hledger/MANUAL.md

title
hledger user manual

User manual

Version: 0.20pre

Introduction

hledger is a program for tracking money, time, or any other commodity, using a simple, editable file format and the powerful principles of double-entry accounting. It was inspired by ledger. hledger is Free Software released under GPL version 3 or later.

hledger’s basic function is to read a plain text file describing (eg) financial transactions, and quickly generate useful reports via the command line. It can also help you record transactions, or (via add-ons) provide a local web interface for editing, or publish live financial data on the web.

You can use it to, eg:

• track spending and income
• track unpaid or due invoices
• track time and report by day/week/month/project
• get accurate numbers for client billing and tax filing

Installing

hledger works on linux, mac and windows. You can fund ready-to-run binaries of the latest release - see the download page.

Otherwise, build the latest release from Hackage using cabal-install. Ensure you have GHC 7.0 or greater or the Haskell Platform installed, then:

$ cabal update
$ cabal install hledger

To also install the web interface, do:

$ cabal install hledger-web

Then try it:

$ hledger

If you get “hledger not found” or similar, you should add cabal’s bin directory to your PATH environment variable. Eg on unix-like systems, something like:

$ echo 'export PATH=$PATH:~/cabal/bin' >> ~/.bash_profile
$ source ~/.bash_profile

To build the latest development version do:

$ cabal update
$ darcs get --lazy http://hub.darcs.net/simon/hledger
$ cd hledger
$ make install (or do cabal install inside hledger-lib/, hledger/ etc.)

Some add-on packages are available on Hackage: hledger-vty, hledger-chart, hledger-interest. These are without an active maintainer, and/or platform-specific, so installing them may be harder.

Note: to use non-ascii characters like £, you might need to configure a suitable locale.

If you have trouble, see Troubleshooting.

Usage

Basic usage is:

$ hledger COMMAND [OPTIONS] [ARGS]

Most commands query or operate on a journal file, which by default is .hledger.journal in your home directory. You can specify a different file with the -f option or LEDGER_FILE environment variable, or standard input with -f -.

Options are similar across most commands, with some variations; use hledger COMMAND --help for details. Most options must appear somewhere after COMMAND, not before it. The -f option can appear anywhere.

Arguments are also command-specific, but usually they form a query which selects a subset of the journal, eg transactions in a certain account.

To create an initial journal, run hledger add and follow the prompts to enter some transactions. Or, save this sample file as .hledger.journal in your home directory. Now try commands like these:

$ hledger                               # show available commands
$ hledger add                           # add more transactions to the journal file
$ hledger balance                       # all accounts with aggregated balances
$ hledger balance --help                # show help for balance command
$ hledger balance --depth 1             # only top-level accounts
$ hledger register                      # show a register of postings from all transactions
$ hledger reg income                    # show postings to/from income accounts
$ hledger reg checking                  # show postings to/from checking account
$ hledger reg desc:shop                 # show postings with shop in the description
$ hledger activity                      # show transactions per day as a bar chart

The journal file

hledger normally reads data from a plain text file in hledger journal format. hledger can read some other file formats as well, but first we’ll discuss hledger’s journal format. Note this is compatible subset of c++ ledger’s journal format, so hledger can work with many c++ ledger journal files as well.

The journal file is so called because it represents a standard accounting general journal. It 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.

You can use hledger without learning any more about this file; just use the add or web commands. Many users, though, also edit the journal file directly with a text editor, perhaps assisted by the helper modes for emacs or vi. Note the file uses unix line endings on all platforms.

hledger’s file format aims to be compatible with c++ ledger, so you can use both tools on your journal.

Here’s an example:

; A sample journal file. This is a comment.

2008/01/01 income               ; <- transaction's first line starts in column 0, contains date and description
    assets:bank:checking  $1    ; <- posting lines start with whitespace, each contains an account name
    income:salary        $-1    ;    followed by at least two spaces and an amount

2008/06/01 gift
    assets:bank:checking  $1    ; <- at least two postings in a transaction
    income:gifts         $-1    ; <- their amounts must balance to 0

2008/06/02 save
    assets:bank:saving    $1
    assets:bank:checking        ; <- one amount may be omitted; here $-1 is inferred

2008/06/03 eat & shop           ; <- description can be anything
    expenses:food         $1
    expenses:supplies     $1    ; <- this transaction debits two expense accounts
    assets:cash                 ; <- $-2 inferred

2008/12/31 * pay off            ; <- an optional * or ! after the date means "cleared" (or anything you want)
    liabilities:debts     $1
    assets:bank:checking

Transactions

Each transaction begins with a date in column 0, followed by an optional description, then two or more postings (of some amount to some account), each on their own line.

The posting amounts within a transaction must always balance, ie add up to 0. You can leave one amount blank and it will be inferred.

Account names

Account names typically have several parts separated by a full colon, from which hledger derives a hierarchical chart of accounts. They can be anything you like, but in finance there are traditionally five top-level accounts: assets, liabilities, income, expenses, and equity.

Account names may contain single spaces, eg: assets:accounts receivable.

