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HLEDGER(1) hledger User Manuals HLEDGER(1)
NAME
This is the command-line interface (CLI) for the hledger accounting
tool. Here we also describe hledger's concepts and file formats. This
manual is for hledger 1.26.
SYNOPSIS
hledger
hledger [-f FILE] COMMAND [OPTIONS] [ARGS]
hledger [-f FILE] ADDONCMD -- [OPTIONS] [ARGS]
DESCRIPTION
hledger is a reliable, cross-platform set of programs 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).
The basic function of the hledger CLI is to read a plain text file
describing financial transactions (in accounting terms, a general jour-
nal) 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, 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
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.
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 or COMMAND help
--man show general or COMMAND user manual with man
--info show general or COMMAND user manual with info
--version
show general or ADDONCMD version
--debug[=N]
show debug output (levels 1-9, default: 1)
General input options:
-f FILE --file=FILE
use a different input file. For stdin, use - (default:
$LEDGER_FILE or $HOME/.hledger.journal)
--rules-file=RULESFILE
Conversion rules file to use when reading CSV (default:
FILE.rules)
--separator=CHAR
Field separator to expect when reading CSV (default: ',')
--alias=OLD=NEW
rename accounts named OLD to NEW
--anon anonymize accounts and payees
--pivot FIELDNAME
use some other field or tag for the account name
-I --ignore-assertions
disable balance assertion checks (note: does not disable balance
assignments)
-s --strict
do extra error checking (check that all posted accounts are
declared)
General reporting options:
-b --begin=DATE
include postings/txns on or after this date (will be adjusted to
preceding subperiod start when using a report interval)
-e --end=DATE
include postings/txns before this date (will be adjusted to fol-
lowing subperiod end when using a report interval)
-D --daily
multiperiod/multicolumn report by day
-W --weekly
multiperiod/multicolumn report by week
-M --monthly
multiperiod/multicolumn report by month
-Q --quarterly
multiperiod/multicolumn report by quarter
-Y --yearly
multiperiod/multicolumn report by year
-p --period=PERIODEXP
set start date, end date, and/or reporting interval all at once
using period expressions syntax
--date2
match the secondary date instead (see command help for other
effects)
--today=DATE
override today's date (affects relative smart dates, for
tests/examples)
-U --unmarked
include only unmarked postings/txns (can combine with -P or -C)
-P --pending
include only pending postings/txns
-C --cleared
include only cleared postings/txns
-R --real
include only non-virtual postings
-NUM --depth=NUM
hide/aggregate accounts or postings more than NUM levels deep
-E --empty
show items with zero amount, normally hidden (and vice-versa in
hledger-ui/hledger-web)
-B --cost
convert amounts to their cost/selling amount at transaction time
-V --market
convert amounts to their market value in default valuation com-
modities
-X --exchange=COMM
convert amounts to their market value in commodity COMM
--value
convert amounts to cost or market value, more flexibly than
-B/-V/-X
--infer-market-prices
use transaction prices (recorded with @ or @@) as additional
market prices, as if they were P directives
--auto apply automated posting rules to modify transactions.
--forecast
generate future transactions from periodic transaction rules,
for the next 6 months or till report end date. In hledger-ui,
also make ordinary future transactions visible.
--commodity-style
Override the commodity style in the output for the specified
commodity. For example 'EUR1.000,00'.
--color=WHEN (or --colour=WHEN)
Should color-supporting commands use ANSI color codes in text
output. 'auto' (default): whenever stdout seems to be a color-
supporting terminal. 'always' or 'yes': always, useful eg when
piping output into 'less -R'. 'never' or 'no': never. A
NO_COLOR environment variable overrides this.
--pretty[=WHEN]
Show prettier output, e.g. using unicode box-drawing charac-
ters. Accepts 'yes' (the default) or 'no' ('y', 'n', 'always',
'never' also work). If you provide an argument you must use
'=', e.g. '--pretty=yes'.
When a reporting option appears more than once in the command line, the
last one takes precedence.
Some reporting options can also be written as query arguments.
Command 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 add-on, you may need to put its
options after a double-hyphen, eg: hledger ui -- --watch. Or, you can
run the add-on 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.
You can save a set of command line options/arguments in a file, and
then reuse them by writing @FILENAME as a command line argument. Eg:
hledger bal @foo.args. (To prevent this, eg if you have an argument
that begins with a literal @, precede it with --, eg: hledger bal --
@ARG).
Inside the argument file, each line should contain just one option or
argument. Avoid the use of spaces, except inside quotes (or you'll see
a confusing error). Between a flag and its argument, use = (or noth-
ing). Bad:
assets depth:2
-X USD
Good:
assets
depth:2
-X=USD
For special characters (see below), use one less level of quoting than
you would at the command prompt. Bad:
-X"$"
Good:
-X$
See also: Save frequently used options.
Special characters
Single escaping (shell metacharacters)
In shell command lines, characters significant to your shell - such as
spaces, <, >, (, ), |, $ and \ - should be "shell-escaped" if you want
hledger to see them. This is done by enclosing them in single or dou-
ble quotes, or by writing a backslash before them. Eg to match an
account name containing a space:
$ hledger register 'credit card'
or:
$ hledger register credit\ card
Windows users should keep in mind that cmd treats single quote as a
regular character, so you should be using double quotes exclusively.
PowerShell treats both single and double quotes as quotes.
Double escaping (regular expression metacharacters)
Characters significant in regular expressions (described below) - such
as ., ^, $, [, ], (, ), |, and \ - may need to be "regex-escaped" if
you don't want them to be interpreted by hledger's regular expression
engine. This is done by writing backslashes before them, but since
backslash is typically also a shell metacharacter, both shell-escaping
and regex-escaping will be needed. Eg to match a literal $ sign while
using the bash shell:
$ hledger balance cur:'\$'
or:
$ hledger balance cur:\\$
Triple escaping (for add-on commands)
When you use hledger to run an external add-on command (described
below), one level of shell-escaping is lost from any options or argu-
ments intended for by the add-on command, so those need an extra level
of shell-escaping. Eg to match a literal $ sign while using the bash
shell and running an add-on command (ui):
$ hledger ui cur:'\\$'
or:
$ hledger ui cur:\\\\$
If you wondered why four backslashes, perhaps this helps:
unescaped: $
escaped: \$
double-escaped: \\$
triple-escaped: \\\\$
Or, you can avoid the extra escaping by running the add-on executable
directly:
$ hledger-ui cur:\\$
Less escaping
Options and arguments are sometimes used in places other than the shell
command line, where shell-escaping is not needed, so there you should
use one less level of escaping. Those places include:
o an @argumentfile
o hledger-ui's filter field
o hledger-web's search form
o GHCI's prompt (used by developers).
Unicode characters
hledger is expected to handle non-ascii characters correctly:
o they should be parsed correctly in input files and on the command
line, by all hledger tools (add, iadd, hledger-web's search/add/edit
forms, etc.)
o they should be displayed correctly by all hledger tools, and on-
screen alignment should be preserved.
This requires a well-configured environment. Here are some tips:
o A system locale must be configured, and it must be one that can
decode the characters being used. In bash, you can set a locale like
this: export LANG=en_US.UTF-8. There are some more details in Trou-
bleshooting. This step is essential - without it, hledger will quit
on encountering a non-ascii character (as with all GHC-compiled pro-
grams).
o your terminal software (eg Terminal.app, iTerm, CMD.exe, xterm..)
must support unicode
o the terminal must be using a font which includes the required unicode
glyphs
o the terminal should be configured to display wide characters as dou-
ble width (for report alignment)
o on Windows, for best results you should run hledger in the same kind
of environment in which it was built. Eg hledger built in the stan-
dard CMD.EXE environment (like the binaries on our download page)
might show display problems when run in a cygwin or msys terminal,
and vice versa. (See eg #961).
Regular expressions
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. If
they're not doing what you expect, it's important to know exactly what
they support:
1. they are case insensitive
2. they are infix matching (they do not need to match the entire thing
being matched)
3. they are POSIX ERE (extended regular expressions)
4. they also support GNU word boundaries (\b, \B, \<, \>)
5. they do not support backreferences; if you write \1, it will match
the digit 1. Except when doing text replacement, eg in account
aliases, where backreferences can be used in the replacement string
to reference capturing groups in the search regexp.
6. they do not support mode modifiers ((?s)), character classes (\w,
\d), or anything else not mentioned above.
Some things to note:
o In the alias directive and --alias option, regular expressions must
be enclosed in forward slashes (/REGEX/). Elsewhere in hledger,
these are not required.
o In queries, to match a regular expression metacharacter like $ as a
literal character, prepend a backslash. Eg to search for amounts
with the dollar sign in hledger-web, write cur:\$.
o On the command line, some metacharacters like $ have a special mean-
ing to the shell and so must be escaped at least once more. See Spe-
cial characters.
ENVIRONMENT
LEDGER_FILE The journal file path when not specified with -f.
On unix computers, the default value is: ~/.hledger.journal.
A more typical value is something like ~/finance/YYYY.journal, where
~/finance is a version-controlled finance directory and YYYY is the
current year. Or, ~/finance/current.journal, where current.journal is
a symbolic link to YYYY.journal.
The usual way to set this permanently is to add a command to one of
your shell's startup files (eg ~/.profile):
export LEDGER_FILE=~/finance/current.journal`
On some Mac computers, there is a more thorough way to set environment
variables, that will also affect applications started from the GUI (eg,
Emacs started from a dock icon): In ~/.MacOSX/environment.plist, add an
entry like:
{
"LEDGER_FILE" : "~/finance/current.journal"
}
For this to take effect you might need to killall Dock, or reboot.
On Windows computers, the default value is probably C:\Users\MyUser-
Name\.hledger.journal. You can change this by running a command like
this in a powershell window:
> setx LEDGER_FILE "C:\Users\MyUserName\finance\2021.journal"
(Let us know if you need to be an Administrator, and if this persists
across a reboot.)
COLUMNS The screen width used by the register command. Default: the
full terminal width.
NO_COLOR If this variable exists with any value, hledger will not use
ANSI color codes in terminal output. This is overriden by the
--color/--colour option.
DATA FILES
hledger reads transactions from one or more data files. The default
data 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 one or more -f/--file options:
$ hledger -f /some/file -f another_file stats
The file name - means standard input:
$ cat some.journal | hledger -f-
Data formats
Usually the data file is in hledger's journal format, but it can be in
any of the supported file formats, which currently are:
Reader: Reads: Used for file exten-
sions:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
journal hledger journal files and some Ledger .journal .j .hledger
journals, for transactions .ledger
time- timeclock files, for precise time log- .timeclock
clock ging
timedot timedot files, for approximate time .timedot
logging
csv comma/semicolon/tab/other-separated .csv .ssv .tsv
values, for data import
These formats are described in their own sections, below.
hledger detects the format automatically based on the file extensions
shown above. If it can't recognise the file extension, it assumes
journal format. So for non-journal files, it's important to use a
recognised file extension, so as to either read successfully or to show
relevant error messages.
You can also force a specific reader/format by prefixing the file path
with the format and a colon. Eg, to read a .dat file as csv format:
$ hledger -f csv:/some/csv-file.dat stats
Or to read stdin (-) as timeclock format:
$ echo 'i 2009/13/1 08:00:00' | hledger print -ftimeclock:-
Multiple files
You can specify multiple -f options, to read multiple files as one big
journal. There are some limitations with this:
o most directives do not affect sibling files
o balance assertions will not see any account balances from previous
files
If you need either of those things, you can
o use a single parent file which includes the others
o or concatenate the files into one before reading, eg: cat a.journal
b.journal | hledger -f- CMD.
Strict mode
hledger checks input files for valid data. By default, the most impor-
tant errors are detected, while still accepting easy journal files
without a lot of declarations:
o Are the input files parseable, with valid syntax ?
o Are all transactions balanced ?
o Do all balance assertions pass ?
With the -s/--strict flag, additional checks are performed:
o Are all accounts posted to, declared with an account directive ?
(Account error checking)
o Are all commodities declared with a commodity directive ? (Commodity
error checking)
o Are all commodity conversions declared explicitly ?
You can use the check command to run individual checks -- the ones
listed above and some more.
TIME PERIODS
Smart dates
hledger's user interfaces accept a flexible "smart date" syntax. 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 separators allowed. Year
2004.9.1 is 4+ digits, month is 1-12, day is 1-31
2004 start of year
2004/10 start of month
10/1 month and day in current year
21 day in current month
october, oct start of month in current year
yesterday, today, tomor- -1, 0, 1 days from today
row
last/this/next -1, 0, 1 periods from the current period
day/week/month/quar-
ter/year
in n n periods from the current period
days/weeks/months/quar-
ters/years
n n periods from the current period
days/weeks/months/quar-
ters/years ahead
n -n periods from the current period
days/weeks/months/quar-
ters/years ago
20181201 8 digit YYYYMMDD with valid year month and day
201812 6 digit YYYYMM with valid year and month
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
Note "today's date" can be overridden with the --today option, in case
it's needed for testing or for recreating old reports. (Except for
periodic transaction rules; those are not affected by --today.)
Report start & end date
By default, most hledger reports will show the full span of time repre-
sented by the journal data. The report start date will be the earliest
transaction or posting date, and the report end date will be the latest
transaction, posting, or market price date.
Often you will want to see a shorter time span, such as the current
month. You can specify a start and/or end date using -b/--begin,
-e/--end, -p/--period or a date: query (described below). All of these
accept the smart date syntax.
Some notes:
o End dates are exclusive, as in Ledger, so you should write the date
after the last day you want to see in the report.
o As noted in reporting options: among start/end dates specified with
options, the last (i.e. right-most) option takes precedence.
o The effective report start and end dates are the intersection of the
start/end dates from options and that from date: queries. That is,
date:2019-01 date:2019 -p'2000 to 2030' yields January 2019, the
smallest common time span.
o A report interval (see below) will adjust start/end dates, when
needed, so that they fall on subperiod boundaries.
Examples:
-b 2016/3/17 begin on St. Patrick's day 2016
-e 12/1 end at the start of december 1st of the current year
(11/30 will be the last date included)
-b thismonth all transactions on or after the 1st of the current month
-p thismonth all transactions in the current month
date:2016/3/17.. the above written as queries instead (.. can also be
replaced with -)
date:..12/1
date:thismonth..
date:thismonth
Report intervals
A report interval can be specified so that commands like register, bal-
ance and activity become multi-period, showing each subperiod as a sep-
arate row or column.
The following "standard" report intervals can be enabled by using their
corresponding flag:
o -D/--daily
o -W/--weekly
o -M/--monthly
o -Q/--quarterly
o -Y/--yearly
These standard intervals always start on natural interval boundaries:
eg --weekly starts on mondays, --monthly starts on the first of the
month, --yearly always starts on January 1st, etc.
Certain more complex intervals, and more flexible boundary dates, can
be specified by -p/--period. These are described in period expres-
sions, below.
Report intervals can only be specified by the flags above, and not by
query arguments, currently.
Report intervals have another effect: multi-period reports are always
expanded to fill a whole number of subperiods. So if you use a report
interval (other than --daily), and you have specified a start or end
date, you may notice those dates being overridden (ie, the report
starts earlier than your requested start date, or ends later than your
requested end date). This is done to ensure "full" first and last sub-
periods, so that all subperiods' numbers are comparable.
To summarise:
o In multiperiod reports, all subperiods are forced to be the same
length, to simplify reporting.
o Reports with the standard --weekly/--monthly/--quarterly/--yearly
intervals are required to start on the first day of a
week/month/quarter/year. We'd like more flexibility here but it
isn't supported yet.
o --period (below) can specify more complex intervals, starting on any
date.
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
".." or "-". 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"
Or you can specify a single quarter like so:
-p "2009Q1" first quarter of 2009,
equivalent to "2009/1/1 to
2009/4/1"
-p "q4" fourth quarter of the cur-
rent year
Period expressions with a report interval
-p/--period's argument can also begin with, or entirely consist of, a
report interval. This should be separated from the start/end dates (if
any) by a space, or the word in. The basic intervals (which can also
be written as command line flags) are daily, weekly, monthly, quar-
terly, and yearly. Some examples:
-p "weekly from 2009/1/1 to 2009/4/1"
-p "monthly in 2008"
-p "quarterly"
As mentioned above, the weekly, monthly, quarterly and yearly intervals
require a report start date that is the first day of a week, month,
quarter or year. And, report start/end dates will be expanded if
needed to span a whole number of intervals.
For example:
-p "weekly from 2009/1/1 starts on 2008/12/29, closest preceding Mon-
to 2009/4/1" day
-p "monthly in starts on 2018/11/01
2008/11/25"
-p "quarterly from starts on 2009/04/01, ends on 2009/06/30,
2009-05-05 to 2009-06-01" which are first and last days of Q2 2009
-p "yearly from starts on 2009/01/01, first day of 2009
2009-12-29"
More complex report intervals
Some more complex kinds of interval are also supported in period
expressions:
o biweekly
o fortnightly
o bimonthly
o every day|week|month|quarter|year
o every N days|weeks|months|quarters|years
These too will cause report start/end dates to be expanded, if needed,
to span a whole number of intervals. Examples:
-p "bimonthly from 2008" periods will have boundaries on 2008/01/01,
2008/03/01, ...
-p "every 2 weeks" starts on closest preceding Monday
-p "every 5 months from periods will have boundaries on 2009/03/01,
2009/03" 2009/08/01, ...
Intervals with custom start date
All intervals mentioned above are required to start on their natural
calendar boundaries, but the following intervals can start on any date:
Weekly on custom day:
o every Nth day of week (th, nd, rd, or st are all accepted after the
number)
o every WEEKDAYNAME (full or three-letter english weekday name, case
insensitive)
Monthly on custom day:
o every Nth day [of month]
o every Nth WEEKDAYNAME [of month]
Yearly on custom day:
o every MM/DD [of year] (month number and day of month number)
o every MONTHNAME DDth [of year] (full or three-letter english month
name, case insensitive, and day of month number)
o every DDth MONTHNAME [of year] (equivalent to the above)
Examples:
-p "every 2nd day of periods will go from Tue to Tue
week"
-p "every Tue" same
-p "every 15th day" period boundaries will be on 15th of each
month
-p "every 2nd Monday" period boundaries will be on second Monday of
each month
-p "every 11/05" yearly periods with boundaries on 5th of
November
-p "every 5th November" same
-p "every Nov 5th" same
Show historical balances at end of the 15th day of each month (N is an
end date, exclusive as always):
$ hledger balance -H -p "every 16th day"
Group postings from the start of wednesday to end of the following
tuesday (N is both (inclusive) start date and (exclusive) end date):
$ hledger register checking -p "every 3rd day of week"
Periods or dates ?
Report intervals like the above are most often used with -p|--period,
to divide reports into multiple subperiods - each generated date marks
a subperiod boundary. Here, the periods between the dates are what's
important.
But report intervals can also be used with --forecast to generate
future transactions, or with balance --budget to generate budget goal-
setting transactions. For these, the dates themselves are what mat-
ters.
Events on multiple weekdays
The every WEEKDAYNAME form has a special variant with multiple day
names, comma-separated. Eg: every mon,thu,sat. Also, weekday and
weekendday are shorthand for mon,tue,wed,thu,fri and sat,sun respec-
tively.
This form is mainly intended for use with --forecast, to generate peri-
odic transactions on arbitrary days of the week. It may be less useful
with -p, since it divides each week into subperiods of unequal length.
(Because gaps between periods are not allowed; if you'd like to change
this, see #1632.)
Examples:
-p "every dates will be Mon, Wed, Fri; periods will be Mon-
mon,wed,fri" Tue, Wed-Thu, Fri-Sun
-p "every weekday" dates will be Mon, Tue, Wed, Thu, Fri; periods will
be Mon, Tue, Wed, Thu, Fri-Sun
-p "every weekend- dates will be Sat, Sun; periods will be Sat, Sun-Fri
day"
DEPTH
With the --depth NUM option (short form: -NUM), commands like account,
balance and register will show only the uppermost accounts in the
account tree, down to level NUM. Use this when you want a summary with
less detail. This flag has the same effect as a depth: query argument:
depth:2, --depth=2 or -2 are equivalent.
QUERIES
One of hledger's strengths is being able to quickly report on a precise
subset of your data. Most hledger commands accept optional query argu-
ments to restrict their scope. The syntax is as follows:
o Zero or more space-separated query terms. These are most often
account name substrings:
utilities food:groceries
o Terms with spaces or other special characters should be enclosed in
quotes:
"personal care"
o Regular expressions are also supported:
"^expenses\b" "accounts (payable|receivable)"
o Add a query type prefix to match other parts of the data:
date:202012- desc:amazon cur:USD amt:">100" status:
o Add a not: prefix to negate a term:
not:cur:USD
Query types
Here are the types of query term available. Remember these can also be
prefixed with not: to convert them into a negative match.
acct:REGEX, REGEX
Match account names containing this (case insensitive) regular expres-
sion. This is the default query type when there is no prefix, and reg-
ular expression syntax is typically not needed, so usually we just
write an account name substring, like expenses or food.
amt:N, amt:<N, amt:<=N, amt:>N, amt:>=N
Match postings with a single-commodity amount equal to, less than, or
greater than N. (Postings with multi-commodity amounts are not tested
and will always match.) The comparison has two modes: if N is preceded
by a + or - sign (or is 0), the two signed numbers are compared. Oth-
erwise, the absolute magnitudes are compared, ignoring sign.
code:REGEX
Match by transaction code (eg check number).
cur:REGEX
Match postings or transactions including any amounts whose cur-
rency/commodity symbol is fully matched by REGEX. (For a partial
match, use .*REGEX.*). Note, to match special characters which are
regex-significant, you need to escape them with \. And for characters
which are significant to your shell you may need one more level of
escaping. So eg to match the dollar sign:
hledger print cur:\\$.
desc:REGEX
Match transaction descriptions.
date:PERIODEXPR
Match dates (or with the --date2 flag, secondary dates) within the
specified period. PERIODEXPR is a period expression with no report
interval. Examples:
date:2016, date:thismonth, date:2/1-2/15, date:2021-07-27..nextquarter.
date2:PERIODEXPR
Match secondary dates within the specified period (independent of the
--date2 flag).
depth:N
Match (or display, depending on command) accounts at or above this
depth.
note:REGEX
Match transaction notes (the part of the description right of |, or the
whole description if there's no |).
payee:REGEX
Match transaction payee/payer names (the part of the description left
of |, or the whole description if there's no |).
real:, real:0
Match real or virtual postings respectively.
status:, status:!, status:*
Match unmarked, pending, or cleared transactions respectively.
type:TYPECODES
Match by account type (see Declaring accounts > Account types). TYPE-
CODES is one or more of the single-letter account type codes ALERXCV,
case insensitive. Note type:A and type:E will also match their respec-
tive subtypes C (Cash) and V (Conversion). Certain kinds of account
alias can disrupt account types, see Rewriting accounts > Aliases and
account types.
tag:REGEX[=REGEX]
Match by tag name, and optionally also by tag value. (To match only by
value, use tag:.=REGEX.)
When querying by tag, note that:
o Accounts also inherit the tags of their parent accounts
o Postings also inherit the tags of their account and their transaction
o Transactions also acquire the tags of their postings.
(inacct:ACCTNAME
A special query term used automatically in hledger-web only: tells
hledger-web to show the transaction register for an account.)
Combining query terms
Most commands select things which match:
o any of the description terms AND
o any of the account terms AND
o any of the status terms AND
o all the other terms.
while the print command 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.
You can do more powerful queries (such as AND-ing two like terms) by
running a first query with print, and piping the result into a second
hledger command. Eg: how much of food expenses was paid with cash ?
$ hledger print assets:cash | hledger -f- -I balance expenses:food
If you are interested in full boolean expressions for queries, see
#203.
Queries and command options
Some queries can also be expressed as command-line options: depth:2 is
equivalent to --depth 2, date:2020 is equivalent to -p 2020, etc. When
you mix command options and query arguments, generally the resulting
query is their intersection.
Queries and account aliases
When account names are rewritten with --alias or alias, acct: will
match either the old or the new account name.
Queries and valuation
When amounts are converted to other commodities in cost or value
reports, cur: and amt: match the old commodity symbol and the old
amount quantity, not the new ones (except in hledger 1.22.0 where it's
reversed, see #1625).
Querying with account aliases
When account names are rewritten with --alias or alias, note that acct:
will match either the old or the new account name.
Querying with cost or value
When amounts are converted to other commodities in cost or value
reports, note that cur: matches the new commodity symbol, and not the
old one, and amt: matches the new quantity, and not the old one. Note:
this changed in hledger 1.22, previously it was the reverse, see the
discussion at #1625.
CONVERSION & COST
This section is about converting between commodities. Some defini-
tions:
o A "commodity conversion" is an exchange of one currency or commodity
for another. Eg a foreign currency exchange, or a purchase or sale
of stock or cryptocurrency.
o A "conversion transaction" is a transaction involving one or more
such conversions.
o "Conversion rate" is the exchange rate in a conversion - the cost per
unit of one commodity in the other.
o "Cost" is how much of one commodity was paid to acquire the other
(when buying), or how much was received in exchange for the other
(when selling). We call both of these "cost" for convenience (after
all, it is cost for one party or the other).
Recording conversions
As a concrete example, let's assume 100 EUR was converted to 120 USD.
