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hledger
This doc is for version 1.3.
NAME
hledger - a command-line accounting tool
SYNOPSIS
hledger [-f FILE] COMMAND [OPTIONS] [ARGS]
hledger [-f FILE] ADDONCMD -- [OPTIONS] [ARGS]
hledger
DESCRIPTION
hledger is a cross-platform program for tracking money, time, or any
other commodity, using double-entry accounting and a simple, editable
file format. hledger is inspired by and largely compatible with
ledger(1).
Tested on unix, mac, windows, hledger aims to be a reliable, practical
tool for daily use.
This is hledger’s command-line interface (there are also curses and web interfaces). Its basic function is to read a plain text file describing financial transactions (in accounting terms, a general journal) and print useful reports on standard output, or export them as CSV. hledger can also read some other file formats such as CSV files, translating them to journal format. Additionally, hledger lists other hledger-* executables found in the user’s $PATH and can invoke them as subcommands.
hledger reads data from one or more files in hledger journal,
timeclock, timedot, or CSV format specified with -f, or
$LEDGER_FILE, or $HOME/.hledger.journal (on
windows, perhaps C:/Users/USER/.hledger.journal). If using
$LEDGER_FILE, note this must be a real environment
variable, not a shell variable. You can specify standard input with
-f-.
Transactions are dated movements of money between two (or more) named accounts, and are recorded with journal entries like this:
2015/10/16 bought food
expenses:food $10
assets:cash
For more about this format, see hledger_journal(5).
Most users use a text editor to edit the journal, usually with an editor mode such as ledger-mode for added convenience. hledger’s interactive add command is another way to record new transactions. hledger never changes existing transactions.
To get started, you can either save some entries like the above in
~/.hledger.journal, or run hledger add and
follow the prompts. Then try some commands like
hledger print or hledger balance. Run
hledger with no arguments for a list of commands.
EXAMPLES
Two simple transactions in hledger journal format:
2015/9/30 gift received
assets:cash $20
income:gifts
2015/10/16 farmers market
expenses:food $10
assets:cash
Some basic reports:
$ hledger print
2015/09/30 gift received
assets:cash $20
income:gifts $-20
2015/10/16 farmers market
expenses:food $10
assets:cash $-10
$ hledger accounts --tree
assets
cash
expenses
food
income
gifts
$ hledger balance
$10 assets:cash
$10 expenses:food
$-20 income:gifts
--------------------
0
$ hledger register cash
2015/09/30 gift received assets:cash $20 $20
2015/10/16 farmers market assets:cash $-10 $10
More commands:
$ hledger # show available commands
$ hledger add # add more transactions to the journal file
$ hledger balance # all accounts with aggregated balances
$ hledger balance --help # show detailed help for balance command
$ hledger balance --depth 1 # only top-level accounts
$ hledger register # show account postings, with running total
$ hledger reg income # show postings to/from income accounts
$ hledger reg 'assets:some bank:checking' # show postings to/from this checking account
$ hledger print desc:shop # show transactions with shop in the description
$ hledger activity -W # show transaction counts per week as a bar chart
OPTIONS
General options
To see general usage help, including general options which are
supported by most hledger commands, run hledger -h. (Note
-h and –help are different, like git.)
General help options:
-h- show general usage (or after COMMAND, command usage)
--help- show this program’s manual as plain text (or after an add-on COMMAND, the add-on’s manual)
--man- show this program’s manual with man
--info- show this program’s manual with info
--version- show version
--debug[=N]- show debug output (levels 1-9, default: 1)
General input options:
-f FILE --file=FILE-
use a different input file. For stdin, use - (default:
$LEDGER_FILEor$HOME/.hledger.journal) --rules-file=RULESFILE- Conversion rules file to use when reading CSV (default: FILE.rules)
--alias=OLD=NEW- rename accounts named OLD to NEW
--anon- anonymize accounts and payees
--pivot TAGNAME- use some other field/tag for account names
-I --ignore-assertions- ignore any failing balance assertions
General reporting options:
-b --begin=DATE- include postings/txns on or after this date
-e --end=DATE- include postings/txns before this date
-D --daily- multiperiod/multicolumn report by day
-W --weekly- multiperiod/multicolumn report by week
-M --monthly- multiperiod/multicolumn report by month
-Q --quarterly- multiperiod/multicolumn report by quarter
-Y --yearly- multiperiod/multicolumn report by year
-p --period=PERIODEXP- set start date, end date, and/or reporting interval all at once (overrides the flags above)
--date2- show, and match with -b/-e/-p/date:, secondary dates instead
-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
--depth=N- hide accounts/postings deeper than N
-E --empty- show items with zero amount, normally hidden
-B --cost- convert amounts to their cost at transaction time (using the transaction price, if any)
-V --value- convert amounts to their market value on the report end date (using the most recent applicable market price, if any)
Note when multiple similar reporting options are provided, the last
one takes precedence. Eg -p feb -p mar is equivalent to
-p mar.
Some of these can also be written as queries.
Command options
To see options for a particular command, including command-specific
options, run: hledger COMMAND -h.
Command-specific options must be written after the command name, eg:
hledger print -x.
Additionally, if the command is an addon, you
may need to put its options after a double-hyphen, eg:
hledger ui -- --watch. Or, you can run the addon executable
directly: hledger-ui --watch.
Command arguments
Most hledger commands accept arguments after the command name, which are often a query, filtering the data in some way.
Special characters
Option and argument values which contain problematic characters
should be escaped with double quotes, backslashes, or (best) single
quotes. Problematic characters means spaces, and also characters which
are significant to your command shell, such as less-than/greater-than.
Eg:
hledger register -p 'last year' "accounts receivable (receivable|payable)" amt:\>100.
Characters which are significant both to the shell and in regular expressions sometimes need to be
double-escaped. These include parentheses, the pipe symbol and the
dollar sign. Eg, to match the dollar symbol, bash users should do:
hledger balance cur:'\$' or
hledger balance cur:\\$.
There’s more.. options and arguments get de-escaped when hledger is
passing them to an addon executable. In this case you might need
triple-escaping. Eg: hledger ui cur:'\\$' or
hledger ui cur:\\\\$.
If in doubt, keep things simple:
- run add-on executables directly
- write options after the command
- enclose problematic args in single quotes
- if needed, also add a backslash to escape regexp metacharacters
If you’re really stumped, add --debug=2 to
troubleshoot.
Input files
hledger reads transactions from a data file (and the add command
writes to it). By default this file is
$HOME/.hledger.journal (or on Windows, something like
C:/Users/USER/.hledger.journal). You can override this with
the $LEDGER_FILE environment variable:
$ setenv LEDGER_FILE ~/finance/2016.journal
$ hledger stats
or with the -f/--file option:
$ hledger -f /some/file stats
The file name - (hyphen) means standard input:
$ cat some.journal | hledger -f-
Usually the data file is in hledger’s journal format, but it can also be one of several other formats, listed below. hledger detects the format automatically based on the file extension, or if that is not recognised, by trying each built-in “reader” in turn:
| Reader: | Reads: | Used for file extensions: |
|---|---|---|
journal |
hledger’s journal format, also some Ledger journals | .journal .j
.hledger .ledger |
timeclock |
timeclock files (precise time logging) | .timeclock |
timedot |
timedot files (approximate time logging) | .timedot |
csv |
comma-separated values (data interchange) | .csv |
If needed (eg to ensure correct error messages when a file has the “wrong” extension), you can force a specific reader/format by prepending it to the file path with a colon. Examples:
$ hledger -f csv:/some/csv-file.dat stats
$ echo 'i 2009/13/1 08:00:00' | hledger print -ftimeclock:-
You can also specify multiple -f options, to read
multiple files as one big journal. There are some limitations with
this:
- directives in one file will not affect the other files
- balance assertions will not see any account balances from previous files
If you need those, either use the include directive, or
concatenate the files, eg:
cat a.journal b.journal | hledger -f- CMD.
Smart dates
hledger’s user interfaces accept a flexible “smart date” syntax (unlike dates in the journal file). Smart dates allow some english words, can be relative to today’s date, and can have less-significant date parts omitted (defaulting to 1).
Examples:
2009/1/1,
2009/01/01, 2009-1-1,
2009.1.1 |
simple dates, several separators allowed |
2009/1,
2009 |
same as above - a missing day or month defaults to 1 |
1/1, january,
jan, this year |
relative dates, meaning january 1 of the current year |
next year |
january 1 of 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 |
lastweek |
spaces are optional |
today,
yesterday, tomorrow |
Report start & end date
Most hledger reports show the full span of time represented by the journal data, by default. So, the effective report start and end dates will be the earliest and latest transaction or posting dates found in the journal.
Often you will want to see a shorter time span, such as the current
month. You can specify a start and/or end date using -b/--begin, -e/--end, -p/--period or a date: query (described below). All of
these accept the smart date syntax. One
important thing to be aware of when specifying end dates: as in Ledger,
end dates are exclusive, so you need to write the date after
the last day you want to include.
Examples:
-b 2016/3/17 |
begin on St. Patrick’s day 2016 |
-e 12/1 |
end at the start of 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 |
date:-12/1 |
|
date:thismonth- |
|
date:thismonth |
Report intervals
A report interval can be specified so that commands like register, balance and activity will divide their reports into multiple
subperiods. The basic intervals can be selected with one of
-D/--daily, -W/--weekly,
-M/--monthly, -Q/--quarterly, or
-Y/--yearly. More complex intervals may be specified with a
period expression. Report intervals
can not be specified with a query, currently.
Period expressions
The -p/--period option accepts period expressions, a
shorthand way of expressing a start date, end date, and/or report
interval all at once.
Here’s a basic period expression specifying the first quarter of 2009. Note, hledger always treats start dates as inclusive and end dates as exclusive:
-p "from 2009/1/1 to 2009/4/1"
Keywords like “from” and “to” are optional, and so are the spaces, as long as you don’t run two dates together. “to” can also be written as “-”. These are equivalent to the above:
-p "2009/1/1 2009/4/1" |
-p2009/1/1to2009/4/1 |
-p2009/1/1-2009/4/1 |
Dates are smart dates, so if the current year is 2009, the above can also be written as:
-p "1/1 4/1" |
-p "january-apr" |
-p "this year to 4/1" |
If you specify only one date, the missing start or end date will be the earliest or latest transaction in your journal:
-p "from 2009/1/1" |
everything after january 1, 2009 |
-p "from 2009/1" |
the same |
-p "from 2009" |
the same |
-p "to 2009" |
everything before january 1, 2009 |
A single date with no “from” or “to” defines both the start and end date like so:
-p "2009" |
the year 2009; equivalent to “2009/1/1 to 2010/1/1” |
-p "2009/1" |
the month of jan; 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 argument of -p can also begin with, or be, a report interval expression. The basic
report intervals are daily, weekly,
monthly, quarterly, or yearly,
which have the same effect as the
-D,-W,-M,-Q, or
-Y flags. Between report interval and start/end dates (if
any), the word in is optional. Examples:
-p "weekly from 2009/1/1 to 2009/4/1" |
-p "monthly in 2008" |
-p "quarterly" |
The following more complex report intervals are also supported:
biweekly, bimonthly,
every N days|weeks|months|quarters|years,
every Nth day [of month],
every Nth day of week.
