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hledger(1) hledger User Manuals hledger(1)
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 describ-
ing 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, trans-
lating 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, time-
clock, 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 edi-
tor mode such as ledger-mode for added convenience. hledger's interac-
tive 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 sup-
ported by most hledger commands, run hledger -h.
General help options:
-h --help
show general usage (or after COMMAND, command usage)
--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_FILE or $HOME/.hledger.journal)
--rules-file=RULESFILE
Conversion rules file to use when reading CSV (default:
FILE.rules)
--separator=CHAR
Field separator to expect when reading CSV (default: ',')
--alias=OLD=NEW
rename accounts named OLD to NEW
--anon anonymize accounts and payees
--pivot FIELDNAME
use some other field or tag for the account name
-I --ignore-assertions
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
using period expressions syntax (overrides the flags above)
--date2
match the secondary date instead (see command help for other
effects)
-U --unmarked
include only unmarked postings/txns (can combine with -P or -C)
-P --pending
include only pending postings/txns
-C --cleared
include only cleared postings/txns
-R --real
include only non-virtual postings
-NUM --depth=NUM
hide/aggregate accounts or postings more than NUM levels deep
-E --empty
show items with zero amount, normally hidden (and vice-versa in
hledger-ui/hledger-web)
-B --cost
convert amounts to their cost 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)
--auto apply automated posting rules to modify transactions.
--forecast
apply periodic transaction rules to generate future transac-
tions, to 6 months from now or report end date.
When a reporting option appears more than once in the command line, the
last one takes precedence.
Some reporting options can also be written as query arguments.
Command 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.
Argument files
You can save a set of command line options/arguments in a file, one per
line, and then reuse them by writing @FILENAME in a command line. To
prevent this expansion of @-arguments, precede them with a -- argument.
For more, see Save frequently used options.
Special characters in arguments and queries
In shell command lines, option and argument values which contain "prob-
lematic" characters, ie spaces, and also characters significant to your
shell such as <, >, (, ), | and $, should be escaped by enclosing them
in quotes or by writing backslashes before the characters. Eg:
hledger register -p 'last year' "accounts receivable (receiv-
able|payable)" amt:\>100.
More escaping
Characters significant both to the shell and in regular expressions may
need one extra level of escaping. These include parentheses, the pipe
symbol and the dollar sign. Eg, to match the dollar symbol, bash users
should do:
hledger balance cur:'\$'
or:
hledger balance cur:\\$
Even more escaping
When hledger runs an addon executable (eg you type hledger ui, hledger
runs hledger-ui), it de-escapes command-line options and arguments
once, so you might need to triple-escape. Eg in bash, running the ui
command and matching the dollar sign, it's:
hledger ui cur:'\\$'
or:
hledger ui cur:\\\\$
If you asked why four slashes above, this may help:
unescaped: $
escaped: \$
double-escaped: \\$
triple-escaped: \\\\$
(The number of backslashes in fish shell is left as an exercise for the
reader.)
You can always avoid the extra escaping for addons by running the addon
directly:
hledger-ui cur:\\$
Less escaping
Inside an argument file, or in the search field of hledger-ui or
hledger-web, or at a GHCI prompt, you need one less level of escaping
than at the command line. And backslashes may work better than quotes.
Eg:
ghci> :main balance cur:\$
Command line tips
If in doubt, keep things simple:
o write options after the command (hledger CMD -OPTIONS ARGS)
o run add-on executables directly (hledger-ui -OPTIONS ARGS)
o enclose problematic args in single quotes
o if needed, also add a backslash to escape regexp metacharacters
To find out exactly how a command line is being parsed, add --debug=2
to troubleshoot.
Unicode characters
hledger is expected to handle unicode (non-ascii) characters, but this
requires a well-configured environment.
To handle unicode characters in the command line or input data, a sys-
tem locale that can decode them must be configured (POSIX's default C
locale will not work). Eg in bash, you could do:
export LANG=en_US.UTF-8
See Troubleshooting for more about this.
Unicode characters should appear correctly in hledger's output. For
the hledger and hledger-ui tools, this requires that
o your terminal supports unicode
o the terminal's font includes the required unicode glyphs
o the terminal is configured to display "wide" characters as double
width (otherwise report alignment will be off)
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 .journal .j .hledger
some Ledger journals .ledger
timeclock timeclock files (precise time .timeclock
logging)
timedot timedot files (approximate time .timedot
logging)
csv comma-separated values (data .csv
interchange)
If needed (eg to ensure correct error messages when a file has the
"wrong" extension), you can force a specific reader/format by prepend-
ing 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:
o directives in one file will not affect the other files
o 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:
2004/10/1, 2004-01-01, exact date, several sepa-
2004.9.1 rators allowed. Year is
4+ digits, month is 1-12,
day is 1-31
2004 start of year
2004/10 start of month
10/1 month and day in current
year
21 day in current month
october, oct start of month in current
year
yesterday, today, tomorrow -1, 0, 1 days from today
last/this/next day/week/month/quar- -1, 0, 1 periods from the
ter/year current period
20181201 8 digit YYYYMMDD with
valid year month and day
201812 6 digit YYYYMM with valid
year and month
Counterexamples - malformed digit sequences might give surprising
results:
201813 6 digits with an invalid
month is parsed as start
of 6-digit year
20181301 8 digits with an invalid
month is parsed as start
of 8-digit year
20181232 8 digits with an invalid
day gives an error
201801012 9+ digits beginning with a
valid YYYYMMDD gives an
error
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 decem-
ber 1st of the current
year (11/30 will be the
last date included)
-b thismonth all transactions on or
after the 1st of the cur-
rent 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, bal-
ance 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 com-
plex 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; equiva-
lent 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"
Note that weekly, monthly, quarterly and yearly intervals will always
start on the first day on week, month, quarter or year accordingly, and
will end on the last day of same period, even if associated period
expression specifies different explicit start and end date.