There are several ways to record this in the journal, each with pros
and cons which will be explained in more detail below. (Also, these
examples use journal format which is properly explained much further
below; sorry about that, you may want to read some of that first.)
Implicit conversion
You can just record the outflow (100 EUR) and inflow (120 USD) in the
appropriate asset account:
2021-01-01
assets:cash -100 EUR
assets:cash 120 USD
hledger will assume this transaction is balanced, inferring that the
conversion rate must be 1 EUR = 1.20 USD. You can see the inferred
rate by using hledger print -x.
Pro:
o Easy, concise
o hledger can do cost reporting
Con:
o Less error checking - typos in amounts or commodity symbols may not
be detected
o conversion rate is not clear
o disturbs the accounting equation
You can prevent accidental implicit conversions due to a mistyped com-
modity symbol, by using hledger check commodities. You can prevent
implicit conversions entirely, by using hledger check balancednoauto-
conversion, or -s/--strict.
Priced conversion
You can add the conversion rate using @ notation:
2021-01-01
assets:cash -100 EUR @ 1.20 USD
assets:cash 120 USD
Now hledger will check that 100 * 1.20 = 120, and would report an error
otherwise.
Pro:
o Still concise
o makes the conversion rate clear
o provides some error checking
o hledger can do cost reporting
Con:
o Disturbs the accounting equation
Equity conversion
In strict double entry bookkeeping, the above transaction is not bal-
anced in EUR or in USD, since some EUR disappears, and some USD
appears. This violates the accounting equation (A+L+E=0), and prevents
reports like balancesheetequity from showing a zero total.
The proper way to make it balance is to add a balancing posting for
each commodity, using an equity account:
2021-01-01
assets:cash -100 EUR
equity:conversion 100 EUR
equity:conversion -120 USD
assets:cash 120 USD
Pro:
o Preserves the accounting equation
o keeps track of conversions and related gains/losses in one place
o works in any double entry accounting system
Con:
o More verbose
o conversion rate is not clear
o hledger can not do cost reporting
Priced equity conversion
Another possible notation would be to record both the conversion rate
and the equity postings:
2021-01-01
assets:cash -100 EUR @ 1.20 USD
equity:conversion 100 EUR
equity:conversion -120 USD
assets:cash 120 USD
hledger currently does not allow this; instead, you can record the con-
version rate as a comment.
Inferring missing conversion rates
hledger will do this automatically for implicit conversions. Currently
it can not do this for equity conversions.
Inferring missing equity postings
With the --infer-equity flag, hledger will add equity postings to
priced and implicit conversions (and move the conversion rate into a
comment).
Cost reporting
With the -B/--cost flag, hledger will convert the amounts in priced and
implicit conversions to their cost in the other commodity. This is
useful to see a report of what you paid for things (or how much you
sold things for). Currently -B/--cost does not work on equity conver-
sions, and it disables --infer-equity.
These operations are transient, only affecting reports. If you want to
change the journal file permanently, you could pipe each entry through
hledger -f- -I print [-x] [--infer-equity] [-B]
Conversion summary
o Recording the conversion rate is good because it makes that clear and
allows cost reporting.
o Recording equity postings is good because it balances the accounting
equation and is correct bookkeeping.
o Combining these is not yet supported, so you have to choose. For
now, priced conversions are a good compromise, so that:
o When you want to see the cost (or sale proceeds) of things, use
-B/--cost.
o When you want to see a balanced balance sheet or correct journal
entries, use --infer-equity.
o Combining these is not yet supported; -B/--cost will take prece-
dence.
o Conversion/cost operations are performed before valuation.
VALUATION
Instead of reporting amounts in their original commodity, hledger can
convert them to cost/sale amount (using the conversion rate recorded in
the transaction), and/or to market value (using some market price on a
certain date). This is controlled by the --value=TYPE[,COMMODITY]
option, which will be described below. We also provide the simpler -V
and -X COMMODITY options, and often one of these is all you need:
-V: Value
The -V/--market flag converts amounts to market value in their default
valuation commodity, using the market prices in effect on the valuation
date(s), if any. More on these in a minute.
-X: Value in specified commodity
The -X/--exchange=COMM option is like -V, except you tell it which cur-
rency you want to convert to, and it tries to convert everything to
that.
Valuation date
Since market prices can change from day to day, market value reports
have a valuation date (or more than one), which determines which market
prices will be used.
For single period reports, if an explicit report end date is specified,
that will be used as the valuation date; otherwise the valuation date
is the journal's end date.
For multiperiod reports, each column/period is valued on the last day
of the period, by default.
Market prices
To convert a commodity A to its market value in another commodity B,
hledger looks for a suitable market price (exchange rate) as follows,
in this order of preference :
1. A declared market price or inferred market price: A's latest market
price in B on or before the valuation date as declared by a P direc-
tive, or (with the --infer-market-prices flag) inferred from trans-
action prices.
2. A reverse market price: the inverse of a declared or inferred market
price from B to A.
3. A forward chain of market prices: a synthetic price formed by com-
bining the shortest chain of "forward" (only 1 above) market prices,
leading from A to B.
4. Any chain of market prices: a chain of any market prices, including
both forward and reverse prices (1 and 2 above), leading from A to
B.
There is a limit to the length of these price chains; if hledger
reaches that length without finding a complete chain or exhausting all
possibilities, it will give up (with a "gave up" message visible in
--debug=2 output). That limit is currently 1000.
Amounts for which no suitable market price can be found, are not con-
verted.
--infer-market-prices: market prices from transactions
Normally, market value in hledger is fully controlled by, and requires,
P directives in your journal. Since adding and updating those can be a
chore, and since transactions usually take place at close to market
value, why not use the recorded transaction prices as additional market
prices (as Ledger does) ? We could produce value reports without need-
ing P directives at all.
Adding the --infer-market-prices flag to -V, -X or --value enables
this. So for example, hledger bs -V --infer-market-prices will get
market prices both from P directives and from transactions. (And if
both occur on the same day, the P directive takes precedence).
There is a downside: value reports can sometimes be affected in confus-
ing/undesired ways by your journal entries. If this happens to you,
read all of this Valuation section carefully, and try adding --debug or
--debug=2 to troubleshoot.
--infer-market-prices can infer market prices from:
o multicommodity transactions with explicit prices (@/@@)
o multicommodity transactions with implicit prices (no @, two commodi-
ties, unbalanced). (With these, the order of postings matters.
hledger print -x can be useful for troubleshooting.)
o but not, currently, from "more correct" multicommodity transactions
(no @, multiple commodities, balanced).
There is another limitation (bug) currently: when a valuation commodity
is not specified, prices inferred with --infer-market-prices do not
help select a default valuation commodity, as P prices would. So con-
version might not happen because no valuation commodity was detected
(--debug=2 will show this). To be safe, specify the valuation commmod-
ity, eg:
o -X EUR --infer-market-prices, not -V --infer-market-prices
o --value=then,EUR --infer-market-prices, not --value=then --infer-mar-
ket-prices
Valuation commodity
When you specify a valuation commodity (-X COMM or --value TYPE,COMM):
hledger will convert all amounts to COMM, wherever it can find a suit-
able market price (including by reversing or chaining prices).
When you leave the valuation commodity unspecified (-V or --value
TYPE):
For each commodity A, hledger picks a default valuation commodity as
follows, in this order of preference:
1. The price commodity from the latest P-declared market price for A on
or before valuation date.
2. The price commodity from the latest P-declared market price for A on
any date. (Allows conversion to proceed when there are inferred
prices before the valuation date.)
3. If there are no P directives at all (any commodity or date) and the
--infer-market-prices flag is used: the price commodity from the
latest transaction-inferred price for A on or before valuation date.
This means:
o If you have P directives, they determine which commodities -V will
convert, and to what.
o If you have no P directives, and use the --infer-market-prices flag,
transaction prices determine it.
Amounts for which no valuation commodity can be found are not con-
verted.
Simple valuation examples
Here are some quick examples of -V:
; one euro is worth this many dollars from nov 1
P 2016/11/01 EUR $1.10
; purchase some euros on nov 3
2016/11/3
assets:euros EUR100
assets:checking
; the euro is worth fewer dollars by dec 21
P 2016/12/21 EUR $1.03
How many euros do I have ?
$ hledger -f t.j bal -N euros
EUR100 assets:euros
What are they worth at end of nov 3 ?
$ hledger -f t.j bal -N euros -V -e 2016/11/4
$110.00 assets:euros
What are they worth after 2016/12/21 ? (no report end date specified,
defaults to today)
$ hledger -f t.j bal -N euros -V
$103.00 assets:euros
--value: Flexible valuation
-V and -X are special cases of the more general --value option:
--value=TYPE[,COMM] TYPE is then, end, now or YYYY-MM-DD.
COMM is an optional commodity symbol.
Shows amounts converted to:
- default valuation commodity (or COMM) using market prices at posting dates
- default valuation commodity (or COMM) using market prices at period end(s)
- default valuation commodity (or COMM) using current market prices
- default valuation commodity (or COMM) using market prices at some date
The TYPE part selects cost or value and valuation date:
--value=then
Convert amounts to their value in the default valuation commod-
ity, using market prices on each posting's date.
--value=end
Convert amounts to their value in the default valuation commod-
ity, using market prices on the last day of the report period
(or if unspecified, the journal's end date); or in multiperiod
reports, market prices on the last day of each subperiod.
--value=now
Convert amounts to their value in the default valuation commod-
ity using current market prices (as of when report is gener-
ated).
--value=YYYY-MM-DD
Convert amounts to their value in the default valuation commod-
ity using market prices on this date.
To select a different valuation commodity, add the optional ,COMM part:
a comma, then the target commodity's symbol. Eg: --value=now,EUR.
hledger will do its best to convert amounts to this commodity, deducing
market prices as described above.
More valuation examples
Here are some examples showing the effect of --value, as seen with
print:
P 2000-01-01 A 1 B
P 2000-02-01 A 2 B
P 2000-03-01 A 3 B
P 2000-04-01 A 4 B
2000-01-01
(a) 1 A @ 5 B
2000-02-01
(a) 1 A @ 6 B
2000-03-01
(a) 1 A @ 7 B
Show the cost of each posting:
$ hledger -f- print --cost
2000-01-01
(a) 5 B
2000-02-01
(a) 6 B
2000-03-01
(a) 7 B
Show the value as of the last day of the report period (2000-02-29):
$ hledger -f- print --value=end date:2000/01-2000/03
2000-01-01
(a) 2 B
2000-02-01
(a) 2 B
With no report period specified, that shows the value as of the last
day of the journal (2000-03-01):
$ hledger -f- print --value=end
2000-01-01
(a) 3 B
2000-02-01
(a) 3 B
2000-03-01
(a) 3 B
Show the current value (the 2000-04-01 price is still in effect today):
$ hledger -f- print --value=now
2000-01-01
(a) 4 B
2000-02-01
(a) 4 B
2000-03-01
(a) 4 B
Show the value on 2000/01/15:
$ hledger -f- print --value=2000-01-15
2000-01-01
(a) 1 B
2000-02-01
(a) 1 B
2000-03-01
(a) 1 B
You may need to explicitly set a commodity's display style, when
reverse prices are used. Eg this output might be surprising:
P 2000-01-01 A 2B
2000-01-01
a 1B
b
$ hledger print -x -X A
2000-01-01
a 0
b 0
Explanation: because there's no amount or commodity directive specify-
ing a display style for A, 0.5A gets the default style, which shows no
decimal digits. Because the displayed amount looks like zero, the com-
modity symbol and minus sign are not displayed either. Adding a com-
modity directive sets a more useful display style for A:
P 2000-01-01 A 2B
commodity 0.00A
2000-01-01
a 1B
b
$ hledger print -X A
2000-01-01
a 0.50A
b -0.50A
Interaction of valuation and queries
When matching postings based on queries in the presence of valuation,
the following happens.
1. The query is separated into two parts:
1. the currency (cur:) or amount (amt:).
2. all other parts.
2. The postings are matched to the currency and amount queries based on
pre-valued amounts.
3. Valuation is applied to the postings.
4. The postings are matched to the other parts of the query based on
post-valued amounts.
See: 1625
Effect of valuation on reports
Here is a reference for how valuation is supposed to affect each part
of hledger's reports (and a glossary). (It's wide, you'll have to
scroll sideways.) It may be useful when troubleshooting. If you find
problems, please report them, ideally with a reproducible example.
Related: #329, #1083.
Report -B, --cost -V, -X --value=then --value=end --value=DATE,
type --value=now
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
print
posting cost value at value at posting value at value at
amounts report end date report or DATE/today
or today journal end
balance unchanged unchanged unchanged unchanged unchanged
asser-
tions/assign-
ments
register
starting bal- cost value at valued at day value at value at
ance (-H) report or each historical report or DATE/today
journal end posting was made journal end
starting bal- cost value at day valued at day value at day value at
ance (-H) before each historical before DATE/today
with report report or posting was made report or
interval journal journal
start start
posting cost value at value at posting value at value at
amounts report or date report or DATE/today
journal end journal end
summary post- summarised value at sum of postings value at value at
ing amounts cost period ends in interval, val- period ends DATE/today
with report ued at interval
interval start
running sum/average sum/average sum/average of sum/average sum/average
total/average of displayed of displayed displayed values of displayed of displayed
values values values values
balance (bs,
bse, cf, is)
balance sums of value at value at posting value at value at
changes costs report end date report or DATE/today of
or today of journal end sums of post-
sums of of sums of ings
postings postings
budget like balance like balance like balance like bal- like balance
amounts changes changes changes ances changes
(--budget)
grand total sum of dis- sum of dis- sum of displayed sum of dis- sum of dis-
played val- played val- valued played val- played values
ues ues ues
balance (bs,
bse, cf, is)
with report
interval
starting bal- sums of value at sums of values of value at sums of post-
ances (-H) costs of report start postings before report start ings before
postings of sums of report start at of sums of report start
before all postings respective post- all postings
report start before ing dates before
report start report start
balance sums of same as sums of values of balance value at
changes (bal, costs of --value=end postings in change in DATE/today of
is, bs postings in period at respec- each period, sums of post-
--change, cf period tive posting valued at ings
--change) dates period ends
end balances sums of same as sums of values of period end value at
(bal -H, is costs of --value=end postings from balances, DATE/today of
--H, bs, cf) postings before period valued at sums of post-
from before start to period period ends ings
report start end at respective
to period posting dates
end
budget like balance like balance like balance like bal- like balance
amounts changes/end changes/end changes/end bal- ances changes/end
(--budget) balances balances ances balances
row totals, sums, aver- sums, aver- sums, averages of sums, aver- sums, aver-
row averages ages of dis- ages of dis- displayed values ages of dis- ages of dis-
(-T, -A) played val- played val- played val- played values
ues ues ues
column totals sums of dis- sums of dis- sums of displayed sums of dis- sums of dis-
played val- played val- values played val- played values
ues ues ues
grand total, sum, average sum, average sum, average of sum, average sum, average
grand average of column of column column totals of column of column
totals totals totals totals
--cumulative is omitted to save space, it works like -H but with a zero
starting balance.
Glossary:
cost calculated using price(s) recorded in the transaction(s).
value market value using available market price declarations, or the
unchanged amount if no conversion rate can be found.
report start
the first day of the report period specified with -b or -p or
date:, otherwise today.
report or journal start
the first day of the report period specified with -b or -p or
date:, otherwise the earliest transaction date in the journal,
otherwise today.
report end
the last day of the report period specified with -e or -p or
date:, otherwise today.
report or journal end
the last day of the report period specified with -e or -p or
date:, otherwise the latest transaction date in the journal,
otherwise today.
report interval
a flag (-D/-W/-M/-Q/-Y) or period expression that activates the
report's multi-period mode (whether showing one or many subperi-
ods).
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: status, code, description, payee, note, or the full name (case
insensitive) of any tag. As with account names, values containing
colon:separated: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
OUTPUT
Output destination
hledger commands send their output to the terminal by default. You can
of course redirect this, eg into a file, using standard shell syntax:
$ hledger print > foo.txt
Some commands (print, register, stats, the balance commands) also pro-
vide the -o/--output-file option, which does the same thing without
needing the shell. Eg:
$ hledger print -o foo.txt
$ hledger print -o - # write to stdout (the default)
hledger can optionally produce debug output (if enabled with
--debug=N); this goes to stderr, and is not affected by -o/--output-
file. If you need to capture it, use shell redirects, eg: hledger bal
--debug=3 >file 2>&1.
Output styling
hledger commands can produce colour output when the terminal supports
it. This is controlled by the --color/--colour option: - if the
--color/--colour option is given a value of yes or always (or no or
never), colour will (or will not) be used; - otherwise, if the NO_COLOR
environment variable is set, colour will not be used; - otherwise,
colour will be used if the output (terminal or file) supports it.
hledger commands can also use unicode box-drawing characters to produce
prettier tables and output. This is controlled by the --pretty option:
- if the --pretty option is given a value of yes or always (or no or
never), unicode characters will (or will not) be used; - otherwise,
unicode characters will not be used.
Output format
Some commands offer additional output formats, other than the usual
plain text terminal output. Here are those commands and the formats
currently supported:
- txt csv html json sql
---------------------------------------------
aregister Y Y Y
balance Y 1 Y 1 Y 1,2 Y
bal- Y 1 Y 1 Y 1 Y
ancesheet
bal- Y 1 Y 1 Y 1 Y
ancesheete-
quity
cashflow Y 1 Y 1 Y 1 Y
incomes- Y 1 Y 1 Y 1 Y
tatement
print Y Y Y Y
register Y Y Y
o 1 Also affected by the balance commands' --layout option.
o 2 balance does not support html output without a report interval or
with --budget.
The output format is selected by the -O/--output-format=FMT option:
$ hledger print -O csv # print CSV on stdout
or by the filename extension of an output file specified with the
-o/--output-file=FILE.FMT option:
$ hledger balancesheet -o foo.csv # write CSV to foo.csv
The -O option can be combined with -o to override the file extension,
if needed:
$ hledger balancesheet -o foo.txt -O csv # write CSV to foo.txt
CSV output
o In CSV output, digit group marks (such as thousands separators) are
disabled automatically.
HTML output
o HTML output can be styled by an optional hledger.css file in the same
directory.
JSON output
o Not yet much used; real-world feedback is welcome.
o Our JSON is rather large and verbose, as it is quite a faithful rep-
resentation of hledger's internal data types. To understand the
JSON, read the Haskell type definitions, which are mostly in
https://github.com/simonmichael/hledger/blob/master/hledger-
lib/Hledger/Data/Types.hs.
o hledger represents quantities as Decimal values storing up to 255
significant digits, eg for repeating decimals. Such numbers can
arise in practice (from automatically-calculated transaction prices),
and would break most JSON consumers. So in JSON, we show quantities
as simple Numbers with at most 10 decimal places. We don't limit the
number of integer digits, but that part is under your control. We
hope this approach will not cause problems in practice; if you find
otherwise, please let us know. (Cf #1195)
SQL output
o Not yet much used; real-world feedback is welcome.
o SQL output is expected to work with sqlite, MySQL and PostgreSQL
o SQL output is structured with the expectations that statements will
be executed in the empty database. If you already have tables cre-
ated via SQL output of hledger, you would probably want to either
clear tables of existing data (via delete or truncate SQL statements)
or drop tables completely as otherwise your postings will be duped.
Commodity styles
The display style of a commodity/currency is inferred according to the
rules described in Commodity display style. The inferred display style
can be overridden by an optional -c/--commodity-style option (Excep-
tions: as is the case for inferred styles, price amounts, and all
amounts displayed by the print command, will be displayed with all of
their decimal digits visible, regardless of the specified precision).
For example, the following will override the display style for dollars.
$ hledger print -c '$1.000,0'
The format specification of the style is identical to the commodity
display style specification for the commodity directive. The command
line option can be supplied repeatedly to override the display style
for multiple commodity/currency symbols.
COMMANDS
hledger provides a number of commands for producing reports and manag-
ing your data. Run hledger with no arguments to list the commands
available, and hledger CMD to run a command. CMD can be the full com-
mand name, or its standard abbreviation shown in the commands list, or
any unambiguous prefix of the name. Eg: hledger bal.
Here are the built-in commands, with the most often-used in bold:
Data entry:
These data entry commands are the only ones which can modify your jour-
nal file.
o add - add transactions using guided prompts
o import - add any new transactions from other files (eg csv)
Data management:
o check - check for various kinds of issue in the data
o close (equity) - generate balance-resetting transactions
o diff - compare account transactions in two journal files
o rewrite - generate extra postings, similar to print --auto
Financial statements:
o aregister (areg) - show transactions in a particular account
o balancesheet (bs) - show assets, liabilities and net worth
o balancesheetequity (bse) - show assets, liabilities and equity
o cashflow (cf) - show changes in liquid assets
o incomestatement (is) - show revenues and expenses
o roi - show return on investments
Miscellaneous reports:
o accounts - show account names
o activity - show postings-per-interval bar charts
o balance (bal) - show balance changes/end balances/budgets in any
accounts
o codes - show transaction codes
o commodities - show commodity/currency symbols
o descriptions - show unique transaction descriptions
o files - show input file paths
o help - show hledger user manuals in several formats
o notes - show unique note segments of transaction descriptions
o payees - show unique payee segments of transaction descriptions
o prices - show market price records
o print - show transactions (journal entries)
o print-unique - show only transactions with unique descriptions
o register (reg) - show postings in one or more accounts & running
total
o register-match - show a recent posting that best matches a descrip-
tion
o stats - show journal statistics
o tags - show tag names
o test - run self tests
Add-on commands:
Programs or scripts named hledger-SOMETHING in your PATH are add-on
commands; these appear in the commands list with a + mark. Two of
these are maintained and released with hledger:
o ui - an efficient terminal interface (TUI) for hledger
o web - a simple web interface (WUI) for hledger
And these add-ons are maintained separately:
o iadd - a more interactive alternative for the add command
o interest - generates interest transactions according to various
schemes
o stockquotes - downloads market prices for your commodities from
AlphaVantage (experimental)
Next, the detailed command docs, in alphabetical order.
accounts
accounts
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.
With --types, it also shows each account's type, if it's known. (See
Declaring accounts > Account types.)
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. Any arguments
will be used as default inputs for the first N prompts.
Many hledger users edit their journals directly with a text editor, or
generate them from CSV. For more interactive data entry, there is the
add command, which prompts interactively on the console for new trans-
actions, and appends them to the main journal file (which should be in
journal format). Existing transactions are not changed. This is one
of the few hledger commands that writes to the journal file (see also
import).
To use it, just run hledger add and follow the prompts. You can add as
many transactions as you like; when you are finished, enter . or press
control-d or control-c to exit.
Features:
o add tries to provide useful defaults, using the most similar (by
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 go one step backward.
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 go one step backward.
To end a transaction, enter . when prompted.
To quit, enter . at a date prompt or press control-d or control-c.
Date [2015/05/22]:
Description: supermarket
Account 1: expenses:food
Amount 1: $10
Account 2: assets:checking
Amount 2 [$-10.0]:
Account 3 (or . or enter to finish this transaction): .
2015/05/22 supermarket
expenses:food $10
assets:checking $-10.0
Save this transaction to the journal ? [y]:
Saved.
Starting the next transaction (. or ctrl-D/ctrl-C to quit)
Date [2015/05/22]: <CTRL-D> $
On Microsoft Windows, the add command makes sure that no part of the
file path ends with a period, as that would cause problems (#1056).
aregister
aregister, areg
Show the transactions and running historical balance of a single
account, with each transaction displayed as one line.
aregister shows the overall transactions affecting a particular account
(and any subaccounts). Each report line represents one transaction in
this account. Transactions before the report start date are always
included in the running balance (--historical mode is always on).
This is a more "real world", bank-like view than the register command
(which shows individual postings, possibly from multiple accounts, not
necessarily in historical mode). As a quick rule of thumb: - use areg-
ister for reviewing and reconciling real-world asset/liability accounts
- use register for reviewing detailed revenues/expenses.
aregister requires one argument: the account to report on. You can
write either the full account name, or a case-insensitive regular
expression which will select the alphabetically first matched account.
(Eg if you have assets:aaa:checking and assets:bbb:checking accounts,
hledger areg checking would select assets:aaa:checking.)
Transactions involving subaccounts of this account will also be shown.
aregister ignores depth limits, so its final total will always match a
balance report with similar arguments.
Any additional arguments form a query which will filter the transac-
tions shown. Note some queries will disturb the running balance, caus-
ing it to be different from the account's real-world running balance.
An example: this shows the transactions and historical running balance
during july, in the first account whose name contains "checking":
$ hledger areg checking date:jul
Each aregister line item shows:
o the transaction's date (or the relevant posting's date if different,
see below)
o the names of all the other account(s) involved in this transaction
(probably abbreviated)
o the total change to this account's balance from this transaction
o the account's historical running balance after this transaction.
Transactions making a net change of zero are not shown by default; add
the -E/--empty flag to show them.
For performance reasons, column widths are chosen based on the first
1000 lines; this means unusually wide values in later lines can cause
visual discontinuities as column widths are adjusted. If you want to
ensure perfect alignment, at the cost of more time and memory, use the
--align-all flag.
This command also supports the output destination and output format
options. The output formats supported are txt, csv, and json.
aregister and custom posting dates
Transactions whose date is outside the report period can still be
shown, if they have a posting to this account dated inside the report
period. (And in this case it's the posting date that is shown.) This
ensures that aregister can show an accurate historical running balance,
matching the one shown by register -H with the same arguments.