Examples:
-p "bimonthly from 2008" |
-p "every 2 weeks" |
-p "every 5 days from 1/3" |
Show historical balances at end of 15th each month (N is exclusive end date):
hledger balance -H -p "every 16th day"
Group postings from start of wednesday to end of next tuesday (N is start date and exclusive end date):
hledger register checking -p "every 3rd day of week"
Depth limiting
With the --depth N option, commands like account, balance and register will show only the uppermost accounts in
the account tree, down to level N. Use this when you want a summary with
less detail.
Pivoting
Normally hledger sums amounts, and organizes them in a hierarchy,
based on account name. The --pivot TAGNAME option causes it
to sum and organize hierarchy based on some other field instead.
TAGNAME is the full, case-insensitive name of a tag you have defined, or one of the
built-in implicit tags (like code or payee).
As with account names, when tag values have
multiple:colon-separated:parts hledger will build
hierarchy, displayed in tree-mode reports, summarisable with a depth
limit, and so on.
--pivot is a general option affecting all reports; you
can think of hledger transforming the journal before any other
processing, replacing every posting’s account name with the value of the
specified tag on that posting, inheriting it from the transaction or
using a blank value if it’s not present.
An example:
2016/02/16 Member Fee Payment
assets:bank account 2 EUR
income:member fees -2 EUR ; member: John Doe
Normal balance report showing account names:
$ hledger balance
2 EUR assets:bank account
-2 EUR income:member fees
--------------------
0
Pivoted balance report, using member: tag values instead:
$ hledger balance --pivot member
2 EUR
-2 EUR John Doe
--------------------
0
One way to show only amounts with a member: value (using a query, described below):
$ hledger balance --pivot member tag:member=.
-2 EUR John Doe
--------------------
-2 EUR
Another way (the acct: query matches against the pivoted “account name”):
$ hledger balance --pivot member acct:.
-2 EUR John Doe
--------------------
-2 EUR
Cost
The -B/--cost flag converts amounts to their cost at
transaction time, if they have a transaction price
specified.
Market value
The -V/--value flag converts the reported amounts to
their market value on the report end date, using the most recent
applicable market prices, when known. Specifically, when there is a market price (P directive) for the
amount’s commodity, dated on or before the report end date (see
hledger -> Report start & end date), the amount will be converted
to the price’s commodity. If multiple applicable prices are defined, the
latest-dated one is used (and if dates are equal, the one last
parsed).
For example:
# one euro is worth this many dollars from nov 1
P 2016/11/01 € $1.10
# purchase some euros on nov 3
2016/11/3
assets:euros €100
assets:checking
# the euro is worth fewer dollars by dec 21
P 2016/12/21 € $1.03
How many euros do I have ?
$ hledger -f t.j bal euros
€100 assets:euros
What are they worth on nov 3 ? (no report end date specified, defaults to the last date in the journal)
$ hledger -f t.j bal euros -V
$110.00 assets:euros
What are they worth on dec 21 ?
$ hledger -f t.j bal euros -V -e 2016/12/21
$103.00 assets:euros
Currently, hledger’s -V only uses market prices recorded with P directives, not transaction prices (unlike Ledger).
Using -B and -V together is allowed.
Regular expressions
hledger uses regular expressions in a number of places:
- query terms, on the command line and in the
hledger-web search form:
REGEX,desc:REGEX,cur:REGEX,tag:...=REGEX - CSV rules conditional blocks:
if REGEX ... - account alias directives and options:
alias /REGEX/ = REPLACEMENT,--alias /REGEX/=REPLACEMENT
hledger’s regular expressions come from the regex-tdfa library. In general they:
- are case insensitive
- are infix matching (do not need to match the entire thing being matched)
- are POSIX extended regular expressions
- also support GNU word boundaries (\<, \>, \b, \B)
- and parenthesised capturing groups and numeric backreferences in replacement strings
- do not support mode modifiers like (?s)
Some things to note:
In the
aliasdirective and--aliasoption, regular expressions must be enclosed in forward slashes (/REGEX/). Elsewhere in hledger, these are not required.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, writecur:\$.On the command line, some metacharacters like
$have a special meaning to the shell and so must be escaped at least once more. See Special characters.
QUERIES
One of hledger’s strengths is being able to quickly report on precise subsets of your data. Most commands accept an optional query expression, written as arguments after the command name, to filter the data by date, account name or other criteria. The syntax is similar to a web search: one or more space-separated search terms, quotes to enclose whitespace, optional prefixes to match specific fields. Multiple search terms are combined as follows:
All commands except print: show transactions/postings/accounts which match (or negatively match)
- any of the description terms AND
- any of the account terms AND
- any of the status terms AND
- all the other terms.
The print command: show transactions which
- match any of the description terms AND
- have any postings matching any of the positive account terms AND
- have no postings matching any of the negative account terms AND
- match all the other terms.
The following kinds of search terms can be used:
REGEX- match account names by this regular expression
acct:REGEX- same as above
amt:N, amt:<N, amt:<=N, amt:>N, amt:>=N- match postings with a single-commodity amount that is equal to, less than, or greater than N. (Multi-commodity amounts are not tested, and will always match.) The comparison has two modes: if N is preceded by a + or - sign (or is 0), the two signed numbers are compared. Otherwise, the absolute magnitudes are compared, ignoring sign.
code:REGEX- match by transaction code (eg check number)
cur:REGEX-
match postings or transactions including any amounts whose
currency/commodity symbol is fully matched by REGEX. (For a partial
match, use
.*REGEX.*). Note, to match characters which are regex-significant, like the dollar sign ($), you need to prepend\. And when using the command line you need to add one more level of quoting to hide it from the shell, so eg do:hledger print cur:'\$'orhledger print cur:\\$. desc:REGEX- match transaction descriptions
date:PERIODEXPR-
match dates within the specified period. PERIODEXPR is a period expression (with no report
interval). Examples:
date:2016,date:thismonth,date:2000/2/1-2/15,date:lastweek-. If the--date2command line flag is present, this matches secondary dates instead. date2:PERIODEXPR- match secondary dates within the specified period.
depth:N- match (or display, depending on command) accounts at or above this depth
real:, real:0- match real or virtual postings respectively
status:, status:!, status:*- match unmarked, pending, or cleared transactions respectively
tag:REGEX[=REGEX]- match by tag name, and optionally also by tag value. Note a tag: query is considered to match a transaction if it matches any of the postings. Also remember that postings inherit the tags of their parent transaction.
not:- before any of the above negates the match.
inacct:ACCTNAME-
a special term used automatically when you click an account name in
hledger-web, specifying the account register we are currently in
(selects the transactions of that account and how to show them, can be
filtered further with
acctetc). Not supported elsewhere in hledger.
Some of these can also be expressed as command-line options (eg
depth:2 is equivalent to --depth 2). Generally
you can mix options and query arguments, and the resulting query will be
their intersection (perhaps excluding the -p/--period
option).
COMMANDS
hledger provides a number of subcommands; hledger with
no arguments shows a list.
If you install additional hledger-* packages, or if you
put programs or scripts named hledger-NAME in your PATH,
these will also be listed as subcommands.
Run a subcommand by writing its name as first argument (eg
hledger incomestatement). You can also write any
unambiguous prefix of a command name (hledger inc), or one
of the standard short aliases displayed in the command list
(hledger is).
accounts
Show account names.
--tree- show short account names, as a tree
--flat- show full account names, as a list (default)
--drop=N- in flat mode: omit N leading account name parts
This command lists all account names that are in use (ie, all the accounts which have at least one transaction posting to them). With query arguments, only matched account names are shown.
It shows a flat list by default. With --tree, it uses
indentation to show the account hierarchy.
In flat mode you can add --drop N to omit the first few
account name components.
Examples:
$ hledger accounts --tree
assets
bank
checking
saving
cash
expenses
food
supplies
income
gifts
salary
liabilities
debts
$ hledger accounts --drop 1
bank:checking
bank:saving
cash
food
supplies
gifts
salary
debts
$ hledger accounts
assets:bank:checking
assets:bank:saving
assets:cash
expenses:food
expenses:supplies
income:gifts
income:salary
liabilities:debts
activity
Show an ascii barchart of posting counts per interval.
The activity command displays an ascii histogram showing transaction counts by day, week, month or other reporting interval (by day is the default). With query arguments, it counts only matched transactions.
$ hledger activity --quarterly
2008-01-01 **
2008-04-01 *******
2008-07-01
2008-10-01 **
add
Prompt for transactions and add them to the journal.
--no-new-accounts- don’t allow creating new accounts; helps prevent typos when entering account names
Many hledger users edit their journals directly with a text editor,
or generate them from CSV. For more interactive data entry, there is the
add command, which prompts interactively on the console for
new transactions, and appends them to the journal file (if there are
multiple -f FILE options, the first file is used.) Existing
transactions are not changed. This is the only hledger command that
writes to the journal file.
To use it, just run hledger add and follow the prompts.
You can add as many transactions as you like; when you are finished,
enter . or press control-d or control-c to exit.
Features:
- add tries to provide useful defaults, using the most similar recent transaction (by description) as a template.
- You can also set the initial defaults with command line arguments.
- Readline-style edit keys can be used during data entry.
- The tab key will auto-complete whenever possible - accounts,
descriptions, dates (
yesterday,today,tomorrow). If the input area is empty, it will insert the default value. - If the journal defines a default commodity, it will be added to any bare numbers entered.
- A parenthesised transaction code may be entered following a date.
- Comments and tags may be entered following a description or amount.
- If you make a mistake, enter
<at any prompt to restart the transaction. - Input prompts are displayed in a different colour when the terminal supports it.
Example (see the tutorial for a detailed explanation):
$ hledger add
Adding transactions to journal file /src/hledger/examples/sample.journal
Any command line arguments will be used as defaults.
Use tab key to complete, readline keys to edit, enter to accept defaults.
An optional (CODE) may follow transaction dates.
An optional ; COMMENT may follow descriptions or amounts.
If you make a mistake, enter < at any prompt to restart the transaction.
To end a transaction, enter . when prompted.
To quit, enter . at a date prompt or press control-d or control-c.
Date [2015/05/22]:
Description: supermarket
Account 1: expenses:food
Amount 1: $10
Account 2: assets:checking
Amount 2 [$-10.0]:
Account 3 (or . or enter to finish this transaction): .
2015/05/22 supermarket
expenses:food $10
assets:checking $-10.0
Save this transaction to the journal ? [y]:
Saved.
Starting the next transaction (. or ctrl-D/ctrl-C to quit)
Date [2015/05/22]: <CTRL-D> $
balance
Show accounts and their balances. Alias: bal.
--change- show balance change in each period (default)
--cumulative- show balance change accumulated across periods (in multicolumn reports)
-H --historical- show historical ending balance in each period (includes postings before report start date)
--tree- show accounts as a tree; amounts include subaccounts (default in simple reports)
--flat- show accounts as a list; amounts exclude subaccounts except when account is depth-clipped (default in multicolumn reports)
-A --average- show a row average column (in multicolumn mode)
-T --row-total- show a row total column (in multicolumn mode)
-N --no-total- don’t show the final total row
--drop=N- omit N leading account name parts (in flat mode)
--no-elide- don’t squash boring parent accounts (in tree mode)
--format=LINEFORMAT- in single-column balance reports: use this custom line format
-O FMT --output-format=FMT- select the output format. Supported formats: txt, csv.