Amounts

After the account name, separated by two or more spaces, there is usually an amount. This is a number, optionally with a currency symbol or commodity name on either the left or right. Commodity names which contain more than just letters should be enclosed in double quotes.

Negative amounts usually have the minus sign next to the number: $-1. Or it may go before the symbol: -$1.

hledger supports flexible decimal points and digit group separators so you can use your country’s convention. Numbers can use either a period (.) or a comma (,) as decimal point. They can also have digit group separators at any position (eg thousands separators) which can be comma or period - whichever one you did not use as a decimal point. If you use digit group separators, you must also include a decimal point in at least one number in the same commodity, so that hledger knows which character is which. Eg, write $1,000.00 or $1.000,00.

Amount styles

Based on how you format amounts, hledger will infer canonical display styles for each commodity, and use these when displaying amounts in that commodity. Amount styles include:

• the position (left or right) and spacing (space or no separator) of the commodity symbol
• the digit group separator character (comma or period) and digit group sizes, if any
• the decimal point character (period or comma)
• the display precision (number of decimal places displayed)

The canonical style is generally the style of the first amount seen in a commodity (which may be in a default commodity directive. The precision is the highest precision seen among all amounts in the commmodity.

Simple dates

Within a journal file, transaction dates always follow a year/month/day format, although several different separator characters are accepted. Some examples:

2010/01/31, 2010/1/31, 2010-1-31, 2010.1.31

Writing the year is optional if you set a default year with a Y directive. This is a line containing Y and the year; it affects subsequent transactions, like so:

Y2009

12/15  ; equivalent to 2009/12/15
  ...

Y2010

1/31  ; equivalent to 2010/1/31
  ...

Secondary dates

Real-life transactions sometimes involve more than one date - eg the date you write a cheque, and the date it clears in your bank. When you want to model this, eg for more accurate balances, write both dates separated by an equals sign. The primary date, on the left, is used by default; the secondary date, on the right, is used when the --date2 flag is specified (--aux-date or --effective will also work).

Their meaning is up to you, but it’s best to follow a consistent rule. I write the bank’s clearing date as primary, and the date I initiated the transaction as secondary (if needed).

Example:

; PRIMARY=SECONDARY
; The secondary date's year is optional, defaulting to the primary's
2010/2/23=2/19 movie ticket
  expenses:cinema                   $10
  assets:checking

$ hledger register checking
2010/02/23 movie ticket         assets:checking                $-10         $-10

$ hledger register checking --date2
2010/02/19 movie ticket         assets:checking                $-10         $-10

Posting dates

Comments and tags are covered below, but while we are talking about dates: you can give individual postings a different date from their parent transaction, by adding a posting tag like date:DATE, where DATE is a simple date. The secondary date can be set with date2:DATE2. If present, these dates will take precedence in reports.

Ledger’s bracketed posting date syntax ([DATE], [DATE=DATE2] or [=DATE2] in a posting comment) is also supported, as an alternate spelling of the date tags.

Default commodity

You can set a default commodity, to be used for any subsequent amounts which have no commodity symbol, with the D directive:

; set british pound as default commodity
; also sets canonical style for pound amounts, since it's the first one
; (pound symbol on left, comma thousands separator, two decimal places)
D £1,000.00

2010/1/1
  a  2340    ; no symbol, will use pound
  b

A default commodity directive may also influence the canonical amount style for the commodity.

Prices

Transaction prices

When recording an amount, you can also record its price in another commodity. This documents an exchange rate that was applied within this transaction (or to be precise, within the posting). There are three ways to specify a transaction price:

1. Write the unit price (exchange rate) explicitly as @ UNITPRICE after the amount:

    2009/1/1
     assets:foreign currency   €100 @ $1.35  ; one hundred euros at $1.35 each
     assets:cash
   

2. Or write the total price for this amount as @@ TOTALPRICE:

    2009/1/1
     assets:foreign currency   €100 @@ $135  ; one hundred euros at $135 for the lot
     assets:cash
   

3. Or fully specify all posting amounts using exactly two commodities:

    2009/1/1
     assets:foreign currency   €100          ; one hundred euros
     assets:cash              $-135          ; exchanged for $135
   

You can use the --cost/-B flag with reporting commands to see such amounts converted to their price’s commodity. Eg, using any of the above examples we get:

$ hledger print --cost
2009/01/01
    assets:foreign currency       $135.00
    assets                       $-135.00

Historical prices

You can also record a series of historical prices for a commodity using P directives. Typically these are used to record daily market prices or exchange rates. ledger uses them to calculate market value with -V, but hledger currently ignores them. They look like this:

    ; Historical price directives look like: P DATE COMMODITYSYMBOL UNITPRICE
    ; These say the euro's exchange rate is $1.35 during 2009 and
    ; $1.40 from 2010/1/1 on.
    P 2009/1/1 € $1.35  
    P 2010/1/1 € $1.40
    

Balance Assertions

ledger supports balance assertions: following a posting’s amount, an equals sign and another amount which is the expected balance in this account at this point. hledger does not currently enforce these but will ignore them, so you can put them in your journal and test with ledger if needed.