For example:
-p "weekly from 2009/1/1 to 2009/4/1"
-- starts on 2008/12/29, closest pre-
ceeding Monday
-p "monthly in 2008/11/25" -- starts on
2018/11/01
-p "quar-
terly from 2009-05-05 to 2009-06-01" -
starts on 2009/04/01, ends on
2009/06/30, which are first and last
days of Q2 2009
-p "yearly from 2009-12-29" - starts on
2009/01/01, first day of 2009
The following more complex report intervals are also supported:
biweekly, bimonthly, every day|week|month|quarter|year,
every N days|weeks|months|quarters|years.
All of these will start on the first day of the requested period and
end on the last one, as described above.
Examples:
-p "bimonthly from 2008" -- periods
will have boundaries on 2008/01/01,
2008/03/01, ...
-p "every 2 weeks" -- starts on closest
preceeding Monday
-p "every 5 month from 2009/03" --
periods will have boundaries on
2009/03/01, 2009/08/01, ...
If you want intervals that start on arbitrary day of your choosing and
span a week, month or year, you need to use any of the following:
every Nth day of week, every <weekday>, every Nth day [of month],
every Nth weekday [of month], every MM/DD [of year],
every Nth MMM [of year], every MMM Nth [of year].
Examples:
-p "every 2nd day of week" -- periods
will go from Tue to Tue
-p "every Tue" -- same
-p "every 15th day" -- period bound-
aries will be on 15th of each month
-p "every 2nd Monday" -- period bound-
aries will be on second Monday of each
month
-p "every 11/05" -- yearly periods with
boundaries on 5th of Nov
-p "every 5th Nov" -- same
-p "every Nov 5th" -- same
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 (short form: -N), commands like account, bal-
ance 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. This flag has the same effect as a depth: query argument (so
-2, --depth=2 or depth:2 are basically equivalent).
Pivoting
Normally hledger sums amounts, and organizes them in a hierarchy, based
on account name. The --pivot FIELD option causes it to sum and orga-
nize hierarchy based on the value of some other field instead. FIELD
can be: code, description, payee, note, or the full name (case insensi-
tive) of any tag. As with account names, values containing colon:sepa-
rated:parts will be displayed hierarchically in reports.
--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 field 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 reported amounts to their current market
value.
Specifically, when there is a market price (P directive) for the
amount's commodity, dated on or before today's date (or the report end
date if specified), the amount will be converted to the price's commod-
ity.
When there are multiple applicable P directives, -V chooses the most
recent one, or in case of equal dates, the last-parsed one.
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 -N euros
100 assets:euros
What are they worth at end of nov 3 ?
$ hledger -f t.j bal -N euros -V -e 2016/11/4
$110.00 assets:euros
What are they worth after 2016/12/21 ? (no report end date specified,
defaults to today)
$ hledger -f t.j bal -N euros -V
$103.00 assets:euros
Currently, hledger's -V only uses market prices recorded with P direc-
tives, not transaction prices (unlike Ledger).
Currently, -V has a limitation in multicolumn balance reports: it uses
the market prices on the report end date for all columns. (Instead of
the prices on each column's end date.)
Combining -B and -V
Using -B/--cost and -V/--value together is currently allowed, but the
results are probably not meaningful. Let us know if you find a use for
this.
Output destination
Some commands (print, register, stats, the balance commands) can write
their output to a destination other than the console. This is con-
trolled by the -o/--output-file option.
$ hledger balance -o - # write to stdout (the default)
$ hledger balance -o FILE # write to FILE
Output format
Some commands can write their output in other formats. Eg print and
register can output CSV, and the balance commands can output CSV or
HTML. This is controlled by the -O/--output-format option, or by spec-
ifying a .csv or .html file extension with -o/--output-file.
$ hledger balance -O csv # write CSV to stdout
$ hledger balance -o FILE.csv # write CSV to FILE.csv
Regular expressions
hledger uses regular expressions in a number of places:
o query terms, on the command line and in the hledger-web search form:
REGEX, desc:REGEX, cur:REGEX, tag:...=REGEX
o CSV rules conditional blocks: if REGEX ...
o account alias directives and options: alias /REGEX/ = REPLACEMENT,
--alias /REGEX/=REPLACEMENT
hledger's regular expressions come from the regex-tdfa library. In
general they:
o are case insensitive
o are infix matching (do not need to match the entire thing being
matched)
o are POSIX extended regular expressions
o also support GNU word boundaries (\<, \>, \b, \B)
o and parenthesised capturing groups and numeric backreferences in
replacement strings
o do not support mode modifiers like (?s)
Some things to note:
o In the alias directive and --alias option, regular expressions must
be enclosed in forward slashes (/REGEX/). Elsewhere in hledger,
these are not required.
o In queries, to match a regular expression metacharacter like $ as a
literal character, prepend a backslash. Eg to search for amounts
with the dollar sign in hledger-web, write cur:\$.
o On the command line, some metacharacters like $ have a special mean-
ing to the shell and so must be escaped at least once more. See Spe-
cial characters.
QUERIES
One of hledger's strengths is being able to quickly report on precise
subsets of your data. Most commands accept an optional query expres-
sion, 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, prefixes to match specific fields, a not: prefix to negate
the match.