-o FILE --output-file=FILE- write output to FILE. A file extension matching one of the above formats selects that format.
--pretty-tables- Use unicode to display prettier tables.
The balance command displays accounts and balances. It is hledger’s most featureful and versatile command.
$ hledger balance
$-1 assets
$1 bank:saving
$-2 cash
$2 expenses
$1 food
$1 supplies
$-2 income
$-1 gifts
$-1 salary
$1 liabilities:debts
--------------------
0
More precisely, the balance command shows the change to each account’s balance caused by all (matched) postings. In the common case where you do not filter by date and your journal sets the correct opening balances, this is the same as the account’s ending balance.
By default, accounts are displayed hierarchically, with subaccounts
indented below their parent. “Boring” accounts, which contain a single
interesting subaccount and no balance of their own, are elided into the
following line for more compact output. (Use --no-elide to
prevent this. Eliding of boring accounts is not yet supported in
multicolumn reports.)
Each account’s balance is the “inclusive” balance - it includes the balances of any subaccounts.
Accounts which have zero balance (and no non-zero subaccounts) are
omitted. Use -E/--empty to show them.
A final total is displayed by default; use -N/--no-total
to suppress it:
$ hledger balance -p 2008/6 expenses --no-total
$2 expenses
$1 food
$1 supplies
Flat mode
To see a flat list of full account names instead of the default
hierarchical display, use --flat. In this mode, accounts
(unless depth-clipped) show their “exclusive” balance, excluding any
subaccount balances. In this mode, you can also use
--drop N to omit the first few account name components.
$ hledger balance -p 2008/6 expenses -N --flat --drop 1
$1 food
$1 supplies
Depth limited balance reports
With --depth N, balance shows accounts only to the
specified depth. This is very useful to show a complex charts of
accounts in less detail. In flat mode, balances from accounts below the
depth limit will be shown as part of a parent account at the depth
limit.
$ hledger balance -N --depth 1
$-1 assets
$2 expenses
$-2 income
$1 liabilities
Multicolumn balance reports
With a reporting interval, multiple balance columns will be shown, one for each report period. There are three types of multi-column balance report, showing different information:
By default: each column shows the sum of postings in that period, ie the account’s change of balance in that period. This is useful eg for a monthly income statement:
$ hledger balance --quarterly income expenses -E Balance changes in 2008: || 2008q1 2008q2 2008q3 2008q4 ===================++================================= expenses:food || 0 $1 0 0 expenses:supplies || 0 $1 0 0 income:gifts || 0 $-1 0 0 income:salary || $-1 0 0 0 -------------------++--------------------------------- || $-1 $1 0 0With
--cumulative: each column shows the ending balance for that period, accumulating the changes across periods, starting from 0 at the report start date:$ hledger balance --quarterly income expenses -E --cumulative Ending balances (cumulative) in 2008: || 2008/03/31 2008/06/30 2008/09/30 2008/12/31 ===================++================================================= expenses:food || 0 $1 $1 $1 expenses:supplies || 0 $1 $1 $1 income:gifts || 0 $-1 $-1 $-1 income:salary || $-1 $-1 $-1 $-1 -------------------++------------------------------------------------- || $-1 0 0 0With
--historical/-H: each column shows the actual historical ending balance for that period, accumulating the changes across periods, starting from the actual balance at the report start date. This is useful eg for a multi-period balance sheet, and when you are showing only the data after a certain start date:$ hledger balance ^assets ^liabilities --quarterly --historical --begin 2008/4/1 Ending balances (historical) in 2008/04/01-2008/12/31: || 2008/06/30 2008/09/30 2008/12/31 ======================++===================================== assets:bank:checking || $1 $1 0 assets:bank:saving || $1 $1 $1 assets:cash || $-2 $-2 $-2 liabilities:debts || 0 0 $1 ----------------------++------------------------------------- || 0 0 0
Multi-column balance reports display accounts in flat mode by
default; to see the hierarchy, use --tree.
With a reporting interval (like --quarterly above), the
report start/end dates will be adjusted if necessary so that they
encompass the displayed report periods. This is so that the first and
last periods will be “full” and comparable to the others.
The -E/--empty flag does two things in multicolumn
balance reports: first, the report will show all columns within the
specified report period (without -E, leading and trailing columns with
all zeroes are not shown). Second, all accounts which existed at the
report start date will be considered, not just the ones with activity
during the report period (use -E to include low-activity accounts which
would otherwise would be omitted).
The -T/--row-total flag adds an additional column
showing the total for each row.
The -A/--average flag adds a column showing the average
value in each row.
Here’s an example of all three:
$ hledger balance -Q income expenses --tree -ETA
Balance changes in 2008:
|| 2008q1 2008q2 2008q3 2008q4 Total Average
============++===================================================
expenses || 0 $2 0 0 $2 $1
food || 0 $1 0 0 $1 0
supplies || 0 $1 0 0 $1 0
income || $-1 $-1 0 0 $-2 $-1
gifts || 0 $-1 0 0 $-1 0
salary || $-1 0 0 0 $-1 0
------------++---------------------------------------------------
|| $-1 $1 0 0 0 0
# Average is rounded to the dollar here since all journal amounts are
Custom balance output
In simple (non-multi-column) balance reports, you can customise the
output with --format FMT:
$ hledger balance --format "%20(account) %12(total)"
assets $-1
bank:saving $1
cash $-2
expenses $2
food $1
supplies $1
income $-2
gifts $-1
salary $-1
liabilities:debts $1
---------------------------------
0
The FMT format string (plus a newline) specifies the formatting applied to each account/balance pair. It may contain any suitable text, with data fields interpolated like so:
%[MIN][.MAX](FIELDNAME)
MIN pads with spaces to at least this width (optional)
MAX truncates at this width (optional)
FIELDNAME must be enclosed in parentheses, and can be one of:
depth_spacer- a number of spaces equal to the account’s depth, or if MIN is specified, MIN * depth spaces.account- the account’s nametotal- the account’s balance/posted total, right justified
Also, FMT can begin with an optional prefix to control how multi-commodity amounts are rendered:
%_- render on multiple lines, bottom-aligned (the default)%^- render on multiple lines, top-aligned%,- render on one line, comma-separated
There are some quirks. Eg in one-line mode,
%(depth_spacer) has no effect, instead
%(account) has indentation built in. Experimentation may be needed to get pleasing results.
Some example formats:
%(total)- the account’s total%-20.20(account)- the account’s name, left justified, padded to 20 characters and clipped at 20 characters%,%-50(account) %25(total)- account name padded to 50 characters, total padded to 20 characters, with multiple commodities rendered on one line%20(total) %2(depth_spacer)%-(account)- the default format for the single-column balance report
Colour support
The balance command shows negative amounts in red, if:
- the
TERMenvironment variable is not set todumb - the output is not being redirected or piped anywhere
Output destination
The balance, print, register and stats commands can write their
output to a destination other than the console. This is controlled by
the -o/--output-file option.
$ hledger balance -o - # write to stdout (the default)
$ hledger balance -o FILE # write to FILE
CSV output
The balance, print and register commands can write their output as
CSV. This is useful for exporting data to other applications, eg to make
charts in a spreadsheet. This is controlled by the
-O/--output-format option, or by specifying a
.csv file extension with -o/--output-file.
$ hledger balance -O csv # write CSV to stdout
$ hledger balance -o FILE.csv # write CSV to FILE.csv
balancesheet
Show a balance sheet. Alias: bs.
--change- show balance change in each period, instead of historical ending balances
--cumulative- show balance change accumulated across periods (in multicolumn reports), instead of historical ending balances
-H --historical- show historical ending balance in each period (includes postings before report start date) (default)
--tree- show accounts as a tree; amounts include subaccounts (default in simple reports)
--flat- show accounts as a list; amounts exclude subaccounts except when account is depth-clipped (default in multicolumn reports)
-A --average- show a row average column (in multicolumn mode)
-T --row-total- show a row total column (in multicolumn mode)
-N --no-total- don’t show the final total row
--drop=N- omit N leading account name parts (in flat mode)
--no-elide- don’t squash boring parent accounts (in tree mode)
--format=LINEFORMAT- in single-column balance reports: use this custom line format
This command displays a simple balance sheet. It
currently assumes that you have top-level accounts named
asset and liability (plural forms also
allowed.)
$ hledger balancesheet
Balance Sheet
Assets:
$-1 assets
$1 bank:saving
$-2 cash
--------------------
$-1
Liabilities:
$1 liabilities:debts
--------------------
$1
Total:
--------------------
0
With a reporting interval, multiple
columns will be shown, one for each report period. As with multicolumn balance reports, you
can alter the report mode with
--change/--cumulative/--historical.
Normally balancesheet shows historical ending balances, which is what
you need for a balance sheet; note this means it ignores report begin
dates.
cashflow
Show a cashflow statement. Alias: cf.
--change- show balance change in each period (default)
--cumulative- show balance change accumulated across periods (in multicolumn reports), instead of changes during periods
-H --historical- show historical ending balance in each period (includes postings before report start date), instead of changes during each period
--tree- show accounts as a tree; amounts include subaccounts (default in simple reports)
--flat- show accounts as a list; amounts exclude subaccounts except when account is depth-clipped (default in multicolumn reports)
-A --average- show a row average column (in multicolumn mode)
-T --row-total- show a row total column (in multicolumn mode)
-N --no-total- don’t show the final total row (in simple reports)
--drop=N- omit N leading account name parts (in flat mode)
--no-elide- don’t squash boring parent accounts (in tree mode)
--format=LINEFORMAT- in single-column balance reports: use this custom line format
This command displays a simple cashflow
statement It shows the change in all “cash” (ie, liquid assets)
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.)
$ hledger cashflow
Cashflow Statement
Cash flows:
$-1 assets
$1 bank:saving
$-2 cash
--------------------
$-1
Total:
--------------------
$-1
With a reporting interval, multiple
columns will be shown, one for each report period. Normally cashflow
shows changes in assets per period, though as with multicolumn balance reports you
can alter the report mode with
--change/--cumulative/--historical.
help
Show any of the hledger manuals.
The help command displays any of the main hledger man pages. (Unlike
hledger --help, which displays only the hledger man page.)
Run it with no arguments to list available topics (their names are
shortened for easier typing), and run hledger help TOPIC to
select one. The output is similar to a man page, but fixed width. It may
be long, so you may wish to pipe it into a pager. See also info and man.
$ hledger help
Choose a topic, eg: hledger help cli
cli, ui, web, api, journal, csv, timeclock, timedot
$ hledger help cli | less
hledger(1) hledger User Manuals hledger(1)
NAME
hledger - a command-line accounting tool
SYNOPSIS
hledger [-f FILE] COMMAND [OPTIONS] [CMDARGS]
hledger [-f FILE] ADDONCMD -- [OPTIONS] [CMDARGS]
:
incomestatement
Show an income statement. Alias: is.