Fixed Lot Prices

Similarly, we ignore ledger’s fixed lot prices. hledger’s prices always work like ledger’s fixed lot prices.

Comments

A semicolon in the journal file marks the start of a comment. You can write comments on their own line between transactions, like so:

; Also known as a "journal comment". Whitespace before the ; is allowed.

You can also write transaction- or posting-specific comments following the transaction’s first line or the posting, on the same line and/or indented on following lines. Some examples:

; a journal comment
2012/5/14 something  ; and now a transaction comment
  ; another comment for this transaction
  posting1  1  ; a comment for posting 1
  posting2
  ; a comment for posting 2
  ; another comment for posting 2
; another journal comment (because not indented)

Currently print preserves transaction and posting comments but not journal comments.

A “tag comment” is a transaction or posting comment containing a tag, explained in the next section.

Tags

You can attach named tags, optionally with values, to transactions and postings, and then filter reports by tag (this is the same as Ledger’s metadata feature, except our tag values are just strings.)

Tags names are unspaced words followed by a colon, anywhere within a transaction or posting comment. Tag values are the (whitespace-trimmed) text after a tag name, up to the next newline or comma (allowing multiple tags on one line). For example:

1/1 a transaction    ; TAG1: , TAG2: tag2's value
    ; TAG3: a third transaction tag
    a  $1  ; TAG4: a posting tag

Querying by tag is work in progress; for now you can test for existence of a tag with tag:NAME.

Including other files

You can pull in the content of additional journal files, by writing lines like this:

!include path/to/file.journal

The !include directive may only be used in journal files, and currently it may only include other journal files (eg, not timelog files.)

Default parent account

You can specify a parent account which will be prepended to all accounts within a section of the journal. Use the !account directive like so:

!account home

2010/1/1
    food    $10
    cash

!end

If !end is omitted, the effect lasts to the end of the file. The above is equivalent to:

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

Included files are also affected, eg:

!account business
!include biz.journal
!end
!account personal
!include personal.journal
!end

Account aliases

You can define account aliases to rewrite certain account names (and their subaccounts). This tends to be a little more reliable than post-processing with sed or similar. The directive is alias ORIG = ALIAS, where ORIG and ALIAS are full account names. To forget all aliases defined to this point, use end aliases.

Here’s an example: say a sole proprietor has a personal.journal:

1/1
    expenses:food  $1
    assets:cash

and a business.journal:

1/1
    expenses:office supplies  $1
    assets:business checking

Here each entity has a simple journal with its own simple chart of accounts. But at tax reporting time, we need to view these as a single entity. So in unified.journal we adjust the personal account names to fit within the business chart of accounts:

alias expenses    = equity:draw:personal
alias assets:cash = assets:personal cash
include personal.journal
end aliases
include business.journal

giving:

$ hledger -f unified.journal print
2011/01/01
    equity:draw:personal:food            $1
    assets:personal cash                $-1

2011/01/01
    expenses:office supplies            $1
    assets:business checking           $-1

You can also specify aliases on the command line. This could be useful to rewrite account names when sharing a report with someone else, such as your accountant:

$ hledger --alias 'my earning=income:business'

Command-line alias options are applied after any alias directives in the journal. At most one alias directive and one alias option will be applied to each account name.

Other file formats

In addition to the usual journal files, hledger can read timelog files.

Since version 0.18, hledger can also read CSV files natively (previous versions provided a special convert command.)

An arbitrary CSV file does not provide enough information to be parsed as a journal. So when reading CSV, hledger looks for an additional rules file, which identifies the CSV fields and assigns accounts. For reading FILE.csv, hledger uses FILE.csv.rules in the same directory, auto-creating it if needed. You should configure the rules file to get the best data from your CSV file. You can specify a different rules file with --rules-file (useful when reading from standard input).

An example - sample.csv:

sample.csv:
"Date","Note","Amount"
"2012/3/22","TRANSFER TO SAVINGS","-10.00"
"2012/3/23","SOMETHING ELSE","5.50"

sample.rules:

skip-lines 1
date-field 0
description-field 1
amount-field 2
currency $
base-account assets:bank:checking

SAVINGS
assets:bank:savings

the resulting journal:

$ hledger -f sample.csv print
using conversion rules file sample.rules
2012/03/22 TRANSFER TO SAVINGS
    assets:bank:savings         $10.00
    assets:bank:checking       $-10.00

2012/03/23 SOMETHING ELSE
    income:unknown              $-5.50
    assets:bank:checking         $5.50

The rules file

A rules file consists of the following optional directives, followed by account-assigning rules. (Tip: rules file parse errors are not the greatest, so check your rules file format if you’re getting unexpected results.)

account-field

If the CSV file contains data corresponding to several accounts (for example - bulk export from other accounting software), the specified field’s value, if non-empty, will override the value of base-account.

account2-field

If the CSV file contains fields for both accounts in the transaction, you can use this in addition to account-field. If account2-field is unspecified, the account-assigning rules are used.

amount-field

This directive specifies the CSV field containing the transaction amount. The field may contain a simple number or an hledger-style amount, perhaps with a price. See also amount-in-field, amount-out-field, currency-field and base-currency.