We do not yet support arbitrary boolean combinations of search terms;
instead most commands show transactions/postings/accounts which match
(or negatively match):
o any of the description terms AND
o any of the account terms AND
o any of the status terms AND
o all the other terms.
The print command instead shows transactions which:
o match any of the description terms AND
o have any postings matching any of the positive account terms AND
o have no postings matching any of the negative account terms AND
o match all the other terms.
The following kinds of search terms can be used. Remember these can
also be prefixed with not:, eg to exclude a particular subaccount.
REGEX, acct:REGEX
match account names by this regular expression. (With no pre-
fix, acct: is assumed.)
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 cur-
rency/commodity symbol is fully matched by REGEX. (For a par-
tial match, use .*REGEX.*). Note, to match characters which are
regex-significant, like the dollar sign ($), you need to prepend
\. And when using the command line you need to add one more
level of quoting to hide it from the shell, so eg do:
hledger print cur:'\$' or hledger print cur:\\$.
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
--date2 command 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
note:REGEX
match transaction notes (part of description right of |, or
whole description when there's no |)
payee:REGEX
match transaction payee/payer names (part of description left of
|, or whole description when there's no |)
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.
The following special search term is used automatically in hledger-web,
only:
inacct:ACCTNAME
tells hledger-web to show the transaction register for this
account. Can be filtered further with acct etc.
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 one of the standard short
aliases displayed in parentheses in the command list (hledger b), or
any any unambiguous prefix of a command name (hledger inc).
Here are all the builtin commands in alphabetical order. See also
hledger for a more organised command list, and hledger CMD -h for
detailed command help.
accounts
accounts, a
Show account names.
This command lists account names, either declared with account direc-
tives (--declared), posted to (--used), or both (the default). With
query arguments, only matched account names and account names refer-
enced by matched postings 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 com-
ponents. Account names can be depth-clipped with depth:N or --depth N
or -N.
Examples:
$ hledger accounts
assets:bank:checking
assets:bank:saving
assets:cash
expenses:food
expenses:supplies
income:gifts
income:salary
liabilities:debts
activity
activity
Show an ascii barchart of posting counts per interval.
The activity command displays an ascii histogram showing transaction
counts by day, week, month or other reporting interval (by day is the
default). With query arguments, it counts only matched transactions.
Examples:
$ hledger activity --quarterly
2008-01-01 **
2008-04-01 *******
2008-07-01
2008-10-01 **
add
add
Prompt for transactions and add them to the journal.
Many hledger users edit their journals directly with a text editor, or
generate them from CSV. For more interactive data entry, there is the
add command, which prompts interactively on the console for new trans-
actions, and appends them to the 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:
o add tries to provide useful defaults, using the most similar (by
description) recent transaction (filtered by the query, if any) as a
template.
o You can also set the initial defaults with command line arguments.
o Readline-style edit keys can be used during data entry.
o The tab key will auto-complete whenever possible - accounts, descrip-
tions, dates (yesterday, today, tomorrow). If the input area is
empty, it will insert the default value.
o If the journal defines a default commodity, it will be added to any
bare numbers entered.
o A parenthesised transaction code may be entered following a date.
o Comments and tags may be entered following a description or amount.
o If you make a mistake, enter < at any prompt to restart the transac-
tion.
o 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
balance, bal, b
Show accounts and their balances.
The balance command is hledger's most versatile command. Note, despite
the name, it is not always used for showing real-world account bal-
ances; the more accounting-aware balancesheet and incomestatement may
be more convenient for that.
By default, it displays all accounts, and each account's change in bal-
ance during the entire period of the journal. Balance changes are cal-
culated by adding up the postings in each account. You can limit the
postings matched, by a query, to see fewer accounts, changes over a
different time period, changes from only cleared transactions, etc.
If you include an account's complete history of postings in the report,
the balance change is equivalent to the account's current ending bal-
ance. For a real-world account, typically you won't have all transac-
tions in the journal; instead you'll have all transactions after a cer-
tain date, and an "opening balances" transaction setting the correct
starting balance on that date. Then the balance command will show
real-world account balances. In some cases the -H/--historical flag is
used to ensure this (more below).
The balance command can produce several styles of report:
Classic balance report
This is the original balance report, as found in Ledger. It usually
looks like this:
$ 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
By default, accounts are displayed hierarchically, with subaccounts
indented below their parent. At each level of the tree, accounts are
sorted by account code if any, then by account name. Or with
-S/--sort-amount, by their balance amount.
"Boring" accounts, which contain a single interesting subaccount and no
balance of their own, are elided into the following line for more com-
pact output. (Eg above, the "liabilities" account.) Use --no-elide to
prevent this.
Account balances are "inclusive" - they include 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, eg:
$ hledger balance -p 2008/6 expenses --no-total
$2 expenses
$1 food
$1 supplies
Customising the classic balance report
You can customise the layout of classic balance reports with --for-
mat 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)
o MIN pads with spaces to at least this width (optional)
o MAX truncates at this width (optional)
o FIELDNAME must be enclosed in parentheses, and can be one of:
o depth_spacer - a number of spaces equal to the account's depth, or
if MIN is specified, MIN * depth spaces.
o account - the account's name
o total - the account's balance/posted total, right justified
Also, FMT can begin with an optional prefix to control how multi-com-
modity amounts are rendered:
o %_ - render on multiple lines, bottom-aligned (the default)
o %^ - render on multiple lines, top-aligned
o %, - render on one line, comma-separated
There are some quirks. Eg in one-line mode, %(depth_spacer) has no
effect, instead %(account) has indentation built in.
