): add an entry to  ~/.MacOSX/environ-
       ment.plist like

              {
                "LEDGER_FILE" : "~/finance/2023.journal"
              }

       and  then  run  killall  Dock  in a terminal window (or restart the ma-
       chine).

       On Windows, see https://www.java.com/en/download/help/path.html, or try
       running these commands in a powershell window (let us know if  it  per-
       sists across a reboot, and if you need to be an Administrator):

              > CD
              > MKDIR finance
              > SETX LEDGER_FILE "C:\Users\USERNAME\finance\2023.journal"

   Setting opening balances
       Pick  a  starting  date  for which you can look up the balances of some
       real-world assets (bank accounts, wallet..)   and  liabilities  (credit
       cards..).

       To  avoid  a  lot of data entry, you may want to start with just one or
       two accounts, like your checking account or cash wallet; and pick a re-
       cent starting date, like today or the start of the week.  You  can  al-
       ways  come  back later and add more accounts and older transactions, eg
       going back to january 1st.

       Add an opening balances transaction to the journal, declaring the  bal-
       ances on this date.  Here are two ways to do it:

       o The  first way: open the journal in any text editor and save an entry
         like this:

                2023-01-01 * opening balances
                    assets:bank:checking                $1000   = $1000
                    assets:bank:savings                 $2000   = $2000
                    assets:cash                          $100   = $100
                    liabilities:creditcard               $-50   = $-50
                    equity:opening/closing balances

         These are start-of-day balances, ie whatever was in  the  account  at
         the end of the previous day.

         The  *  after  the  date  is  an optional status flag.  Here it means
         "cleared & confirmed".

         The currency symbols are optional, but usually a good idea as  you'll
         be dealing with multiple currencies sooner or later.

         The  = amounts are optional balance assertions, providing extra error
         checking.

       o The second way: run hledger add and follow the prompts  to  record  a
         similar transaction:

                $ hledger add
                Adding transactions to journal file /Users/simon/finance/2023.journal
                Any command line arguments will be used as defaults.
                Use tab key to complete, readline keys to edit, enter to accept defaults.
                An optional (CODE) may follow transaction dates.
                An optional ; COMMENT may follow descriptions or amounts.
                If you make a mistake, enter < at any prompt to go one step backward.
                To end a transaction, enter . when prompted.
                To quit, enter . at a date prompt or press control-d or control-c.
                Date [2023-02-07]: 2023-01-01
                Description: * opening balances
                Account 1: assets:bank:checking
                Amount  1: $1000
                Account 2: assets:bank:savings
                Amount  2 [$-1000]: $2000
                Account 3: assets:cash
                Amount  3 [$-3000]: $100
                Account 4: liabilities:creditcard
                Amount  4 [$-3100]: $-50
                Account 5: equity:opening/closing balances
                Amount  5 [$-3050]:
                Account 6 (or . or enter to finish this transaction): .
                2023-01-01 * opening balances
                    assets:bank:checking                      $1000
                    assets:bank:savings                       $2000
                    assets:cash                                $100
                    liabilities:creditcard                     $-50
                    equity:opening/closing balances          $-3050

                Save this transaction to the journal ? [y]:
                Saved.
                Starting the next transaction (. or ctrl-D/ctrl-C to quit)
                Date [2023-01-01]: .

       If  you're  using  version control, this could be a good time to commit
       the journal.  Eg:

              $ git commit -m 'initial balances' 2023.journal

   Recording transactions
       As you spend or receive money, you can record these transactions  using
       one  of  the  methods  above (text editor, hledger add) or by using the
       hledger-iadd or hledger-web add-ons, or by using the import command  to
       convert CSV data downloaded from your bank.

       Here  are  some  simple transactions, see the hledger_journal(5) manual
       and hledger.org for more ideas:

              2023/1/10 * gift received
                assets:cash   $20
                income:gifts

              2023.1.12 * farmers market
                expenses:food    $13
                assets:cash

              2023-01-15 paycheck
                income:salary
                assets:bank:checking    $1000

   Reconciling
       Periodically you should reconcile - compare your hledger-reported  bal-
       ances  against  external sources of truth, like bank statements or your
       bank's website - to be sure that your ledger accurately represents  the
       real-world  balances  (and,  that  the real-world institutions have not
       made a mistake!).  This gets easy and fast with (1)  practice  and  (2)
       frequency.   If  you do it daily, it can take 2-10 minutes.  If you let
       it pile up, expect it to take longer as you hunt down errors  and  dis-
       crepancies.