--change- show balance change in each period (default)
--cumulative- show balance change accumulated across periods (in multicolumn reports), instead of changes during periods
-H --historical- show historical ending balance in each period (includes postings before report start date), instead of changes during each period
--tree- show accounts as a tree; amounts include subaccounts (default in simple reports)
--flat- show accounts as a list; amounts exclude subaccounts except when account is depth-clipped (default in multicolumn reports)
-A --average- show a row average column (in multicolumn mode)
-T --row-total- show a row total column (in multicolumn mode)
-N --no-total- don’t show the final total row
--drop=N- omit N leading account name parts (in flat mode)
--no-elide- don’t squash boring parent accounts (in tree mode)
--format=LINEFORMAT- in single-column balance reports: use this custom line format
This command displays a simple income
statement. It currently assumes that you have top-level accounts
named income (or revenue) and
expense (plural forms also allowed.)
$ hledger incomestatement
Income Statement
Revenues:
$-2 income
$-1 gifts
$-1 salary
--------------------
$-2
Expenses:
$2 expenses
$1 food
$1 supplies
--------------------
$2
Total:
--------------------
0
With a reporting interval, multiple
columns will be shown, one for each report period. Normally
incomestatement shows revenues/expenses per period, though as with multicolumn balance reports you
can alter the report mode with
--change/--cumulative/--historical.
info
Show any of the hledger manuals using info.
The info command displays any of the hledger reference manuals using the info hypertextual
documentation viewer. This can be a very efficient way to browse large
manuals. It requires the “info” program to be available in your
PATH.
As with help, run it with no arguments to list available topics (manuals).
man
Show any of the hledger manuals using man.
The man command displays any of the hledger reference manuals using man, the standard
documentation viewer on unix systems. This will fit the text to your
terminal width, and probably invoke a pager automatically. It requires
the “man” program to be available in your PATH.
As with help, run it with no arguments to list available topics (manuals).
Show transactions from the journal.
-x --explicit- show all amounts explicitly
-m STR --match=STR- show the transaction whose description is most similar to STR, and is most recent
-O FMT --output-format=FMT- select the output format. Supported formats: txt, csv.
-o FILE --output-file=FILE- write output to FILE. A file extension matching one of the above formats selects that format.
$ hledger print
2008/01/01 income
assets:bank:checking $1
income:salary $-1
2008/06/01 gift
assets:bank:checking $1
income:gifts $-1
2008/06/02 save
assets:bank:saving $1
assets:bank:checking $-1
2008/06/03 * eat & shop
expenses:food $1
expenses:supplies $1
assets:cash $-2
2008/12/31 * pay off
liabilities:debts $1
assets:bank:checking $-1
The print command displays full journal entries (transactions) from the journal file, tidily formatted.
As of hledger 1.2, print’s output is always a valid hledger journal. However it may not preserve all original content, eg it does not print directives or inter-transaction comments.
Normally, transactions’ implicit/explicit amount style is preserved:
when an amount is omitted in the journal, it will be omitted in the
output. You can use the -x/--explicit flag to make all
amounts explicit, which can be useful for troubleshooting or for making
your journal more readable and robust against data entry errors. Note,
in this mode postings with a multi-commodity amount (possible with an
implicit amount in a multi-commodity transaction) will be split into
multiple single-commodity postings, for valid journal output.
With -B/–cost, amounts with transaction prices are converted to cost (using the transaction price).
The print command also supports output destination and CSV output. 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","","",""
- There is one CSV record per posting, with the parent transaction’s fields repeated.
- 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.)
- The amount is separated into “commodity” (the symbol) and “amount” (numeric quantity) fields.
- The numeric amount is repeated in either the “credit” or “debit” column, for convenience. (Those names are not accurate in the accounting sense; it just puts negative amounts under credit and zero or greater amounts under debit.)
register
Show postings and their running total. Alias: reg.
--cumulative- show running total from report start date (default)
-H --historical- show historical running total/balance (includes postings before report start date)
-A --average- show running average of posting amounts instead of total (implies –empty)
-r --related- show postings’ siblings instead
-w N --width=N- set output width (default: terminal width or COLUMNS. -wN,M sets description width as well)
-O FMT --output-format=FMT- select the output format. Supported formats: txt, csv.
-o FILE --output-file=FILE- write output to FILE. A file extension matching one of the above formats selects that format.
The register command displays postings, one per line, and their running total. This is typically used with a query selecting a particular account, to see that account’s activity:
$ hledger register checking
2008/01/01 income assets:bank:checking $1 $1
2008/06/01 gift assets:bank:checking $1 $2
2008/06/02 save assets:bank:checking $-1 $1
2008/12/31 pay off assets:bank:checking $-1 0
The --historical/-H flag adds the balance
from any undisplayed prior postings to the running total. This is useful
when you want to see only recent activity, with a historically accurate
running balance:
$ hledger register checking -b 2008/6 --historical
2008/06/01 gift assets:bank:checking $1 $2
2008/06/02 save assets:bank:checking $-1 $1
2008/12/31 pay off assets:bank:checking $-1 0
The --depth option limits the amount of sub-account
detail displayed.
The --average/-A flag shows the running
average posting amount instead of the running total (so, the final
number displayed is the average for the whole report period). This flag
implies --empty (see below). It is affected by
--historical. It works best when showing just one account
and one commodity.
The --related/-r flag shows the
other postings in the transactions of the postings which would
normally be shown.
With a reporting interval, register shows summary postings, one per interval, aggregating the postings to each account:
$ hledger register --monthly income
2008/01 income:salary $-1 $-1
2008/06 income:gifts $-1 $-2
Periods with no activity, and summary postings with a zero amount,
are not shown by default; use the --empty/-E
flag to see them:
$ hledger register --monthly income -E
2008/01 income:salary $-1 $-1
2008/02 0 $-1
2008/03 0 $-1
2008/04 0 $-1
2008/05 0 $-1
2008/06 income:gifts $-1 $-2
2008/07 0 $-2
2008/08 0 $-2
2008/09 0 $-2
2008/10 0 $-2
2008/11 0 $-2
2008/12 0 $-2
Often, you’ll want to see just one line per interval. The
--depth option helps with this, causing subaccounts to be
aggregated:
$ hledger register --monthly assets --depth 1h
2008/01 assets $1 $1
2008/06 assets $-1 0
2008/12 assets $-1 $-1
Note when using report intervals, if you specify start/end dates these will be adjusted outward if necessary to contain a whole number of intervals. This ensures that the first and last intervals are full length and comparable to the others in the report.
Custom register output
register uses the full terminal width by default, except on windows.
You can override this by setting the COLUMNS environment
variable (not a bash shell variable) or by using the
--width/-w option.
The description and account columns normally share the space equally
(about half of (width - 40) each). You can adjust this by adding a
description width as part of –width’s argument, comma-separated:
--width W,D . Here’s a diagram:
<--------------------------------- width (W) ---------------------------------->
date (10) description (D) account (W-41-D) amount (12) balance (12)
DDDDDDDDDD dddddddddddddddddddd aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa AAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAA
and some examples:
$ hledger reg # use terminal width (or 80 on windows)
$ hledger reg -w 100 # use width 100
$ COLUMNS=100 hledger reg # set with one-time environment variable
$ export COLUMNS=100; hledger reg # set till session end (or window resize)
$ hledger reg -w 100,40 # set overall width 100, description width 40
$ hledger reg -w $COLUMNS,40 # use terminal width, and set description width
The register command also supports the -o/--output-file
and -O/--output-format options for controlling output destination and CSV output.
stats
Show some journal statistics.
-o FILE --output-file=FILE- write output to FILE. A file extension matching one of the above formats selects that format.
$ hledger stats
Main journal file : /src/hledger/examples/sample.journal
Included journal files :
Transactions span : 2008-01-01 to 2009-01-01 (366 days)
Last transaction : 2008-12-31 (2333 days ago)
Transactions : 5 (0.0 per day)
Transactions last 30 days: 0 (0.0 per day)
Transactions last 7 days : 0 (0.0 per day)
Payees/descriptions : 5
Accounts : 8 (depth 3)
Commodities : 1 ($)
The stats command displays summary information for the whole journal, or a matched part of it. With a reporting interval, it shows a report for each report period.
The stats command also supports -o/--output-file for
controlling output destination.
test
Run built-in unit tests.
$ hledger test
Cases: 74 Tried: 74 Errors: 0 Failures: 0
This command runs hledger’s built-in unit tests and displays a quick report. With a regular expression argument, it selects only tests with matching names. It’s mainly used in development, but it’s also nice to be able to check your hledger executable for smoke at any time.
ADD-ON COMMANDS
hledger also searches for external add-on commands, and will include
these in the commands list. These are programs or scripts in your PATH
whose name starts with hledger- and ends with a recognised
file extension (currently: no extension,
bat,com,exe,
hs,lhs,pl,py,rb,rkt,sh).
Add-ons can be invoked like any hledger command, but there are a few
things to be aware of. Eg if the hledger-web add-on is
installed,
hledger -h webshows hledger’s help, whilehledger web -hshows hledger-web’s help.Flags specific to the add-on must have a preceding
--to hide them from hledger. Sohledger web --serve --port 9000will be rejected; you must usehledger web -- --serve --port 9000.You can always run add-ons directly if preferred:
hledger-web --serve --port 9000.
Add-ons are a relatively easy way to add local features or experiment with new ideas. They can be written in any language, but haskell scripts have a big advantage: they can use the same hledger (and haskell) library functions that built-in commands do, for command-line options, journal parsing, reporting, etc.
Here are some hledger add-ons available:
Official add-ons
These are maintained and released along with hledger.
api
hledger-api serves hledger data as a JSON web API.
ui
hledger-ui provides an efficient curses-style interface.
web
hledger-web provides a simple web interface.
Third party add-ons
These are maintained separately, and usually updated shortly after a hledger release.
diff
hledger-diff shows differences in an account’s transactions between one journal file and another.
iadd
hledger-iadd is a curses-style, more interactive replacement for the add command.
interest
hledger-interest generates interest transactions for an account according to various schemes.
irr
hledger-irr calculates the internal rate of return of an investment account.
Experimental add-ons
These are available in source form in the hledger repo’s bin/ directory; installing them is pretty easy. They may be less mature and documented than built-in commands. Reading and tweaking these is a good way to start making your own!
autosync
hledger-autosync is a symbolic link for easily running ledger-autosync, if installed. ledger-autosync does deduplicating conversion of OFX data and some CSV formats, and can also download the data if your bank offers OFX Direct Connect.
budget
hledger-budget.hs adds more budget-tracking features to hledger.
chart
hledger-chart.hs is an old pie chart generator, in need of some love.
check
hledger-check.hs checks more powerful account balance assertions.
check-dates
hledger-check-dates.hs checks that journal entries are ordered by date.
check-dupes
hledger-check-dupes.hs checks for account names sharing the same leaf name.
equity
hledger-equity.hs prints balance-resetting transactions, useful for bringing account balances across file boundaries.
prices
hledger-prices.hs prints all prices from the journal.
print-unique
hledger-print-unique.hs prints transactions which do not reuse an already-seen description.
register-match
hledger-register-match.hs helps ledger-autosync detect already-seen transactions when importing.
rewrite
hledger-rewrite.hs Adds one or more custom postings to matched transactions.