amount-in-field

amount-out-field

If the CSV file uses two different columns for in and out movements, use these directives instead of amount-field. Note these expect each record to have a positive number in one of these fields and nothing in the other.

base-account

A default account to use in all transactions. May be overridden by account1-field and account2-field.

base-currency

A default currency symbol which will be prepended to all amounts. See also currency-field.

code-field

Which field contains the transaction code or check number ((NNN)).

currency-field

The currency symbol in this field will be prepended to all amounts. This overrides base-currency.

date-field

Which field contains the transaction date. A number of common four-digit-year date formats are understood by default; other formats will require a date-format directive.

date-format

This directive specifies one additional format to try when parsing the date field, using the syntax of Haskell’s formatTime. Eg, if the CSV dates are non-padded D/M/YY, use:

date-format %-d/%-m/%y

Note custom date formats work best when hledger is built with version 1.2.0.5 or greater of the time library.

description-field

Which field contains the transaction’s description. This can be a simple field number, or a custom format combining multiple fields, eg:

description-field %(1) - %(3)

date2-field

Which field contains the transaction’s secondary date.

status-field

Which field contains the transaction cleared status (*).

skip-lines

How many lines to skip in the beginning of the file, e.g. to skip a line of column headings.

Account-assigning rules select an account to transfer to based on the description field (unless account2-field is used.) Each account-assigning rule is a paragraph consisting of one or more case-insensitive regular expressions), one per line, followed by the account name to use when the transaction’s description matches any of these patterns. Eg:

WHOLE FOODS
SUPERMARKET
expenses:food:groceries

If you want to clean up messy bank data, you can add = and a replacement pattern, which rewrites the matched part of the description. (To rewrite the entire description, use .*PAT.*=REPL). You can also refer to matched groups in the usual way with \0 etc. Eg:

BLKBSTR=BLOCKBUSTER
expenses:entertainment

Lines beginning with ; or # are ignored - just don’t use them in the middle of an account-assigning rule.

Commands

hledger provides a number of subcommands, in the style of git or darcs. Run hledger with no arguments to see a list. Most are built in to the core hledger package, while add-on commands will appear if you install additional hledger-* packages. You can also install your own subcommands by putting programs or scripts named hledger-NAME in your PATH.

Misc commands

Here are some miscellaneous commands you might use to get started:

add

The add command prompts interactively for new transactions, and appends them to the journal file. Each transaction is appended when you complete it by entering . (period) at the account prompt. Enter control-D or control-C when you are done.

The add command tries to be helpful, providing:

• Sensible defaults

• History awareness: if there are existing transactions approximately matching the description you enter, they will be displayed and the best match will provide defaults for the other fields. If you specify a query on the command line, only matching transactions will be considered as history.

• Readline-style input: during data entry, the usual editing keys should work.

• Auto-completion for account names: while entering account names, the tab key will auto-complete as far as possible, or list the available options.

• Default commodity awareness: if the journal has a default commodity directive, that will be applied to any bare numbers entered.

Examples:

$ hledger add
$ hledger -f home.journal add equity:bob

test

This command runs hledger’s built-in unit tests and displays a quick report. A pattern can be provided to filter tests by name. It’s mainly used in development, but it’s also nice to be able to check hledger for smoke at any time.

Examples:

$ hledger test
$ hledger test -v balance

Reporting commands

These are the commands for querying your ledger.

print

The print command displays full transactions from the journal file, tidily formatted and showing all amounts explicitly. The output of print is always a valid hledger journal, but it might not preserve the original content absolutely intact (eg comments.)

hledger’s print command also shows all unit prices in effect, or (with -B/–cost) shows cost amounts.

Examples:

$ hledger print
$ hledger print employees:bob | hledger -f- register expenses

register

The register command displays postings, one per line, and their running total. With no query terms, this is not all that different from print:

$ hledger register

More typically, use it to see a specific account’s activity:

$ hledger register assets:bank:checking

The --depth option limits the amount of sub-account detail displayed:

$ hledger register assets:bank:checking --depth 2

With a reporting interval it shows aggregated summary postings within each interval:

$ hledger register --monthly rent
$ hledger register --monthly -E food --depth 4

The --width/-w option adjusts the width of the output. By default, this is 80 characters. To allow more space for descriptions and account names, use -w to increase the width to 120 characters, or -wN to set any desired width (at least 50 recommended, with no space before the N - eg -w200 or --width=200,

The --related/-r flag shows the other postings in the transactions of the postings which would normally be shown.

balance

The balance command displays accounts and their balances, indented to show the account hierarchy. Examples:

$ hledger balance
$ hledger balance food -p 'last month'

A final total is displayed, use --no-total to suppress this. Also, the --depth N option shows accounts only to the specified depth, useful for an overview:

$ for y in 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010; do echo; echo $y; hledger -f $y.journal balance ^expenses --depth 2; done

With --flat, a non-hierarchical list of full account names is displayed instead. This mode shows just the accounts actually contributing to the balance, making the arithmetic a little more obvious to non-hledger users. In this mode you can also use --drop N to elide the first few account name components. Note --depth doesn’t work too well with --flat currently; it hides deeper accounts rather than aggregating them.

incomestatement

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

balancesheet

This command displays a simple balance sheet. It currently assumes that you have top-level accounts named asset, liability and equity (plural forms also allowed.)

cashflow

This command displays a simplified cashflow statement (without the traditional segmentation into operating, investing, and financing cash flows.) It shows the change in all “cash” accounts for the period. It currently assumes that cash accounts are under a top-level account named asset and do not contain receivable or A/R (plural forms also allowed.)

activity

The activity command displays a simplistic textual bar chart showing transaction counts by day, week, month or other reporting interval.