To filter strictly by transaction date instead, add the --txn-dates
flag. If you use this flag and some of your postings have custom
dates, it's probably best to assume the running balance is wrong.
balance
balance, bal
Show accounts and their balances.
balance is one of hledger's oldest and most versatile commands, for
listing account balances, balance changes, values, value changes and
more, during one time period or many. Generally it shows a table, with
rows representing accounts, and columns representing periods.
Note there are some higher-level variants of the balance command with
convenient defaults, which can be simpler to use: balancesheet, bal-
ancesheetequity, cashflow and incomestatement. When you need more con-
trol, then use balance.
balance features
Here's a quick overview of the balance command's features, followed by
more detailed descriptions and examples. Many of these work with the
higher-level commands as well.
balance can show..
o accounts as a list (-l) or a tree (-t)
o optionally depth-limited (-[1-9])
o sorted by declaration order and name, or by amount
..and their..
o balance changes (the default)
o or actual and planned balance changes (--budget)
o or value of balance changes (-V)
o or change of balance values (--valuechange)
o or unrealised capital gain/loss (--gain)
..in..
o one time period (the whole journal period by default)
o or multiple periods (-D, -W, -M, -Q, -Y, -p INTERVAL)
..either..
o per period (the default)
o or accumulated since report start date (--cumulative)
o or accumulated since account creation (--historical/-H)
..possibly converted to..
o cost (--value=cost[,COMM]/--cost/-B)
o or market value, as of transaction dates (--value=then[,COMM])
o or at period ends (--value=end[,COMM])
o or now (--value=now)
o or at some other date (--value=YYYY-MM-DD)
..with..
o totals (-T), averages (-A), percentages (-%), inverted sign
(--invert)
o rows and columns swapped (--transpose)
o another field used as account name (--pivot)
o custom-formatted line items (single-period reports only) (--format)
o commodities displayed on the same line or multiple lines (--layout)
This command supports the output destination and output format options,
with output formats txt, csv, json, and (multi-period reports only:)
html. In txt output in a colour-supporting terminal, negative amounts
are shown in red.
The --related/-r flag shows the balance of the other postings in the
transactions of the postings which would normally be shown.
Simple balance report
With no arguments, balance shows a list of all accounts and their
change of balance - ie, the sum of posting amounts, both inflows and
outflows - during the entire period of the journal. For real-world
accounts, this should also match their end balance at the end of the
journal period (more on this below).
Accounts are sorted by declaration order if any, and then alphabeti-
cally by account name. For instance (using examples/sample.journal):
$ hledger -f examples/sample.journal bal
$1 assets:bank:saving
$-2 assets:cash
$1 expenses:food
$1 expenses:supplies
$-1 income:gifts
$-1 income:salary
$1 liabilities:debts
--------------------
0
Accounts with a zero balance (and no non-zero subaccounts, in tree mode
- see below) are hidden by default. Use -E/--empty to show them
(revealing assets:bank:checking here):
$ hledger -f examples/sample.journal bal -E
0 assets:bank:checking
$1 assets:bank:saving
$-2 assets:cash
$1 expenses:food
$1 expenses:supplies
$-1 income:gifts
$-1 income:salary
$1 liabilities:debts
--------------------
0
The total of the amounts displayed is shown as the last line, unless
-N/--no-total is used.
Filtered balance report
You can show fewer accounts, a different time period, totals from
cleared transactions only, etc. by using query arguments or options to
limit the postings being matched. Eg:
$ hledger -f examples/sample.journal bal --cleared assets date:200806
$-2 assets:cash
--------------------
$-2
List or tree mode
By default, or with -l/--flat, accounts are shown as a flat list with
their full names visible, as in the examples above.
With -t/--tree, the account hierarchy is shown, with subaccounts'
"leaf" names indented below their parent:
$ hledger -f examples/sample.journal balance
$-1 assets
$1 bank:saving
$-2 cash
$2 expenses
$1 food
$1 supplies
$-2 income
$-1 gifts
$-1 salary
$1 liabilities:debts
--------------------
0
Notes:
o "Boring" accounts are combined with their subaccount for more compact
output, unless --no-elide is used. Boring accounts have no balance
of their own and just one subaccount (eg assets:bank and liabilities
above).
o All balances shown are "inclusive", ie including the balances from
all subaccounts. Note this means some repetition in the output,
which requires explanation when sharing reports with non-plaintextac-
counting-users. A tree mode report's final total is the sum of the
top-level balances shown, not of all the balances shown.
o Each group of sibling accounts (ie, under a common parent) is sorted
separately.
Depth limiting
With a depth:NUM query, or --depth NUM option, or just -NUM (eg: -3)
balance reports will show accounts only to the specified depth, hiding
the deeper subaccounts. This can be useful for getting an overview
without too much detail.
Account balances at the depth limit always include the balances from
any deeper subaccounts (even in list mode). Eg, limiting to depth 1:
$ hledger -f examples/sample.journal balance -1
$-1 assets
$2 expenses
$-2 income
$1 liabilities
--------------------
0
Dropping top-level accounts
You can also hide one or more top-level account name parts, using
--drop NUM. This can be useful for hiding repetitive top-level account
names:
$ hledger -f examples/sample.journal bal expenses --drop 1
$1 food
$1 supplies
--------------------
$2
Multi-period balance report
With a report interval (set by the -D/--daily, -W/--weekly,
-M/--monthly, -Q/--quarterly, -Y/--yearly, or -p/--period flag), bal-
ance shows a tabular report, with columns representing successive time
periods (and a title):
$ hledger -f examples/sample.journal bal --quarterly income expenses -E
Balance changes in 2008:
|| 2008q1 2008q2 2008q3 2008q4
===================++=================================
expenses:food || 0 $1 0 0
expenses:supplies || 0 $1 0 0
income:gifts || 0 $-1 0 0
income:salary || $-1 0 0 0
-------------------++---------------------------------
|| $-1 $1 0 0
Notes:
o The report's start/end dates will be expanded, if necessary, to fully
encompass the displayed subperiods (so that the first and last subpe-
riods have the same duration as the others).
o Leading and trailing periods (columns) containing all zeroes are not
shown, unless -E/--empty is used.
o Accounts (rows) containing all zeroes are not shown, unless
-E/--empty is used.
o Amounts with many commodities are shown in abbreviated form, unless
--no-elide is used. (experimental)
o Average and/or total columns can be added with the -A/--average and
-T/--row-total flags.
o The --transpose flag can be used to exchange rows and columns.
o The --pivot FIELD option causes a different transaction field to be
used as "account name". See PIVOTING.
Multi-period reports with many periods can be too wide for easy viewing
in the terminal. Here are some ways to handle that:
o Hide the totals row with -N/--no-total
o Convert to a single currency with -V
o Maximize the terminal window
o Reduce the terminal's font size
o View with a pager like less, eg: hledger bal -D --color=yes | less
-RS
o Output as CSV and use a CSV viewer like visidata (hledger bal -D -O
csv | vd -f csv), Emacs' csv-mode (M-x csv-mode, C-c C-a), or a
spreadsheet (hledger bal -D -o a.csv && open a.csv)
o Output as HTML and view with a browser: hledger bal -D -o a.html &&
open a.html
Showing declared accounts
With --declared, accounts which have been declared with an account
directive will be included in the balance report, even if they have no
transactions. (Since they will have a zero balance, you will also need
-E/--empty to see them.)
More precisely, leaf declared accounts (with no subaccounts) will be
included, since those are usually the more useful in reports.
The idea of this is to be able to see a useful "complete" balance
report, even when you don't have transactions in all of your declared
accounts yet.
Data layout
The --layout option affects how multi-commodity amounts are displayed,
and some other things, influencing the overall layout of the report
data:
o --layout=wide[,WIDTH]: commodities are shown on a single line, possi-
bly elided to the specified width
o --layout=tall: each commodity is shown on a separate line
o --layout=bare: amounts are shown as bare numbers, with commodity sym-
bols in a separate column
o --layout=tidy: data is normalised to tidy form, with one row per data
value. We currently support this with CSV output only. In tidy
mode, totals and row averages are disabled (-N/--no-total is implied
and -T/--row-total and -A/--average will be ignored).
These --layout modes are supported with some but not all of the output
formats:
- txt csv html json sql
-------------------------------------
wide Y Y Y
tall Y Y Y
bare Y Y Y
tidy Y
Examples:
o Wide layout. With many commodities, reports can be very wide:
$ hledger -f examples/bcexample.hledger bal assets:us:etrade -3 -T -Y --layout=wide
Balance changes in 2012-01-01..2014-12-31:
|| 2012 2013 2014 Total
==================++====================================================================================================================================================================================================================
Assets:US:ETrade || 10.00 ITOT, 337.18 USD, 12.00 VEA, 106.00 VHT 70.00 GLD, 18.00 ITOT, -98.12 USD, 10.00 VEA, 18.00 VHT -11.00 ITOT, 4881.44 USD, 14.00 VEA, 170.00 VHT 70.00 GLD, 17.00 ITOT, 5120.50 USD, 36.00 VEA, 294.00 VHT
------------------++--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|| 10.00 ITOT, 337.18 USD, 12.00 VEA, 106.00 VHT 70.00 GLD, 18.00 ITOT, -98.12 USD, 10.00 VEA, 18.00 VHT -11.00 ITOT, 4881.44 USD, 14.00 VEA, 170.00 VHT 70.00 GLD, 17.00 ITOT, 5120.50 USD, 36.00 VEA, 294.00 VHT
o Limited wide layout. A width limit reduces the width, but some com-
modities will be hidden:
$ hledger -f examples/bcexample.hledger bal assets:us:etrade -3 -T -Y --layout=wide,32
Balance changes in 2012-01-01..2014-12-31:
|| 2012 2013 2014 Total
==================++===========================================================================================================================
Assets:US:ETrade || 10.00 ITOT, 337.18 USD, 2 more.. 70.00 GLD, 18.00 ITOT, 3 more.. -11.00 ITOT, 3 more.. 70.00 GLD, 17.00 ITOT, 3 more..
------------------++---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|| 10.00 ITOT, 337.18 USD, 2 more.. 70.00 GLD, 18.00 ITOT, 3 more.. -11.00 ITOT, 3 more.. 70.00 GLD, 17.00 ITOT, 3 more..
o Tall layout. Each commodity gets a new line (may be different in
each column), and account names are repeated:
$ hledger -f examples/bcexample.hledger bal assets:us:etrade -3 -T -Y --layout=tall
Balance changes in 2012-01-01..2014-12-31:
|| 2012 2013 2014 Total
==================++==================================================
Assets:US:ETrade || 10.00 ITOT 70.00 GLD -11.00 ITOT 70.00 GLD
Assets:US:ETrade || 337.18 USD 18.00 ITOT 4881.44 USD 17.00 ITOT
Assets:US:ETrade || 12.00 VEA -98.12 USD 14.00 VEA 5120.50 USD
Assets:US:ETrade || 106.00 VHT 10.00 VEA 170.00 VHT 36.00 VEA
Assets:US:ETrade || 18.00 VHT 294.00 VHT
------------------++--------------------------------------------------
|| 10.00 ITOT 70.00 GLD -11.00 ITOT 70.00 GLD
|| 337.18 USD 18.00 ITOT 4881.44 USD 17.00 ITOT
|| 12.00 VEA -98.12 USD 14.00 VEA 5120.50 USD
|| 106.00 VHT 10.00 VEA 170.00 VHT 36.00 VEA
|| 18.00 VHT 294.00 VHT
o Bare layout. Commodity symbols are kept in one column, each commod-
ity gets its own report row, account names are repeated:
$ hledger -f examples/bcexample.hledger bal assets:us:etrade -3 -T -Y --layout=bare
Balance changes in 2012-01-01..2014-12-31:
|| Commodity 2012 2013 2014 Total
==================++=============================================
Assets:US:ETrade || GLD 0 70.00 0 70.00
Assets:US:ETrade || ITOT 10.00 18.00 -11.00 17.00
Assets:US:ETrade || USD 337.18 -98.12 4881.44 5120.50
Assets:US:ETrade || VEA 12.00 10.00 14.00 36.00
Assets:US:ETrade || VHT 106.00 18.00 170.00 294.00
------------------++---------------------------------------------
|| GLD 0 70.00 0 70.00
|| ITOT 10.00 18.00 -11.00 17.00
|| USD 337.18 -98.12 4881.44 5120.50
|| VEA 12.00 10.00 14.00 36.00
|| VHT 106.00 18.00 170.00 294.00
o Bare layout also affects CSV output, which is useful for producing
data that is easier to consume, eg when making charts:
$ hledger -f examples/bcexample.hledger bal assets:us:etrade -3 -O csv --layout=bare
"account","commodity","balance"
"Assets:US:ETrade","GLD","70.00"
"Assets:US:ETrade","ITOT","17.00"
"Assets:US:ETrade","USD","5120.50"
"Assets:US:ETrade","VEA","36.00"
"Assets:US:ETrade","VHT","294.00"
"total","GLD","70.00"
"total","ITOT","17.00"
"total","USD","5120.50"
"total","VEA","36.00"
"total","VHT","294.00"
o Tidy layout produces normalised "tidy data", where every variable is
a column and each row represents a single data point (see
https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/tidyr/vignettes/tidy-
data.html). This kind of data is the easiest to process with other
software:
$ hledger -f examples/bcexample.hledger bal assets:us:etrade -3 -Y -O csv --layout=tidy
"account","period","start_date","end_date","commodity","value"
"Assets:US:ETrade","2012","2012-01-01","2012-12-31","GLD","0"
"Assets:US:ETrade","2012","2012-01-01","2012-12-31","ITOT","10.00"
"Assets:US:ETrade","2012","2012-01-01","2012-12-31","USD","337.18"
"Assets:US:ETrade","2012","2012-01-01","2012-12-31","VEA","12.00"
"Assets:US:ETrade","2012","2012-01-01","2012-12-31","VHT","106.00"
"Assets:US:ETrade","2013","2013-01-01","2013-12-31","GLD","70.00"
"Assets:US:ETrade","2013","2013-01-01","2013-12-31","ITOT","18.00"
"Assets:US:ETrade","2013","2013-01-01","2013-12-31","USD","-98.12"
"Assets:US:ETrade","2013","2013-01-01","2013-12-31","VEA","10.00"
"Assets:US:ETrade","2013","2013-01-01","2013-12-31","VHT","18.00"
"Assets:US:ETrade","2014","2014-01-01","2014-12-31","GLD","0"
"Assets:US:ETrade","2014","2014-01-01","2014-12-31","ITOT","-11.00"
"Assets:US:ETrade","2014","2014-01-01","2014-12-31","USD","4881.44"
"Assets:US:ETrade","2014","2014-01-01","2014-12-31","VEA","14.00"
"Assets:US:ETrade","2014","2014-01-01","2014-12-31","VHT","170.00"
Sorting by amount
With -S/--sort-amount, accounts with the largest (most positive) bal-
ances are shown first. Eg: hledger bal expenses -MAS shows your big-
gest averaged monthly expenses first. When more than one commodity is
present, they will be sorted by the alphabetically earliest commodity
first, and then by subsequent commodities (if an amount is missing a
commodity, it is treated as 0).
Revenues and liability balances are typically negative, however, so -S
shows these in reverse order. To work around this, you can add
--invert to flip the signs. (Or, use one of the higher-level reports,
which flip the sign automatically. Eg: hledger incomestatement -MAS).
Percentages
With -%/--percent, balance reports show each account's value expressed
as a percentage of the (column) total:
$ hledger -f examples/sample.journal bal expenses -Q -%
Balance changes in 2008:
|| 2008Q1 2008Q2 2008Q3 2008Q4
===================++=================================
expenses:food || 0 50.0 % 0 0
expenses:supplies || 0 50.0 % 0 0
-------------------++---------------------------------
|| 0 100.0 % 0 0
Note it is not useful to calculate percentages if the amounts in a col-
umn have mixed signs. In this case, make a separate report for each
sign, eg:
$ hledger bal -% amt:`>0`
$ hledger bal -% amt:`<0`
Similarly, if the amounts in a column have mixed commodities, convert
them to one commodity with -B, -V, -X or --value, or make a separate
report for each commodity:
$ hledger bal -% cur:\\$
$ hledger bal -% cur:EUR
Balance change, end balance
It's important to be clear on the meaning of the numbers shown in bal-
ance reports. Here is some terminology we use:
A balance change is the net amount added to, or removed from, an
account during some period.
An end balance is the amount accumulated in an account as of some date
(and some time, but hledger doesn't store that; assume end of day in
your timezone). It is the sum of previous balance changes.
We call it a historical end balance if it includes all balance changes
since the account was created. For a real world account, this means it
will match the "historical record", eg the balances reported in your
bank statements or bank web UI. (If they are correct!)
In general, balance changes are what you want to see when reviewing
revenues and expenses, and historical end balances are what you want to
see when reviewing or reconciling asset, liability and equity accounts.
balance shows balance changes by default. To see accurate historical
end balances:
1. Initialise account starting balances with an "opening balances"
transaction (a transfer from equity to the account), unless the
journal covers the account's full lifetime.
2. Include all of of the account's prior postings in the report, by not
specifying a report start date, or by using the -H/--historical
flag. (-H causes report start date to be ignored when summing post-
ings.)
Balance report types
For more flexible reporting, there are three important option groups:
hledger balance [CALCULATIONTYPE] [ACCUMULATIONTYPE] [VALUATIONTYPE]
...
The first two are the most important: calculation type selects the
basic calculation to perform for each table cell, while accumulation
type says which postings should be included in each cell's calculation.
Typically one or both of these are selected by default, so you don't
need to write them explicitly. A valuation type can be added if you
want to convert the basic report to value or cost.
Calculation type:
The basic calculation to perform for each table cell. It is one of:
o --sum : sum the posting amounts (default)
o --budget : like --sum but also show a goal amount
o --valuechange : show the change in period-end historical balance val-
ues (caused by deposits, withdrawals, and/or market price fluctua-
tions)
o --gain : show the unrealised capital gain/loss, (the current valued
balance minus each amount's original cost)
Accumulation type:
Which postings should be included in each cell's calculation. It is
one of:
o --change : postings from column start to column end, ie within the
cell's period. Typically used to see revenues/expenses. (default
for balance, incomestatement)
o --cumulative : postings from report start to column end, eg to show
changes accumulated since the report's start date. Rarely used.
o --historical/-H : postings from journal start to column end, ie all
postings from account creation to the end of the cell's period. Typ-
ically used to see historical end balances of assets/liabili-
ties/equity. (default for balancesheet, balancesheetequity, cash-
flow)
Valuation type:
Which kind of valuation, valuation date(s) and optionally a target val-
uation commodity to use. It is one of:
o no valuation, show amounts in their original commodities (default)
o --value=cost[,COMM] : no valuation, show amounts converted to cost
o --value=then[,COMM] : show value at transaction dates
o --value=end[,COMM] : show value at period end date(s) (default with
--valuechange, --gain)
o --value=now[,COMM] : show value at today's date
o --value=YYYY-MM-DD[,COMM] : show value at another date
or one of their aliases: --cost/-B, --market/-V or --exchange/-X.
Most combinations of these options should produce reasonable reports,
but if you find any that seem wrong or misleading, let us know. The
following restrictions are applied:
o --valuechange implies --value=end
o --valuechange makes --change the default when used with the bal-
ancesheet/balancesheetequity commands
o --cumulative or --historical disables --row-total/-T
For reference, here is what the combinations of accumulation and valua-
tion show:
Valua- no valuation --value= then --value= end --value= YYYY-
tion: MM-DD /now
>Accumu-
lation:
v
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--change change in period sum of posting- period-end DATE-value of
date market val- value of change change in
ues in period in period period
--cumu- change from sum of posting- period-end DATE-value of
lative report start to date market val- value of change change from
period end ues from report from report report start
start to period start to period to period end
end end
--his- change from sum of posting- period-end DATE-value of
torical journal start to date market val- value of change change from
/-H period end (his- ues from journal from journal journal start
torical end bal- start to period start to period to period end
ance) end end
Useful balance reports
Some frequently used balance options/reports are:
o bal -M revenues expenses
Show revenues/expenses in each month. Also available as the incomes-
tatement command.
o bal -M -H assets liabilities
Show historical asset/liability balances at each month end. Also
available as the balancesheet command.
o bal -M -H assets liabilities equity
Show historical asset/liability/equity balances at each month end.
Also available as the balancesheetequity command.
o bal -M assets not:receivable
Show changes to liquid assets in each month. Also available as the
cashflow command.
Also:
o bal -M expenses -2 -SA
Show monthly expenses summarised to depth 2 and sorted by average
amount.
o bal -M --budget expenses
Show monthly expenses and budget goals.
o bal -M --valuechange investments
Show monthly change in market value of investment assets.
o bal investments --valuechange -D date:lastweek amt:'>1000' -STA
[--invert]
Show top gainers [or losers] last week
Budget report
The --budget report type activates extra columns showing any budget
goals for each account and period. The budget goals are defined by
periodic transactions. This is very useful for comparing planned and
actual income, expenses, time usage, etc.
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]
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, budget
goal amounts are shown, and the actual/goal percentage. (Note: bud-
get goals should be in the same commodity as the actual amount.)
o All parent accounts are always shown, even in list mode. Eg assets,
assets:bank, and expenses above.
o Amounts always include all subaccounts, budgeted or unbudgeted, even
in list 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 and notes, see Budgeting.
Budget report start date
This might be a bug, but for now: when making budget reports, it's a
good idea to explicitly set the report's start date to the first day of
a reporting period, because a periodic rule like ~ monthly generates
its transactions on the 1st of each month, and if your journal has no
regular transactions on the 1st, the default report start date could
exclude that budget goal, which can be a little surprising. Eg here
the default report period is just the day of 2020-01-15:
~ monthly in 2020
(expenses:food) $500
2020-01-15
expenses:food $400
assets:checking
$ hledger bal expenses --budget
Budget performance in 2020-01-15:
|| 2020-01-15
==============++============
<unbudgeted> || $400
--------------++------------
|| $400
To avoid this, specify the budget report's period, or at least the
start date, with -b/-e/-p/date:, to ensure it includes the budget goal
transactions (periodic transactions) that you want. Eg, adding -b
2020/1/1 to the above:
$ hledger bal expenses --budget -b 2020/1/1
Budget performance in 2020-01-01..2020-01-15:
|| 2020-01-01..2020-01-15
===============++========================
expenses:food || $400 [80% of $500]
---------------++------------------------
|| $400 [80% of $500]
Budgets and subaccounts
You can add budgets to any account in your account hierarchy. If you
have budgets on both parent account and some of its children, then bud-
get(s) of the child account(s) would be added to the budget of their
parent, much like account balances behave.
In the most simple case this means that once you add a budget to any
account, all its parents would have budget as well.
To illustrate this, consider the following budget:
~ monthly from 2019/01
expenses:personal $1,000.00
expenses:personal:electronics $100.00
liabilities
With this, monthly budget for electronics is defined to be $100 and
budget for personal expenses is an additional $1000, which implicitly
means that budget for both expenses:personal and expenses is $1100.
Transactions in expenses:personal:electronics will be counted both
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]
Selecting budget goals
The budget report evaluates periodic transaction rules to generate spe-
cial "goal transactions", which generate the goal amounts for each
account in each report subperiod. When troubleshooting, you can use
the print command to show these as forecasted transactions:
$ hledger print --forecast=BUDGETREPORTPERIOD tag:generated
By default, the budget report uses all available periodic transaction
rules to generate goals. This includes rules with a different report
interval from your report. Eg if you have daily, weekly and monthly
periodic rules, all of these will contribute to the goals in a monthly
budget report.
You can select a subset of periodic rules by providing an argument to
the --budget flag. --budget=DESCPAT will match all periodic rules
whose description contains DESCPAT, a case-insensitive substring (not a
regular expression or query). This means you can give your periodic
rules descriptions (remember that two spaces are needed), and then
select from multiple budgets defined in your journal.
Customising single-period balance reports
For single-period balance reports displayed in the terminal (only), you
can use --format FMT to customise the format and content of each line.
Eg:
$ hledger -f examples/sample.journal balance --format "%20(account) %12(total)"
assets $-1
bank:saving $1
cash $-2
expenses $2
food $1
supplies $1
income $-2
gifts $-1
salary $-1
liabilities:debts $1
---------------------------------
0
The FMT format string (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
balancesheet
balancesheet, bs
This command displays a balance sheet, showing historical ending bal-
ances of asset and liability accounts. (To see equity as well, use the
balancesheetequity command.) Amounts are shown with normal positive
sign, as in conventional financial statements.
The asset and liability accounts shown are those accounts declared with
the Asset or Cash or Liability type, or otherwise all accounts under a
top-level asset or liability account (case insensitive, plurals
allowed).
Example:
$ hledger balancesheet
Balance Sheet
Assets:
$-1 assets
$1 bank:saving
$-2 cash
--------------------
$-1
Liabilities:
$1 liabilities:debts
--------------------
$1
Total:
--------------------
0
This command is a higher-level variant of the balance command, and sup-
ports many of that command's features, such as multi-period reports.
It is similar to hledger balance -H assets liabilities, but with
smarter account detection, and liabilities displayed with their sign
flipped.
This command also supports the output destination and output format
options The output formats supported are txt, csv, html, and (experi-
mental) json.
balancesheetequity
balancesheetequity, bse
This command displays a balance sheet, showing historical ending bal-
ances of asset, liability and equity accounts. Amounts are shown with
normal positive sign, as in conventional financial statements.