ENVIRONMENT
COLUMNS The screen width used by the register command. Default: the full terminal width.
LEDGER_FILE The journal file path when not specified
with -f. Default: ~/.hledger.journal (on
windows, perhaps C:/Users/USER/.hledger.journal).
FILES
Reads data from one or more files in hledger journal, timeclock,
timedot, or CSV format specified with -f, or
$LEDGER_FILE, or $HOME/.hledger.journal (on
windows, perhaps C:/Users/USER/.hledger.journal).
BUGS
The need to precede addon command options with -- when
invoked from hledger is awkward.
When input data contains non-ascii characters, a suitable system locale must be configured (or there will be an unhelpful error). Eg on POSIX, set LANG to something other than C.
In a Microsoft Windows CMD window, non-ascii characters and colours are not supported.
In a Cygwin/MSYS/Mintty window, the tab key is not supported in hledger add.
Not all of Ledger’s journal file syntax is supported. See file format differences.
On large data files, hledger is slower and uses more memory than Ledger.
TROUBLESHOOTING
Here are some issues you might encounter when you run hledger (and remember you can also seek help from the IRC channel, mail list or bug tracker):
Successfully installed, but “No command ‘hledger’
found”
stack and cabal install binaries into a special directory, which should
be added to your PATH environment variable. Eg on unix-like systems,
that is ~/.local/bin and ~/.cabal/bin respectively.
I set a custom LEDGER_FILE, but hledger is still using the
default file
LEDGER_FILE should be a real environment variable, not just
a shell variable. The command env | grep LEDGER_FILE should
show it. You may need to use export. Here’s an explanation.
“Illegal byte sequence” or “Invalid or incomplete multibyte
or wide character” errors
In order to handle non-ascii letters and symbols (like £), hledger needs
an appropriate locale. This is usually configured system-wide; you can
also configure it temporarily. The locale may need to be one that
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).
hledger-ui
This doc is for version 1.3.
NAME
hledger-ui - curses-style interface for the hledger accounting tool
SYNOPSIS
hledger-ui [OPTIONS] [QUERYARGS]
hledger ui -- [OPTIONS] [QUERYARGS]
DESCRIPTION
hledger is a cross-platform program for tracking money, time, or any other commodity, using double-entry accounting and a simple, editable file format. hledger is inspired by and largely compatible with ledger(1).
hledger-ui is hledger’s curses-style interface, providing an efficient full-window text UI for viewing accounts and transactions, and some limited data entry capability. It is easier than hledger’s command-line interface, and sometimes quicker and more convenient than the web interface.
Like hledger, it reads data from one or more files in hledger
journal, timeclock, timedot, or CSV format specified with
-f, or $LEDGER_FILE, or
$HOME/.hledger.journal (on windows, perhaps
C:/Users/USER/.hledger.journal). For more about this see
hledger(1), hledger_journal(5) etc.
OPTIONS
Note: if invoking hledger-ui as a hledger subcommand, write
-- before options as shown above.
Any QUERYARGS are interpreted as a hledger search query which filters the data.
--watch- watch for data and date changes and reload automatically
--theme=default|terminal|greenterm- use this custom display theme
--register=ACCTREGEX- start in the (first) matched account’s register screen
--change- show period balances (changes) at startup instead of historical balances
--flat- show full account names, unindented
hledger input options:
-f FILE --file=FILE-
use a different input file. For stdin, use - (default:
$LEDGER_FILEor$HOME/.hledger.journal) --rules-file=RULESFILE- Conversion rules file to use when reading CSV (default: FILE.rules)
--alias=OLD=NEW- rename accounts named OLD to NEW
--anon- anonymize accounts and payees
--pivot TAGNAME- use some other field/tag for account names
-I --ignore-assertions- ignore any failing balance assertions
hledger reporting options:
-b --begin=DATE- include postings/txns on or after this date
-e --end=DATE- include postings/txns before this date
-D --daily- multiperiod/multicolumn report by day
-W --weekly- multiperiod/multicolumn report by week
-M --monthly- multiperiod/multicolumn report by month
-Q --quarterly- multiperiod/multicolumn report by quarter
-Y --yearly- multiperiod/multicolumn report by year
-p --period=PERIODEXP- set start date, end date, and/or reporting interval all at once (overrides the flags above)
--date2- show, and match with -b/-e/-p/date:, secondary dates instead
-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
--depth=N- hide accounts/postings deeper than N
-E --empty- show items with zero amount, normally hidden
-B --cost- convert amounts to their cost at transaction time (using the transaction price, if any)
-V --value- convert amounts to their market value on the report end date (using the most recent applicable market price, if any)
hledger help options:
-h- show general usage (or after COMMAND, command usage)
--help- show this program’s manual as plain text (or after an add-on COMMAND, the add-on’s manual)
--man- show this program’s manual with man
--info- show this program’s manual with info
--version- show version
--debug[=N]- show debug output (levels 1-9, default: 1)
KEYS
? shows a help dialog listing all keys. (Some of these
also appear in the quick help at the bottom of each screen.) Press
? again (or ESCAPE, or LEFT) to
close it. The following keys work on most screens:
The cursor keys navigate: right (or enter)
goes deeper, left returns to the previous screen,
up/down/page up/page down/home/end
move up and down through lists. Vi-style
(h/j/k/l) and
Emacs-style
(CTRL-p/CTRL-n/CTRL-f/CTRL-b)
movement keys are also supported. A tip: movement speed is limited by
your keyboard repeat rate, to move faster you may want to adjust it. (If
you’re on a mac, the Karabiner app is one way to do that.)
With shift pressed, the cursor keys adjust the report period,
limiting the transactions to be shown (by default, all are shown).
shift-down/up steps downward and upward through these
standard report period durations: year, quarter, month, week, day. Then,
shift-left/right moves to the previous/next period.
t sets the report period to today. With the
--watch option, when viewing a “current” period (the
current day, week, month, quarter, or year), the period will move
automatically to track the current date. To set a non-standard period,
you can use / and a date: query.
/ lets you set a general filter query limiting the data
shown, using the same query terms as
in hledger and hledger-web. While editing the query, you can use CTRL-a/e/d/k,
BS, cursor keys; press ENTER to set it, or
ESCAPEto cancel. There are also keys for quickly adjusting
some common filters like account depth and transaction status (see
below). BACKSPACE or DELETE removes all
filters, showing all transactions.
ESCAPE removes all filters and jumps back to the top
screen. Or, it cancels a minibuffer edit or help dialog in progress.
CTRL-l redraws the screen and centers the selection if
possible (selections near the top won’t be centered, since we don’t
scroll above the top).
g reloads from the data file(s) and updates the current
screen and any previous screens. (With large files, this could cause a
noticeable pause.)
I toggles balance assertion checking. Disabling balance
assertions temporarily can be useful for troubleshooting.
a runs command-line hledger’s add command, and reloads
the updated file. This allows some basic data entry.
E runs $HLEDGER_UI_EDITOR, or $EDITOR, or a default
(emacsclient -a "" -nw) on the journal file. With some
editors (emacs, vi), the cursor will be positioned at the current
transaction when invoked from the register and transaction screens, and
at the error location (if possible) when invoked from the error
screen.
q quits the application.
Additional screen-specific keys are described below.
SCREENS
Accounts screen
This is normally the first screen displayed. It lists accounts and their balances, like hledger’s balance command. By default, it shows all accounts and their latest ending balances (including the balances of subaccounts). if you specify a query on the command line, it shows just the matched accounts and the balances from matched transactions.
Account names are normally indented to show the hierarchy (tree
mode). To see less detail, set a depth limit by pressing a number key,
1 to 9. 0 shows even less detail,
collapsing all accounts to a single total. - and
+ (or =) decrease and increase the depth
limit. To remove the depth limit, set it higher than the maximum account
depth, or press ESCAPE.
F toggles flat mode, in which accounts are shown as a
flat list, with their full names. In this mode, account balances exclude
subaccounts, except for accounts at the depth limit (as with hledger’s
balance command).
H toggles between showing historical balances or period
balances. Historical balances (the default) are ending balances at the
end of the report period, taking into account all transactions before
that date (filtered by the filter query if any), including transactions
before the start of the report period. In other words, historical
balances are what you would see on a bank statement for that account
(unless disturbed by a filter query). Period balances ignore
transactions before the report start date, so they show the change in
balance during the report period. They are more useful eg when viewing a
time log.
U toggles filtering by unmarked status, including or excluding
unmarked postings in the balances. Similarly, P toggles
pending postings, and C toggles cleared postings. (By
default, balances include all postings; if you activate one or two
status filters, only those postings are included; and if you activate
all three, the filter is removed.)
R toggles real mode, in which virtual postings are
ignored.
Z toggles nonzero mode, in which only accounts with
nonzero balances are shown (hledger-ui shows zero items by default,
unlike command-line hledger).
Press right or enter to view an account’s
transactions register.
Register screen
This screen shows the transactions affecting a particular account, like a check register. Each line represents one transaction and shows:
the other account(s) involved, in abbreviated form. (If there are both real and virtual postings, it shows only the accounts affected by real postings.)
the overall change to the current account’s balance; positive for an inflow to this account, negative for an outflow.
the running historical total or period total for the current account, after the transaction. This can be toggled with
H. Similar to the accounts screen, the historical total is affected by transactions (filtered by the filter query) before the report start date, while the period total is not. If the historical total is not disturbed by a filter query, it will be the running historical balance you would see on a bank register for the current account.
If the accounts screen was in tree mode, the register screen will
include transactions from both the current account and its subaccounts.
If the accounts screen was in flat mode, and a non-depth-clipped account
was selected, the register screen will exclude transactions from
subaccounts. In other words, the register always shows the transactions
responsible for the period balance shown on the accounts screen. As on
the accounts screen, this can be toggled with F.
U toggles filtering by unmarked status, showing or hiding
unmarked transactions. Similarly, P toggles pending
transactions, and C toggles cleared transactions. (By
default, transactions with all statuses are shown; if you activate one
or two status filters, only those transactions are shown; and if you
activate all three, the filter is removed.)q
R toggles real mode, in which virtual postings are
ignored.
Z toggles nonzero mode, in which only transactions
posting a nonzero change are shown (hledger-ui shows zero items by
default, unlike command-line hledger).
Press right (or enter) to view the selected
transaction in detail.
Transaction screen
This screen shows a single transaction, as a general journal entry, similar to hledger’s print command and journal format (hledger_journal(5)).
The transaction’s date(s) and any cleared flag, transaction code, description, comments, along with all of its account postings are shown. Simple transactions have two postings, but there can be more (or in certain cases, fewer).
up and down will step through all
transactions listed in the previous account register screen. In the
title bar, the numbers in parentheses show your position within that
account register. They will vary depending on which account register you
came from (remember most transactions appear in multiple account
registers). The #N number preceding them is the transaction’s position
within the complete unfiltered journal, which is a more stable id (at
least until the next reload).