Experimentation may be needed to get pleasing results.
Some example formats:
o %(total) - the account's total
o %-20.20(account) - the account's name, left justified, padded to 20
characters and clipped at 20 characters
o %,%-50(account) %25(total) - account name padded to 50 characters,
total padded to 20 characters, with multiple commodities rendered on
one line
o %20(total) %2(depth_spacer)%-(account) - the default format for the
single-column balance report
Colour support
The balance command shows negative amounts in red, if:
o the TERM environment variable is not set to dumb
o the output is not being redirected or piped anywhere
Flat mode
To see a flat list instead of the default hierarchical display, use
--flat. In this mode, accounts (unless depth-clipped) show their full
names and "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 or depth:N or just -N, balance reports show accounts
only to the specified numeric depth. This is very useful to summarise
a complex set of accounts and get an overview.
$ hledger balance -N -1
$-1 assets
$2 expenses
$-2 income
$1 liabilities
Flat-mode balance reports, which normally show exclusive balances, show
inclusive balances at the depth limit.
Multicolumn balance report
Multicolumn or tabular balance reports are a very useful hledger fea-
ture, and usually the preferred style. They share many of the above
features, but they show the report as a table, with columns represent-
ing time periods. This mode is activated by providing a reporting
interval.
There are three types of multicolumn balance report, showing different
information:
1. 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 0
2. With --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 0
3. With --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
Multicolumn 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 peri-
ods 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 oth-
erwise 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
Limitations:
In multicolumn reports the -V/--value flag uses the market price on the
report end date, for all columns (not the price on each column's end
date).
Eliding of boring parent accounts in tree mode, as in the classic bal-
ance report, is not yet supported in multicolumn reports.
Budget report
With --budget, extra columns are displayed showing budget goals for
each account and period, if any. Budget goals are defined by periodic
transactions. This is very useful for comparing planned and actual
income, expenses, time usage, etc. --budget is most often combined
with a report interval.
For example, you can take average monthly expenses in the common
expense categories to construct a minimal monthly budget:
;; Budget
~ monthly
income $2000
expenses:food $400
expenses:bus $50
expenses:movies $30
assets:bank:checking
;; Two months worth of expenses
2017-11-01
income $1950
expenses:food $396
expenses:bus $49
expenses:movies $30
expenses:supplies $20
assets:bank:checking
2017-12-01
income $2100
expenses:food $412
expenses:bus $53
expenses:gifts $100
assets:bank:checking
You can now see a monthly budget report:
$ hledger balance -M --budget
Budget performance in 2017/11/01-2017/12/31:
|| Nov Dec
======================++====================================================
assets || $-2445 [ 99% of $-2480] $-2665 [ 107% of $-2480]
assets:bank || $-2445 [ 99% of $-2480] $-2665 [ 107% of $-2480]
assets:bank:checking || $-2445 [ 99% of $-2480] $-2665 [ 107% of $-2480]
expenses || $495 [ 103% of $480] $565 [ 118% of $480]
expenses:bus || $49 [ 98% of $50] $53 [ 106% of $50]
expenses:food || $396 [ 99% of $400] $412 [ 103% of $400]
expenses:movies || $30 [ 100% of $30] 0 [ 0% of $30]
income || $1950 [ 98% of $2000] $2100 [ 105% of $2000]
----------------------++----------------------------------------------------
|| 0 [ 0] 0 [ 0]
Note this is different from a normal balance report in several ways:
o Only accounts with budget goals during the report period are shown,
by default.
o In each column, in square brackets after the actual amount, budgeted
amounts are shown, along with the percentage of budget used.
o All parent accounts are always shown, even in flat mode. Eg assets,
assets:bank, and expenses above.
o Amounts always include all subaccounts, budgeted or unbudgeted, even
in flat mode.
This means that the numbers displayed will not always add up! Eg above,
the expenses actual amount includes the gifts and supplies transac-
tions, but the expenses:gifts and expenses:supplies accounts are not
shown, as they have no budget amounts declared.
This can be confusing. When you need to make things clearer, use the
-E/--empty flag, which will reveal all accounts including unbudgeted
ones, giving the full picture. Eg:
$ hledger balance -M --budget --empty
Budget performance in 2017/11/01-2017/12/31:
|| Nov Dec
======================++====================================================
assets || $-2445 [ 99% of $-2480] $-2665 [ 107% of $-2480]
assets:bank || $-2445 [ 99% of $-2480] $-2665 [ 107% of $-2480]
assets:bank:checking || $-2445 [ 99% of $-2480] $-2665 [ 107% of $-2480]
expenses || $495 [ 103% of $480] $565 [ 118% of $480]
expenses:bus || $49 [ 98% of $50] $53 [ 106% of $50]
expenses:food || $396 [ 99% of $400] $412 [ 103% of $400]
expenses:gifts || 0 $100
expenses:movies || $30 [ 100% of $30] 0 [ 0% of $30]
expenses:supplies || $20 0
income || $1950 [ 98% of $2000] $2100 [ 105% of $2000]
----------------------++----------------------------------------------------
|| 0 [ 0] 0 [ 0]
You can roll over unspent budgets to next period with --cumulative:
$ hledger balance -M --budget --cumulative
Budget performance in 2017/11/01-2017/12/31:
|| Nov Dec
======================++====================================================
assets || $-2445 [ 99% of $-2480] $-5110 [ 103% of $-4960]
assets:bank || $-2445 [ 99% of $-2480] $-5110 [ 103% of $-4960]
assets:bank:checking || $-2445 [ 99% of $-2480] $-5110 [ 103% of $-4960]
expenses || $495 [ 103% of $480] $1060 [ 110% of $960]
expenses:bus || $49 [ 98% of $50] $102 [ 102% of $100]
expenses:food || $396 [ 99% of $400] $808 [ 101% of $800]
expenses:movies || $30 [ 100% of $30] $30 [ 50% of $60]
income || $1950 [ 98% of $2000] $4050 [ 101% of $4000]
----------------------++----------------------------------------------------
|| 0 [ 0] 0 [ 0]
For more examples, see Budgeting and Forecasting.