       A typical workflow:

       1. Reconcile  cash.   Count  what's  in your wallet.  Compare with what
          hledger reports (hledger bal cash).  If they are different,  try  to
          remember  the  missing transaction, or look for the error in the al-
          ready-recorded transactions.   A  register  report  can  be  helpful
          (hledger  reg cash).  If you can't find the error, add an adjustment
          transaction.  Eg if you have $105 after the above, and can't explain
          the missing $2, it could be:

                  2023-01-16 * adjust cash
                      assets:cash    $-2 = $105
                      expenses:misc

       2. Reconcile checking.  Log in to your bank's website.  Compare today's
          (cleared) balance with hledger's cleared balance (hledger bal check-
          ing -C).  If they are different, track down the error or record  the
          missing  transaction(s) or add an adjustment transaction, similar to
          the above.  Unlike the cash case, you can usually compare the trans-
          action history and running balance from your bank with the  one  re-
          ported  by hledger reg checking -C.  This will be easier if you gen-
          erally record transaction dates quite similar to your bank's  clear-
          ing dates.

       3. Repeat for other asset/liability accounts.

       Tip:  instead of the register command, use hledger-ui to see a live-up-
       dating register while you edit the journal: hledger-ui --watch --regis-
       ter checking -C

       After reconciling, it could be a  good  time  to  mark  the  reconciled
       transactions'  status  as "cleared and confirmed", if you want to track
       that, by adding the * marker.  Eg in the  paycheck  transaction  above,
       insert * between 2023-01-15 and paycheck

       If  you're using version control, this can be another good time to com-
       mit:

              $ git commit -m 'txns' 2023.journal

   Reporting
       Here are some basic reports.

       Show all transactions:

              $ hledger print
              2023-01-01 * opening balances
                  assets:bank:checking                      $1000
                  assets:bank:savings                       $2000
                  assets:cash                                $100
                  liabilities:creditcard                     $-50
                  equity:opening/closing balances          $-3050

              2023-01-10 * gift received
                  assets:cash              $20
                  income:gifts

              2023-01-12 * farmers market
                  expenses:food             $13
                  assets:cash

              2023-01-15 * paycheck
                  income:salary
                  assets:bank:checking           $1000

              2023-01-16 * adjust cash
                  assets:cash               $-2 = $105
                  expenses:misc

       Show account names, and their hierarchy:

              $ hledger accounts --tree
              assets
                bank
                  checking
                  savings
                cash
              equity
                opening/closing balances
              expenses
                food
                misc
              income
                gifts
                salary
              liabilities
                creditcard

       Show all account totals:

              $ hledger balance
                             $4105  assets
                             $4000    bank
                             $2000      checking
                             $2000      savings
                              $105    cash
                            $-3050  equity:opening/closing balances
                               $15  expenses
                               $13    food
                                $2    misc
                            $-1020  income
                              $-20    gifts
                            $-1000    salary
                              $-50  liabilities:creditcard
              --------------------
                                 0

       Show only asset and liability balances, as  a  flat  list,  limited  to
       depth 2:

              $ hledger bal assets liabilities -2
                             $4000  assets:bank
                              $105  assets:cash
                              $-50  liabilities:creditcard
              --------------------
                             $4055

       Show  the  same  thing  without negative numbers, formatted as a simple
       balance sheet:

              $ hledger bs -2
              Balance Sheet 2023-01-16

                                      || 2023-01-16
              ========================++============
               Assets                 ||
              ------------------------++------------
               assets:bank            ||      $4000
               assets:cash            ||       $105
              ------------------------++------------
                                      ||      $4105
              ========================++============
               Liabilities            ||
              ------------------------++------------
               liabilities:creditcard ||        $50
              ------------------------++------------
                                      ||        $50
              ========================++============
               Net:                   ||      $4055

       The final total is your "net worth" on the end date.  (Or use bse for a
       full balance sheet with equity.)

       Show income and expense totals, formatted as an income statement:

              hledger is
              Income Statement 2023-01-01-2023-01-16

                             || 2023-01-01-2023-01-16
              ===============++=======================
               Revenues      ||
              ---------------++-----------------------
               income:gifts  ||                   $20
               income:salary ||                 $1000
              ---------------++-----------------------
                             ||                 $1020
              ===============++=======================
               Expenses      ||
              ---------------++-----------------------
               expenses:food ||                   $13
               expenses:misc ||                    $2
              ---------------++-----------------------
                             ||                   $15
              ===============++=======================
               Net:          ||                 $1005

       The final total is your net income during this period.