The asset, liability and equity accounts shown are those accounts
declared with the Asset, Cash, Liability or Equity type, or otherwise
all accounts under a top-level asset, liability or equity account (case
insensitive, plurals allowed).
Example:
$ hledger balancesheetequity
Balance Sheet With Equity
Assets:
$-2 assets
$1 bank:saving
$-3 cash
--------------------
$-2
Liabilities:
$1 liabilities:debts
--------------------
$1
Equity:
$1 equity:owner
--------------------
$1
Total:
--------------------
0
This command is a higher-level variant of the balance command, and sup-
ports many of that command's features, such as multi-period reports.
It is similar to hledger balance -H assets liabilities equity, but with
smarter account detection, and liabilities/equity displayed with their
sign flipped.
This command also supports the output destination and output format
options The output formats supported are txt, csv, html, and (experi-
mental) json.
cashflow
cashflow, cf
This command displays a cashflow statement, showing the inflows and
outflows affecting "cash" (ie, liquid, easily convertible) assets.
Amounts are shown with normal positive sign, as in conventional finan-
cial statements.
"Cash" assets are those accounts which are (or whose parents are)
declared as Cash by an account directive, like this:
account some:liquid:asset ; type:C
Or if there are no such declarations, all accounts
o under a top-level asset account (case insensitive, plural allowed)
o with some variation of cash, bank, checking or saving in their name.
More precisely: all accounts matching this case insensitive regular
expression:
^assets?(:.+)?:(cash|bank|che(ck|que?)(ing)?|savings?|currentcash)(:|$)
and their subaccounts.
An example cashflow report:
$ hledger cashflow
Cashflow Statement
Cash flows:
$-1 assets
$1 bank:saving
$-2 cash
--------------------
$-1
Total:
--------------------
$-1
This command is a higher-level variant of the balance command, and sup-
ports many of that command's features, such as multi-period reports.
It is similar to hledger balance assets not:fixed not:investment
not:receivable, but with smarter account detection.
This command also supports the output destination and output format
options The output formats supported are txt, csv, html, and (experi-
mental) json.
check
check
Check for various kinds of errors in your data.
hledger provides a number of built-in error checks to help prevent
problems in your data. Some of these are run automatically; or, you
can use this check command to run them on demand, with no output and a
zero exit code if all is well. Specify their names (or a prefix) as
argument(s).
Some examples:
hledger check # basic checks
hledger check -s # basic + strict checks
hledger check ordereddates payees # basic + two other checks
Here are the checks currently available:
Basic checks
These checks are always run automatically, by (almost) all hledger com-
mands, including check:
o parseable - data files are well-formed and can be successfully parsed
o balancedwithautoconversion - all transactions are balanced, inferring
missing amounts where necessary, and possibly converting commodities
using transaction prices or automatically-inferred transaction prices
o assertions - all balance assertions in the journal are passing.
(This check can be disabled with -I/--ignore-assertions.)
Strict checks
These additional checks are run when the -s/--strict (strict mode) flag
is used. Or, they can be run by giving their names as arguments to
check:
o accounts - all account names used by transactions have been declared
o commodities - all commodity symbols used have been declared
o balancednoautoconversion - transactions are balanced, possibly using
explicit transaction prices but not inferred ones
Other checks
These checks can be run only by giving their names as arguments to
check. They are more specialised and not desirable for everyone,
therefore optional:
o ordereddates - transactions are ordered by date within each file
o payees - all payees used by transactions have been declared
o uniqueleafnames - all account leaf names are unique
Custom checks
A few more checks are are available as separate add-on commands, in
https://github.com/simonmichael/hledger/tree/master/bin:
o hledger-check-tagfiles - all tag values containing / (a forward
slash) exist as file paths
o hledger-check-fancyassertions - more complex balance assertions are
passing
You could make similar scripts to perform your own custom checks. See:
Cookbook -> Scripting.
close
close, equity
Prints a sample "closing" transaction bringing specified account bal-
ances to zero, and an inverse "opening" transaction restoring the same
account balances.
If like most people you split your journal files by time, eg by year:
at the end of the year you can use this command to "close out" your
asset and liability (and perhaps equity) balances in the old file, and
reinitialise them in the new file. This helps ensure that report bal-
ances remain correct whether you are including old files or not.
(Because all closing/opening transactions except the very first will
cancel out - see example below.)
Some people also use this command to close out revenue and expense bal-
ances at the end of an accounting period. This properly records the
period's profit/loss as "retained earnings" (part of equity), and
allows the accounting equation (A-L=E) to balance, which you could then
check by the bse report's zero total.
You can print just the closing transaction by using the --close flag,
or just the opening transaction with the --open flag.
Their descriptions are closing balances and opening balances by
default; you can customise these with the --close-desc and --open-desc
options.
Just one balancing equity posting is used by default, with the amount
left implicit. The default account name is equity:opening/closing bal-
ances. You can customise the account name(s) with --close-acct and
--open-acct. (If you specify only one of these, it will be used for
both.)
With --x/--explicit, the equity posting's amount will be shown explic-
itly, and if it involves multiple commodities, there will be a separate
equity posting for each commodity (as in the print command).
With --interleaved, each equity posting is shown next to the posting it
balances (good for troubleshooting).
close and prices
Transaction prices are ignored (and discarded) by closing/opening
transactions, by default. With --show-costs, they are preserved; there
will be a separate equity posting for each cost in each commodity.
This means balance -B reports will look the same after the transition.
Note if you have many foreign currency or investment transactions, this
will generate very large journal entries.
close date
The default closing date is yesterday, or the journal's end date,
whichever is later.
Unless you are running close on exactly the first day of the new
period, you'll want to override the closing date. This is done by
specifying a report end date, where "last day of the report period"
will be the closing date. The opening date is always the following
day. So to close on (end of) 2020-12-31 and open on (start of)
2021-01-01, any of these will work:
end date argument explanation
-----------------------------------------------
-e 2021-01-01 end dates are exclusive
-e 2021 equivalent, per smart
dates
-p 2020 equivalent, the period's
begin date is ignored
date:2020 equivalent query
Example: close asset/liability accounts for file transition
Carrying asset/liability balances from 2020.journal into a new file for
2021:
$ hledger close -f 2020.journal -p 2020 assets liabilities
# copy/paste the closing transaction to the end of 2020.journal
# copy/paste the opening transaction to the start of 2021.journal
Or:
$ hledger close -f 2020.journal -p 2020 assets liabilities --open >> 2021.journal # add 2021's first transaction
$ hledger close -f 2020.journal -p 2020 assets liabilities --close >> 2020.journal # add 2020's last transaction
Now,
$ hledger bs -f 2021.journal # just new file - balances correct
$ hledger bs -f 2020.journal -f 2021.journal # old and new files - balances correct
$ hledger bs -f 2020.journal # just old files - balances are zero ?
# (exclude final closing txn, see below)
Hiding opening/closing transactions
Although the closing/opening transactions cancel out, they will be vis-
ible in reports like print and register, creating some visual clutter.
You can exclude them all with a query, like:
$ hledger print not:desc:'opening|closing' # less typing
$ hledger print not:'equity:opening/closing balances' # more precise
But when reporting on multiple files, this can get a bit tricky; you
may need to keep the earliest opening balances, for a historical regis-
ter report; or you may need to suppress a closing transaction, to see
year-end balances. If you find yourself needing more precise queries,
here's one solution: add more easily-matched tags to opening/closing
transactions, like this:
; 2019.journal
2019-01-01 opening balances ; earliest opening txn, no tag here
...
2019-12-31 closing balances ; clopen:2020
...
; 2020.journal
2020-01-01 opening balances ; clopen:2020
...
2020-12-31 closing balances ; clopen:2021
...
; 2021.journal
2021-01-01 opening balances ; clopen:2021
...
Now with
; all.journal
include 2019.journal
include 2020.journal
include 2021.journal
you could do eg:
$ hledger -f all.journal reg -H checking not:tag:clopen
# all years checking register, hiding non-essential opening/closing txns
$ hledger -f all.journal bs -p 2020 not:tag:clopen=2020
# 2020 year end balances, suppressing 2020 closing txn
close and balance assertions
The closing and opening transactions will include balance assertions,
verifying that the accounts have first been reset to zero and then
restored to their previous balance. These provide valuable error
checking, alerting you when things get out of line, but you can ignore
them temporarily with -I or just remove them if you prefer.
You probably shouldn't use status or realness filters (like -C or -R or
status:) with close, or the generated balance assertions will depend on
these flags. Likewise, if you run this command with --auto, the bal-
ance assertions would probably always require --auto.
Multi-day transactions (where some postings have a different date)
break the balance assertions, because the money is temporarily "invisi-
ble" while in transit:
2020/12/30 a purchase made in december, cleared in the next year
expenses:food 5
assets:bank:checking -5 ; date: 2021/1/2
To fix the assertions, you can add a temporary account to track such
in-transit money (splitting the multi-day transaction into two single-
day transactions):
; in 2020.journal:
2020/12/30 a purchase made in december, cleared in the next year
expenses:food 5
liabilities:pending
; in 2021.journal:
2021/1/2 clearance of last year's pending transactions
liabilities:pending 5 = 0
assets:bank:checking
Example: close revenue/expense accounts to retained earnings
For this, use --close to suppress the opening transaction, as it's not
needed. Also you'll want to change the equity account name to your
equivalent of "equity:retained earnings".
Closing 2021's first quarter revenues/expenses:
$ hledger close -f 2021.journal --close revenues expenses -p 2021Q1 \
--close-acct='equity:retained earnings' >> 2021.journal
The same, using the default journal and current year:
$ hledger close --close revenues expenses -p Q1 \
--close-acct='equity:retained earnings' >> $LEDGER_FILE
Now, the first quarter's balance sheet should show a zero (unless you
are using @/@@ notation without equity postings):
$ hledger bse -p Q1
And we must suppress the closing transaction to see the first quarter's
income statement (using the description; not:'retained earnings' won't
work here):
$ hledger is -p Q1 not:desc:'closing balances'
codes
codes
List the codes seen in transactions, in the order parsed.
This command prints the value of each transaction's code field, in the
order transactions were parsed. The transaction code is an optional
value written in parentheses between the date and description, often
used to store a cheque number, order number or similar.
Transactions aren't required to have a code, and missing or empty codes
will not be shown by default. With the -E/--empty flag, they will be
printed as blank lines.
You can add a query to select a subset of transactions.
Examples:
1/1 (123)
(a) 1
1/1 ()
(a) 1
1/1
(a) 1
1/1 (126)
(a) 1
$ hledger codes
123
124
126
$ hledger codes -E
123
124
126
commodities
commodities
List all commodity/currency symbols used or declared in the journal.
descriptions
descriptions
List the unique descriptions that appear in transactions.
This command lists the unique descriptions that appear in transactions,
in alphabetic order. You can add a query to select a subset of trans-
actions.
Example:
$ hledger descriptions
Store Name
Gas Station | Petrol
Person A
diff
diff
Compares a particular account's transactions in two input files. It
shows any transactions to this account which are in one file but not in
the other.
More precisely, for each posting affecting this account in either file,
it looks for a corresponding posting in the other file which posts the
same amount to the same account (ignoring date, description, etc.)
Since postings not transactions are compared, this also works when mul-
tiple bank transactions have been combined into a single journal entry.
This is useful eg if you have downloaded an account's transactions from
your bank (eg as CSV data). When hledger and your bank disagree about
the account balance, you can compare the bank data with your journal to
find out the cause.
Examples:
$ hledger diff -f $LEDGER_FILE -f bank.csv assets:bank:giro
These transactions are in the first file only:
2014/01/01 Opening Balances
assets:bank:giro EUR ...
...
equity:opening balances EUR -...
These transactions are in the second file only:
files
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 the hledger user manual in one of several formats, optionally
positioned at a given TOPIC (if possible).
TOPIC is any heading in the manual, or the start of any heading (but
not the middle). It is case insensitive.
Some examples: commands, print, forecast, "auto postings", "commodity
column".
This command shows the user manual built in to this hledger version.
It can be useful if the correct version of the hledger manual, or the
usual viewing tools, are not installed on your system.
By default it uses the best viewer it can find in $PATH, in this order:
info, man, $PAGER (unless a topic is specified), less, or stdout. When
run non-interactively, it always uses stdout. Or you can select a par-
ticular viewer with the -i (info), -m (man), or -p (pager) flags.
import
import
Read new transactions added to each FILE since last run, and add them
to the journal. Or with --dry-run, just print the transactions that
would be added. Or with --catchup, just mark all of the FILEs' trans-
actions as imported, without actually importing any.
This command may append new transactions to the main journal file
(which should be in journal format). Existing transactions are not
changed. This is one of the few hledger commands that writes to the
journal file (see also add).
Unlike other hledger commands, with import the journal file is an out-
put file, and will be modified, though only by appending (existing data
will not be changed). The input files are specified as arguments, so
to import one or more CSV files to your main journal, you will run
hledger import bank.csv or perhaps hledger import *.csv.
Note you can import from any file format, though CSV files are the most
common import source, and these docs focus on that case.
Deduplication
As a convenience import does deduplication while reading transactions.
This does not mean "ignore transactions that look the same", but rather
"ignore transactions that have been seen before". This is intended for
when you are periodically importing foreign data which may contain
already-imported transactions. So eg, if every day you download bank
CSV files containing redundant data, you can safely run hledger import
bank.csv and only new transactions will be imported. (import is idem-
potent.)
Since the items being read (CSV records, eg) often do not come with
unique identifiers, hledger detects new transactions by date, assuming
that:
1. new items always have the newest dates
2. item dates do not change across reads
3. and items with the same date remain in the same relative order
across reads.
These are often true of CSV files representing transactions, or true
enough so that it works pretty well in practice. 1 is important, but
violations of 2 and 3 amongst the old transactions won't matter (and if
you import often, the new transactions will be few, so less likely to
be the ones affected).
hledger remembers the latest date processed in each input file by sav-
ing a hidden ".latest" state file in the same directory. Eg when read-
ing finance/bank.csv, it will look for and update the finance/.lat-
est.bank.csv state file. The format is simple: one or more lines con-
taining the same ISO-format date (YYYY-MM-DD), meaning "I have pro-
cessed transactions up to this date, and this many of them on that
date." Normally you won't see or manipulate these state files yourself.
But if needed, you can delete them to reset the state (making all
transactions "new"), or you can construct them to "catch up" to a cer-
tain date.
Note deduplication (and updating of state files) can also be done by
print --new, but this is less often used.
Import testing
With --dry-run, the transactions that will be imported are printed to
the terminal, without updating your journal or state files. The output
is valid journal format, like the print command, so you can re-parse
it. Eg, to see any importable transactions which CSV rules have not
categorised:
$ hledger import --dry bank.csv | hledger -f- -I print unknown
or (live updating):
$ ls bank.csv* | entr bash -c 'echo ====; hledger import --dry bank.csv | hledger -f- -I print unknown'
Importing balance assignments
Entries added by import will have their posting amounts made explicit
(like hledger print -x). This means that any balance assignments in
imported files must be evaluated; but, imported files don't get to see
the main file's account balances. As a result, importing entries with
balance assignments (eg from an institution that provides only balances
and not posting amounts) will probably generate incorrect posting
amounts. To avoid this problem, use print instead of import:
$ hledger print IMPORTFILE [--new] >> $LEDGER_FILE
(If you think import should leave amounts implicit like print does,
please test it and send a pull request.)
Commodity display styles
Imported amounts will be formatted according to the canonical commodity
styles (declared or inferred) in the main journal file.
incomestatement
incomestatement, is
This command displays an income statement, showing revenues and
expenses during one or more periods. Amounts are shown with normal
positive sign, as in conventional financial statements.
The revenue and expense accounts shown are those accounts declared with
the Revenue or Expense type, or otherwise all accounts under a top-
level revenue or income or expense account (case insensitive, plurals
allowed).
Example:
$ hledger incomestatement
Income Statement
Revenues:
$-2 income
$-1 gifts
$-1 salary
--------------------
$-2
Expenses:
$2 expenses
$1 food
$1 supplies
--------------------
$2
Total:
--------------------
0
This command is a higher-level variant of the balance command, and sup-
ports many of that command's features, such as multi-period reports.
It is similar to hledger balance '(revenues|income)' expenses, but with
smarter account detection, and revenues/income displayed with their
sign flipped.
This command also supports the output destination and output format
options The output formats supported are txt, csv, html, and (experi-
mental) json.
notes
notes
List the unique notes that appear in transactions.
This command lists the unique notes that appear in transactions, in
alphabetic order. You can add a query to select a subset of transac-
tions. The note is the part of the transaction description after a |
character (or if there is no |, the whole description).
Example:
$ hledger notes
Petrol
Snacks
payees
payees
List the unique payee/payer names that appear in transactions.
This command lists unique payee/payer names which have been declared
with payee directives (--declared), used in transaction descriptions
(--used), or both (the default).
The payee/payer is the part of the transaction description before a |
character (or if there is no |, the whole description).
You can add query arguments to select a subset of transactions. This
implies --used.
Example:
$ hledger payees
Store Name
Gas Station
Person A
prices
prices
Print market price directives from the journal. With --infer-market-
prices, generate additional market prices from transaction prices.
With --infer-reverse-prices, also generate market prices by inverting
transaction prices. Prices (and postings providing transaction prices)
can be filtered by a query. Price amounts are displayed with their
full precision.
print
print
Show transaction journal entries, sorted by date.
The print command displays full journal entries (transactions) from the
journal file, sorted by date (or with --date2, by secondary date).
Amounts are shown mostly normalised to commodity display style, eg the
placement of commodity symbols will be consistent. All of their deci-
mal places are shown, as in the original journal entry (with one alter-
ation: in some cases trailing zeroes are added.)
Amounts are shown right-aligned within each transaction (but not across
all transactions).
Directives and inter-transaction comments are not shown, currently.
This means the print command is somewhat lossy, and if you are using it
to reformat your journal you should take care to also copy over the
directives and file-level comments.
Eg:
$ 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
print's output is usually a valid hledger journal, and you can process
it again with a second hledger command. This can be useful for certain
kinds of search, eg:
# Show running total of food expenses paid from cash.
# -f- reads from stdin. -I/--ignore-assertions is sometimes needed.
$ hledger print assets:cash | hledger -f- -I reg expenses:food
There are some situations where print's output can become unparseable:
o Valuation affects posting amounts but not balance assertion or bal-
ance assignment amounts, potentially causing those to fail.
o Auto postings can generate postings with too many missing amounts.
o Account aliases can generate bad account names.
Normally, the journal entry's explicit or implicit amount style is pre-
served. For example, when an amount is omitted in the journal, it will
not appear in the output. Similarly, when a transaction price is
implied but not written, it will not appear in the output. You can use
the -x/--explicit flag to make all amounts and transaction prices
explicit, which can be useful for troubleshooting or for making your
journal more readable and robust against data entry errors. -x is also
implied by using any of -B,-V,-X,--value.
Note, -x/--explicit will cause postings with a multi-commodity amount
(these can arise when a multi-commodity transaction has an implicit
amount) to be split into multiple single-commodity postings, keeping
the output parseable.
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, hledger prints only transactions it has not seen on a pre-
vious run. This uses the same deduplication system as the import com-
mand. (See import's docs for details.)
This command also supports the output destination and output format
options The output formats supported are txt, csv, and (experimental)
json and sql.
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
Show postings and their running total.
The register command displays matched postings, across all accounts, in
date order, with their running total or running historical balance.
(See also the aregister command, which shows matched transactions in a
specific account.)
register normally shows line per posting, but note that multi-commodity
amounts will occupy multiple lines (one line per commodity).
It is typically used with a query selecting a particular account, to
see that account's activity:
$ hledger register checking
2008/01/01 income assets:bank:checking $1 $1
2008/06/01 gift assets:bank:checking $1 $2
2008/06/02 save assets:bank:checking $-1 $1
2008/12/31 pay off assets:bank:checking $-1 0
With --date2, it shows and sorts by secondary date instead.
For performance reasons, column widths are chosen based on the first
1000 lines; this means unusually wide values in later lines can cause
visual discontinuities as column widths are adjusted. If you want to
ensure perfect alignment, at the cost of more time and memory, use the
--align-all flag.
The --historical/-H flag adds the balance from any undisplayed prior
postings to the running total. This is useful when you want to see
only recent activity, with a historically accurate running balance:
$ hledger register checking -b 2008/6 --historical
2008/06/01 gift assets:bank:checking $1 $2
2008/06/02 save assets:bank:checking $-1 $1
2008/12/31 pay off assets:bank:checking $-1 0
The --depth option limits the amount of sub-account detail displayed.
The --average/-A flag shows the running average posting amount instead
of the running total (so, the final number displayed is the average for
the whole report period). This flag implies --empty (see below). It
is affected by --historical. It works best when showing just one
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 the output destination and output format
options The output formats supported are txt, csv, and (experimental)
json.
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.
At a minimum, you need to supply a query (which could be just an
account name) to select your investment(s) with --inv, and another
query to identify your profit and loss transactions with --pnl.
If you do not record changes in the value of your investment manually,
or do not require computation of time-weighted return (TWR), --pnl
could be an empty query (--pnl "" or --pnl STR where STR does not match
any of your accounts).
This command will compute and display the internalized rate of return
(IRR) 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.
Price directives will be taken into account if you supply appropriate
--cost or --value flags (see VALUATION).
Note, in some cases this report can fail, for these reasons:
o Error (NotBracketed): No solution for Internal Rate of Return (IRR).
Possible causes: IRR is huge (>1000000%), balance of investment
becomes negative at some point in time.
o Error (SearchFailed): Failed to find solution for Internal Rate of
Return (IRR). Either search does not converge to a solution, or con-
verges too slowly.
Examples:
o Using roi to compute total return of investment in stocks:
https://github.com/simonmichael/hledger/blob/master/examples/invest-
ing/roi-unrealised.ledger
o Cookbook > Return on Investment: https://hledger.org/roi.html
Spaces and special characters in --inv and --pnl
Note that --inv and --pnl's argument is a query, and queries could have
several space-separated terms (see QUERIES).
To indicate that all search terms form single command-line argument,
you will need to put them in quotes (see Special characters):
$ hledger roi --inv 'term1 term2 term3 ...'
If any query terms contain spaces themselves, you will need an extra
level of nested quoting, eg:
$ hledger roi --inv="'Assets:Test 1'" --pnl="'Equity:Unrealized Profit and Loss'"
Semantics of --inv and --pnl
Query supplied to --inv has to match all transactions that are related
to your investment. Transactions not matching --inv will be ignored.
In these transactions, ROI will conside postings that match --inv to be
"investment postings" and other postings (not matching --inv) will be
sorted into two categories: "cash flow" and "profit and loss", as ROI
needs to know which part of the investment value is your contributions
and which is due to the return on investment.
o "Cash flow" is depositing or withdrawing money, buying or selling
assets, or otherwise converting between your investment commodity and
any other commodity. Example:
2019-01-01 Investing in Snake Oil
assets:cash -$100
investment:snake oil
2020-01-01 Selling my Snake Oil
assets:cash $10
investment:snake oil = 0
o "Profit and loss" is change in the value of your investment:
2019-06-01 Snake Oil falls in value
investment:snake oil = $57
equity:unrealized profit or loss
All non-investment postings are assumed to be "cash flow", unless they
match --pnl query. Changes in value of your investment due to "profit
and loss" postings will be considered as part of your investment
return.
Example: if you use --inv snake --pnl equity:unrealized, then postings
in the example below would be classifed as:
2019-01-01 Snake Oil #1
assets:cash -$100 ; cash flow posting
investment:snake oil ; investment posting
2019-03-01 Snake Oil #2
equity:unrealized pnl -$100 ; profit and loss posting
snake oil ; investment posting
2019-07-01 Snake Oil #3
equity:unrealized pnl ; profit and loss posting
cash -$100 ; cash flow posting
snake oil $50 ; investment posting
IRR and TWR explained
"ROI" stands for "return on investment". Traditionally this was com-
puted as a difference between current value of investment and its ini-
tial value, expressed in percentage of the initial value.
However, this approach is only practical in simple cases, where invest-
ments receives no in-flows or out-flows of money, and where rate of
growth is fixed over time. For more complex scenarios you need differ-
ent ways to compute rate of return, and this command implements two of
them: IRR and TWR.
Internal rate of return, or "IRR" (also called "money-weighted rate of
return") takes into account effects of in-flows and out-flows.
Naively, if you are withdrawing from your investment, your future gains
would be smaller (in absolute numbers), and will be a smaller percent-
age of your initial investment, and if you are adding to your invest-
ment, you will receive bigger absolute gains (but probably at the same
rate of return). IRR is a way to compute rate of return for each
period between in-flow or out-flow of money, and then combine them in a
way that gives you a compound annual rate of return that investment is
expected to generate.
As mentioned before, in-flows and out-flows would be any cash that you
personally put in or withdraw, and for the "roi" command, these are the
postings that match the query in the--inv argument and NOT match the
query in the--pnl argument.
If you manually record changes in the value of your investment as
transactions that balance them against "profit and loss" (or "unreal-
ized gains") account or use price directives, then in order for IRR to
compute the precise effect of your in-flows and out-flows on the rate
of return, you will need to record the value of your investement on or
close to the days when in- or out-flows occur.