Examples:

$ hledger activity -p weekly dining

stats

The stats command displays summary information for the whole journal, or a matched part of it.

Examples:

$ hledger stats
$ hledger stats -p 'monthly in 2009'

Add-on commands

The following extra commands will be available if they have been installed (run hledger by itself to find out):

web

The web command (provided by the hledger-web package) runs a web server providing a web-based user interface (release demo, latest demo). The web UI provides reporting, including a more useful account register view, and also data entry and editing.

web-specific options:

--port=N           serve on tcp port N (default 5000)
--base-url=URL     use this base url (default http://localhost:PORT)

If you want to visit the web UI from other machines, you’ll need to use this option to fix the hyperlinks. Just give your machine’s host name or ip address instead of localhost. This option is also lets you conform to a custom url scheme when running hledger-web behind a reverse proxy as part of a larger site. Note that the PORT in the base url need not be the same as the --port argument.

Warning: unlike other hledger commands, web can alter existing journal data, via the edit form. A numbered backup of the file will be saved on each edit, normally (ie if file permissions allow, disk is not full, etc.) Also, there is no built-in access control. So unless you run it behind an authenticating proxy, any visitor to your server will be able to see and overwrite the journal file (and included files.)

hledger-web disallows edits which would leave the journal file not in valid journal format. If the file becomes unparseable by other means, hledger-web will show an error until the file has been fixed.

Examples:

$ hledger-web
$ hledger-web -E -B --depth 2 -f some.journal
$ hledger-web --port 5010 --base-url http://some.vhost.com --debug

vty

The vty command (provided by the hledger-vty package) starts a simple curses-style (full-screen, text) user interface, which allows interactive navigation of the print/register/balance reports. This lets you browse around and explore your numbers quickly with less typing.

vty-specific options:

--debug-vty  run with no terminal output, showing console

Examples:

$ hledger vty
$ hledger vty -BE food

chart

The chart command (provided by the hledger-chart package) saves an image file, by default “hledger.png”, showing a basic pie chart of your top account balances. Note that positive and negative balances will not be displayed together in the same chart; any balances not matching the sign of the first one will be ignored.

chart-specific options:

-o/--chart-output=IMGFILE  output filename (default: hledger.png)

You can specify a different output file name with -o/–output. The data currently will always be in PNG format.

--chart-items=N            number of accounts to show (default: 10)

The number of top accounts to show (default is 10).

--chart-size=WIDTHxHEIGHT  image size (default: 600x400)

You can adjust the image resolution with –size=WIDTHxHEIGHT (in pixels).

To show only accounts above a certain depth, use the –depth option; otherwise the chart can include accounts of any depth. When a parent and child account both appear in a chart, the parent’s balance will be exclusive of the child’s.

Examples:

$ hledger chart assets --depth 2
$ hledger chart liabilities --depth 2
$ hledger chart ^expenses -o balance.png --size 1000x600 --items 20
$ for m in 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12; do hledger chart -p 2009/$m ^expenses --depth 2 -o expenses-2009$m.png --size 400x300; done

Reporting options

The following additional features and options allow for fine-grained reporting. They are common to most commands, where applicable.

Queries

Most commands accept an optional query expression, written as arguments after the command name, to filter the data (or in some cases, to modify the output). The syntax is similar to a Google search expression: one or more space-separated search terms, optional prefixes to match specific fields, quotes to enclose whitespace etc. Each query term can be any of the following:

• REGEX - match account names by this regular expression
• acct:REGEX - same as above
• desc:REGEX - match transaction descriptions by regular expression
• date:PERIODEXPR - match dates within the specified period
• edate:PERIODEXPR - as above, but match secondary dates
• status:1 or status:0 - match cleared/uncleared transactions
• tag:NAME[=REGEX] - match by exact tag name, and optionally match the tag value by regular expression
• depth:N - match (or display, depending on command) accounts at or above this depth
• not: before any of the above negates the match

Multiple query terms will select transactions/postings/accounts which match (or negatively match)

any of the description terms AND
any of the account terms AND
all the other terms

With the print command, they select transactions which

match any of the description terms AND
have any postings matching any of the positive account terms AND
have no postings matching any of the negative account terms AND
match all the other terms

Note many of the above query terms can also be expressed as command-line flags; you can use either, or both at once.