Error screen
This screen will appear if there is a problem, such as a parse error, when you press g to reload. Once you have fixed the problem, press g again to reload and resume normal operation. (Or, you can press escape to cancel the reload attempt.)
ENVIRONMENT
COLUMNS The screen width to use. Default: the full terminal width.
LEDGER_FILE The journal file path when not specified
with -f. Default: ~/.hledger.journal (on
windows, perhaps C:/Users/USER/.hledger.journal).
FILES
Reads data from one or more files in hledger journal, timeclock,
timedot, or CSV format specified with -f, or
$LEDGER_FILE, or $HOME/.hledger.journal (on
windows, perhaps C:/Users/USER/.hledger.journal).
BUGS
The need to precede options with -- when invoked from
hledger is awkward.
-f- doesn’t work (hledger-ui can’t read from stdin).
-V affects only the accounts screen.
When you press g, the current and all previous screens
are regenerated, which may cause a noticeable pause with large files.
Also there is no visual indication that this is in progress.
--watch is not yet fully robust. It works well for
normal usage, but many file changes in a short time (eg saving the file
thousands of times with an editor macro) can cause problems at least on
OSX. Symptoms include: unresponsive UI, periodic resetting of the cursor
position, momentary display of parse errors, high CPU usage eventually
subsiding, and possibly a small but persistent build-up of CPU usage
until the program is restarted.
hledger-web
This doc is for version 1.3.
NAME
hledger-web - web interface for the hledger accounting tool
SYNOPSIS
hledger-web [OPTIONS]
hledger web -- [OPTIONS]
DESCRIPTION
hledger is a cross-platform program for tracking money, time, or any other commodity, using double-entry accounting and a simple, editable file format. hledger is inspired by and largely compatible with ledger(1).
hledger-web is hledger’s web interface. It starts a simple web application for browsing and adding transactions, and optionally opens it in a web browser window if possible. It provides a more user-friendly UI than the hledger CLI or hledger-ui interface, showing more at once (accounts, the current account register, balance charts) and allowing history-aware data entry, interactive searching, and bookmarking.
hledger-web also lets you share a ledger with multiple users, or even the public web. There is no access control, so if you need that you should put it behind a suitable web proxy. As a small protection against data loss when running an unprotected instance, it writes a numbered backup of the main journal file (only ?) on every edit.
Like hledger, it reads data from one or more files in hledger
journal, timeclock, timedot, or CSV format specified with
-f, or $LEDGER_FILE, or
$HOME/.hledger.journal (on windows, perhaps
C:/Users/USER/.hledger.journal). For more about this see
hledger(1), hledger_journal(5) etc.
By default, hledger-web starts the web app in “transient mode” and
also opens it in your default web browser if possible. In this mode the
web app will keep running for as long as you have it open in a browser
window, and will exit after two minutes of inactivity (no requests and
no browser windows viewing it). With --serve, it just runs
the web app without exiting, and logs requests to the console.
By default the server listens on IP address 127.0.0.1, accessible
only to local requests. You can use --host to change this,
eg --host 0.0.0.0 to listen on all configured
addresses.
Similarly, use --port to set a TCP port other than 5000,
eg if you are running multiple hledger-web instances.
You can use --base-url to change the protocol, hostname,
port and path that appear in hyperlinks, useful eg for integrating
hledger-web within a larger website. The default is
http://HOST:PORT/ using the server’s configured host
address and TCP port (or http://HOST if PORT is 80).
With --file-url you can set a different base url for
static files, eg for better caching or cookie-less serving on high
performance websites.
Note there is no built-in access control (aside from listening on 127.0.0.1 by default). So you will need to hide hledger-web behind an authenticating proxy (such as apache or nginx) if you want to restrict who can see and add entries to your journal.
Command-line options and arguments may be used to set an initial filter on the data. This is not shown in the web UI, but it will be applied in addition to any search query entered there.
With journal and timeclock files (but not CSV files, currently) the web app detects changes made by other means and will show the new data on the next request. If a change makes the file unparseable, hledger-web will show an error until the file has been fixed.
OPTIONS
Note: if invoking hledger-web as a hledger subcommand, write
-- before options as shown above.
--serve- serve and log requests, don’t browse or auto-exit
--host=IPADDR- listen on this IP address (default: 127.0.0.1)
--port=PORT- listen on this TCP port (default: 5000)
--base-url=URL- set the base url (default: http://IPADDR:PORT). You would change this when sharing over the network, or integrating within a larger website.
--file-url=URL- set the static files url (default: BASEURL/static). hledger-web normally serves static files itself, but if you wanted to serve them from another server for efficiency, you would set the url with this.
hledger input options:
-f FILE --file=FILE-
use a different input file. For stdin, use - (default:
$LEDGER_FILEor$HOME/.hledger.journal) --rules-file=RULESFILE- Conversion rules file to use when reading CSV (default: FILE.rules)
--alias=OLD=NEW- rename accounts named OLD to NEW
--anon- anonymize accounts and payees
--pivot TAGNAME- use some other field/tag for account names
-I --ignore-assertions- ignore any failing balance assertions
hledger reporting options:
-b --begin=DATE- include postings/txns on or after this date
-e --end=DATE- include postings/txns before this date
-D --daily- multiperiod/multicolumn report by day
-W --weekly- multiperiod/multicolumn report by week
-M --monthly- multiperiod/multicolumn report by month
-Q --quarterly- multiperiod/multicolumn report by quarter
-Y --yearly- multiperiod/multicolumn report by year
-p --period=PERIODEXP- set start date, end date, and/or reporting interval all at once (overrides the flags above)
--date2- show, and match with -b/-e/-p/date:, secondary dates instead
-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
--depth=N- hide accounts/postings deeper than N
-E --empty- show items with zero amount, normally hidden
-B --cost- convert amounts to their cost at transaction time (using the transaction price, if any)
-V --value- convert amounts to their market value on the report end date (using the most recent applicable market price, if any)
hledger help options:
-h- show general usage (or after COMMAND, command usage)
--help- show this program’s manual as plain text (or after an add-on COMMAND, the add-on’s manual)
--man- show this program’s manual with man
--info- show this program’s manual with info
--version- show version
--debug[=N]- show debug output (levels 1-9, default: 1)
ENVIRONMENT
LEDGER_FILE The journal file path when not specified
with -f. Default: ~/.hledger.journal (on
windows, perhaps C:/Users/USER/.hledger.journal).
FILES
Reads data from one or more files in hledger journal, timeclock,
timedot, or CSV format specified with -f, or
$LEDGER_FILE, or $HOME/.hledger.journal (on
windows, perhaps C:/Users/USER/.hledger.journal).
BUGS
The need to precede options with -- when invoked from
hledger is awkward.
-f- doesn’t work (hledger-web can’t read from
stdin).
Query arguments and some hledger options are ignored.
Does not work in text-mode browsers.
Does not work well on small screens.
hledger-api
This doc is for version 1.3.
NAME
hledger-api - web API server for the hledger accounting tool
SYNOPSIS
hledger-api [OPTIONS]
hledger api -- [OPTIONS]
DESCRIPTION
hledger is a cross-platform program for tracking money, time, or any other commodity, using double-entry accounting and a simple, editable file format. hledger is inspired by and largely compatible with ledger(1).
hledger-api is a simple web API server, intended to support client-side web apps operating on hledger data. It comes with a series of simple client-side app examples, which drive its evolution.
Like hledger, it reads data from one or more files in hledger
journal, timeclock, timedot, or CSV format specified with
-f, or $LEDGER_FILE, or
$HOME/.hledger.journal (on windows, perhaps
C:/Users/USER/.hledger.journal). For more about this see
hledger(1), hledger_journal(5) etc.
The server listens on IP address 127.0.0.1, accessible only to local
requests, by default. You can change this with --host, eg
--host 0.0.0.0 to listen on all addresses. Note there is no
other access control, so you will need to hide hledger-api behind an
authenticating proxy if you want to restrict access. You can change the
TCP port (default: 8001) with -p PORT.
If invoked as hledger-api --swagger, instead of starting
a server the API docs will be printed in Swagger 2.0 format.
OPTIONS
Note: if invoking hledger-api as a hledger subcommand, write
-- before options as shown above.
-f --file=FILE-
use a different input file. For stdin, use - (default:
$LEDGER_FILEor$HOME/.hledger.journal) -d --static-dir=DIR-
serve files from a different directory (default:
.) --host=IPADDR- listen on this IP address (default: 127.0.0.1)
-p --port=PORT- listen on this TCP port (default: 8001)
--swagger- print API docs in Swagger 2.0 format, and exit
--version- show version
-h- show usage
--help- show manual as plain text
--man- show manual with man
--info- show manual with info
ENVIRONMENT
LEDGER_FILE The journal file path when not specified
with -f. Default: ~/.hledger.journal (on
windows, perhaps C:/Users/USER/.hledger.journal).
FILES
Reads data from one or more files in hledger journal, timeclock,
timedot, or CSV format specified with -f, or
$LEDGER_FILE, or $HOME/.hledger.journal (on
windows, perhaps C:/Users/USER/.hledger.journal).
BUGS
The need to precede options with -- when invoked from
hledger is awkward.
journal format
This doc is for version 1.3.
NAME
Journal - hledger’s default file format, representing a General Journal
DESCRIPTION
hledger’s usual data source is a plain text file containing journal
entries in hledger journal format. This file represents a standard
accounting 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 a compatible subset, mostly, of ledger’s journal format, so hledger can work with compatible ledger journal files as well. It’s safe, and encouraged, to run both hledger and ledger on the same journal file, eg to validate the results you’re getting.
You can use hledger without learning any more about this file; just use the add or web commands to create and update it. Many users, though, also edit the journal file directly with a text editor, perhaps assisted by the helper modes for emacs or vim.
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
FILE FORMAT
Transactions
Transactions are movements of some quantity of commodities between named accounts. Each transaction is represented by a journal entry beginning with a simple date in column 0. This can be followed by any of the following, separated by spaces:
- (optional) a status character (empty,
!, or*) - (optional) a transaction code (any short number or text, enclosed in parentheses)
- (optional) a transaction description (any remaining text until end of line)
Then comes zero or more (but usually at least 2) indented lines representing…
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:
- (optional) a status character (empty,
!, or*), followed by a space - (required) an account name (any text, optionally containing single spaces, until end of line or a double space)
- (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 convenience, 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.
Dates
Simple dates
Within a journal file, transaction dates use Y/M/D (or Y-M-D or
Y.M.D) Leading zeros are optional. The year may be omitted, in which
case it will be inferred from the context - the current transaction, the
default year set with a default year
directive, or the current date when the command is run. Some
examples: 2010/01/31, 1/31,
2010-01-31, 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, you can specify individual posting dates, which I recommend. Or, you can use the secondary dates (aka auxiliary/effective dates) feature, supported for compatibility with Ledger.
A secondary date can be written after the primary date, 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 also
work).
The meaning of secondary dates is up to you, but it’s best to follow a consistent rule. Eg write the bank’s clearing date as primary, and when needed, the date the transaction was initiated as secondary.
Here’s an example. Note that a secondary date will use the year of the primary date if unspecified.