Nested budgets
You can add budgets to any account in your account hierarchy. If you
have budgets on both parent account and some of its children, then bud-
get(s) of the child account(s) would be added to the budget of their
parent, much like account balances behave.
In the most simple case this means that once you add a budget to any
account, all its parents would have budget as well.
To illustrate this, consider the following budget:
~ monthly from 2019/01
expenses:personal $1,000.00
expenses:personal:electronics $100.00
liabilities
With this, monthly budget for electronics is defined to be $100 and
budget for personal expenses is an additional $1000, which implicity
means that budget for both expenses:personal and expenses is $1100.
Transactions in expenses:personal:electronics will be counted both
towards its $100 budget and $1100 of expenses:personal , and transac-
tions in any other subaccount of expenses:personal would be counted
towards only towards the budget of expenses:personal.
For example, let's consider these transactions:
~ monthly from 2019/01
expenses:personal $1,000.00
expenses:personal:electronics $100.00
liabilities
2019/01/01 Google home hub
expenses:personal:electronics $90.00
liabilities $-90.00
2019/01/02 Phone screen protector
expenses:personal:electronics:upgrades $10.00
liabilities
2019/01/02 Weekly train ticket
expenses:personal:train tickets $153.00
liabilities
2019/01/03 Flowers
expenses:personal $30.00
liabilities
As you can see, we have transactions in expenses:personal:electron-
ics:upgrades and expenses:personal:train tickets, and since both of
these accounts are without explicitly defined budget, these transac-
tions would be counted towards budgets of expenses:personal:electronics
and expenses:personal accordingly:
$ hledger balance --budget -M
Budget performance in 2019/01:
|| Jan
===============================++===============================
expenses || $283.00 [ 26% of $1100.00]
expenses:personal || $283.00 [ 26% of $1100.00]
expenses:personal:electronics || $100.00 [ 100% of $100.00]
liabilities || $-283.00 [ 26% of $-1100.00]
-------------------------------++-------------------------------
|| 0 [ 0]
And with --empty, we can get a better picture of budget allocation and
consumption:
$ hledger balance --budget -M --empty
Budget performance in 2019/01:
|| Jan
========================================++===============================
expenses || $283.00 [ 26% of $1100.00]
expenses:personal || $283.00 [ 26% of $1100.00]
expenses:personal:electronics || $100.00 [ 100% of $100.00]
expenses:personal:electronics:upgrades || $10.00
expenses:personal:train tickets || $153.00
liabilities || $-283.00 [ 26% of $-1100.00]
----------------------------------------++-------------------------------
|| 0 [ 0]
Output format
The balance command supports output destination and output format
selection.
balancesheet
balancesheet, bs
This command displays a simple balance sheet, showing historical ending
balances of asset and liability accounts (ignoring any report begin
date). It assumes that these accounts are under a top-level asset or
liability account (case insensitive, plural forms also allowed).
Note this report shows all account balances with normal positive sign
(like conventional financial statements, unlike balance/print/register)
(experimental).
Example:
$ 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 bal-
ancesheet shows historical ending balances, which is what you need for
a balance sheet; note this means it ignores report begin dates.
This command also supports output destination and output format selec-
tion.
balancesheetequity
balancesheetequity, bse
Just like balancesheet, but also reports Equity (which it assumes is
under a top-level equity account).
Example:
$ hledger balancesheetequity
Balance Sheet With Equity
Assets:
$-2 assets
$1 bank:saving
$-3 cash
--------------------
$-2
Liabilities:
$1 liabilities:debts
--------------------
$1
Equity:
$1 equity:owner
--------------------
$1
Total:
--------------------
0
cashflow
cashflow, cf
This command displays a simple cashflow statement, showing changes in
"cash" accounts. It assumes that these accounts are under a top-level
asset account (case insensitive, plural forms also allowed) and do not
contain receivable or A/R in their name. Note this report shows all
account balances with normal positive sign (like conventional financial
statements, unlike balance/print/register) (experimental).
Example:
$ 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.
This command also supports output destination and output format selec-
tion.
check-dates
check-dates
Check that transactions are sorted by increasing date. With --date2,
checks secondary dates instead. With --strict, dates must also be
unique. With a query, only matched transactions' dates are checked.
Reads the default journal file, or another specified with -f.
check-dupes
check-dupes
Reports account names having the same leaf but different prefixes. In
other words, two or more leaves that are categorized differently.
Reads the default journal file, or another specified as an argument.
An example: http://stefanorodighiero.net/software/hledger-dupes.html
close
close, equity
Prints a "closing balances" transaction and an "opening balances"
transaction that bring account balances to and from zero, respectively.
Useful for bringing asset/liability balances forward into a new journal
file, or for closing out revenues/expenses to retained earnings at the
end of a period.
The closing transaction transfers balances to "equity:closing bal-
ances". The opening transaction transfers balances from "equity:open-
ing balances". You can chose to print just one of the transactions by
using the --opening or --closing flag.
