A bunch of account sorting changes that got intermingled.
First, account codes have been dropped. They can still be parsed and
will be ignored, for now. I don't know if anyone used them.
Instead, account display order is now controlled by the order of account
directives, if any. From the mail list:
I'd like to drop account codes, introduced in hledger 1.9 to control
the display order of accounts. In my experience,
- they are tedious to maintain
- they duplicate/compete with the natural tendency to arrange account
directives to match your mental chart of accounts
- they duplicate/compete with the tree structure created by account
names
and it gets worse if you think about using them more extensively,
eg to classify accounts by type.
Instead, I plan to just let the position (parse order) of account
directives determine the display order of those declared accounts.
Undeclared accounts will be displayed after declared accounts,
sorted alphabetically as usual.
Second, the various account sorting modes have been implemented more
widely and more correctly. All sorting modes (alphabetically, by account
declaration, by amount) should now work correctly in almost all commands
and modes (non-tabular and tabular balance reports, tree and flat modes,
the accounts command). Sorting bugs have been fixed, eg #875.
Only the budget report (balance --budget) does not yet support sorting.
Comprehensive functional tests for sorting in the accounts and balance
commands have been added. If you are confused by some sorting behaviour,
studying these tests is recommended, as sorting gets tricky.
It now works slightly differently. Eg:
- <unbudgeted>'s subaccounts are hidden by default
- --show-unbudgeted shows all unbudgeted accounts, including subaccounts of budgeted parents
- --show-unbudgeted doesn't affect the grouping under <unbudgeted>
IMHO it's a nice simplification and increase in consistency, while still meeting the original intent.
Accounts which have no budget goals within the report period are now
grouped under <unbudgeted> - not just accounts with no budget goals ever.
Haddocks have been clarified, especially for budgetRollup. In some
ways things are much clearer without this feature, but it remains
enabled by default for now.
Budgets were restricted to a single interval in 1.9, but this was
a mistake. This restores the 1.5 behaviour, where a budget can be built
up from multiple periodic transactions with different intervals.
Income, liability and equity balances, which until now we have
always displayed as negative numbers, are now shown as normally positive
by these reports.
Negative numbers now indicate a contra-balance (eg an overdrawn
checking account), a net loss, a negative net worth, etc.
This makes these reports more like conventional financial statements,
and easier to read and share with normal people.
Ledger-style automated postings, previously supported only by
hledger-budget, have landed as a first-class feature. The --auto
flag activates them, so that any postings they generate are
included in reports.
Ledger-style periodic transactions, previously supported only by
hledger-budget, have landed as a first-class feature. The --forecast
flag activates them, so that any transactions they generate are
included in reports.