In technical terms, IRR uses the same approach as computation of net
present value, and tries to find a discount rate that makes net present
value of all the cash flows of your investment to add up to zero. This
could be hard to wrap your head around, especially if you haven't done
discounted cash flow analysis before. Implementation of IRR in hledger
should produce results that match the XIRR formula in Excel.
Second way to compute rate of return that roi command implements is
called "time-weighted rate of return" or "TWR". Like IRR, it will also
break the history of your investment into periods between in-flows,
out-flows and value changes, to compute rate of return per each period
and then a compound rate of return. However, internal workings of TWR
are quite different.
TWR represents your investment as an imaginary "unit fund" where in-
flows/ out-flows lead to buying or selling "units" of your investment
and changes in its value change the value of "investment unit". Change
in "unit price" over the reporting period gives you rate of return of
your investment.
References:
o Explanation of rate of return
o Explanation of IRR
o Explanation of TWR
o Examples of computing IRR and TWR and discussion of the limitations
of both metrics
stats
stats
Show journal and performance statistics.
The stats command displays summary information for the whole journal,
or a matched part of it. With a reporting interval, it shows a report
for each report period.
At the end, it shows (in the terminal) the overall run time and number
of transactions processed per second. Note these are approximate and
will vary based on machine, current load, data size, hledger version,
haskell lib versions, GHC version.. but they may be of interest. The
stats command's run time is similar to that of a single-column balance
report.
Example:
$ hledger stats -f examples/1000x1000x10.journal
Main file : /Users/simon/src/hledger/examples/1000x1000x10.journal
Included files :
Transactions span : 2000-01-01 to 2002-09-27 (1000 days)
Last transaction : 2002-09-26 (6995 days ago)
Transactions : 1000 (1.0 per day)
Transactions last 30 days: 0 (0.0 per day)
Transactions last 7 days : 0 (0.0 per day)
Payees/descriptions : 1000
Accounts : 1000 (depth 10)
Commodities : 26 (A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, X, Y, Z)
Market prices : 1000 (A)
Run time : 0.12 s
Throughput : 8342 txns/s
This command also supports output destination and output format selec-
tion.
tags
tags
List the tags used in the journal, or their values.
This command lists the tag names used in the journal, whether on trans-
actions, postings, or account declarations.
With a TAGREGEX argument, only tag names matching this regular expres-
sion (case insensitive, infix matched) are shown.
With QUERY arguments, only transactions and accounts matching this
query are considered. If the query involves transaction fields (date:,
desc:, amt:, ...), the search is restricted to the matched transactions
and their accounts.
With the --values flag, the tags' unique non-empty values are listed
instead. With -E/--empty, blank/empty values are also shown.
With --parsed, tags or values are shown in the order they were parsed,
with duplicates included. (Except, tags from account declarations are
always shown first.)
Tip: remember, accounts also acquire tags from their parents, postings
also acquire tags from their account and transaction, transactions also
acquire tags from their postings.
test
test
Run built-in unit tests.
This command runs the unit tests built in to hledger and hledger-lib,
printing the results on stdout. If any test fails, the exit code will
be non-zero.
This is mainly used by hledger developers, but you can also use it to
sanity-check the installed hledger executable on your platform. All
tests are expected to pass - if you ever see a failure, please report
as a bug!
This command also accepts tasty test runner options, written after a --
(double hyphen). Eg to run only the tests in Hledger.Data.Amount, with
ANSI colour codes disabled:
$ hledger test -- -pData.Amount --color=never
For help on these, see https://github.com/feuerbach/tasty#options (--
--help currently doesn't show them).
About add-on commands
Add-on commands are programs or scripts in your PATH
o whose name starts with hledger-
o whose name ends with a recognised file extension: .bat,.com,.exe,
.hs,.lhs,.pl,.py,.rb,.rkt,.sh or none
o and (on unix, mac) which are executable by the current user.
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 library
functions that built-in commands use for command-line options, parsing
and reporting. Some experimental/example add-on scripts can be found
in the hledger repo's bin/ directory.
Note in a hledger command line, add-on command flags must have a double
dash (--) preceding them. Eg you must write:
$ hledger web -- --serve
and not:
$ hledger web --serve
(because the --serve flag belongs to hledger-web, not hledger).
The -h/--help and --version flags don't require --.
If you have any trouble with this, remember you can always run the add-
on program directly, eg:
$ hledger-web --serve
JOURNAL FORMAT
hledger's default file format, representing a General Journal.
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 get-
ting.
You can use hledger without learning any more about this file; just use
the add or web or import commands to create and update it.
Many users, though, edit the journal file with a text editor, and track
changes with a version control system such as git. Editor addons such
as ledger-mode or hledger-mode for Emacs, vim-ledger for Vim, and
hledger-vscode for Visual Studio Code, make this easier, adding colour,
formatting, tab completion, and useful commands. See Editor configura-
tion at hledger.org for the full list.
Here's a description of each part of the file format (and hledger's
data model). These are mostly in the order you'll use them, but in
some cases related concepts have been grouped together for easy refer-
ence, or linked before they are introduced, so feel free to skip over
anything that looks unnecessary right now.
Transactions
Transactions are the main unit of information in a journal file. They
represent events, typically a movement of some quantity of commodities
between two or more named accounts.
Each transaction is recorded as a journal entry, beginning with a sim-
ple date in column 0. This can be followed by any of the following
optional fields, separated by spaces:
o a status character (empty, !, or *)
o a code (any short number or text, enclosed in parentheses)
o a description (any remaining text until end of line or a semicolon)
o a comment (any remaining text following a semicolon until end of
line, and any following indented lines beginning with a semicolon)
o 0 or more indented posting lines, describing what was transferred and
the accounts involved (indented comment lines are also allowed, but
not blank lines or non-indented lines).
Here's a simple journal file containing one transaction:
2008/01/01 income
assets:bank:checking $1
income:salary $-1
Dates
Simple dates
Dates in the journal file use simple dates format: YYYY-MM-DD or
YYYY/MM/DD or YYYY.MM.DD, with leading zeros optional. The year may be
omitted, in which case it will be inferred from the context: the cur-
rent transaction, the default year set with a default year directive,
or the current date when the command is run. Some examples:
2010-01-31, 2010/01/31, 2010.1.31, 1/31.
(The UI also accepts simple dates, as well as the more flexible smart
dates documented in the hledger manual.)
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, for more accurate daily balances, you can specify
individual posting dates.
Or, you can use the older secondary date feature (Ledger calls it aux-
iliary date or effective date). Note: we support this for compatibil-
ity, but I usually recommend avoiding this feature; posting dates are
almost always clearer and simpler.
A secondary date is written after the primary date, following an equals
sign. If the year is omitted, the primary date's year is assumed.
When running reports, the primary (left) date is used by default, but
with the --date2 flag (or --aux-date or --effective), the secondary
(right) date will be used instead.
The meaning of secondary dates is up to you, but it's best to follow a
consistent rule. Eg "primary = the bank's clearing date, secondary =
date the transaction was initiated, if different", as shown here:
2010/2/23=2/19 movie ticket
expenses:cinema $10
assets:checking
$ hledger register checking
2010-02-23 movie ticket assets:checking $-10 $-10
$ hledger register checking --date2
2010-02-19 movie ticket assets:checking $-10 $-10
Posting dates
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 pend-
ing, combine -U and -P.
Status marks are optional, but can be helpful eg for reconciling with
real-world accounts. Some editor modes provide highlighting and short-
cuts for working with status. Eg in Emacs ledger-mode, you can toggle
transaction status with C-c C-e, or posting status with C-c C-c.
What "uncleared", "pending", and "cleared" actually mean is up to you.
Here's one suggestion:
status meaning
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
uncleared recorded but not yet reconciled; needs review
pending tentatively reconciled (if needed, eg during a big reconcil-
iation)
cleared complete, reconciled as far as possible, and considered cor-
rect
With this scheme, you would use -PC to see the current balance at your
bank, -U to see things which will probably hit your bank soon (like
uncashed checks), and no flags to see the most up-to-date state of your
finances.
Code
After the status mark, but before the description, you can optionally
write a transaction "code", enclosed in parentheses. This is a good
place to record a check number, or some other important transaction id
or reference number.
Description
A transaction's description is the rest of the line following the date
and status mark (or until a comment begins). Sometimes called the
"narration" in traditional bookkeeping, it can be used for whatever you
wish, or left blank. Transaction descriptions can be queried, unlike
comments.
Payee and note
You can optionally include a | (pipe) character in descriptions to sub-
divide the description into separate fields for payee/payer name on the
left (up to the first |) and an additional note field on the right
(after the first |). This may be worthwhile if you need to do more
precise querying and pivoting by payee or by note.
Comments
Lines in the journal beginning with a semicolon (;) or hash (#) or star
(*) are comments, and will be ignored. (Star comments cause org-mode
nodes to be ignored, allowing emacs users to fold and navigate their
journals with org-mode or orgstruct-mode.)
You can attach comments to a transaction by writing them after the
description and/or indented on the following lines (before the post-
ings). Similarly, you can attach comments to an individual posting by
writing them after the amount and/or indented on the following lines.
Transaction and posting comments must begin with a semicolon (;).
Some examples:
# a file comment
; another file comment
* also a file comment, useful in org/orgstruct mode
comment
A multiline file comment, which continues
until a line containing just "end comment"
(or end of file).
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 file comment (because not indented)
You can also comment larger regions of a file using comment and end
comment directives.
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 new-
lines. 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,
o "a comment containing" is just comment text, not a tag
o "tag1" is a tag with no value
o "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.
Postings
A posting is an addition of some amount to, or removal of some amount
from, an account. Each posting line begins with at least one space or
tab (2 or 4 spaces is common), followed by:
o (optional) a status character (empty, !, or *), followed by a space
o (required) an account name (any text, optionally containing single
spaces, until end of line or a double space)
o (optional) two or more spaces or tabs followed by an amount.
Positive amounts are being added to the account, negative amounts are
being removed.
The amounts within a transaction must always sum up to zero. As a con-
venience, one amount may be left blank; it will be inferred so as to
balance the transaction.
Be sure to note the unusual two-space delimiter between account name
and amount. This makes it easy to write account names containing spa-
ces. But if you accidentally leave only one space (or tab) before the
amount, the amount will be considered part of the account name.
Virtual postings
A posting with a parenthesised account name is called a virtual posting
or unbalanced posting, which means it is exempt from the usual rule
that a transaction's postings must balance add up to zero.
This is not part of double entry accounting, so you might choose to
avoid this feature. Or you can use it sparingly for certain special
cases where it can be convenient. Eg, you could set opening balances
without using a balancing equity account:
1/1 opening balances
(assets:checking) $1000
(assets:savings) $2000
A posting with a bracketed account name is called a balanced virtual
posting. The balanced virtual postings in a transaction must add up to
zero (separately from other postings). Eg:
1/1 buy food with cash, update budget envelope subaccounts, & something else
assets:cash $-10 ; <- these balance
expenses:food $7 ; <-
expenses:food $3 ; <-
[assets:checking:budget:food] $-10 ; <- and these balance
[assets:checking:available] $10 ; <-
(something:else) $5 ; <- not required to balance
Ordinary non-parenthesised, non-bracketed postings are called real
postings. You can exclude virtual postings from reports with the
-R/--real flag or real:1 query.
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, revenue, expenses, and equity.
Account names may contain single spaces, eg: assets:accounts receiv-
able. 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.)
hledger's amount format is flexible, supporting several international
formats. Here are some examples. Amounts have a number (the "quan-
tity"):
1
..and usually a currency symbol or commodity name (more on this below),
to the left or right of the quantity, with or without a separating
space:
$1
4000 AAPL
3 "green apples"
Amounts can be preceded by a minus sign (or a plus sign, though plus is
the default), The sign can be written before or after a left-side com-
modity symbol:
-$1
$-1
One or more spaces between the sign and the number are acceptable when
parsing (but they won't be displayed in output):
+ $1
$- 1
Scientific E notation is allowed:
1E-6
EUR 1E3
Decimal marks, digit group marks
A decimal mark can be written as a period or a comma:
1.23
1,23456780000009
In the integer part of the quantity (left of the decimal mark), groups
of digits can optionally be separated by a digit group mark - a space,
comma, or period (different from the decimal mark):
$1,000,000.00
EUR 2.000.000,00
INR 9,99,99,999.00
1 000 000.9455
Note, a number containing a single digit group mark and no decimal mark
is ambiguous. Are these digit group marks or decimal marks ?
1,000
1.000
If you don't tell it otherwise, hledger will assume both of the above
are decimal marks, parsing both numbers as 1.
To prevent confusing parsing mistakes and undetected typos, especially
if your data contains digit group marks (eg, thousands separators), we
recommend explicitly declaring the decimal mark character in each jour-
nal file, using a directive at the top of the file. The decimal-mark
directive is best, otherwise commodity directives will also work.
These are described detail below.
Commodity
Amounts in hledger have both a "quantity", which is a signed decimal
number, and a "commodity", which is a currency symbol, stock ticker, or
any word or phrase describing something you are tracking.
If the commodity name contains non-letters (spaces, numbers, or punctu-
ation), you must always write it inside double quotes ("green apples",
"ABC123").
If you write just a bare number, that too will have a commodity, with
name ""; we call that the "no-symbol commodity".
Actually, hledger combines these single-commodity amounts into more
powerful multi-commodity amounts, which are what it works with most of
the time. A multi-commodity amount could be, eg: 1 USD, 2 EUR, 3.456
TSLA. In practice, you will only see multi-commodity amounts in
hledger's output; you can't write them directly in the journal file.
(If you are writing scripts or working with hledger's internals, these
are the Amount and MixedAmount types.)
Directives influencing number parsing and display
You can add decimal-mark and commodity directives to the journal, to
declare and control these things more explicitly and precisely. These
are described below, in JOURNAL FORMAT -> Declaring commodities.
Here's a quick example:
# the decimal mark character used by all amounts in this file (all commodities)
decimal-mark .
# display styles for the $, EUR, INR and no-symbol commodities:
commodity $1,000.00
commodity EUR 1.000,00
commodity INR 9,99,99,999.00
commodity 1 000 000.9455
Commodity display style
For the amounts in each commodity, hledger chooses a consistent display
style to use in most reports. (Exceptions: price amounts, and all
amounts displayed by the print command, are displayed with all of their
decimal digits visible.)
A commodity's display style is inferred as follows.
First, if a default commodity is declared with D, this commodity and
its style is applied to any no-symbol amounts in the journal.
Then each commodity's style is inferred from one of the following, in
order of preference:
o The commodity directive for that commodity (including the no-symbol
commodity), if any.
o The amounts in that commodity seen in the journal's transactions.
(Posting amounts only; prices and periodic or auto rules are ignored,
currently.)
o The built-in fallback style, which looks like this: $1000.00. (Sym-
bol on the left, period decimal mark, two decimal places.)
A style is inferred from journal amounts as follows:
o Use the general style (decimal mark, symbol placement) of the first
amount
o Use the first-seen digit group style (digit group mark, digit group
sizes), if any
o Use the maximum number of decimal places of all.
Transaction price amounts don't affect the commodity display style
directly, but occasionally they can do so indirectly (eg when a post-
ing's amount is inferred using a transaction price). If you find this
causing problems, use a commodity directive to fix the display style.
To summarise: each commodity's amounts will be normalised to (a) the
style declared by a commodity directive, or (b) the style of the first
posting amount in the journal, with the first-seen digit group style
and the maximum-seen number of decimal places. So if your reports are
showing amounts in a way you don't like, eg with too many decimal
places, use a commodity directive. Some examples:
# declare euro, dollar, bitcoin and no-symbol commodities and set their
# input number formats and output display styles:
commodity EUR 1.000,
commodity $1000.00
commodity 1000.00000000 BTC
commodity 1 000.
The inferred commodity style can be overridden by supplying a command
line option.
Rounding
Amounts are stored internally as decimal numbers with up to 255 decimal
places, and displayed with the number of decimal places specified by
the commodity display style. Note, hledger uses banker's rounding: it
rounds to the nearest even number, eg 0.5 displayed with zero decimal
places is "0"). (Guaranteed since hledger 1.17.1; in older versions
this could vary if hledger was built with Decimal < 0.5.1.)
Transaction prices
Within a transaction, you can note an amount's price in another commod-
ity. 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. Note transaction prices are
fixed at the time of the transaction, and do not change over time. See
also market prices, which represent prevailing exchange rates on a cer-
tain date.
There are several ways to record a transaction price:
1. Write the price per unit, as @ UNITPRICE after the amount:
2009/1/1
assets:euros EUR100 @ $1.35 ; one hundred euros purchased at $1.35 each
assets:dollars ; balancing amount is -$135.00
2. Write the total price, as @@ TOTALPRICE after the amount:
2009/1/1
assets:euros EUR100 @@ $135 ; one hundred euros purchased at $135 for the lot
assets:dollars
3. Specify amounts for all postings, using exactly two commodities, and
let hledger infer the price that balances the transaction:
2009/1/1
assets:euros EUR100 ; one hundred euros purchased
assets:dollars $-135 ; for $135
4. Like 1, but the @ is parenthesised, i.e. (@); this is for compati-
bility with Ledger journals (Virtual posting costs), and is equiva-
lent to 1 in hledger.
5. Like 2, but as in 4 the @@ is parenthesised, i.e. (@@); in hledger,
this is equivalent to 2.
Use the -B/--cost flag to convert amounts to their transaction price's
commodity, if any. (mnemonic: "B" is from "cost Basis", as in Ledger).
Eg here is how -B affects the balance report for the example above:
$ hledger bal -N --flat
$-135 assets:dollars
EUR100 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 EUR100 ; for 100 euros
$ hledger bal -N --flat -B
EUR-100 assets:dollars # <- the dollars' selling price
EUR100 assets:euros
Lot prices, lot dates
Ledger allows another kind of price, lot price (four variants: {UNIT-
PRICE}, {{TOTALPRICE}}, {=FIXEDUNITPRICE}, {{=FIXEDTOTALPRICE}}),
and/or a lot date ([DATE]) to be specified. These are normally used to
select a lot when selling investments. hledger will parse these, for
compatibility with Ledger journals, but currently ignores them. A
transaction price, lot price and/or lot date may appear in any order,
after the posting amount and before the balance assertion if any.
Balance assertions
hledger supports Ledger-style balance assertions in journal files.
These look like, for example, = EXPECTEDBALANCE following a posting's
amount. Eg here we assert the expected dollar balance in accounts a
and b after each posting:
2013/1/1
a $1 =$1
b =$-1
2013/1/2
a $1 =$2
b $-1 =$-2
After reading a journal file, hledger will check all balance assertions
and report an error if any of them fail. Balance assertions can pro-
tect you from, eg, inadvertently disrupting reconciled balances while
cleaning up old entries. You can disable them temporarily with the
-I/--ignore-assertions flag, which can be useful for troubleshooting or
for reading Ledger files. (Note: this flag currently does not disable
balance assignments, below).
Assertions and ordering
hledger sorts an account's postings and assertions first by date and
then (for postings on the same day) by parse order. Note this is dif-
ferent from Ledger, which sorts assertions only by parse order. (Also,
Ledger assertions do not see the accumulated effect of repeated post-
ings to the same account within a transaction.)
So, hledger balance assertions keep working if you reorder differently-
dated transactions within the journal. But if you reorder same-dated
transactions or postings, assertions might break and require updating.
This order dependence does bring an advantage: precise control over the
order of postings and assertions within a day, so you can assert intra-
day balances.
Assertions and multiple included files
Multiple files included with the include directive are processed as if
concatenated into one file, preserving their order and the posting
order within each file. It means that balance assertions in later
files will see balance from earlier files.
And if you have multiple postings to an account on the same day, split
across multiple files, and you want to assert the account's balance on
that day, you'll need to put the assertion in the right file - the last
one in the sequence, probably.
Assertions and multiple -f files
Unlike include, when multiple files are specified on the command line
with multiple -f/--file options, balance assertions will not see bal-
ance from earlier files. This can be useful when you do not want prob-
lems in earlier files to disrupt valid assertions in later files.
If you do want assertions to see balance from earlier files, use
include, or concatenate the files temporarily.
Assertions and commodities
The asserted balance must be a simple single-commodity amount, and in
fact the assertion checks only this commodity's balance within the
(possibly multi-commodity) account balance. This is how assertions
work in Ledger also. We could call this a "partial" balance assertion.
To assert the balance of more than one commodity in an account, you can
write multiple postings, each asserting one commodity's balance.
You can make a stronger "total" balance assertion by writing a double
equals sign (== EXPECTEDBALANCE). This asserts that there are no other
commodities in the account besides the asserted one (or at least, that
their balance is 0).
2013/1/1
a $1
a 1EUR
b $-1
c -1EUR
2013/1/2 ; These assertions succeed
a 0 = $1
a 0 = 1EUR
b 0 == $-1
c 0 == -1EUR
2013/1/3 ; This assertion fails as 'a' also contains 1EUR
a 0 == $1
It's not yet possible to make a complete assertion about a balance that
has multiple commodities. One workaround is to isolate each commodity
into its own subaccount:
2013/1/1
a:usd $1
a:euro 1EUR
b
2013/1/2
a 0 == 0
a:usd 0 == $1
a:euro 0 == 1EUR
Assertions and prices
Balance assertions ignore transaction prices, and should normally be
written without one:
2019/1/1
(a) $1 @ EUR1 = $1
We do allow prices to be written there, however, and print shows them,
even though they don't affect whether the assertion passes or fails.
This is for backward compatibility (hledger's close command used to
generate balance assertions with prices), and because balance assign-
ments do use them (see below).
Assertions and subaccounts
The balance assertions above (= and ==) do not count the balance from
subaccounts; they check the account's exclusive balance only. You can
assert the balance including subaccounts by writing =* or ==*, eg:
2019/1/1
equity:opening balances
checking:a 5
checking:b 5
checking 1 ==* 11
Assertions and virtual postings
Balance assertions always consider both real and virtual postings; they
are not affected by the --real/-R flag or real: query.
Assertions and auto postings
Balance assertions are affected by the --auto flag, which generates
auto postings, which can alter account balances. Because auto postings
are optional in hledger, accounts affected by them effectively have two
balances. But balance assertions can only test one or the other of
these. So to avoid making fragile assertions, either:
o assert the balance calculated with --auto, and always use --auto with
that file
o or assert the balance calculated without --auto, and never use --auto
with that file
o or avoid balance assertions on accounts affected by auto postings (or
avoid auto postings entirely).
Assertions and precision
Balance assertions compare the exactly calculated amounts, which are
not always what is shown by reports. Eg a commodity directive may
limit the display precision, but this will not affect balance asser-
tions. Balance assertion failure messages show exact amounts.
Balance assignments
Ledger-style balance assignments are also supported. These are like
balance assertions, but with no posting amount on the left side of the
equals sign; instead it is calculated automatically so as to satisfy
the assertion. This can be a convenience during data entry, eg when
setting opening balances:
; starting a new journal, set asset account balances
2016/1/1 opening balances
assets:checking = $409.32
assets:savings = $735.24
assets:cash = $42
equity:opening balances
or when adjusting a balance to reality:
; no cash left; update balance, record any untracked spending as a generic expense
2016/1/15
assets:cash = $0
expenses:misc
The calculated amount depends on the account's balance in the commodity
at that point (which depends on the previously-dated postings of the
commodity to that account since the last balance assertion or assign-
ment). 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.
Balance assignments and prices
A transaction price in a balance assignment will cause the calculated
amount to have that price attached:
2019/1/1
(a) = $1 @ EUR2
$ hledger print --explicit
2019-01-01
(a) $1 @ EUR2 = $1 @ EUR2
Directives
A directive is a line in the journal beginning with a special keyword,
that influences how the journal is processed, how things are displayed,
and so on. hledger's directives are based on (a subset of) Ledger's,
but there are many differences, and also some differences between
hledger versions. Here are some more definitions:
o subdirective - Some directives support subdirectives, written
indented below the parent directive.
o decimal mark - The character to interpret as a decimal mark (period
or comma) when parsing amounts of a commodity.
o display style - How to display amounts of a commodity in output: sym-
bol side and spacing, digit groups, decimal mark, and number of deci-
mal places.
Directives are not required when starting out with hledger, but you
will probably add some as your needs grow. Here is an overview of
directives by purpose:
purpose directives command line
options with sim-
ilar effect
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
READING/GENERATING DATA:
Declare a commodity's or file's commodity, D, decimal-
decimal mark to help parse mark
amounts accurately
Apply changes to the data while alias, apply account, --alias
parsing comment, D, Y
Inline extra data files include multiple
-f/--file's
Generate extra transactions or ~
budget goals
Generate extra postings =
CHECKING FOR ERRORS:
Define valid entities to allow account, commodity,
stricter error checking payee
DISPLAYING REPORTS:
Declare accounts' display order account
and accounting type
Declare commodity display commodity, D -c/--commodity-
styles style
And here are all the directives and their precise effects:
direc- effects ends
tive at
file
end?
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
account Declares an account, for checking all entries in all files;
and its display order and type, for reports. Subdirectives:
any text, ignored.
alias Rewrites account names, in following entries until end of Y
current file or end aliases.
apply Prepends a common parent account to all account names, in Y
account following entries until end of current file or end apply
account.
comment Ignores part of the journal file, until end of current file Y
or end comment.
commod- Declares a commodity, for checking all entries in all files; N, Y
ity the decimal mark for parsing amounts of this commodity, for
following entries until end of current file; and its display
style, for reports. Takes precedence over D. Subdirectives:
format (alternate syntax).