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
Secondary dates require some effort; you must use them consistently
in your journal entries and remember whether to use or not use the
--date2 flag for your reports. They are included in hledger
for Ledger compatibility, but posting dates are a more powerful and less
confusing alternative.
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
reports, 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. You can
set the secondary date similarly, with date2:DATE2. The
date: or date2: tags must have a valid simple
date value if they are present, eg a date: tag with no
value is not allowed.
Ledger’s earlier, more compact bracketed date syntax is also
supported: [DATE], [DATE=DATE2] or
[=DATE2]. hledger will attempt to parse any
square-bracketed sequence of the 0123456789/-.= characters
in this way. With this syntax, DATE infers its year from the transaction
and DATE2 infers its year from DATE.
Status
Transactions, or individual postings within a transaction, can have a status mark, which is a single character before the transaction description or posting account name, separated from it by a space, indicating 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 unmarked for clarity.
To replicate Ledger and old hledger’s behaviour of also matching pending, 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 shortcuts 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 reconciliation) |
| cleared | complete, reconciled as far as possible, and considered correct |
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 uncashed checks), and no flags to see the most
up-to-date state of your finances.
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. Because of this, they must
always be followed by two or more spaces (or
newline).
Account names can be aliased.
Amounts
After the account name, there is usually an amount. Important: between account name and amount, there must be two or more spaces.
Amounts consist of a number and (usually) a currency symbol or commodity name. Some examples:
2.00001
$1
4000 AAPL
3 "green apples"
-$1,000,000.00
INR 9,99,99,999.00
EUR -2.000.000,00
As you can see, the amount format is somewhat flexible:
- amounts are a number (the “quantity”) and optionally a currency symbol/commodity name (the “commodity”).
- the commodity is a symbol, word, or phrase, on the left or right, with or without a separating space. If the commodity contains numbers, spaces or non-word punctuation it must be enclosed in double quotes.
- negative amounts with a commodity on the left can have the minus sign before or after it
- digit groups (thousands, or any other grouping) can be separated by commas (in which case period is used for decimal point) or periods (in which case comma is used for decimal point)
You can use any of these variations when recording data, but when hledger displays amounts, it will choose a consistent format for each commodity. (Except for price amounts, which are always formatted as written). The display format is chosen as follows:
- if there is a commodity directive specifying the format, that is used
- otherwise the format is inferred from the first posting amount in that commodity in the journal, and the precision (number of decimal places) will be the maximum from all posting amounts in that commmodity
- or if there are no such amounts in the journal, a default format is
used (like
$1000.00).
Price amounts and amounts in D directives usually don’t affect amount format inference, but in some situations they can do so indirectly. (Eg when D’s default commodity is applied to a commodity-less amount, or when an amountless posting is balanced using a price’s commodity, or when -V is used.) If you find this causing problems, set the desired format with a commodity directive.
Virtual Postings
When you parenthesise the account name in a posting, we call that a virtual posting, which means:
- it is ignored when checking that the transaction is balanced
- it is excluded from reports when the
--real/-Rflag is used, or thereal:1query.
You could use this, eg, to set an account’s opening balance without
needing to use the equity:opening balances account:
1/1 special unbalanced posting to set initial balance
(assets:checking) $1000
When the account name is bracketed, we call it a balanced virtual
posting. This is like an ordinary virtual posting except the
balanced virtual postings in a transaction must balance to 0, like the
real postings (but separately from them). Balanced virtual postings are
also excluded by --real/-R or real:1.
1/1 buy food with cash, and update some budget-tracking subaccounts elsewhere
expenses:food $10
assets:cash $-10
[assets:checking:available] $10
[assets:checking:budget:food] $-10
Virtual postings have some legitimate uses, but those are few. You can usually find an equivalent journal entry using real postings, which is more correct and provides better error checking.
Balance Assertions
hledger supports Ledger-style
balance assertions in journal files. These look like
=EXPECTEDBALANCE following a posting’s amount. Eg in this
example 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 protect you from, eg, inadvertently disrupting reconciled balances
while cleaning up old entries. You can disable them temporarily with the
--ignore-assertions flag, which can be useful for
troubleshooting or for reading Ledger files.
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 different from Ledger, which sorts assertions only by parse order. (Also, Ledger assertions do not see the accumulated effect of repeated postings 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 included files
With included files, things are a little more complicated. Including preserves the ordering of postings and assertions. If you have multiple postings to an account on the same day, split across different files, and you also want to assert the account’s balance on the same day, you’ll have to put the assertion in the right file.
Assertions and multiple -f options
Balance assertions don’t work well across files specified with multiple -f options. Use include or concatenate the files instead.
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. We could call this a partial balance assertion. This is compatible with Ledger, and makes it possible to make assertions about accounts containing multiple commodities.
To assert each commodity’s balance in such a multi-commodity account, you can add multiple postings (with amount 0 if necessary). But note that no matter how many assertions you add, you can’t be sure the account does not contain some unexpected commodity. (We’ll add support for this kind of total balance assertion if there’s demand.)
Assertions and subaccounts
Balance assertions do not count the balance from subaccounts; they check the posted account’s exclusive balance. For example:
1/1
checking:fund 1 = 1 ; post to this subaccount, its balance is now 1
checking 1 = 1 ; post to the parent account, its exclusive balance is now 1
equity
The balance report’s flat mode shows these exclusive balances more clearly:
$ hledger bal checking --flat
1 checking
1 checking:fund
--------------------
2
Assertions and virtual postings
Balance assertions are checked against all postings, both real and virtual. They are not affected by the
--real/-R flag or real: query.
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 assignment). Note that using balance assignments makes your journal a little less explicit; to know the exact amount posted, you have to run hledger or do the calculations yourself, instead of just reading it.
Prices
Transaction prices
Within a transaction, you can note an amount’s price in another commodity. This can be used to document the cost (in a purchase) or selling price (in a sale). For example, transaction prices are useful to record purchases of a foreign currency.
Transaction prices are fixed, and do not change over time. (Ledger
users: Ledger uses a different syntax
for fixed prices, {=UNITPRICE}, which hledger currently
ignores).
There are several ways to record a transaction price:
Write the price per unit, as
@ UNITPRICEafter the amount:2009/1/1 assets:euros €100 @ $1.35 ; one hundred euros purchased at $1.35 each assets:dollars ; balancing amount is -$135.00Write the total price, as
@@ TOTALPRICEafter the amount:2009/1/1 assets:euros €100 @@ $135 ; one hundred euros purchased at $135 for the lot assets:dollarsSpecify amounts for all postings, using exactly two commodities, and let hledger infer the price that balances the transaction:
2009/1/1 assets:euros €100 ; one hundred euros purchased assets:dollars $-135 ; for $135
Amounts with transaction prices can be displayed in the transaction
price’s commodity by using the -B/--cost flag
(except for #551) (“B”
is from “cost Basis”). Eg for the above, here is how -B affects the
balance report:
$ hledger bal -N --flat
$-135 assets:dollars
€100 assets:euros
$ hledger bal -N --flat -B
$-135 assets:dollars
$135 assets:euros # <- the euros' cost
Note -B is sensitive to the order of postings when a transaction price is inferred: the inferred price will be in the commodity of the last amount. So if example 3’s postings are reversed, while the transaction is equivalent, -B shows something different:
2009/1/1
assets:dollars $-135 ; 135 dollars sold
assets:euros €100 ; for 100 euros
$ hledger bal -N --flat -B
€-100 assets:dollars # <- the dollars' selling price
€100 assets:euros
Market prices
Market prices are not tied to a particular transaction; they represent historical exchange rates between two commodities. (Ledger calls them historical prices.) For example, the prices published by a stock exchange or the foreign exchange market. hledger can use these prices to show the market value of things at a given date, see market value.
To record market prices, use P directives in the main journal or in an included file. Their format is:
P DATE COMMODITYBEINGPRICED UNITPRICE
DATE is a simple date as usual. COMMODITYBEINGPRICED is the symbol of the commodity being priced. UNITPRICE is an ordinary amount (symbol and quantity) in a second commodity, specifying the unit price or conversion rate for the first commodity in terms of the second, on the given date.
For example, the following directives say that one euro was worth 1.35 US dollars during 2009, and $1.40 from 2010 onward:
P 2009/1/1 € $1.35
P 2010/1/1 € $1.40
Comments
Lines in the journal beginning with a semicolon (;) or
hash (#) or asterisk (*) are comments, and
will be ignored. (Asterisk comments make it easy to treat your journal
like an org-mode outline in emacs.)
Also, anything between comment and
end comment directives is a (multi-line) comment. If
there is no end comment, the comment extends to the end of
the file.
You can attach comments to a transaction by writing them after the description and/or indented on the following lines (before the postings). Similarly, you can attach comments to an individual posting by writing them after the amount and/or indented on the following lines.
Some examples:
# a journal comment
; also a journal comment
comment
This is a multiline comment,
which continues until a line
where the "end comment" string
appears on its own.
end comment
2012/5/14 something ; a transaction comment
; the transaction comment, continued
posting1 1 ; a comment for posting 1
posting2
; a comment for posting 2
; another comment line for posting 2
; a journal comment (because not indented)
Tags
Tags are a way to add extra labels or labelled data to postings and transactions, which you can then search or pivot on.
A simple tag is a word (which may contain hyphens) followed by a full colon, written inside a transaction or posting comment line:
2017/1/16 bought groceries ; sometag:
Tags can have a value, which is the text after the colon, up to the next comma or end of line, with leading/trailing whitespace removed:
expenses:food $10 ; a-posting-tag: the tag value
Note this means hledger’s tag values can not contain commas or newlines. Ending at commas means you can write multiple short tags on one line, comma separated:
assets:checking ; a comment containing tag1:, tag2: some value ...
Here,
- “
a comment containing” is just comment text, not a tag - “
tag1” is a tag with no value - “
tag2” is another tag, whose value is “some value ...”
Tags in a transaction comment affect the transaction and all of its
postings, while tags in a posting comment affect only that posting. For
example, the following transaction has three tags (A,
TAG2, third-tag) and the posting has four
(those plus posting-tag):
1/1 a transaction ; A:, TAG2:
; third-tag: a third transaction tag, <- with a value
(a) $1 ; posting-tag:
Tags are like Ledger’s metadata feature, except hledger’s tag values are simple strings.
Implicit tags
Some predefined “implicit” tags are also provided:
code- the transaction’s code fielddescription- the transaction’s descriptionpayee- the part of description before|, or all of itnote- the part of description after|, or all of it
payee and note support descriptions written
in a special PAYEE | NOTE format, accessing the parts
before and after the pipe character respectively. For descriptions not
containing a pipe character they are the same as
description.
Directives
Account aliases
You can define aliases which rewrite your account names (after reading the journal, before generating reports). hledger’s account aliases can be useful for:
- expanding shorthand account names to their full form, allowing easier data entry and a less verbose journal
- adapting old journals to your current chart of accounts
- experimenting with new account organisations, like a new hierarchy or combining two accounts into one
- customising reports
See also Cookbook: 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. 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 full account names. hledger will replace any occurrence of the old account name with the new one. Subaccounts 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 the forward slashes:
alias /REGEX/ = REPLACEMENT
or --alias '/REGEX/=REPLACEMENT'.