If you split your journal files by time (eg yearly), you will typically
run this command at the end of the year, and save the closing transac-
tion as last entry of the old file, and the opening transaction as the
first entry of the new file. This makes the files self contained, so
that correct balances are reported no matter which of them are loaded.
Ie, if you load just one file, the balances are initialised correctly;
or if you load several files, the redundant closing/opening transac-
tions cancel each other out. (They will show up in print or register
reports; you can exclude them with a query like not:desc:'(open-
ing|closing) balances'.)
If you're running a business, you might also use this command to "close
the books" at the end of an accounting period, transferring income
statement account balances to retained earnings. (You may want to
change the equity account name to something like "equity:retained earn-
ings".)
By default, the closing transaction is dated yesterday, the balances
are calculated as of end of yesterday, and the opening transaction is
dated today. To close on some other date, use: hledger close -e OPEN-
INGDATE. Eg, to close/open on the 2018/2019 boundary, use -e 2019.
You can also use -p or date:PERIOD (any starting date is ignored).
Both transactions will include balance assertions for the
closed/reopened accounts. You probably shouldn't use status or real-
ness filters (like -C or -R or status:) with this command, or the gen-
erated balance assertions will depend on these flags. Likewise, if you
run this command with --auto, the balance assertions will probably
always require --auto.
Examples:
Carrying asset/liability balances into a new file for 2019, all from
command line:
Warning: we use >> here to append; be careful not to type a single >
which would wipe your journal!
$ hledger close -f 2018.journal -e 2019 assets liabilities --opening >>2019.journal
$ hledger close -f 2018.journal -e 2019 assets liabilities --closing >>2018.journal
Now:
$ hledger bs -f 2019.journal # one file - balances are correct
$ hledger bs -f 2018.journal -f 2019.journal # two files - balances still correct
$ hledger bs -f 2018.journal not:desc:closing # to see year-end balances, must exclude closing txn
Transactions spanning the closing date can complicate matters, breaking
balance assertions:
2018/12/30 a purchase made in 2018, clearing the following year
expenses:food 5
assets:bank:checking -5 ; [2019/1/2]
Here's one way to resolve that:
; in 2018.journal:
2018/12/30 a purchase made in 2018, clearing the following year
expenses:food 5
liabilities:pending
; in 2019.journal:
2019/1/2 clearance of last year's pending transactions
liabilities:pending 5 = 0
assets:checking
files
files
List all files included in the journal. With a REGEX argument, only
file names matching the regular expression (case sensitive) are shown.
help
help
Show any of the hledger manuals.
The help command displays any of the main hledger manuals, in one of
several ways. Run it with no argument to list the manuals, or provide
a full or partial manual name to select one.
hledger manuals are available in several formats. hledger help will
use the first of these display methods that it finds: info, man,
$PAGER, less, stdout (or when non-interactive, just stdout). You can
force a particular viewer with the --info, --man, --pager, --cat flags.
Examples:
$ hledger help
Please choose a manual by typing "hledger help MANUAL" (a substring is ok).
Manuals: hledger hledger-ui hledger-web hledger-api journal csv timeclock timedot
$ hledger help h --man
hledger(1) hledger User Manuals hledger(1)
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
...
import
import
Read new transactions added to each FILE since last run, and add them
to the main journal file. Or with --dry-run, just print the transac-
tions that would be added.
The input files are specified as arguments - no need to write -f before
each one. So eg to add new transactions from all CSV files to the main
journal, it's just: hledger import *.csv
New transactions are detected in the same way as print --new: by assum-
ing transactions are always added to the input files in increasing date
order, and by saving .latest.FILE state files.
The --dry-run output is in journal format, so you can filter it, eg to
see only uncategorised transactions:
$ hledger import --dry ... | hledger -f- print unknown --ignore-assertions
incomestatement
incomestatement, is
This command displays a simple income statement, showing revenues and
expenses during a period. It assumes that these accounts are under a
top-level revenue or income or expense account (case insensitive, plu-
ral forms also allowed). Note this report shows all account balances
with normal positive sign (like conventional financial statements,
unlike balance/print/register) (experimental).
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.
This command also supports output destination and output format selec-
tion.
prices
prices
Print market price directives from the journal. With --costs, also
print synthetic market prices based on transaction prices. With
--inverted-costs, also print inverse prices based on transaction
prices. Prices (and postings providing prices) can be filtered by a
query.
print
print, txns, p
Show transaction journal entries, sorted by date.
The print command displays full journal entries (transactions) from the
journal file in date order, tidily formatted. With --date2, transac-
tions are sorted by secondary date instead.
print's output is always a valid hledger journal.
It preserves all transaction information, but it does not preserve
directives or inter-transaction comments
$ 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
Normally, the journal entry's explicit or implicit amount style is pre-
served. Ie when an amount is omitted in the journal, it will be omit-
ted 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,
-x will cause postings with a multi-commodity amount (these can arise
when a multi-commodity transaction has an implicit amount) will be
split into multiple single-commodity postings, for valid journal out-
put.
With -B/--cost, amounts with transaction prices are converted to cost
using that price. This can be used for troubleshooting.
With -m/--match and a STR argument, print will show at most one trans-
action: the one one whose description is most similar to STR, and is
most recent. STR should contain at least two characters. If there is
no similar-enough match, no transaction will be shown.
With --new, for each FILE being read, hledger reads (and writes) a spe-
cial state file (.latest.FILE in the same directory), containing the
latest transaction date(s) that were seen last time FILE was read.