Smart dates

Unlike the journal file, hledger’s user interface accepts more flexible “smart dates”, for example in the -b and -e options, period expressions, display expressions, the add command and the web add form. Smart dates allow some natural english words, will assume 1 where less-significant date parts are unspecified, and can be relative to today’s date. Examples:

• 2009/1/1, 2009/01/01, 2009-1-1, 2009.1.1 (simple dates)
• 2009/1, 2009 (these also mean january 1, 2009)
• 1/1, january, jan, this year (relative dates, meaning january 1 of this year)
• next year (january 1, next year)
• this month (the 1st of the current month)
• this week (the most recent monday)
• last week (the monday of the week before this one)
• today, yesterday, tomorrow

Spaces in smart dates are optional, so eg: -b lastmonth is valid.

Period expressions

hledger supports flexible “period expressions” with the -p/--period option to select transactions within a period of time (eg in 2009) and/or with a reporting interval (eg weekly). hledger period expressions are similar but not identical to c++ ledger’s.

Here is a basic period expression specifying the first quarter of 2009. Note the start date is always included and the end date is always excluded:

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

Keywords like “from” and “to” are optional, and so are the spaces. Just don’t run two dates together:

-p2009/1/1to2009/4/1
-p"2009/1/1 2009/4/1"

Dates are smart dates, so if the current year is 2009, the above can also be written as:

-p "1/1 to 4/1"
-p "january to apr"
-p "this year to 4/1"

If you specify only one date, the missing start or end date will be the earliest or latest transaction in your journal:

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

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

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

The -b/--begin and -e/--end options may be used as a shorthand for -p 'from ...' and -p 'to ...' respectively.

Note, however: a -p/--period option in the command line will cause any -b/-e/-D/-W/-M/-Q/-Y flags to be ignored.

Reporting interval

Period expressions can also begin with (or be) a reporting interval, which affects commands like register and activity. The reporting interval can be daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, yearly, or one of the every ... expressions below, optionally followed by in. Examples:

-p "weekly from 2009/1/1 to 2009/4/1"
-p "monthly in 2008"
-p "bimonthly from 2008"
-p "quarterly"
-p "every 2 weeks"
-p "every 5 days from 1/3"
-p "every 15th day of month"
-p "every 4th day of week"

A reporting interval may also be specified with the -D/--daily, -W/--weekly, -M/--monthly, -Q/--quarterly, and -Y/--yearly options. But as noted above, a –period option will override these.

Display expressions

Unlike a period expression, which selects the transactions to be used for calculation, a display expression (specified with -d/--display) selects which transactions will be displayed. This useful, say, if you want to see your checking register just for this month, but with an accurate running balance based on all transactions. Eg:

$ hledger register checking --display "d>=[1]"

meaning “make a register report of all checking transactions, but display only the ones with date on or after the 1st of this month.” This the only kind of display expression we currently support, ie transactions before or after a given (smart) date.

Depth limiting

With the --depth N option, reports will show only the uppermost accounts in the account tree, down to level N. See the balance, register and chart examples.

Timelog reporting

hledger can also read time log files in (a subset of) timeclock.el’s format, containing clock-in and clock-out entries like so:

i 2009/03/31 22:21:45 projects:A
o 2009/04/01 02:00:34

hledger treats the clock-in description (“projects:A”) as an account name, and creates a virtual transaction (or several - one per day) with the appropriate amount of hours. From the time log above, hledger print gives:

2009/03/31 * 22:21-23:59
    (projects:A)          1.6h

2009/04/01 * 00:00-02:00
    (projects:A)          2.0h

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

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

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

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

• at the command line, use these bash aliases:

    alias ti="echo i `date '+%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S'` \$* >>$TIMELOG"
    alias to="echo o `date '+%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S'` >>$TIMELOG"
  

• or use the old ti and to scripts in the c++ ledger 2.x repository. These rely on a “timeclock” executable which I think is just the ledger 2 executable renamed.

Custom output formats

The --format FMT option will customize the line format of the balance command’s output (only, for now). FMT is a C printf/strftime-style format string, with the exception that field names are enclosed in parentheses:

%[-][MIN][.MAX]([FIELD])

If the minus sign is given, the text is left justified. The MIN field specified a minimum number of characters in width. After the value is injected into the string, spaces is added to make sure the string is at least as long as MIN. Similary, the MAX field specifies the maximum number of characters. The string will be cut if the injected string is too long.

• %-(total) the total of an account, left justified
• %20(total) The same, right justified, at least 20 chars wide
• %.20(total) The same, no more than 20 chars wide
• %-.20(total) Left justified, maximum twenty chars wide

The following FIELD types are currently supported:

• account inserts the account name
• depth_spacer inserts a space for each level of an account’s depth. That is, if an account has two parents, this construct will insert two spaces. If a minimum width is specified, that much space is inserted for each level of depth. Thus %5_, for an account with four parents, will insert twenty spaces.
• total inserts the total for the account

Examples:

If you want the account before the total you can use this format:

$ hledger balance --format "%20(account) %-(total)"
              assets $-1
         bank:saving $1
                cash $-2
            expenses $2
                food $1
            supplies $1
              income $-2
               gifts $-1
              salary $-1
   liabilities:debts $1
--------------------
                   0

Or, if you’d like to export the balance sheet:

$ hledger balance --format "%(total);%(account)" --no-total
$-1;assets
$1;bank:saving
$-2;cash
$2;expenses
$1;food
$1;supplies
$-2;income
$-1;gifts
$-1;salary
$1;liabilities:debts

The default output format is %20(total) %2(depth_spacer)%-(account)

Appendices

Compatibility with c++ ledger

hledger mimics a subset of ledger 3.x, and adds some features of its own. We currently support:

• regular journal transactions
• journal format (we should be able to parse most ledger journals)
• timelog format
• multiple commodities
• prices and price history (with non-changing prices)
• virtual postings
• filtering by account and description
• print, register & balance commands
• period expressions quite similar to ledger’s
• display expressions containing just a simple date predicate
• basic support (read: incomplete) for display formatting

We do not support:

• periodic and modifier transactions
• fluctuating prices
• display formats (actually, a small subset is supported)
• budget reports

And we add these commands:

• add
• chart
• vty
• web

Implementation

Unlike c++ ledger, hledger is written in the Haskell programming language. Haskell enables a coding style known as pure lazy functional programming, which holds the promise of more robust and maintainable software built with fewer lines of code. Haskell also provides a more abstracted, portable platform which can make deployment and installation easier in some cases. Haskell also brings some new challenges such as managing memory growth.

File format compatibility

hledger’s file format is mostly identical with that of c++ ledger, with some features being accepted but ignored (eg, modifier entries and periodic entries). There are subtle differences in parser behaviour, eg comments may be permissible in different places. hledger does not allow separate dates for individual postings, or AMT1=AMT2 or { } syntax.

Generally, it’s easy to keep a journal file that works with both hledger and c++ ledger if you avoid these. Occasionally you’ll need to make small adjustments to restore compatibility for one or the other.

See also: other differences, usage issues.

Features not supported

c++ ledger features not currently supported include: modifier and periodic entries, and the following c++ ledger options and commands:

Basic options:
-o, --output FILE      write output to FILE
-i, --init-file FILE   initialize ledger using FILE (default: ~/.ledgerrc)
-a, --account NAME     use NAME for the default account (useful with QIF)

Report filtering:
-c, --current          show only current and past entries (not future)
    --period-sort EXPR sort each report period's entries by EXPR
-L, --actual           consider only actual (non-automated) transactions
-r, --related          calculate report using related transactions
    --budget           generate budget entries based on periodic entries
    --add-budget       show all transactions plus the budget
    --unbudgeted       show only unbudgeted transactions
    --forecast EXPR    generate forecast entries while EXPR is true
-l, --limit EXPR       calculate only transactions matching EXPR
-t, --amount EXPR      use EXPR to calculate the displayed amount
-T, --total EXPR       use EXPR to calculate the displayed total

Output customization:
-n, --collapse         Only show totals in the top-most accounts.
-s, --subtotal         other: show subtotals
-P, --by-payee         show summarized totals by payee
-x, --comm-as-payee    set commodity name as the payee, for reporting
    --dow              show a days-of-the-week report
-S, --sort EXPR        sort report according to the value expression EXPR
-w, --wide             for the default register report, use 132 columns
    --head COUNT       show only the first COUNT entries (negative inverts)
    --tail COUNT       show only the last COUNT entries (negative inverts)
    --pager PAGER      send all output through the given PAGER program
-A, --average          report average transaction amount
-D, --deviation        report deviation from the average
-%, --percentage       report balance totals as a percentile of the parent
    --totals           in the "xml" report, include running total
-j, --amount-data      print only raw amount data (useful for scripting)
-J, --total-data       print only raw total data
-y, --date-format STR  use STR as the date format (default: %Y/%m/%d)
-F, --format STR       use STR as the format; for each report type, use:
    --balance-format      --register-format       --print-format
    --plot-amount-format  --plot-total-format     --equity-format
    --prices-format       --wide-register-format

Commodity reporting:
    --price-db FILE    sets the price database to FILE (def: ~/.pricedb)
-L, --price-exp MINS   download quotes only if newer than MINS (def: 1440)
-Q, --download         download price information when needed
-O, --quantity         report commodity totals (this is the default)
-V, --market           report last known market value
-g, --performance      report gain/loss for each displayed transaction
-G, --gain             report net gain/loss

Commands:
xml      [REGEXP]...   print matching entries in XML format
equity   [REGEXP]...   output equity entries for matching accounts
prices   [REGEXP]...   display price history for matching commodities
entry DATE PAYEE AMT   output a derived entry, based on the arguments

Other differences

• hledger recognises description and negative patterns by “desc:” and “not:” prefixes, unlike ledger 3’s free-form parser

• hledger doesn’t require a space before command-line option values, eg -fFILE or -f FILE works

• hledger’s weekly reporting intervals always start on mondays

• hledger shows start and end dates of the intervals requested, not just the span containing data

• hledger always shows timelog balances in hours

• hledger splits multi-day timelog sessions at midnight

• hledger doesn’t track the value of commodities with varying price; prices are fixed as of the transaction date

• hledger’s output follows the decimal point character, digit grouping, and digit group separator character used in the journal.