D Sets a default commodity to use for no-symbol amounts, and Y
its decimal mark for parsing amounts of this commodity in
following entries until end of current file; and its display
style, for reports.
deci- Declares the decimal mark, for parsing amounts of all com- Y
mal- modities in following entries until next decimal-mark or end
mark of current file. Included files can override. Takes prece-
dence over commodity and D.
include Includes entries and directives from another file, as if they
were written inline.
payee Declares a payee name, for checking all entries in all files.
P Declares a market price for a commodity on some date, for
valuation reports.
Y Declares a year for yearless dates, for following entries Y
until end of current file.
~ Declares a periodic transaction rule that generates future
(tilde) transactions with --forecast and budget goals with balance
--budget.
= Declares an auto posting rule that generates extra postings partly
(equals) on matched transactions with --auto, in current, parent, and
child files (but not sibling files, see #1212).
Directives and multiple files
If you use multiple -f/--file options, or the include directive,
hledger will process multiple input files. But directives which affect
input typically have effect only until the end of the file in which
they occur (and on any included files in that region).
This may seem inconvenient, but it's intentional; it makes reports sta-
ble and deterministic, independent of the order of input. Otherwise
you could see different numbers if you happened to write -f options in
a different order, or if you moved includes around while cleaning up
your files.
It can be surprising though; for example, it means that alias direc-
tives do not affect parent or sibling files (see below).
Comment blocks
A line containing just comment starts a commented region of the file,
and a line containing just end comment (or the end of the current file)
ends it. See also comments.
Including other files
You can pull in the content of additional files by writing an include
directive, like this:
include FILEPATH
Only journal files can include, and only journal, timeclock or timedot
files can be included (not CSV files, currently).
If the file path does not begin with a slash, it is relative to the
current file's folder.
A tilde means home directory, eg: include ~/main.journal.
The path may contain glob patterns to match multiple files, eg: include
*.journal.
There is limited support for recursive wildcards: **/ (the slash is
required) matches 0 or more subdirectories. It's not super convenient
since you have to avoid include cycles and including directories, but
this can be done, eg: include */**/*.journal.
The path may also be prefixed to force a specific file format, overrid-
ing the file extension (as described in hledger.1 -> Input files):
include timedot:~/notes/2020*.md.
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
Declaring payees
The payee directive can be used to declare a limited set of payees
which may appear in transaction descriptions. The "payees" check will
report an error if any transaction refers to a payee that has not been
declared. Eg:
payee Whole Foods
Declaring the decimal mark
You can use a decimal-mark directive - usually one per file, at the top
of the file - to declare which character represents a decimal mark when
parsing amounts in this file. It can look like
decimal-mark .
or
decimal-mark ,
This prevents any ambiguity when parsing numbers in the file, so we
recommend it, especially if the file contains digit group marks (eg
thousands separators).
Declaring commodities
You can use commodity directives to declare your commodities. In fact
the commodity directive performs several functions at once:
1. It declares commodities which may be used in the journal. This can
optionally be enforced, providing useful error checking. (Cf Com-
modity error checking)
2. It declares which decimal mark character (period or comma), to
expect when parsing input - useful to disambiguate international
number formats in your data. Without this, hledger will parse both
1,000 and 1.000 as 1. (Cf Amounts)
3. It declares how to render the commodity's amounts when displaying
output - the decimal mark, any digit group marks, the number of dec-
imal places, symbol placement and so on. (Cf Commodity display
style)
You will run into one of the problems solved by commodity directives
sooner or later, so we recommend using them, for robust and predictable
parsing and display.
Generally you should put them at the top of your journal file (since
for function 2, they affect only following amounts, cf #793).
A commodity directive is just the word commodity followed by a sample
amount, like this:
;commodity SAMPLEAMOUNT
commodity $1000.00
commodity 1,000.0000 AAAA ; optional same-line comment
It may also be written on multiple lines, and use the format subdirec-
tive, as in Ledger. Note in this case the commodity symbol appears
twice; it must be the same in both places:
;commodity SYMBOL
; format SAMPLEAMOUNT
; display indian rupees with currency name on the left,
; thousands, lakhs and crores comma-separated,
; period as decimal point, and two decimal places.
commodity INR
format INR 1,00,00,000.00
Remember that if the commodity symbol contains spaces, numbers, or
punctuation, it must be enclosed in double quotes (cf Commodity).
The amount's quantity does not matter; only the format is significant.
It must include a decimal mark - either a period or a comma - followed
by 0 or more decimal digits.
A few more examples:
# number formats for $, EUR, INR and the no-symbol commodity:
commodity $1,000.00
commodity EUR 1.000,00
commodity INR 9,99,99,999.0
commodity 1 000 000.
Note hledger normally uses banker's rounding, so 0.5 displayed with
zero decimal digits is "0". (More at Commodity display style.)
Even in the presence of commodity directives, the commodity display
style can still be overridden by supplying a command line option.
Commodity error checking
In strict mode, enabled with the -s/--strict flag, hledger will report
an error if a commodity symbol is used that has not been declared by a
commodity directive. This works similarly to account error checking,
see the notes there for more details.
Note, this disallows amounts without a commodity symbol, because cur-
rently it's not possible (?) to declare the "no-symbol" commodity with
a directive. This is one exception for convenience: zero amounts are
always allowed to have no commodity symbol.
Default commodity
The D directive sets a default commodity, to be used for any subsequent
commodityless amounts (ie, plain numbers) seen while parsing the jour-
nal. This effect lasts until the next D directive, or the end of the
journal.
For compatibility/historical reasons, D also acts like a commodity
directive (setting the commodity's decimal mark for parsing and display
style for output).
The syntax is D AMOUNT. As with commodity, the amount must include a
decimal mark (either period or comma). Eg:
; commodity-less amounts should be treated as dollars
; (and displayed with the dollar sign on the left, thousands separators and two decimal places)
D $1,000.00
1/1
a 5 ; <- commodity-less amount, parsed as $5 and displayed as $5.00
b
If both commodity and D directives are found for a commodity, commodity
takes precedence for setting decimal mark and display style.
If you are using D and also checking commodities, you will need to add
a commodity directive similar to the D. (The hledger check commodities
command expects commodity directives, and ignores D).
Declaring market prices
The P directive declares a market price, which is an exchange rate
between two commodities on a certain date. (In Ledger, they are called
"historical prices".) These are often obtained from a stock exchange,
cryptocurrency exchange, or the foreign exchange market.
The format is:
P DATE COMMODITY1SYMBOL COMMODITY2AMOUNT
DATE is a simple date, COMMODITY1SYMBOL is the symbol of the commodity
being priced, and COMMODITY2AMOUNT is the amount (symbol and quantity)
of commodity 2 that one unit of commodity 1 is worth on this date.
Examples:
# one euro was worth $1.35 from 2009-01-01 onward:
P 2009-01-01 EUR $1.35
# and $1.40 from 2010-01-01 onward:
P 2010-01-01 EUR $1.40
The -V, -X and --value flags use these market prices to show amount
values in another commodity. See Valuation.
Declaring accounts
account directives can be used to declare accounts (ie, the places that
amounts are transferred from and to). Though not required, these dec-
larations can provide several benefits:
o They can document your intended chart of accounts, providing a refer-
ence.
o They control account display order in reports, allowing non-alpha-
betic sorting (eg Revenues to appear above Expenses).
o They can help hledger know your accounts' types (asset, liability,
equity, revenue, expense), useful for reports like balancesheet and
incomestatement.
o They can store other account information, as comments or as tags
which can be used to filter reports.
o They help with account name completion (in hledger add, hledger-web,
hledger-iadd, ledger-mode, etc.)
o In strict mode, they restrict which accounts may be posted to by
transactions, which helps detect typos.
The simplest form is just the word account followed by a hledger-style
account name, eg this account directive declares the assets:bank:check-
ing account:
account assets:bank:checking
Account error checking
By default, accounts come into existence when a transaction references
them by name. This is convenient, but it means hledger can't warn you
when you mis-spell an account name in the journal. Usually you'll find
the error later, as an extra account in balance reports, or an incor-
rect balance when reconciling.
In strict mode, enabled with the -s/--strict flag, hledger will report
an error if any transaction uses an account name that has not been
declared by an account directive. Some notes:
o The declaration is case-sensitive; transactions must use the correct
account name capitalisation.
o The account directive's scope is "whole file and below" (see direc-
tives). This means it affects all of the current file, and any files
it includes, but not parent or sibling files. The position of
account directives within the file does not matter, though it's usual
to put them at the top.
o Accounts can only be declared in journal files (but will affect
included files in other formats).
o It's currently not possible to declare "all possible subaccounts"
with a wildcard; every account posted to must be declared.
Account comments
Comments, beginning with a semicolon, can be added:
o on the same line, after two or more spaces (because ; is allowed in
account names)
o on the next lines, indented
An example of both:
account assets:bank:checking ; same-line comment, note 2+ spaces required before ;
; next-line comment
; some tags, type:A, acctnum:12345
Compatibility note: same-line comments are not supported by Ledger or
hledger <1.13.
Account subdirectives
We also allow (and ignore) Ledger-style indented subdirectives, just
for compatibility.:
account assets:bank:checking
format blah blah ; <- subdirective, ignored
Here is the full syntax of account directives:
account ACCTNAME [;type:ACCTTYPE] [COMMENT]
[;COMMENTS]
[LEDGER-STYLE SUBDIRECTIVES, IGNORED]
Account types
hledger knows that accounts come in several types: assets, liabilities,
expenses and so on. This enables easy reports like balancesheet and
incomestatement, and filtering by account type with the type: query.
As a convenience, hledger will detect these account types automatically
if you are using common english-language top-level account names
(described below). But generally we recommend you declare types
explicitly, by adding a type: tag to your top-level account directives.
Subaccounts will inherit the type of their parent. The tag's value
should be one of the five main account types:
o A or Asset (things you own)
o L or Liability (things you owe)
o E or Equity (investment/ownership; balanced counterpart of assets &
liabilities)
o R or Revenue (what you received money from, AKA income; technically
part of Equity)
o X or Expense (what you spend money on; technically part of Equity)
or, it can be (these are used less often):
o C or Cash (a subtype of Asset, indicating liquid assets for the cash-
flow report)
o V or Conversion (a subtype of Equity, for conversions (see CONVERSION
& COST).)
Here is a typical set of account type declarations:
account assets ; type: A
account liabilities ; type: L
account equity ; type: E
account revenues ; type: R
account expenses ; type: X
account assets:bank ; type: C
account assets:cash ; type: C
account equity:conversion ; type: V
Here are some tips for working with account types.
o The rules for inferring types from account names are as follows.
These are just a convenience that sometimes help new users get going;
if they don't work for you, just ignore them and declare your account
types. See also Regular expressions. Note the Cash regexp changed
in hledger 1.24.99.2.
If account's name contains this (CI) regular expression: | its type is:
--------------------------------------------------------------------|-------------
^assets?(:.+)?:(cash|bank|che(ck|que?)(ing)?|savings?|current)(:|$) | Cash
^assets?(:|$) | Asset
^(debts?|liabilit(y|ies))(:|$) | Liability
^equity:(trad(e|ing)|conversion)s?(:|$) | Conversion
^equity(:|$) | Equity
^(income|revenue)s?(:|$) | Revenue
^expenses?(:|$) | Expense
o If you declare any account types, it's a good idea to declare an
account for each of them, because a mixture of declared and name-
inferred types can disrupt certain reports.
o Certain uses of account aliases can disrupt account types. See
Rewriting accounts > Aliases and account types.
o As mentioned above, subaccounts will inherit a type from their parent
account. More precisely, an account's type is decided by the first
of these that exists:
1. A type: declaration for this account.
2. A type: declaration in the parent accounts above it, preferring
the nearest.
3. An account type inferred from this account's name.
4. An account type inferred from a parent account's name, preferring
the nearest parent.
5. Otherwise, it will have no type.
o For troubleshooting, you can list accounts and their types with:
$ hledger accounts --types [ACCTPAT] [-DEPTH] [type:TYPECODES]
Account display order
Account directives also set the order in which accounts are displayed,
eg in reports, the hledger-ui accounts screen, and the hledger-web
sidebar. By default accounts are listed in alphabetical order. But if
you have these account directives in the journal:
account assets
account liabilities
account equity
account revenues
account expenses
you'll see those accounts displayed in declaration order, not alphabet-
ically:
$ hledger accounts -1
assets
liabilities
equity
revenues
expenses
Undeclared accounts, if any, are displayed last, in alphabetical order.
Note that sorting is done at each level of the account tree (within
each group of sibling accounts under the same parent). And currently,
this directive:
account other:zoo
would influence the position of zoo among other's subaccounts, but not
the position of other among the top-level accounts. This means:
o you will sometimes declare parent accounts (eg account other above)
that you don't intend to post to, just to customize their display
order
o sibling accounts stay together (you couldn't display x:y in between
a:b and a:c).
Rewriting accounts
You can define account alias rules which rewrite your account names, or
parts of them, before generating reports. This can be useful for:
o expanding shorthand account names to their full form, allowing easier
data entry and a less verbose journal
o adapting old journals to your current chart of accounts
o experimenting with new account organisations, like a new hierarchy
o combining two accounts into one, eg to see their sum or difference on
one line
o customising reports
Account aliases also rewrite account names in account directives. They
do not affect account names being entered via hledger add or hledger-
web.
Account aliases are very powerful. They are generally easy to use cor-
rectly, but you can also generate invalid account names with them; more
on this below.
See also Rewrite account names.
Basic aliases
To set an account alias, use the alias directive in your journal file.
This affects all subsequent journal entries in the current file or its
included files (but note: not sibling or parent files). The spaces
around the = are optional:
alias OLD = NEW
Or, you can use the --alias 'OLD=NEW' option on the command line. This
affects all entries. It's useful for trying out aliases interactively.
OLD and NEW are case sensitive full account names. hledger will
replace any occurrence of the old account name with the new one. Sub-
accounts are also affected. Eg:
alias checking = assets:bank:wells fargo:checking
; rewrites "checking" to "assets:bank:wells fargo:checking", or "checking:a" to "assets:bank:wells fargo:checking:a"
Regex aliases
There is also a more powerful variant that uses a regular expression,
indicated by wrapping the pattern in forward slashes. (This is the
only place where hledger requires forward slashes around a regular
expression.)
Eg:
alias /REGEX/ = REPLACEMENT
or:
$ hledger --alias '/REGEX/=REPLACEMENT' ...
Any part of an account name matched by REGEX will be replaced by
REPLACEMENT. REGEX is case-insensitive as usual.
If you need to match a forward slash, escape it with a backslash, eg
/\/=:.
If REGEX contains parenthesised match groups, these can be referenced
by the usual backslash and number in REPLACEMENT:
alias /^(.+):bank:([^:]+):(.*)/ = \1:\2 \3
; rewrites "assets:bank:wells fargo:checking" to "assets:wells fargo checking"
REPLACEMENT continues to the end of line (or on command line, to end of
option argument), so it can contain trailing whitespace.
Combining aliases
You can define as many aliases as you like, using journal directives
and/or command line options.
Recursive aliases - where an account name is rewritten by one alias,
then by another alias, and so on - are allowed. Each alias sees the
effect of previously applied aliases.
In such cases it can be important to understand which aliases will be
applied and in which order. For (each account name in) each journal
entry, we apply:
1. alias directives preceding the journal entry, most recently parsed
first (ie, reading upward from the journal entry, bottom to top)
2. --alias options, in the order they appeared on the command line
(left to right).
In other words, for (an account name in) a given journal entry:
o the nearest alias declaration before/above the entry is applied first
o the next alias before/above that will be be applied next, and so on
o aliases defined after/below the entry do not affect it.
This gives nearby aliases precedence over distant ones, and helps pro-
vide semantic stability - aliases will keep working the same way inde-
pendent of which files are being read and in which order.
In case of trouble, adding --debug=6 to the command line will show
which aliases are being applied when.
Aliases and multiple files
As explained at Directives and multiple files, alias directives do not
affect parent or sibling files. Eg in this command,
hledger -f a.aliases -f b.journal
account aliases defined in a.aliases will not affect b.journal.
Including the aliases doesn't work either:
include a.aliases
2020-01-01 ; not affected by a.aliases
foo 1
bar
This means that account aliases should usually be declared at the start
of your top-most file, like this:
alias foo=Foo
alias bar=Bar
2020-01-01 ; affected by aliases above
foo 1
bar
include c.journal ; also affected
end aliases
You can clear (forget) all currently defined aliases (seen in the jour-
nal so far, or defined on the command line) with this directive:
end aliases
Aliases can generate bad account names
Be aware that account aliases can produce malformed account names,
which could cause confusing reports or invalid print output. For exam-
ple, you could erase all account names:
2021-01-01
a:aa 1
b
$ hledger print --alias '/.*/='
2021-01-01
1
The above print output is not a valid journal. Or you could insert an
illegal double space, causing print output that would give a different
journal when reparsed:
2021-01-01
old 1
other
$ hledger print --alias old="new USD" | hledger -f- print
2021-01-01
new USD 1
other
Aliases and account types
If an account with a type declaration (see Declaring accounts > Account
types) is renamed by an alias, normally the account type remains in
effect.
However, renaming in a way that reshapes the account tree (eg renaming
parent accounts but not their children, or vice versa) could prevent
child accounts from inheriting the account type of their parents.
Secondly, if an account's type is being inferred from its name, renam-
ing it by an alias could prevent or alter that.
If you are using account aliases and the type: query is not matching
accounts as you expect, try troubleshooting with the accounts command,
eg something like:
$ hledger accounts --alias assets=bassetts type:a
Default parent account
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 sup-
ported.
A default parent account also affects account directives. It does not
affect account names being entered via hledger add or hledger-web. If
account aliases are present, they are applied after the default parent
account.
Periodic transactions
Periodic transaction rules describe transactions that recur. They
allow hledger to generate temporary future transactions to help with
forecasting, so you don't have to write out each one in the journal,
and it's easy to try out different forecasts.
Periodic transactions can be a little tricky, so before you use them,
read this whole section - or at least these tips:
1. Two spaces accidentally added or omitted will cause you trouble -
read about this below.
2. For troubleshooting, show the generated transactions with hledger
print --forecast tag:generated or hledger register --forecast
tag:generated.
3. Forecasted transactions will begin only after the last non-fore-
casted transaction's date.
4. Forecasted transactions will end 6 months from today, by default.
See below for the exact start/end rules.
5. period expressions can be tricky. Their documentation needs
improvement, but is worth studying.
6. Some period expressions with a repeating interval must begin on a
natural boundary of that interval. Eg in weekly from DATE, DATE
must be a monday. ~ weekly from 2019/10/1 (a tuesday) will give an
error.
7. Other period expressions with an interval are automatically expanded
to cover a whole number of that interval. (This is done to improve
reports, but it also affects periodic transactions. Yes, it's a bit
inconsistent with the above.) Eg: ~ every 10th day of month from
2020/01, which is equivalent to ~ every 10th day of month from
2020/01/01, will be adjusted to start on 2019/12/10.
Periodic transaction rules also have a second meaning: they are used to
define budget goals, shown in budget reports.
Periodic rule syntax
A periodic transaction rule looks like a normal journal entry, with the
date replaced by a tilde (~) followed by a period expression (mnemonic:
~ looks like a recurring sine wave.):
~ monthly
expenses:rent $2000
assets:bank:checking
There is an additional constraint on the period expression: the start
date must fall on a natural boundary of the interval. Eg monthly from
2018/1/1 is valid, but monthly from 2018/1/15 is not.
Periodic rules and relative dates
Partial or relative dates (like 12/31, 25, tomorrow, last week, next
quarter) are usually not recommended in periodic rules, since the
results will change as time passes. If used, they will be interpreted
relative to, in order of preference:
1. the first day of the default year specified by a recent Y directive
2. or the date specified with --today
3. or the date on which you are running the report.
They will not be affected at all by report period or forecast period
dates.
Two spaces between period expression and description!
If the period expression is followed by a transaction description,
these must be separated by two or more spaces. This helps hledger know
where the period expression ends, so that descriptions can not acciden-
tally alter their meaning, as in this example:
; 2 or more spaces needed here, so the period is not understood as "every 2 months in 2020"
; ||
; vv
~ every 2 months in 2020, we will review
assets:bank:checking $1500
income:acme inc
So,
o Do write two spaces between your period expression and your transac-
tion description, if any.
o Don't accidentally write two spaces in the middle of your period
expression.
Forecasting with periodic transactions
The --forecast flag activates any periodic transaction rules in the
journal. These will generate temporary additional transactions, usu-
ally recurring and in the future, which will appear in all reports.
hledger print --forecast is a good way to see them.
This can be useful for estimating balances into the future, perhaps
experimenting with different scenarios.
It could also be useful for scripted data entry: you could describe
recurring transactions, and every so often copy the output of print
--forecast into the journal.
The generated transactions will have an extra tag, like generated-
transaction:~ PERIODICEXPR, indicating which periodic rule generated
them. There is also a similar, hidden tag, named _generated-transac-
tion:, which you can use to reliably match transactions generated "just
now" (rather than printed in the past).
The forecast transactions are generated within a forecast period, which
is independent of the report period. (Forecast period sets the bounds
for generated transactions, report period controls which transactions
are reported.) The forecast period begins on:
o the start date provided within --forecast's argument, if any
o otherwise, the later of
o the report start date, if specified (with -b/-p/date:)
o the day after the latest ordinary transaction in the journal, if
any
o otherwise today.
It ends on:
o the end date provided within --forecast's argument, if any
o otherwise, the report end date, if specified (with -e/-p/date:)
o otherwise 180 days (6 months) from today.
Note, this means that ordinary transactions will suppress periodic
transactions, by default; the periodic transactions will not start
until after the last ordinary transaction. This is usually convenient,
but you can get around it in two ways:
o If you need to record some transactions in the future, make them
periodic transactions (with a single occurrence, eg: ~ YYYY-MM-DD)
rather than ordinary transactions. That way they won't suppress
other periodic transactions.
o Or give --forecast a period expression argument. A forecast period
specified this way can overlap ordinary transactions, and need not be
in the future. Some things to note:
o You must use = between flag and argument; a space won't work.
o The period expression can specify the forecast period's start date,
end date, or both. See also Report start & end date.
o The period expression should not specify a report interval. (Each
periodic transaction rule specifies its own interval.)
Some examples: --forecast=202001-202004, --forecast=jan-, --fore-
cast=2021.
Budgeting with periodic transactions
With the --budget flag, currently supported by the balance command,
each periodic transaction rule declares recurring budget goals for the
specified accounts. Eg the first example above declares a goal of
spending $2000 on rent (and also, a goal of depositing $2000 into
checking) every month. Goals and actual performance can then be com-
pared in budget reports.
See also: Budgeting and Forecasting.
Auto postings
"Automated postings" or "auto postings" are extra postings which get
added automatically to transactions which match certain queries,
defined by "auto posting rules", when you use the --auto flag.
An auto posting rule looks a bit like a transaction:
= QUERY
ACCOUNT AMOUNT
...
ACCOUNT [AMOUNT]
except the first line is an equals sign (mnemonic: = suggests match-
ing), followed by a query (which matches existing postings), and each
"posting" line describes a posting to be generated, and the posting
amounts can be:
o a normal amount with a commodity symbol, eg $2. This will be used
as-is.
o a number, eg 2. The commodity symbol (if any) from the matched post-
ing will be added to this.
o a numeric multiplier, eg *2 (a star followed by a number N). The
matched posting's amount (and total price, if any) will be multiplied
by N.
o a multiplier with a commodity symbol, eg *$2 (a star, number N, and
symbol S). The matched posting's amount will be multiplied by N, and
its commodity symbol will be replaced with S.
Any query term containing spaces must be enclosed in single or double
quotes, as on the command line. Eg, note the quotes around the second
query term below:
= expenses:groceries 'expenses:dining out'
(budget:funds:dining out) *-1
Some examples:
; every time I buy food, schedule a dollar donation
= expenses:food
(liabilities:charity) $-1
; when I buy a gift, also deduct that amount from a budget envelope subaccount
= expenses:gifts
assets:checking:gifts *-1
assets:checking *1
2017/12/1
expenses:food $10
assets:checking
2017/12/14
expenses:gifts $20
assets:checking
$ hledger print --auto
2017-12-01
expenses:food $10
assets:checking
(liabilities:charity) $-1
2017-12-14
expenses:gifts $20
assets:checking
assets:checking:gifts -$20
assets:checking $20
Auto postings and multiple files
An auto posting rule can affect any transaction in the current file, or
in any parent file or child file. Note, currently it will not affect
sibling files (when multiple -f/--file are used - see #1212).
Auto postings and dates
A posting date (or secondary date) in the matched posting, or (taking
precedence) a posting date in the auto posting rule itself, will also
be used in the generated posting.
Auto postings and transaction balancing / inferred amounts / balance asser-
tions
Currently, auto postings are added:
o after missing amounts are inferred, and transactions are checked for
balancedness,
o but before balance assertions are checked.
Note this means that journal entries must be balanced both before and
after auto postings are added. This changed in hledger 1.12+; see #893
for background.
This also means that you cannot have more than one auto-posting with a
missing amount applied to a given transaction, as it will be unable to
infer amounts.