When this file is found, only transactions with newer dates (and new
transactions on the latest date) are printed. This is useful for
ignoring already-seen entries in import data, such as downloaded CSV
files. Eg:
$ hledger -f bank1.csv print --new
# shows transactions added since last print --new on this file
This assumes that transactions added to FILE always have same or
increasing dates, and that transactions on the same day do not get
reordered. See also the import command.
This command also supports output destination and output format selec-
tion. Here's an example of print's CSV output:
$ hledger print -Ocsv
"txnidx","date","date2","status","code","description","comment","account","amount","commodity","credit","debit","posting-status","posting-comment"
"1","2008/01/01","","","","income","","assets:bank:checking","1","$","","1","",""
"1","2008/01/01","","","","income","","income:salary","-1","$","1","","",""
"2","2008/06/01","","","","gift","","assets:bank:checking","1","$","","1","",""
"2","2008/06/01","","","","gift","","income:gifts","-1","$","1","","",""
"3","2008/06/02","","","","save","","assets:bank:saving","1","$","","1","",""
"3","2008/06/02","","","","save","","assets:bank:checking","-1","$","1","","",""
"4","2008/06/03","","*","","eat & shop","","expenses:food","1","$","","1","",""
"4","2008/06/03","","*","","eat & shop","","expenses:supplies","1","$","","1","",""
"4","2008/06/03","","*","","eat & shop","","assets:cash","-2","$","2","","",""
"5","2008/12/31","","*","","pay off","","liabilities:debts","1","$","","1","",""
"5","2008/12/31","","*","","pay off","","assets:bank:checking","-1","$","1","","",""
o There is one CSV record per posting, with the parent transaction's
fields repeated.
o The "txnidx" (transaction index) field shows which postings belong to
the same transaction. (This number might change if transactions are
reordered within the file, files are parsed/included in a different
order, etc.)
o The amount is separated into "commodity" (the symbol) and "amount"
(numeric quantity) fields.
o The numeric amount is repeated in either the "credit" or "debit" col-
umn, for convenience. (Those names are not accurate in the account-
ing sense; it just puts negative amounts under credit and zero or
greater amounts under debit.)
print-unique
print-unique
Print transactions which do not reuse an already-seen description.
Example:
$ cat unique.journal
1/1 test
(acct:one) 1
2/2 test
(acct:two) 2
$ LEDGER_FILE=unique.journal hledger print-unique
(-f option not supported)
2015/01/01 test
(acct:one) 1
register
register, reg, r
Show postings and their running total.
The register command displays postings in date order, 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
With --date2, it shows and sorts by secondary date instead.
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.
The --invert flag negates all amounts. For example, it can be used on
an income account where amounts are normally displayed as negative num-
bers. It's also useful to show postings on the checking account
together with the related account:
$ hledger register --related --invert assets:checking
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 (won't display correctly in --help):
<--------------------------------- width (W) ---------------------------------->
date (10) description (D) account (W-41-D) amount (12) balance (12)
DDDDDDDDDD dddddddddddddddddddd aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa AAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAA
and some examples:
$ hledger reg # use terminal width (or 80 on windows)
$ hledger reg -w 100 # use width 100
$ COLUMNS=100 hledger reg # set with one-time environment variable
$ export COLUMNS=100; hledger reg # set till session end (or window resize)
$ hledger reg -w 100,40 # set overall width 100, description width 40
$ hledger reg -w $COLUMNS,40 # use terminal width, & description width 40
This command also supports output destination and output format selec-
tion.
register-match
register-match
Print the one posting whose transaction description is closest to DESC,
in the style of the register command. If there are multiple equally
good matches, it shows the most recent. Query options (options, not
arguments) can be used to restrict the search space. Helps
ledger-autosync detect already-seen transactions when importing.
rewrite
rewrite
Print all transactions, rewriting the postings of matched transactions.
For now the only rewrite available is adding new postings, like print
--auto.
This is a start at a generic rewriter of transaction entries. It reads
the default journal and prints the transactions, like print, but adds
one or more specified postings to any transactions matching QUERY. The
posting amounts can be fixed, or a multiplier of the existing transac-
tion's first posting amount.
Examples:
hledger-rewrite.hs ^income --add-posting '(liabilities:tax) *.33 ; income tax' --add-posting '(reserve:gifts) $100'
hledger-rewrite.hs expenses:gifts --add-posting '(reserve:gifts) *-1"'
hledger-rewrite.hs -f rewrites.hledger
rewrites.hledger may consist of entries like:
= ^income amt:<0 date:2017
(liabilities:tax) *0.33 ; tax on income
(reserve:grocery) *0.25 ; reserve 25% for grocery
(reserve:) *0.25 ; reserve 25% for grocery
Note the single quotes to protect the dollar sign from bash, and the
two spaces between account and amount.
More:
$ hledger rewrite -- [QUERY] --add-posting "ACCT AMTEXPR" ...
$ hledger rewrite -- ^income --add-posting '(liabilities:tax) *.33'
$ hledger rewrite -- expenses:gifts --add-posting '(budget:gifts) *-1"'
$ hledger rewrite -- ^income --add-posting '(budget:foreign currency) *0.25 JPY; diversify'
Argument for --add-posting option is a usual posting of transaction
with an exception for amount specification. More precisely, you can
use '*' (star symbol) before the amount to indicate that that this is a
factor for an amount of original matched posting. If the amount
includes a commodity name, the new posting amount will be in the new
commodity; otherwise, it will be in the matched posting amount's com-
modity.