• hledger print shows amounts for all postings, and shows unit prices for amounts which have them. (This means that it does not currently print multi-commodity transactions in valid journal format.)

• hledger print ignores the –date2 flag, always showing both dates. ledger print shows only the secondary date with –aux-date, but not vice versa.

• hledger’s default commodity directive (D) sets the commodity for subsequent commodityless amounts, and sets that commodity’s display settings if such an amount is the first seen. ledger uses D only for commodity display settings and for the entry command.

• hledger generates a description for timelog sessions, instead of taking it from the clock-out entry

• hledger’s include directive does not support shell glob patterns (eg include *.journal ), which ledger does.

Troubleshooting

Sorry you’re here! There are a lot of ways things can go wrong. Here are some known issues and things to try. Please also seek support from the IRC channel, mail list or bug tracker.

Installation issues

Starting from the top, consider whether each of these might apply to you. Tip: blindly reinstalling/upgrading everything in sight probably won’t work, it’s better to go in small steps and understand the problem, or get help.

1. Running hledger says something like No command ‘hledger’ found
   cabal installs binaries into a special directory, which should be added to your PATH environment variable. On unix-like systems, it is ~/.cabal/bin.

2. Did you cabal update ?
   If not, cabal update and try again.

3. Do you have a new enough version of GHC ?
   Run ghc --version. hledger requires GHC 7.0 or greater (on some platforms, 7.2.1 can be helpful).

4. Do you have a new enough version of cabal ?
   Avoid ancient versions. cabal --version should report at least 0.10 (and 0.14 is much better). You may be able to upgrade it with:

    $ cabal update
    $ cabal install cabal-install-0.14
   

5. Are your installed GHC/cabal packages in good repair ?
   Run ghc-pkg check. If it reports problems, some of your packages have become inconsistent, and you should fix these first. ghc-pkg-clean is an easy way.

6. cabal can’t satisfy the new dependencies due to old installed packages
   Cabal dependency failures become more likely as you install more packages over time. If cabal install hledger-web --dry says it can’t satisfy dependencies, you have this problem. You can:

   1. try to understand which packages to remove (with ghc-pkg unregister) or which constraints to add (with --constraint 'PKG == ...') to help cabal find a solution

   2. install into a fresh environment created with virthualenv or cabal-dev

   3. or (easiest) erase your installed packages with ghc-pkg-reset and try again.

7. Dependency or compilation error in one of the new packages ?
   If cabal starts downloading and building packages and then terminates with an error, look at the output carefully and identify the problem package(s). If necessary, add -v2 or -v3 for more verbose output. You can install the new packages one at a time to troubleshoot, but remember cabal is smarter when installing all packages at once.

   Often the problem is that you need to install a particular C library using your platform’s package management system. Or the dependencies specified on a package may need updating. Or there may be a compilation error. If you find an error in a hledger package, check the recent commits to see if the latest development version might have a fix.

8. ExitFailure 11
   See http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/hackage/ticket/777. This means that a build process has been killed, usually because it grew too large. This is common on memory-limited VPS’s and with GHC 7.4.1. Look for some memory-hogging processes you can kill, increase your RAM, or limit GHC’s heap size by doing cabal install ... --ghc-options='+RTS -M400m' (400 megabytes works well on my 1G VPS, adjust up or down..)

9. Can’t load .so/.DLL for: ncursesw (/usr/lib/libncursesw.so: file too short)
   (or similar): cf GHC bug #5551. Upgrade GHC to 7.2.1, or try your luck with this workaround.

10. Undefined iconv symbols on OS X
    This kind of error:

     Linking dist/build/hledger/hledger ...
     Undefined symbols:
       "_iconv_close", referenced from:
           _hs_iconv_close in libHSbase-4.2.0.2.a(iconv.o)
       "_iconv", referenced from:
           _hs_iconv in libHSbase-4.2.0.2.a(iconv.o)
       "_iconv_open", referenced from:
           _hs_iconv_open in libHSbase-4.2.0.2.a(iconv.o)
    

    probably means you are on a mac with macports libraries installed, cf http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/ghc/ticket/4068. To work around temporarily, add this –extra-lib-dirs flag:

     $ cabal install hledger --extra-lib-dirs=/usr/lib
    

    or permanently, add this to ~/.cabal/config:

     extra-lib-dirs: /usr/lib
    

11. hledger-vty requires curses-related libraries
    On Ubuntu, eg, you’ll need the libncurses5-dev package. On Windows, these are not available (unless perhaps via Cygwin.)

12. hledger-chart requires GTK-related libraries
    On Ubuntu, eg, install the libghc6-gtk-dev package. See also Gtk2Hs installation notes.

Usage issues

Here are some issues you might encounter when you run hledger:

12. hledger fails to parse some valid ledger files
    See file format compatibility.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Examples and recipes

• Here’s a bash function that will run hledger chart and display the image in your (graphical) emacs:

  function chart () {
    hledger chart $* && emacsclient -n hledger.png
  }
  

  Example:

  $ chart food --depth 2 -p jan
  

See also the extra directory.

Other resources

• The rest of the hledger.org site.

• The c++ ledger site and highly informative manual.

• Why you need accounting