       Show transactions affecting your wallet, with running total:

              $ hledger register cash
              2023-01-01 opening balances     assets:cash                   $100          $100
              2023-01-10 gift received        assets:cash                    $20          $120
              2023-01-12 farmers market       assets:cash                   $-13          $107
              2023-01-16 adjust cash          assets:cash                    $-2          $105

       Show weekly posting counts as a bar chart:

              $ hledger activity -W
              2019-12-30 *****
              2023-01-06 ****
              2023-01-13 ****

   Migrating to a new file
       At the end of the year, you may want to continue your journal in a  new
       file, so that old transactions don't slow down or clutter your reports,
       and  to  help ensure the integrity of your accounting history.  See the
       close command.

       If using version control, don't forget to git add the new file.

BUGS
       We  welcome  bug  reports  in  the  hledger  issue  tracker  (shortcut:
       http://bugs.hledger.org),  or on the #hledger chat or hledger mail list
       (https://hledger.org/support).

       Some known issues and limitations:

       The need to precede add-on command options with --  when  invoked  from
       hledger is awkward.  (See Command options, Constructing command lines.)

       A  UTF-8-aware  system locale must be configured to work with non-ascii
       data.  (See Unicode characters, Troubleshooting.)

       On Microsoft Windows, depending whether you are running in a CMD window
       or a Cygwin/MSYS/Mintty window and how you installed hledger, non-ascii
       characters and colours may not be supported, and the tab key may not be
       supported by hledger add.  (Running in  a  WSL  window  should  resolve
       these.)

       When processing large data files, hledger uses more memory than Ledger.

   Troubleshooting
       Here  are  some common issues you might encounter when you run hledger,
       and how to resolve them (and remember also you can  usually  get  quick
       Support):

       PATH issues: I get an error like "No command 'hledger' found"
       Depending how you installed hledger, the executables may not be in your
       shell's  PATH.   Eg  on  unix systems, stack installs hledger in ~/.lo-
       cal/bin and cabal installs it in ~/.cabal/bin.  You may need to add one
       of these directories to your shell's PATH, and/or open a  new  terminal
       window.

       LEDGER_FILE  issues:  I configured LEDGER_FILE but hledger is not using
       it
       o LEDGER_FILE should be a real environment variable, not just  a  shell
         variable.  Eg on unix, the command env | grep LEDGER_FILE should show
         it.    You   may   need   to   use   export  (see  https://stackover-
         flow.com/a/7411509).

       o You may need to force your shell to see  the  new  configuration.   A
         simple way is to close your terminal window and open a new one.

       LANG  issues:  I get errors like "Illegal byte sequence" or "Invalid or
       incomplete multibyte or wide character" or "commitAndReleaseBuffer: in-
       valid argument (invalid character)"
       Programs compiled with GHC (hledger, haskell build tools,  etc.)   need
       the  system  locale  to be UTF-8-aware, or they will fail when they en-
       counter non-ascii characters.  To fix  it,  set  the  LANG  environment
       variable  to  a  locale  which supports UTF-8 and which is installed on
       your system.

       On unix, locale -a lists the installed locales.   Look  for  one  which
       mentions  utf8, UTF-8 or similar.  Some examples: C.UTF-8, en_US.utf-8,
       fr_FR.utf8.  If necessary, use your system package manager  to  install
       one.   Then  select it by setting the LANG environment variable.  Note,
       exact spelling and capitalisation of the locale name may be  important:
       Here's one common way to configure this permanently for your shell:

              $ echo "export LANG=en_US.utf8" >>~/.profile
              # close and re-open terminal window

       If you are using Nix (not NixOS) for GHC and Hledger, you might need to
       set the LOCALE_ARCHIVE variable:

              $ echo "export LOCALE_ARCHIVE=${glibcLocales}/lib/locale/locale-archive" >>~/.profile
              # close and re-open terminal window

       COMPATIBILITY ISSUES: hledger gives an error with my Ledger file
       Not  all  of  Ledger's journal file syntax or feature set is supported.
       See hledger and Ledger for full details.



AUTHORS
       Simon Michael <simon@joyful.com> and contributors.
       See http://hledger.org/CREDITS.html


COPYRIGHT
       Copyright 2007-2023 Simon Michael and contributors.


LICENSE
       Released under GNU GPL v3 or later.


SEE ALSO
       hledger(1), hledger-ui(1), hledger-web(1), ledger(1)

hledger-1.32.99                  December 2023                      HLEDGER(1)