Auto posting tags
Automated postings will have some extra tags:
o generated-posting:= QUERY - shows this was generated by an auto post-
ing rule, and the query
o _generated-posting:= QUERY - a hidden tag, which does not appear in
hledger's output. This can be used to match postings generated "just
now", rather than generated in the past and saved to the journal.
Also, any transaction that has been changed by auto posting rules will
have these tags added:
o modified: - this transaction was modified
o _modified: - a hidden tag not appearing in the comment; this transac-
tion was modified "just now".
CSV FORMAT
How hledger reads CSV data, and the CSV rules file format.
hledger can read CSV files (Character Separated Value - usually comma,
semicolon, or tab) containing dated records as if they were journal
files, automatically converting each CSV record into a transaction.
(To learn about writing CSV, see CSV output.)
We describe each CSV file's format with a corresponding rules file. By
default this is named like the CSV file with a .rules extension added.
Eg when reading FILE.csv, hledger also looks for FILE.csv.rules in the
same directory as FILE.csv. You can specify a different rules file
with the --rules-file option. If a rules file is not found, hledger
will create a sample rules file, which you'll need to adjust.
This file contains rules describing the CSV data (header line, fields
layout, date format etc.), and how to construct hledger journal entries
(transactions) from it. Often there will also be a list of conditional
rules for categorising transactions based on their descriptions.
Here's an overview of the CSV rules; these are described more fully
below, after the examples:
skip skip one or more header lines or matched CSV
records
fields list name CSV fields, assign them to hledger
fields
field assignment assign a value to one hledger field, with
interpolation
Field names hledger field names, used in the fields list
and field assignments
separator a custom field separator
if block apply some rules to CSV records matched by
patterns
if table apply some rules to CSV records matched by
patterns, alternate syntax
end skip the remaining CSV records
date-format how to parse dates in CSV records
decimal-mark the decimal mark used in CSV amounts, if
ambiguous
newest-first disambiguate record order when there's only
one date
include inline another CSV rules file
balance-type choose which type of balance assignments to
use
Note, for best error messages when reading CSV files, use a .csv, .tsv
or .ssv file extension or file prefix - see File Extension below.
There's an introductory Convert CSV files tutorial on hledger.org.
Examples
Here are some sample hledger CSV rules files. See also the full col-
lection at:
https://github.com/simonmichael/hledger/tree/master/examples/csv
Basic
At minimum, the rules file must identify the date and amount fields,
and often it also specifies the date format and how many header lines
there are. Here's a simple CSV file and a rules file for it:
Date, Description, Id, Amount
12/11/2019, Foo, 123, 10.23
# basic.csv.rules
skip 1
fields date, description, _, amount
date-format %d/%m/%Y
$ hledger print -f basic.csv
2019-11-12 Foo
expenses:unknown 10.23
income:unknown -10.23
Default account names are chosen, since we didn't set them.
Bank of Ireland
Here's a CSV with two amount fields (Debit and Credit), and a balance
field, which we can use to add balance assertions, which is not neces-
sary but provides extra error checking:
Date,Details,Debit,Credit,Balance
07/12/2012,LODGMENT 529898,,10.0,131.21
07/12/2012,PAYMENT,5,,126
# bankofireland-checking.csv.rules
# skip the header line
skip
# name the csv fields, and assign some of them as journal entry fields
fields date, description, amount-out, amount-in, balance
# We generate balance assertions by assigning to "balance"
# above, but you may sometimes need to remove these because:
#
# - the CSV balance differs from the true balance,
# by up to 0.0000000000005 in my experience
#
# - it is sometimes calculated based on non-chronological ordering,
# eg when multiple transactions clear on the same day
# date is in UK/Ireland format
date-format %d/%m/%Y
# set the currency
currency EUR
# set the base account for all txns
account1 assets:bank:boi:checking
$ hledger -f bankofireland-checking.csv print
2012-12-07 LODGMENT 529898
assets:bank:boi:checking EUR10.0 = EUR131.2
income:unknown EUR-10.0
2012-12-07 PAYMENT
assets:bank:boi:checking EUR-5.0 = EUR126.0
expenses:unknown EUR5.0
The balance assertions don't raise an error above, because we're read-
ing directly from CSV, but they will be checked if these entries are
imported into a journal file.
Amazon
Here we convert amazon.com order history, and use an if block to gener-
ate a third posting if there's a fee. (In practice you'd probably get
this data from your bank instead, but it's an example.)
"Date","Type","To/From","Name","Status","Amount","Fees","Transaction ID"
"Jul 29, 2012","Payment","To","Foo.","Completed","$20.00","$0.00","16000000000000DGLNJPI1P9B8DKPVHL"
"Jul 30, 2012","Payment","To","Adapteva, Inc.","Completed","$25.00","$1.00","17LA58JSKRD4HDGLNJPI1P9B8DKPVHL"
# amazon-orders.csv.rules
# skip one header line
skip 1
# name the csv fields, and assign the transaction's date, amount and code.
# Avoided the "status" and "amount" hledger field names to prevent confusion.
fields date, _, toorfrom, name, amzstatus, amzamount, fees, code
# how to parse the date
date-format %b %-d, %Y
# combine two fields to make the description
description %toorfrom %name
# save the status as a tag
comment status:%amzstatus
# set the base account for all transactions
account1 assets:amazon
# leave amount1 blank so it can balance the other(s).
# I'm assuming amzamount excludes the fees, don't remember
# set a generic account2
account2 expenses:misc
amount2 %amzamount
# and maybe refine it further:
#include categorisation.rules
# add a third posting for fees, but only if they are non-zero.
if %fees [1-9]
account3 expenses:fees
amount3 %fees
$ hledger -f amazon-orders.csv print
2012-07-29 (16000000000000DGLNJPI1P9B8DKPVHL) To Foo. ; status:Completed
assets:amazon
expenses:misc $20.00
2012-07-30 (17LA58JSKRD4HDGLNJPI1P9B8DKPVHL) To Adapteva, Inc. ; status:Completed
assets:amazon
expenses:misc $25.00
expenses:fees $1.00
Paypal
Here's a real-world rules file for (customised) Paypal CSV, with some
Paypal-specific rules, and a second rules file included:
"Date","Time","TimeZone","Name","Type","Status","Currency","Gross","Fee","Net","From Email Address","To Email Address","Transaction ID","Item Title","Item ID","Reference Txn ID","Receipt ID","Balance","Note"
"10/01/2019","03:46:20","PDT","Calm Radio","Subscription Payment","Completed","USD","-6.99","0.00","-6.99","simon@joyful.com","memberships@calmradio.com","60P57143A8206782E","MONTHLY - $1 for the first 2 Months: Me - Order 99309. Item total: $1.00 USD first 2 months, then $6.99 / Month","","I-R8YLY094FJYR","","-6.99",""
"10/01/2019","03:46:20","PDT","","Bank Deposit to PP Account ","Pending","USD","6.99","0.00","6.99","","simon@joyful.com","0TU1544T080463733","","","60P57143A8206782E","","0.00",""
"10/01/2019","08:57:01","PDT","Patreon","PreApproved Payment Bill User Payment","Completed","USD","-7.00","0.00","-7.00","simon@joyful.com","support@patreon.com","2722394R5F586712G","Patreon* Membership","","B-0PG93074E7M86381M","","-7.00",""
"10/01/2019","08:57:01","PDT","","Bank Deposit to PP Account ","Pending","USD","7.00","0.00","7.00","","simon@joyful.com","71854087RG994194F","Patreon* Membership","","2722394R5F586712G","","0.00",""
"10/19/2019","03:02:12","PDT","Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.","Subscription Payment","Completed","USD","-2.00","0.00","-2.00","simon@joyful.com","tle@wikimedia.org","K9U43044RY432050M","Monthly donation to the Wikimedia Foundation","","I-R5C3YUS3285L","","-2.00",""
"10/19/2019","03:02:12","PDT","","Bank Deposit to PP Account ","Pending","USD","2.00","0.00","2.00","","simon@joyful.com","3XJ107139A851061F","","","K9U43044RY432050M","","0.00",""
"10/22/2019","05:07:06","PDT","Noble Benefactor","Subscription Payment","Completed","USD","10.00","-0.59","9.41","noble@bene.fac.tor","simon@joyful.com","6L8L1662YP1334033","Joyful Systems","","I-KC9VBGY2GWDB","","9.41",""
# paypal-custom.csv.rules
# Tips:
# Export from Activity -> Statements -> Custom -> Activity download
# Suggested transaction type: "Balance affecting"
# Paypal's default fields in 2018 were:
# "Date","Time","TimeZone","Name","Type","Status","Currency","Gross","Fee","Net","From Email Address","To Email Address","Transaction ID","Shipping Address","Address Status","Item Title","Item ID","Shipping and Handling Amount","Insurance Amount","Sales Tax","Option 1 Name","Option 1 Value","Option 2 Name","Option 2 Value","Reference Txn ID","Invoice Number","Custom Number","Quantity","Receipt ID","Balance","Address Line 1","Address Line 2/District/Neighborhood","Town/City","State/Province/Region/County/Territory/Prefecture/Republic","Zip/Postal Code","Country","Contact Phone Number","Subject","Note","Country Code","Balance Impact"
# This rules file assumes the following more detailed fields, configured in "Customize report fields":
# "Date","Time","TimeZone","Name","Type","Status","Currency","Gross","Fee","Net","From Email Address","To Email Address","Transaction ID","Item Title","Item ID","Reference Txn ID","Receipt ID","Balance","Note"
fields date, time, timezone, description_, type, status_, currency, grossamount, feeamount, netamount, fromemail, toemail, code, itemtitle, itemid, referencetxnid, receiptid, balance, note
skip 1
date-format %-m/%-d/%Y
# ignore some paypal events
if
In Progress
Temporary Hold
Update to
skip
# add more fields to the description
description %description_ %itemtitle
# save some other fields as tags
comment itemid:%itemid, fromemail:%fromemail, toemail:%toemail, time:%time, type:%type, status:%status_
# convert to short currency symbols
if %currency USD
currency $
if %currency EUR
currency E
if %currency GBP
currency P
# generate postings
# the first posting will be the money leaving/entering my paypal account
# (negative means leaving my account, in all amount fields)
account1 assets:online:paypal
amount1 %netamount
# the second posting will be money sent to/received from other party
# (account2 is set below)
amount2 -%grossamount
# if there's a fee, add a third posting for the money taken by paypal.
if %feeamount [1-9]
account3 expenses:banking:paypal
amount3 -%feeamount
comment3 business:
# choose an account for the second posting
# override the default account names:
# if the amount is positive, it's income (a debit)
if %grossamount ^[^-]
account2 income:unknown
# if negative, it's an expense (a credit)
if %grossamount ^-
account2 expenses:unknown
# apply common rules for setting account2 & other tweaks
include common.rules
# apply some overrides specific to this csv
# Transfers from/to bank. These are usually marked Pending,
# which can be disregarded in this case.
if
Bank Account
Bank Deposit to PP Account
description %type for %referencetxnid %itemtitle
account2 assets:bank:wf:pchecking
account1 assets:online:paypal
# Currency conversions
if Currency Conversion
account2 equity:currency conversion
# common.rules
if
darcs
noble benefactor
account2 revenues:foss donations:darcshub
comment2 business:
if
Calm Radio
account2 expenses:online:apps
if
electronic frontier foundation
Patreon
wikimedia
Advent of Code
account2 expenses:dues
if Google
account2 expenses:online:apps
description google | music
$ hledger -f paypal-custom.csv print
2019-10-01 (60P57143A8206782E) Calm Radio MONTHLY - $1 for the first 2 Months: Me - Order 99309. Item total: $1.00 USD first 2 months, then $6.99 / Month ; itemid:, fromemail:simon@joyful.com, toemail:memberships@calmradio.com, time:03:46:20, type:Subscription Payment, status:Completed
assets:online:paypal $-6.99 = $-6.99
expenses:online:apps $6.99
2019-10-01 (0TU1544T080463733) Bank Deposit to PP Account for 60P57143A8206782E ; itemid:, fromemail:, toemail:simon@joyful.com, time:03:46:20, type:Bank Deposit to PP Account, status:Pending
assets:online:paypal $6.99 = $0.00
assets:bank:wf:pchecking $-6.99
2019-10-01 (2722394R5F586712G) Patreon Patreon* Membership ; itemid:, fromemail:simon@joyful.com, toemail:support@patreon.com, time:08:57:01, type:PreApproved Payment Bill User Payment, status:Completed
assets:online:paypal $-7.00 = $-7.00
expenses:dues $7.00
2019-10-01 (71854087RG994194F) Bank Deposit to PP Account for 2722394R5F586712G Patreon* Membership ; itemid:, fromemail:, toemail:simon@joyful.com, time:08:57:01, type:Bank Deposit to PP Account, status:Pending
assets:online:paypal $7.00 = $0.00
assets:bank:wf:pchecking $-7.00
2019-10-19 (K9U43044RY432050M) Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. Monthly donation to the Wikimedia Foundation ; itemid:, fromemail:simon@joyful.com, toemail:tle@wikimedia.org, time:03:02:12, type:Subscription Payment, status:Completed
assets:online:paypal $-2.00 = $-2.00
expenses:dues $2.00
expenses:banking:paypal ; business:
2019-10-19 (3XJ107139A851061F) Bank Deposit to PP Account for K9U43044RY432050M ; itemid:, fromemail:, toemail:simon@joyful.com, time:03:02:12, type:Bank Deposit to PP Account, status:Pending
assets:online:paypal $2.00 = $0.00
assets:bank:wf:pchecking $-2.00
2019-10-22 (6L8L1662YP1334033) Noble Benefactor Joyful Systems ; itemid:, fromemail:noble@bene.fac.tor, toemail:simon@joyful.com, time:05:07:06, type:Subscription Payment, status:Completed
assets:online:paypal $9.41 = $9.41
revenues:foss donations:darcshub $-10.00 ; business:
expenses:banking:paypal $0.59 ; business:
CSV rules
The following kinds of rule can appear in the rules file, in any order.
Blank lines and lines beginning with # or ; are ignored.
skip
skip N
The word "skip" followed by a number (or no number, meaning 1) tells
hledger to ignore this many non-empty lines preceding the CSV data.
(Empty/blank lines are skipped automatically.) You'll need this when-
ever your CSV data contains header lines.
It also has a second purpose: it can be used inside if blocks to ignore
certain CSV records (described below).
fields list
fields FIELDNAME1, FIELDNAME2, ...
A fields list (the word "fields" followed by comma-separated field
names) is the quick way to assign CSV field values to hledger fields.
(The other way is field assignments, see below.) A fields list does
does two things:
1. It names the CSV fields. This is optional, but can be convenient
later for interpolating them.
2. Whenever you use a standard hledger field name (defined below), the
CSV value is assigned to that part of the hledger transaction.
Here's an example that says "use the 1st, 2nd and 4th fields as the
transaction's date, description and amount; name the last two fields
for later reference; and ignore the others":
fields date, description, , amount, , , somefield, anotherfield
Tips:
o The fields list always use commas, even if your CSV data uses another
separator character.
o Currently there must be least two items in the list (at least one
comma).
o Field names may not contain spaces. Spaces before/after field names
are optional.
o Field names may contain _ (underscore) or - (hyphen).
o If the CSV contains column headings, it's a good idea to use these,
suitably modified, as the basis for your field names (eg lower-cased,
with underscores instead of spaces).
o If some heading names match standard hledger fields, but you don't
want to set the hledger fields directly, alter those names, eg by
appending an underscore.
o Fields you don't care about can be given a dummy name (eg: _ ), or no
name.
field assignment
HLEDGERFIELDNAME FIELDVALUE
Field assignments are the more flexible way to assign CSV values to
hledger fields. They can be used instead of or in addition to a fields
list (see above).
To assign a value to a hledger field, write the field name (any of the
standard hledger field/pseudo-field names, defined below), a space,
followed by a text value on the same line. This text value may inter-
polate CSV fields, referenced by their 1-based position in the CSV
record (%N), or by the name they were given in the fields list (%CSV-
FIELDNAME).
Some examples:
# set the amount to the 4th CSV field, with " USD" appended
amount %4 USD
# combine three fields to make a comment, containing note: and date: tags
comment note: %somefield - %anotherfield, date: %1
Tips:
o Interpolation strips outer whitespace (so a CSV value like " 1 "
becomes 1 when interpolated) (#1051).
o Interpolations always refer to a CSV field - you can't interpolate a
hledger field. (See Referencing other fields below).
Field names
Here are the standard hledger field (and pseudo-field) names, which you
can use in a fields list and in field assignments. For more about the
transaction parts they refer to, see Transactions.
date field
Assigning to date sets the transaction date.
date2 field
date2 sets the transaction's secondary date, if any.
status field
status sets the transaction's status, if any.
code field
code sets the transaction's code, if any.
description field
description sets the transaction's description, if any.
comment field
comment sets the transaction's comment, if any.
commentN, where N is a number, sets the Nth posting's comment.
Tips:
o You can assign multi-line comments by writing literal \n in the code.
A comment starting with \n will begin on a new line.
o Comments can contain tags, as usual.
account field
Assigning to accountN, where N is 1 to 99, sets the account name of the
Nth posting, and causes that posting to be generated.
Most often there are two postings, so you'll want to set account1 and
account2. Typically account1 is associated with the CSV file, and is
set once with a top-level assignment, while account2 is set based on
each transaction's description, and in conditional blocks.
If a posting's account name is left unset but its amount is set (see
below), a default account name will be chosen (like "expenses:unknown"
or "income:unknown").
amount field
amountN sets the amount of the Nth posting, and causes that posting to
be generated. By assigning to amount1, amount2, ... etc. you can
generate up to 99 postings.
amountN-in and amountN-out can be used instead, if the CSV uses sepa-
rate fields for debits and credits (inflows and outflows). hledger
assumes both of these CSV fields are unsigned, and will automatically
negate the "-out" value. If they are signed, see "Setting amounts"
below.
amount, or amount-in and amount-out are a legacy mode, to keep pre-
hledger-1.17 CSV rules files working (and for occasional convenience).
They are suitable only for two-posting transactions; they set both
posting 1's and posting 2's amount. Posting 2's amount will be
negated, and also converted to cost if there's a transaction price.
If you have an existing rules file using the unnumbered form, you might
want to use the numbered form in certain conditional blocks, without
having to update and retest all the old rules. To facilitate this,
posting 1 ignores amount/amount-in/amount-out if any of
amount1/amount1-in/amount1-out are assigned, and posting 2 ignores them
if any of amount2/amount2-in/amount2-out are assigned, avoiding con-
flicts.
currency field
currency sets a currency symbol, to be prepended to all postings'
amounts. You can use this if the CSV amounts do not have a currency
symbol, eg if it is in a separate column.
currencyN prepends a currency symbol to just the Nth posting's amount.
balance field
balanceN sets a balance assertion amount (or if the posting amount is
left empty, a balance assignment) on posting N.
balance is a compatibility spelling for hledger <1.17; it is equivalent
to balance1.
You can adjust the type of assertion/assignment with the balance-type
rule (see below).
See Tips below for more about setting amounts and currency.
separator
You can use the separator rule to read other kinds of character-sepa-
rated data. The argument is any single separator character, or the
words tab or space (case insensitive). Eg, for comma-separated values
(CSV):
separator ,
or for semicolon-separated values (SSV):
separator ;
or for tab-separated values (TSV):
separator TAB
If the input file has a .csv, .ssv or .tsv file extension (or a csv:,
ssv:, tsv: prefix), the appropriate separator will be inferred automat-
ically, and you won't need this rule.
if block
if MATCHER
RULE
if
MATCHER
MATCHER
MATCHER
RULE
RULE
Conditional blocks ("if blocks") are a block of rules that are applied
only to CSV records which match certain patterns. They are often used
for customising account names based on transaction descriptions.
Matching the whole record
Each MATCHER can be a record matcher, which looks like this:
REGEX
REGEX is a case-insensitive regular expression that tries to match any-
where within the CSV record. It is a POSIX ERE (extended regular
expression) that also supports GNU word boundaries (\b, \B, \<, \>),
and nothing else. If you have trouble, be sure to check our doc:
https://hledger.org/hledger.html#regular-expressions
Important note: the record that is matched is not the original record,
but a synthetic one, with any enclosing double quotes (but not enclos-
ing whitespace) removed, and always comma-separated (which means that a
field containing a comma will appear like two fields). Eg, if the
original record is 2020-01-01; "Acme, Inc."; 1,000, the REGEX will
actually see 2020-01-01,Acme, Inc., 1,000).
Matching individual fields
Or, MATCHER can be a field matcher, like this:
%CSVFIELD REGEX
which matches just the content of a particular CSV field. CSVFIELD is
a percent sign followed by the field's name or column number, like
%date or %1.
Combining matchers
A single matcher can be written on the same line as the "if"; or multi-
ple matchers can be written on the following lines, non-indented. Mul-
tiple matchers are OR'd (any one of them can match), unless one begins
with an & symbol, in which case it is AND'ed with the previous matcher.
if
MATCHER
& MATCHER
RULE
Rules applied on successful match
After the patterns there should be one or more rules to apply, all
indented by at least one space. Three kinds of rule are allowed in
conditional blocks:
o field assignments (to set a hledger field)
o skip (to skip the matched CSV record)
o end (to skip all remaining CSV records).
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
if table
if,CSVFIELDNAME1,CSVFIELDNAME2,...,CSVFIELDNAMEn
MATCHER1,VALUE11,VALUE12,...,VALUE1n
MATCHER2,VALUE21,VALUE22,...,VALUE2n
MATCHER3,VALUE31,VALUE32,...,VALUE3n
<empty line>
Conditional tables ("if tables") are a different syntax to specify
field assignments that will be applied only to CSV records which match
certain patterns.
MATCHER could be either field or record matcher, as described above.
When MATCHER matches, values from that row would be assigned to the CSV
fields named on the if line, in the same order.
Therefore if table is exactly equivalent to a sequence of of if blocks:
if MATCHER1
CSVFIELDNAME1 VALUE11
CSVFIELDNAME2 VALUE12
...
CSVFIELDNAMEn VALUE1n
if MATCHER2
CSVFIELDNAME1 VALUE21
CSVFIELDNAME2 VALUE22
...
CSVFIELDNAMEn VALUE2n
if MATCHER3
CSVFIELDNAME1 VALUE31
CSVFIELDNAME2 VALUE32
...
CSVFIELDNAMEn VALUE3n
Each line starting with MATCHER should contain enough (possibly empty)
values for all the listed fields.
Rules would be checked and applied in the order they are listed in the
table and, like with if blocks, later rules (in the same or another ta-
ble) or if blocks could override the effect of any rule.
Instead of ',' you can use a variety of other non-alphanumeric charac-
ters as a separator. First character after if is taken to be the sepa-
rator for the rest of the table. It is the responsibility of the user
to ensure that separator does not occur inside MATCHERs and values -
there is no way to escape separator.
Example:
if,account2,comment
atm transaction fee,expenses:business:banking,deductible? check it
%description groceries,expenses:groceries,
2020/01/12.*Plumbing LLC,expenses:house:upkeep,emergency plumbing call-out
end
This rule can be used inside if blocks (only), to make hledger stop
reading this CSV file and move on to the next input file, or to command
execution. Eg:
# ignore everything following the first empty record
if ,,,,
end
date-format
date-format DATEFMT
This is a helper for the date (and date2) fields. If your CSV dates
are not formatted like YYYY-MM-DD, YYYY/MM/DD or YYYY.MM.DD, you'll
need to add a date-format rule describing them with a strptime date
parsing pattern, which must parse the CSV date value completely. Some
examples:
# MM/DD/YY
date-format %m/%d/%y
# D/M/YYYY
# The - makes leading zeros optional.
date-format %-d/%-m/%Y
# YYYY-Mmm-DD
date-format %Y-%h-%d
# M/D/YYYY HH:MM AM some other junk
# Note the time and junk must be fully parsed, though only the date is used.
date-format %-m/%-d/%Y %l:%M %p some other junk
For the supported strptime syntax, see:
https://hackage.haskell.org/package/time/docs/Data-Time-For-
mat.html#v:formatTime
Note that although you can parse date-times which include a time zone,
that time zone is ignored; it will not change the date that is parsed.
This means when reading CSV data with times not in your local time
zone, dates can be "off by one".
decimal-mark
decimal-mark .
or:
decimal-mark ,
hledger automatically accepts either period or comma as a decimal mark
when parsing numbers (cf Amounts). However if any numbers in the CSV
contain digit group marks, such as thousand-separating commas, you
should declare the decimal mark explicitly with this rule, to avoid
misparsed numbers.
newest-first
hledger always sorts the generated transactions by date. Transactions
on the same date should appear in the same order as their CSV records,
as hledger can usually auto-detect whether the CSV's normal order is
oldest first or newest first. But if all of the following are true:
o the CSV might sometimes contain just one day of data (all records
having the same date)
o the CSV records are normally in reverse chronological order (newest
at the top)
o and you care about preserving the order of same-day transactions
then, you should add the newest-first rule as a hint. Eg:
# tell hledger explicitly that the CSV is normally newest first
newest-first
include
include RULESFILE
This includes the contents of another CSV rules file at this point.