REGEX is a case-insensitive regular expression. Anywhere it matches inside an account name, the matched part will be replaced by REPLACEMENT. If REGEX contains parenthesised match groups, these can be referenced by the usual numeric backreferences in REPLACEMENT. Note, currently regular expression aliases may cause noticeable slow-downs. (And if you use Ledger on your hledger file, they will be ignored.) Eg:
alias /^(.+):bank:([^:]+)(.*)/ = \1:\2 \3
# rewrites "assets:bank:wells fargo:checking" to "assets:wells fargo checking"
Multiple aliases
You can define as many aliases as you like using directives or command-line options. Aliases are recursive - each alias sees the result of applying previous ones. (This is different from Ledger, where aliases are non-recursive by default). Aliases are applied in the following order:
- alias directives, most recently seen first (recent directives take precedence over earlier ones; directives not yet seen are ignored)
- alias options, in the order they appear on the command line
end aliases
You can clear (forget) all currently defined aliases with the
end aliases directive:
end aliases
account directive
The account directive predefines account names, as in
Ledger and Beancount. This may be useful for your own documentation;
hledger doesn’t make use of it yet.
; account ACCT
; OPTIONAL COMMENTS/TAGS...
account assets:bank:checking
a comment
acct-no:12345
account expenses:food
; etc.
apply account directive
You can specify a parent account which will be prepended to all
accounts within a section of the journal. Use the
apply account and end apply account directives
like so:
apply account home
2010/1/1
food $10
cash
end apply account
which is equivalent to:
2010/01/01
home:food $10
home:cash $-10
If end apply account is omitted, the effect lasts to the
end of the file. Included files are also affected, eg:
apply account business
include biz.journal
end apply account
apply account personal
include personal.journal
Prior to hledger 1.0, legacy account and
end spellings were also supported.
Multi-line comments
A line containing just comment starts a multi-line
comment, and a line containing just end comment ends it.
See comments.
commodity directive
The commodity directive predefines commodities
(currently this is just informational), and also it may define the
display format for amounts in this commodity (overriding the
automatically inferred format).
It may be written on a single line, like this:
; commodity EXAMPLEAMOUNT
; display AAAA amounts with the symbol on the right, space-separated,
; using period as decimal point, with four decimal places, and
; separating thousands with comma.
commodity 1,000.0000 AAAA
or on multiple lines, using the “format” subdirective. In this case the commodity symbol appears twice and should be the same in both places:
; commodity SYMBOL
; format EXAMPLEAMOUNT
; 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 9,99,99,999.00
Default commodity
The D directive sets a default commodity (and display format), to be used for amounts without a commodity symbol (ie, plain numbers). (Note this differs from Ledger’s default commodity directive.) The commodity and display format will be applied to all subsequent commodity-less amounts, or until the next D directive.
# commodity-less amounts should be treated as dollars
# (and displayed with symbol on the left, thousands separators and two decimal places)
D $1,000.00
1/1
a 5 # <- commodity-less amount, becomes $1
b
Default year
You can set a default year to be used for subsequent dates which
don’t specify a year. This is a line beginning with Y
followed by the year. Eg:
Y2009 ; set default year to 2009
12/15 ; equivalent to 2009/12/15
expenses 1
assets
Y2010 ; 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
Including other files
You can pull in the content of additional journal files by writing an include directive, like this:
include path/to/file.journal
If the path does not begin with a slash, it is relative to the
current file. Glob patterns (*) are not currently
supported.
The include directive can only be used in journal files.
It can include journal, timeclock or timedot files, but not CSV
files.
EDITOR SUPPORT
Add-on modes exist for various text editors, to make working with journal files easier. They add colour, navigation aids and helpful commands. For hledger users who edit the journal file directly (the majority), using one of these modes is quite recommended.
These were written with Ledger in mind, but also work with hledger files:
csv format
This doc is for version 1.3.
NAME
CSV - how hledger reads CSV data, and the CSV rules file format
DESCRIPTION
hledger can read CSV
files, converting each CSV record into a journal entry (transaction), if
you provide some conversion hints in a “rules file”. This file should be
named like the CSV file with an additional .rules suffix
(eg: mybank.csv.rules); or, you can specify the file with
--rules-file PATH. hledger will create it if necessary,
with some default rules which you’ll need to adjust. At minimum, the
rules file must specify the date and amount
fields. For an example, see Cookbook: convert
CSV files.
To learn about exporting CSV, see CSV output.
CSV RULES
The following six kinds of rule can appear in the rules file, in any
order. Blank lines and lines beginning with # or
; are ignored.
skip
skipN
Skip this number of CSV records at the beginning. You’ll need this whenever your CSV data contains header lines. Eg:
# ignore the first CSV line
skip 1
date-format
date-formatDATEFMT
When your CSV date fields are not formatted like
YYYY/MM/DD (or YYYY-MM-DD or
YYYY.MM.DD), you’ll need to specify the format. DATEFMT is
a strptime-like
date parsing pattern, which must parse the date field values
completely. Examples:
# for dates like "6/11/2013":
date-format %-d/%-m/%Y
# for dates like "11/06/2013":
date-format %m/%d/%Y
# for dates like "2013-Nov-06":
date-format %Y-%h-%d
# for dates like "11/6/2013 11:32 PM":
date-format %-m/%-d/%Y %l:%M %p
field list
fieldsFIELDNAME1,
FIELDNAME2…
This (a) names the CSV fields, in order (names may not contain
whitespace; uninteresting names may be left blank), and (b) assigns them
to journal entry fields if you use any of these standard field names:
date, date2, status,
code, description, comment,
account1, account2, amount,
amount-in, amount-out, currency,
balance. Eg:
# use the 1st, 2nd and 4th CSV fields as the entry's date, description and amount,
# and give the 7th and 8th fields meaningful names for later reference:
#
# CSV field:
# 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
# entry field:
fields date, description, , amount, , , somefield, anotherfield
field assignment
ENTRYFIELDNAME
FIELDVALUE
This sets a journal entry field (one of the standard names above) to
the given text value, which can include CSV field values interpolated by
name (%CSVFIELDNAME) or 1-based position (%N).
Eg:
# set the amount to the 4th CSV field with "USD " prepended
amount USD %4
# combine three fields to make a comment (containing two tags)
comment note: %somefield - %anotherfield, date: %1
Field assignments can be used instead of or in addition to a field list.
conditional block
if PATTERN
FIELDASSIGNMENTS…
if
PATTERN
PATTERN…
FIELDASSIGNMENTS…
This applies one or more field assignments, only to those CSV records matched by one of the PATTERNs. The patterns are case-insensitive regular expressions which match anywhere within the whole CSV record (it’s not yet possible to match within a specific field). When there are multiple patterns they can be written on separate lines, unindented. The field assignments are on separate lines indented by at least one space. Examples:
# if the CSV record contains "groceries", set account2 to "expenses:groceries"
if groceries
account2 expenses:groceries
# if the CSV record contains any of these patterns, set account2 and comment as shown
if
monthly service fee
atm transaction fee
banking thru software
account2 expenses:business:banking
comment XXX deductible ? check it
include
includeRULESFILE
Include another rules file at this point. RULESFILE is
either an absolute file path or a path relative to the current file’s
directory. Eg:
# rules reused with several CSV files
include common.rules
CSV TIPS
Each generated journal entry will have two postings, to
account1 and account2 respectively. Currently
it’s not possible to generate entries with more than two postings.
If the CSV has debit/credit amounts in separate fields, assign to the
amount-in and amount-out pseudo fields instead
of amount.
If the CSV has the currency in a separate field, assign that to the
currency pseudo field which will be automatically prepended
to the amount. (Or you can do the same thing with a field
assignment.)
If the CSV includes a running balance, you can assign that to the
balance pseudo field to generate a balance assertion on
account1 whenever the balance field is non-empty. (Eg to
double-check your bank’s balance calculation.)
If an amount value is parenthesised, it will be de-parenthesised and sign-flipped automatically.
The generated journal entries will be sorted by date. The original order of same-day entries will be preserved, usually.
timeclock format
This doc is for version 1.3.
NAME
Timeclock - the time logging format of timeclock.el, as read by hledger
DESCRIPTION
hledger can read timeclock files. 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).
i 2015/03/30 09:00:00 some:account name optional description after two spaces
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 two spaces
(some:account name) 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:
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
tiandtoscripts in the ledger 2.x repository. These rely on a “timeclock” executable which I think is just the ledger 2 executable renamed.
timedot format
This doc is for version 1.3.
NAME
Timedot - hledger’s human-friendly time logging format
DESCRIPTION
Timedot is a plain text format for logging dated, categorised quantities (eg time), supported by hledger. It is convenient for approximate and retroactive time logging, eg when the real-time clock-in/out required with a timeclock file is too precise or too interruptive. It can be formatted like a bar chart, making clear at a glance where time was spent.
Though called “timedot”, the format does not specify the commodity being logged, so could represent other dated, quantifiable things. Eg you could record a single-entry journal of financial transactions, perhaps slightly more conveniently than with hledger_journal(5) format.
FILE FORMAT
A timedot file contains a series of day entries. A day entry begins with a date, and is followed by category/quantity pairs, one per line. Dates are hledger-style simple dates (see hledger_journal(5)). Categories are hledger-style account names, optionally indented. There must be at least two spaces between the category and the quantity. Quantities can be written in two ways:
a series of dots (period characters). Each dot represents “a quarter” - eg, a quarter hour. Spaces can be used to group dots into hours, for easier counting.
a number (integer or decimal), representing “units” - eg, hours. A good alternative when dots are cumbersome. (A number also can record negative quantities.)
Blank lines and lines beginning with #, ; or * are ignored. An example:
# on this day, 6h was spent on client work, 1.5h on haskell FOSS work, etc.
2016/2/1
inc:client1 .... .... .... .... .... ....
fos:haskell .... ..
biz:research .
2016/2/2
inc:client1 .... ....
biz:research .
Or with numbers:
2016/2/3
inc:client1 4
fos:hledger 3
biz:research 1
Reporting:
$ hledger -f t.timedot print date:2016/2/2
2016/02/02 *
(inc:client1) 2.00
2016/02/02 *
(biz:research) 0.25
$ hledger -f t.timedot bal --daily --tree
Balance changes in 2016/02/01-2016/02/03:
|| 2016/02/01d 2016/02/02d 2016/02/03d
============++========================================
biz || 0.25 0.25 1.00
research || 0.25 0.25 1.00
fos || 1.50 0 3.00
haskell || 1.50 0 0
hledger || 0 0 3.00
inc || 6.00 2.00 4.00
client1 || 6.00 2.00 4.00
------------++----------------------------------------
|| 7.75 2.25 8.00
I prefer to use period for separating account components. We can make this work with an account alias:
2016/2/4
fos.hledger.timedot 4
fos.ledger ..
$ hledger -f t.timedot --alias /\\./=: bal date:2016/2/4
4.50 fos
4.00 hledger:timedot
0.50 ledger
--------------------
4.50
Here is a sample.timedot.