Re-write rules in a file
During the run this tool will execute so called "Automated Transac-
tions" found in any journal it process. I.e instead of specifying this
operations in command line you can put them in a journal file.
$ rewrite-rules.journal
Make contents look like this:
= ^income
(liabilities:tax) *.33
= expenses:gifts
budget:gifts *-1
assets:budget *1
Note that '=' (equality symbol) that is used instead of date in trans-
actions you usually write. It indicates the query by which you want to
match the posting to add new ones.
$ hledger rewrite -- -f input.journal -f rewrite-rules.journal > rewritten-tidy-output.journal
This is something similar to the commands pipeline:
$ hledger rewrite -- -f input.journal '^income' --add-posting '(liabilities:tax) *.33' \
| hledger rewrite -- -f - expenses:gifts --add-posting 'budget:gifts *-1' \
--add-posting 'assets:budget *1' \
> rewritten-tidy-output.journal
It is important to understand that relative order of such entries in
journal is important. You can re-use result of previously added post-
ings.
Diff output format
To use this tool for batch modification of your journal files you may
find useful output in form of unified diff.
$ hledger rewrite -- --diff -f examples/sample.journal '^income' --add-posting '(liabilities:tax) *.33'
Output might look like:
--- /tmp/examples/sample.journal
+++ /tmp/examples/sample.journal
@@ -18,3 +18,4 @@
2008/01/01 income
- assets:bank:checking $1
+ assets:bank:checking $1
income:salary
+ (liabilities:tax) 0
@@ -22,3 +23,4 @@
2008/06/01 gift
- assets:bank:checking $1
+ assets:bank:checking $1
income:gifts
+ (liabilities:tax) 0
If you'll pass this through patch tool you'll get transactions contain-
ing the posting that matches your query be updated. Note that multiple
files might be update according to list of input files specified via
--file options and include directives inside of these files.
Be careful. Whole transaction being re-formatted in a style of output
from hledger print.
See also:
https://github.com/simonmichael/hledger/issues/99
rewrite vs. print --auto
This command predates print --auto, and currently does much the same
thing, but with these differences:
o with multiple files, rewrite lets rules in any file affect all other
files. print --auto uses standard directive scoping; rules affect
only child files.
o rewrite's query limits which transactions can be rewritten; all are
printed. print --auto's query limits which transactions are printed.
o rewrite applies rules specified on command line or in the journal.
print --auto applies rules specified in the journal.
roi
roi
Shows the time-weighted (TWR) and money-weighted (IRR) rate of return
on your investments.
This command assumes that you have account(s) that hold nothing but
your investments and whenever you record current appraisal/valuation of
these investments you offset unrealized profit and loss into account(s)
that, again, hold nothing but unrealized profit and loss.
Any transactions affecting balance of investment account(s) and not
originating from unrealized profit and loss account(s) are assumed to
be your investments or withdrawals.
At a minimum, you need to supply a query (which could be just an
account name) to select your investments with --inv, and another query
to identify your profit and loss transactions with --pnl.
It will compute and display the internalized rate of return (IRR) and
time-weighted rate of return (TWR) for your investments for the time
period requested. Both rates of return are annualized before display,
regardless of the length of reporting interval.
stats
stats
Show some journal statistics.
The stats command displays summary information for the whole journal,
or a matched part of it. With a reporting interval, it shows a report
for each report period.
Example:
$ 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 ($)
This command also supports output destination and output format selec-
tion.
tags
tags
List all the tag names used in the journal. With a TAGREGEX argument,
only tag names matching the regular expression (case insensitive) are
shown. With QUERY arguments, only transactions matching the query are
considered.
test
test
Run built-in unit tests.
This command runs the unit tests built in to hledger-lib and hledger,
printing test names and results on stdout. If any test fails, the exit
code will be non-zero.
Test names include a group prefix. If a (exact, case sensitive) group
prefix, or a full test name is provided as the first argument, only
that group or test is run.
If a numeric second argument is provided, it will set the randomness
seed, for repeatable results from tests using randomness (currently
none of them).
This is mainly used by developers, but it's nice to be able to san-
ity-check your installed hledger executable at any time. All tests are
expected to pass - if you ever see otherwise, something has gone wrong,
please report a bug!
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 exten-
sion (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,
o hledger -h web shows hledger's help, while hledger web -h shows
hledger-web's help.
o Flags specific to the add-on must have a preceding -- to hide them
from hledger. So hledger web --serve --port 9000 will be rejected;
you must use hledger web -- --serve --port 9000.
o 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 accord-
ing to various schemes.
irr
hledger-irr calculates the internal rate of return of an investment
account, but it's superseded now by the built-in roi command.
Experimental add-ons
These are available in source form in the hledger repo's bin/ direc-
tory; installing them is pretty easy. They may be less mature and doc-
umented 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.
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.
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.jour-
nal).
FILES
Reads data from one or more files in hledger journal, timeclock, time-
dot, 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 sup-
ports 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).
REPORTING BUGS
Report bugs at http://bugs.hledger.org (or on the #hledger IRC channel
or hledger mail list)
AUTHORS
Simon Michael <simon@joyful.com> and contributors
COPYRIGHT
Copyright (C) 2007-2016 Simon Michael.
Released under GNU GPL v3 or later.
SEE ALSO
hledger(1), hledger-ui(1), hledger-web(1), hledger-api(1),
hledger_csv(5), hledger_journal(5), hledger_timeclock(5), hledger_time-
dot(5), ledger(1)
http://hledger.org
hledger 1.14.1 March 2019 hledger(1)
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