RULESFILE is an absolute file path or a path relative to the current
file's directory. This can be useful for sharing common rules between
several rules files, eg:
# someaccount.csv.rules
## someaccount-specific rules
fields date,description,amount
account1 assets:someaccount
account2 expenses:misc
## common rules
include categorisation.rules
balance-type
Balance assertions generated by assigning to balanceN are of the simple
= type by default, which is a single-commodity, subaccount-excluding
assertion. You may find the subaccount-including variants more useful,
eg if you have created some virtual subaccounts of checking to help
with budgeting. You can select a different type of assertion with the
balance-type rule:
# balance assertions will consider all commodities and all subaccounts
balance-type ==*
Here are the balance assertion types for quick reference:
= single commodity, exclude subaccounts
=* single commodity, include subaccounts
== multi commodity, exclude subaccounts
==* multi commodity, include subaccounts
Tips
Rapid feedback
It's a good idea to get rapid feedback while creating/troubleshooting
CSV rules. Here's a good way, using entr from eradman.com/entrproject:
$ ls foo.csv* | entr bash -c 'echo ----; hledger -f foo.csv print desc:SOMEDESC'
A desc: query (eg) is used to select just one, or a few, transactions
of interest. "bash -c" is used to run multiple commands, so we can
echo a separator each time the command re-runs, making it easier to
read the output.
Valid CSV
hledger accepts CSV conforming to RFC 4180. When CSV values are
enclosed in quotes, note:
o they must be double quotes (not single quotes)
o spaces outside the quotes are not allowed
File Extension
To help hledger identify the format and show the right error messages,
CSV/SSV/TSV files should normally be named with a .csv, .ssv or .tsv
filename extension. Or, the file path should be prefixed with csv:,
ssv: or tsv:. Eg:
$ hledger -f foo.ssv print
or:
$ cat foo | hledger -f ssv:- foo
You can override the file extension with a separator rule if needed.
See also: Input files in the hledger manual.
Reading multiple CSV files
If you use multiple -f options to read multiple CSV files at once,
hledger will look for a correspondingly-named rules file for each CSV
file. But if you use the --rules-file option, that rules file will be
used for all the CSV files.
Valid transactions
After reading a CSV file, hledger post-processes and validates the gen-
erated journal entries as it would for a journal file - balancing them,
applying balance assignments, and canonicalising amount styles. Any
errors at this stage will be reported in the usual way, displaying the
problem entry.
There is one exception: balance assertions, if you have generated them,
will not be checked, since normally these will work only when the CSV
data is part of the main journal. If you do need to check balance
assertions generated from CSV right away, pipe into another hledger:
$ hledger -f file.csv print | hledger -f- print
Deduplicating, importing
When you download a CSV file periodically, eg to get your latest bank
transactions, the new file may overlap with the old one, containing
some of the same records.
The import command will (a) detect the new transactions, and (b) append
just those transactions to your main journal. It is idempotent, so you
don't have to remember how many times you ran it or with which version
of the CSV. (It keeps state in a hidden .latest.FILE.csv file.) This
is the easiest way to import CSV data. Eg:
# download the latest CSV files, then run this command.
# Note, no -f flags needed here.
$ hledger import *.csv [--dry]
This method works for most CSV files. (Where records have a stable
chronological order, and new records appear only at the new end.)
A number of other tools and workflows, hledger-specific and otherwise,
exist for converting, deduplicating, classifying and managing CSV data.
See:
o https://hledger.org/cookbook.html#setups-and-workflows
o https://plaintextaccounting.org -> data import/conversion
Setting amounts
Some tips on using the amount-setting rules discussed above.
Here are the ways to set a posting's amount:
1. If the CSV has a single amount field:
Assign (via a fields list or a field assignment) to amountN. This sets
the Nth posting's amount. N is usually 1 or 2 but can go up to 99.
2. If the CSV has separate amount fields for debit & credit (in & out):
a. If both fields are unsigned:
Assign to amountN-in and amountN-out. This sets posting N's amount
to whichever of these has a non-zero value, and negates the "-out"
value.
b. If either field is signed (can contain a minus sign):
Use a conditional rule to flip the sign (of non-empty values).
Since hledger always negates amountN-out, if it was already nega-
tive, we must undo that by negating once more (but only if the
field is non-empty):
fields date, description, amount1-in, amount1-out
if %amount1-out [1-9]
amount1-out -%amount1-out
c. If both fields, or neither field, can contain a non-zero value:
hledger normally expects exactly one of the fields to have a non-
zero value. Eg, the amountN-in/amountN-out rules would reject
value pairs like these:
"", ""
"0", "0"
"1", "none"
So, use smarter conditional rules to set the amount from the appro-
priate field. Eg, these rules would make it use only the value
containing non-zero digits, handling the above:
fields date, description, in, out
if %in [1-9]
amount1 %in
if %out [1-9]
amount1 %out
3. If you want posting 2's amount converted to cost:
Assign to amount (or to amount-in and amount-out). (This is the legacy
numberless syntax, which sets amount1 and amount2 and converts amount2
to cost.)
4. If the CSV has the balance instead of the transaction amount:
Assign to balanceN, which sets posting N's amount indirectly via a bal-
ance assignment. (Old syntax: balance, equivalent to balance1.)
o If hledger guesses the wrong default account name:
When setting the amount via balance assertion, hledger may guess
the wrong default account name. So, set the account name explic-
itly, eg:
fields date, description, balance1
account1 assets:checking
Amount signs
There is some special handling for amount signs, to simplify parsing
and sign-flipping:
o If an amount value begins with a plus sign:
that will be removed: +AMT becomes AMT
o If an amount value is parenthesised:
it will be de-parenthesised and sign-flipped: (AMT) becomes -AMT
o If an amount value has two minus signs (or two sets of parentheses,
or a minus sign and parentheses):
they cancel out and will be removed: --AMT or -(AMT) becomes AMT
o If an amount value contains just a sign (or just a set of parenthe-
ses):
that is removed, making it an empty value. "+" or "-" or "()" becomes
"".
Setting currency/commodity
If the currency/commodity symbol is included in the CSV's amount
field(s):
2020-01-01,foo,$123.00
you don't have to do anything special for the commodity symbol, it will
be assigned as part of the amount. Eg:
fields date,description,amount
2020-01-01 foo
expenses:unknown $123.00
income:unknown $-123.00
If the currency is provided as a separate CSV field:
2020-01-01,foo,USD,123.00
You can assign that to the currency pseudo-field, which has the special
effect of prepending itself to every amount in the transaction (on the
left, with no separating space):
fields date,description,currency,amount
2020-01-01 foo
expenses:unknown USD123.00
income:unknown USD-123.00
Or, you can use a field assignment to construct the amount yourself,
with more control. Eg to put the symbol on the right, and separated by
a space:
fields date,description,cur,amt
amount %amt %cur
2020-01-01 foo
expenses:unknown 123.00 USD
income:unknown -123.00 USD
Note we used a temporary field name (cur) that is not currency - that
would trigger the prepending effect, which we don't want here.
Amount decimal places
Like amounts in a journal file, the amounts generated by CSV rules like
amount1 influence commodity display styles, such as the number of deci-
mal places displayed in reports.
The original amounts as written in the CSV file do not affect display
style (because we don't yet reliably know their commodity).
Referencing other fields
In field assignments, you can interpolate only CSV fields, not hledger
fields. In the example below, there's both a CSV field and a hledger
field named amount1, but %amount1 always means the CSV field, not the
hledger field:
# Name the third CSV field "amount1"
fields date,description,amount1
# Set hledger's amount1 to the CSV amount1 field followed by USD
amount1 %amount1 USD
# Set comment to the CSV amount1 (not the amount1 assigned above)
comment %amount1
Here, since there's no CSV amount1 field, %amount1 will produce a lit-
eral "amount1":
fields date,description,csvamount
amount1 %csvamount USD
# Can't interpolate amount1 here
comment %amount1
When there are multiple field assignments to the same hledger field,
only the last one takes effect. Here, comment's value will be be B, or
C if "something" is matched, but never A:
comment A
comment B
if something
comment C
How CSV rules are evaluated
Here's how to think of CSV rules being evaluated (if you really need
to). First,
o include - all includes are inlined, from top to bottom, depth first.
(At each include point the file is inlined and scanned for further
includes, recursively, before proceeding.)
Then "global" rules are evaluated, top to bottom. If a rule is
repeated, the last one wins:
o skip (at top level)
o date-format
o newest-first
o fields - names the CSV fields, optionally sets up initial assignments
to hledger fields
Then for each CSV record in turn:
o test all if blocks. If any of them contain a end rule, skip all
remaining CSV records. Otherwise if any of them contain a skip rule,
skip that many CSV records. If there are multiple matched skip
rules, the first one wins.
o collect all field assignments at top level and in matched if blocks.
When there are multiple assignments for a field, keep only the last
one.
o compute a value for each hledger field - either the one that was
assigned to it (and interpolate the %CSVFIELDNAME references), or a
default
o generate a synthetic hledger transaction from these values.
This is all part of the CSV reader, one of several readers hledger can
use to parse input files. When all files have been read successfully,
the transactions are passed as input to whichever hledger command the
user specified.
TIMECLOCK FORMAT
The time logging format of timeclock.el, as read by hledger.
hledger can read time logs in timeclock format. As with Ledger, these
are (a subset of) timeclock.el's format, containing clock-in and clock-
out entries as in the example below. The date is a simple date. The
time format is HH:MM[:SS][+-ZZZZ]. Seconds and timezone are optional.
The timezone, if present, must be four digits and is ignored (currently
the time is always interpreted as a local time).
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:
o use emacs and the built-in timeclock.el, or the extended timeclock-
x.el and perhaps the extras in ledgerutils.el
o at the command line, use these bash aliases: shell alias ti="echo
i `date '+%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S'` \$* >>$TIMELOG" alias to="echo o
`date '+%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S'` >>$TIMELOG"
o or use the old ti and to scripts in the ledger 2.x repository. These
rely on a "timeclock" executable which I think is just the ledger 2
executable renamed.
TIMEDOT FORMAT
timedot format is hledger's human-friendly time logging format. Com-
pared to timeclock format, it is
o convenient for quick, approximate, and retroactive time logging
o readable: you can see at a glance where time was spent.
A timedot file contains a series of day entries, which might look like
this:
2021-08-04
hom:errands .... ....
fos:hledger:timedot .. ; docs
per:admin:finance
hledger reads this as three time transactions on this day, with each
dot representing a quarter-hour spent:
$ hledger -f a.timedot print # .timedot file extension activates the timedot reader
2021-08-04 *
(hom:errands) 2.00
2021-08-04 *
(fos:hledger:timedot) 0.50
2021-08-04 *
(per:admin:finance) 0
A day entry begins with a date line:
o a non-indented simple date (Y-M-D, Y/M/D, or Y.M.D).
Optionally this can be followed on the same line by
o a common transaction description for this day
o a common transaction comment for this day, after a semicolon (;).
After the date line are zero or more optionally-indented time transac-
tion lines, consisting of:
o an account name - any word or phrase, usually a hledger-style account
name.
o two or more spaces - a field separator, required if there is an
amount (as in journal format).
o a timedot amount - dots representing quarter hours, or a number rep-
resenting hours.
o an optional comment beginning with semicolon. This is ignored.
In more detail, timedot amounts can be:
o dots: zero or more period characters, each representing one quarter-
hour. Spaces are ignored and can be used for grouping. Eg: .... ..
o a number, representing hours. Eg: 1.5
o a number immediately followed by a unit symbol s, m, h, d, w, mo, or
y, representing seconds, minutes, hours, days weeks, months or years.
Eg 1.5h or 90m. The following equivalencies are assumed:
60s = 1m, 60m = 1h, 24h = 1d, 7d = 1w, 30d = 1mo, 365d = 1y. (This
unit will not be visible in the generated transaction amount, which is
always in hours.)
There is some added flexibility to help with keeping time log data in
the same file as your notes, todo lists, etc.:
o Lines beginning with # or ;, and blank lines, are ignored.
o Lines not ending with a double-space and amount are parsed as trans-
actions with zero amount. (Most hledger reports hide these by
default; add -E to see them.)
o One or more stars (*) followed by a space, at the start of a line, is
ignored. So date lines or time transaction lines can also be Org-
mode headlines.
o All Org-mode headlines before the first date line are ignored.
More examples:
# 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 .
2016/2/3
inc:client1 4
fos:hledger 3
biz:research 1
* Time log
** 2020-01-01
*** adm:time .
*** adm:finance .
* 2020 Work Diary
** Q1
*** 2020-02-29
**** DONE
0700 yoga
**** UNPLANNED
**** BEGUN
hom:chores
cleaning ...
water plants
outdoor - one full watering can
indoor - light watering
**** TODO
adm:planning: trip
*** LATER
Reporting:
$ hledger -f a.timedot print date:2016/2/2
2016-02-02 *
(inc:client1) 2.00
2016-02-02 *
(biz:research) 0.25
$ hledger -f a.timedot bal --daily --tree
Balance changes in 2016-02-01-2016-02-03:
|| 2016-02-01d 2016-02-02d 2016-02-03d
============++========================================
biz || 0.25 0.25 1.00
research || 0.25 0.25 1.00
fos || 1.50 0 3.00
haskell || 1.50 0 0
hledger || 0 0 3.00
inc || 6.00 2.00 4.00
client1 || 6.00 2.00 4.00
------------++----------------------------------------
|| 7.75 2.25 8.00
Using period instead of colon as account name separator:
2016/2/4
fos.hledger.timedot 4
fos.ledger ..
$ hledger -f a.timedot --alias /\\./=: bal --tree
4.50 fos
4.00 hledger:timedot
0.50 ledger
--------------------
4.50
A sample.timedot file.
COMMON TASKS
Here are some quick examples of how to do some basic tasks with
hledger. For more details, see the reference section below, the
hledger_journal(5) manual, or the more extensive docs at
https://hledger.org.
Getting help
$ hledger # show available commands
$ hledger --help # show common options
$ hledger CMD --help # show common and command options, and command help
$ hledger help # show available manuals/topics
$ hledger help hledger # show hledger manual, as info/man/text (auto-chosen)
$ hledger help journal -m # show the journal topic, as a man page scrolled to that section
$ hledger help --help # show more detailed help for the help command
Find more docs, chat, mail list, reddit, issue tracker:
https://hledger.org/support.html-feedback
Constructing command lines
hledger has an extensive and powerful command line interface. We
strive to keep it simple and ergonomic, but you may run into one of the
confusing real world details described in OPTIONS, below. If that hap-
pens, here are some tips that may help:
o command-specific options must go after the command (it's fine to put
all options there) (hledger CMD OPTS ARGS)
o running add-on executables directly simplifies command line parsing
(hledger-ui OPTS ARGS)
o enclose "problematic" args in single quotes
o if needed, also add a backslash to hide regular expression metachar-
acters from the shell
o to see how a misbehaving command is being parsed, add --debug=2.
Starting a journal file
hledger looks for your accounting data in a journal file,
$HOME/.hledger.journal by default:
$ hledger stats
The hledger journal file "/Users/simon/.hledger.journal" was not found.
Please create it first, eg with "hledger add" or a text editor.
Or, specify an existing journal file with -f or LEDGER_FILE.
You can override this by setting the LEDGER_FILE environment variable.
It's a good practice to keep this important file under version control,
and to start a new file each year. So you could do something like
this:
$ mkdir ~/finance
$ cd ~/finance
$ git init
Initialized empty Git repository in /Users/simon/finance/.git/
$ touch 2020.journal
$ echo "export LEDGER_FILE=$HOME/finance/2020.journal" >> ~/.bashrc
$ source ~/.bashrc
$ hledger stats
Main file : /Users/simon/finance/2020.journal
Included files :
Transactions span : to (0 days)
Last transaction : none
Transactions : 0 (0.0 per day)
Transactions last 30 days: 0 (0.0 per day)
Transactions last 7 days : 0 (0.0 per day)
Payees/descriptions : 0
Accounts : 0 (depth 0)
Commodities : 0 ()
Market prices : 0 ()
Setting opening balances
Pick a starting date for which you can look up the balances of some
real-world assets (bank accounts, wallet..) and liabilities (credit
cards..).
To avoid a lot of data entry, you may want to start with just one or
two accounts, like your checking account or cash wallet; and pick a
recent starting date, like today or the start of the week. You can
always come back later and add more accounts and older transactions, eg
going back to january 1st.
Add an opening balances transaction to the journal, declaring the bal-
ances on this date. Here are two ways to do it:
o The first way: open the journal in any text editor and save an entry
like this:
2020-01-01 * opening balances
assets:bank:checking $1000 = $1000
assets:bank:savings $2000 = $2000
assets:cash $100 = $100
liabilities:creditcard $-50 = $-50
equity:opening/closing balances
These are start-of-day balances, ie whatever was in the account at
the end of the previous day.
The * after the date is an optional status flag. Here it means
"cleared & confirmed".
The currency symbols are optional, but usually a good idea as you'll
be dealing with multiple currencies sooner or later.
The = amounts are optional balance assertions, providing extra error
checking.
o The second way: run hledger add and follow the prompts to record a
similar transaction:
$ hledger add
Adding transactions to journal file /Users/simon/finance/2020.journal
Any command line arguments will be used as defaults.
Use tab key to complete, readline keys to edit, enter to accept defaults.
An optional (CODE) may follow transaction dates.
An optional ; COMMENT may follow descriptions or amounts.
If you make a mistake, enter < at any prompt to go one step backward.
To end a transaction, enter . when prompted.
To quit, enter . at a date prompt or press control-d or control-c.
Date [2020-02-07]: 2020-01-01
Description: * opening balances
Account 1: assets:bank:checking
Amount 1: $1000
Account 2: assets:bank:savings
Amount 2 [$-1000]: $2000
Account 3: assets:cash
Amount 3 [$-3000]: $100
Account 4: liabilities:creditcard
Amount 4 [$-3100]: $-50
Account 5: equity:opening/closing balances
Amount 5 [$-3050]:
Account 6 (or . or enter to finish this transaction): .
2020-01-01 * opening balances
assets:bank:checking $1000
assets:bank:savings $2000
assets:cash $100
liabilities:creditcard $-50
equity:opening/closing balances $-3050
Save this transaction to the journal ? [y]:
Saved.
Starting the next transaction (. or ctrl-D/ctrl-C to quit)
Date [2020-01-01]: .
If you're using version control, this could be a good time to commit
the journal. Eg:
$ git commit -m 'initial balances' 2020.journal
Recording transactions
As you spend or receive money, you can record these transactions using
one of the methods above (text editor, hledger add) or by using the
hledger-iadd or hledger-web add-ons, or by using the import command to
convert CSV data downloaded from your bank.
Here are some simple transactions, see the hledger_journal(5) manual
and hledger.org for more ideas:
2020/1/10 * gift received
assets:cash $20
income:gifts
2020.1.12 * farmers market
expenses:food $13
assets:cash
2020-01-15 paycheck
income:salary
assets:bank:checking $1000
Reconciling
Periodically you should reconcile - compare your hledger-reported bal-
ances against external sources of truth, like bank statements or your
bank's website - to be sure that your ledger accurately represents the
real-world balances (and, that the real-world institutions have not
made a mistake!). This gets easy and fast with (1) practice and (2)
frequency. If you do it daily, it can take 2-10 minutes. If you let
it pile up, expect it to take longer as you hunt down errors and dis-
crepancies.
A typical workflow:
1. Reconcile cash. Count what's in your wallet. Compare with what
hledger reports (hledger bal cash). If they are different, try to
remember the missing transaction, or look for the error in the
already-recorded transactions. A register report can be helpful
(hledger reg cash). If you can't find the error, add an adjustment
transaction. Eg if you have $105 after the above, and can't explain
the missing $2, it could be:
2020-01-16 * adjust cash
assets:cash $-2 = $105
expenses:misc
2. Reconcile checking. Log in to your bank's website. Compare today's
(cleared) balance with hledger's cleared balance (hledger bal check-
ing -C). If they are different, track down the error or record the
missing transaction(s) or add an adjustment transaction, similar to
the above. Unlike the cash case, you can usually compare the trans-
action history and running balance from your bank with the one
reported by hledger reg checking -C. This will be easier if you
generally record transaction dates quite similar to your bank's
clearing dates.
3. Repeat for other asset/liability accounts.
Tip: instead of the register command, use hledger-ui to see a live-
updating register while you edit the journal: hledger-ui --watch --reg-
ister checking -C
After reconciling, it could be a good time to mark the reconciled
transactions' status as "cleared and confirmed", if you want to track
that, by adding the * marker. Eg in the paycheck transaction above,
insert * between 2020-01-15 and paycheck
If you're using version control, this can be another good time to com-
mit:
$ git commit -m 'txns' 2020.journal
Reporting
Here are some basic reports.
Show all transactions:
$ hledger print
2020-01-01 * opening balances
assets:bank:checking $1000
assets:bank:savings $2000
assets:cash $100
liabilities:creditcard $-50
equity:opening/closing balances $-3050
2020-01-10 * gift received
assets:cash $20
income:gifts
2020-01-12 * farmers market
expenses:food $13
assets:cash
2020-01-15 * paycheck
income:salary
assets:bank:checking $1000
2020-01-16 * adjust cash
assets:cash $-2 = $105
expenses:misc
Show account names, and their hierarchy:
$ hledger accounts --tree
assets
bank
checking
savings
cash
equity
opening/closing balances
expenses
food
misc
income
gifts
salary
liabilities
creditcard
Show all account totals:
$ hledger balance
$4105 assets
$4000 bank
$2000 checking
$2000 savings
$105 cash
$-3050 equity:opening/closing balances
$15 expenses
$13 food
$2 misc
$-1020 income
$-20 gifts
$-1000 salary
$-50 liabilities:creditcard
--------------------
0
Show only asset and liability balances, as a flat list, limited to
depth 2:
$ hledger bal assets liabilities --flat -2
$4000 assets:bank
$105 assets:cash
$-50 liabilities:creditcard
--------------------
$4055
Show the same thing without negative numbers, formatted as a simple
balance sheet:
$ hledger bs --flat -2
Balance Sheet 2020-01-16
|| 2020-01-16
========================++============
Assets ||
------------------------++------------
assets:bank || $4000
assets:cash || $105
------------------------++------------
|| $4105
========================++============
Liabilities ||
------------------------++------------
liabilities:creditcard || $50
------------------------++------------
|| $50
========================++============
Net: || $4055
The final total is your "net worth" on the end date. (Or use bse for a
full balance sheet with equity.)
Show income and expense totals, formatted as an income statement:
hledger is
Income Statement 2020-01-01-2020-01-16
|| 2020-01-01-2020-01-16
===============++=======================
Revenues ||
---------------++-----------------------
income:gifts || $20
income:salary || $1000
---------------++-----------------------
|| $1020
===============++=======================
Expenses ||
---------------++-----------------------
expenses:food || $13
expenses:misc || $2
---------------++-----------------------
|| $15
===============++=======================
Net: || $1005
The final total is your net income during this period.
Show transactions affecting your wallet, with running total:
$ hledger register cash
2020-01-01 opening balances assets:cash $100 $100
2020-01-10 gift received assets:cash $20 $120
2020-01-12 farmers market assets:cash $-13 $107
2020-01-16 adjust cash assets:cash $-2 $105
Show weekly posting counts as a bar chart:
$ hledger activity -W
2019-12-30 *****
2020-01-06 ****
2020-01-13 ****
Migrating to a new file
At the end of the year, you may want to continue your journal in a new
file, so that old transactions don't slow down or clutter your reports,
and to help ensure the integrity of your accounting history. See the
close command.
If using version control, don't forget to git add the new file.
LIMITATIONS
The need to precede add-on 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.
On Windows, non-ascii characters may not display correctly when running
a hledger built in CMD in MSYS/CYGWIN, or vice-versa.
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.
Getting errors like "Illegal byte sequence" or "Invalid or incomplete
multibyte or wide character" or "commitAndReleaseBuffer: invalid argu-
ment (invalid character)"
Programs compiled with GHC (hledger, haskell build tools, etc.) need to
have a UTF-8-aware locale configured in the environment, otherwise they
will fail with these kinds of errors when they encounter non-ascii
characters.
To fix it, set the LANG environment variable to some locale which sup-
ports UTF-8. The locale you choose must be installed on your system.
Here's an example of setting LANG temporarily, on Ubuntu GNU/Linux:
$ file my.journal
my.journal: UTF-8 Unicode text # the file is UTF8-encoded
$ echo $LANG
C # LANG is set to the default locale, which does not support UTF8
$ locale -a # which locales are installed ?
C
en_US.utf8 # here's a UTF8-aware one we can use
POSIX
$ LANG=en_US.utf8 hledger -f my.journal print # ensure it is used for this command
If available, C.UTF-8 will also work. If your preferred locale isn't
listed by locale -a, you might need to install it. Eg on
Ubuntu/Debian:
$ 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
Here's how you could set it permanently, if you use a bash shell:
$ echo "export LANG=en_US.utf8" >>~/.bash_profile
$ bash --login
Exact spelling and capitalisation may be important. Note the differ-
ence on MacOS (UTF-8, not utf8). Some platforms (eg ubuntu) allow
variant spellings, but others (eg macos) require it to be exact:
$ locale -a | grep -iE en_us.*utf
en_US.UTF-8
$ LANG=en_US.UTF-8 hledger -f my.journal print
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) 2007-2020 Simon Michael.
Released under GNU GPL v3 or later.
SEE ALSO
hledger(1), hledger-ui(1), hledger-web(1), ledger(1)
hledger-1.26 June 2022 HLEDGER(1)
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