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April 2016

hledger_journal(5)

web({{ versions({{journal}}) toc }}) man({{

NAME

Journal - hledger’s default file format, representing a General Journal

DESCRIPTION

}})

hledger’s usual data source is a plain text file containing journal entries in hledger journal format. This file represents a standard accounting general journal. I use file names ending in .journal, but that’s not required. The journal file contains a number of transaction entries, each describing a transfer of money (or any commodity) between two or more named accounts, in a simple format readable by both hledger and humans.

hledger’s journal format is a compatible subset, mostly, of ledger’s journal format, so hledger can work with compatible ledger journal files as well. It’s safe, and encouraged, to run both hledger and ledger on the same journal file, eg to validate the results you’re getting.

You can use hledger without learning any more about this file; just use the add or web commands to create and update it. Many users, though, also edit the journal file directly with a text editor, perhaps assisted by the helper modes for emacs or vim.

Here’s an example:

; A sample journal file. This is a comment.

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

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

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

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

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

FILE FORMAT

Transactions

Transactions are represented by journal entries. Each begins with a simple date in column 0, followed by three optional fields with spaces between them:

a status flag, which can be empty or ! or * (meaning “uncleared”, “pending” and “cleared”, or whatever you want)
a transaction code (eg a check number),
and/or a description

then some number of postings, of some amount to some account, each on its own line. Usually there are at least two postings, though one or even none is possible.

The (real) posting amounts within a transaction must always balance, ie add up to 0. Optionally one amount can be left blank, in which case it will be inferred.

Dates

Simple dates

Within a journal file, transaction dates use Y/M/D (or Y-M-D or Y.M.D) Leading zeros are optional. The year may be omitted, in which case it will be inferred from the context - the current transaction, the default year set with a default year directive, or the current date when the command is run. Some examples: 2010/01/31, 1/31, 2010-01-31, 2010.1.31.

Secondary dates

Real-life transactions sometimes involve more than one date - eg the date you write a cheque, and the date it clears in your bank. When you want to model this, eg for more accurate balances, you can specify individual #posting-dates, which I recommend. Or, you can use the secondary dates (aka auxiliary/effective dates) feature, supported for compatibility with Ledger.

A secondary date can be written after the primary date, separated by an equals sign. The primary date, on the left, is used by default; the secondary date, on the right, is used when the --date2 flag is specified (--aux-date or --effective also work).

The meaning of secondary dates is up to you, but it’s best to follow a consistent rule. Eg write the bank’s clearing date as primary, and when needed, the date the transaction was initiated as secondary.

Here’s an example. Note that a secondary date will use the year of the primary date if unspecified.

2010/2/23=2/19 movie ticket
  expenses:cinema                   $10
  assets:checking

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

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

Secondary dates require some effort; you must use them consistently in your journal entries and remember whether to use or not use the --date2 flag for your reports. They are included in hledger for Ledger compatibility, but posting dates are a more powerful and less confusing alternative.

Posting dates

You can give individual postings a different date from their parent transaction, by adding a posting comment containing a tag (see below) like date:DATE. This is probably the best way to control posting dates precisely. Eg in this example the expense should appear in May reports, and the deduction from checking should be reported on 6/1 for easy bank reconciliation:

2015/5/30
    expenses:food     $10   ; food purchased on saturday 5/30
    assets:checking         ; bank cleared it on monday, date:6/1

$ hledger -f t.j register food
2015/05/30                      expenses:food                  $10           $10

$ hledger -f t.j register checking
2015/06/01                      assets:checking               $-10          $-10

DATE should be a simple date; if the year is not specified it will use the year of the transaction’s date. You can set the secondary date similarly, with date2:DATE2. The date: or date2: tags must have a valid simple date value if they are present, eg a date: tag with no value is not allowed.

Ledger’s earlier, more compact bracketed date syntax is also supported: [DATE], [DATE=DATE2] or [=DATE2]. hledger will attempt to parse any square-bracketed sequence of the 0123456789/-.= characters in this way. With this syntax, DATE infers its year from the transaction and DATE2 infers its year from DATE.

Account names

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

Account names may contain single spaces, eg: assets:accounts receivable. Because of this, they must always be followed by at least two 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.

The amount is a number, optionally with a currency symbol or commodity name on either the left or right. Negative amounts may have the minus sign either before or after the currency symbol (-$1 or $-1). Commodity names which contain more than just letters should be enclosed in double quotes (1 "person hours").

Decimal points and digit groups

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

Amount display styles

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

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

The canonical style is generally the style of the first posting amount seen in a commodity. However the display precision will be the highest precision seen in all posting amounts in that commmodity.

The precisions used in a price amount, or a D directive, don’t affect the canonical display precision directly, but they can affect it indirectly, eg when D’s default commodity is applied to a commodity-less amount or when an amountless posting is balanced using a price’s commodity (actually this last case does not influence the canonical display precision but probably should).

Virtual Postings

When you parenthesise the account name in a posting, that posting is considered virtual, which means:

it is ignored when checking that the transaction is balanced
it is excluded from reports when the --real/-R flag is used, or the real:1 query.

You could use this, eg, to set an account’s opening balance without needing to use the equity:opening balances account:

1/1 special unbalanced posting to set initial balance
  (assets:checking)   $1000

Balanced Virtual Postings

When the account name is bracketed, the posting is balanced virtual, which is just like a virtual posting except the balanced virtual postings in a transaction must balance to 0, like the real postings (but separately from them). Balanced virtual postings are also excluded by --real/-R or real:1.

Virtual postings are a feature inherited from Ledger can can occasionally be useful, but they can be a crutch and you should think twice or three times before using them. You can almost always find an equivalent journal entry using two or more real postings that will be more correct and more error-proof.

Balance Assertions

hledger supports ledger-style balance assertions in journal files. These look like =EXPECTEDBALANCE following a posting’s amount. Eg in this example we assert the expected dollar balance in accounts a and b after each posting:

2013/1/1
  a   $1  =$1
  b       =$-1

2013/1/2
  a   $1  =$2
  b  $-1  =$-2

After reading a journal file, hledger will check all balance assertions and report an error if any of them fail. Balance assertions can protect you from, eg, inadvertently disrupting reconciled balances while cleaning up old entries. You can disable them temporarily with the --ignore-assertions flag, which can be useful for troubleshooting or for reading Ledger files.

Assertions and ordering

hledger sorts an account’s postings and assertions first by date and then (for postings on the same day) by parse order. Note this is different from Ledger, which sorts assertions only by parse order. (Also, Ledger assertions do not see the accumulated effect of repeated postings to the same account within a transaction.)

So, hledger balance assertions keep working if you reorder differently-dated transactions within the journal. But if you reorder same-dated transactions or postings, assertions might break and require updating. This order dependence does bring an advantage: precise control over the order of postings and assertions within a day, so you can assert intra-day balances.

With included files, things are a little more complicated. Including preserves the ordering of postings and assertions. If you have multiple postings to an account on the same day, split across different files, and you also want to assert the account’s balance on the same day, you’ll have to put the assertion in the right file.

Assertions and commodities

The asserted balance must be a simple single-commodity amount, and in fact the assertion checks only this commodity’s balance within the (possibly multi-commodity) account balance. We could call this a partial balance assertion. This is compatible with Ledger, and makes it possible to make assertions about accounts containing multiple commodities.

To assert each commodity’s balance in such a multi-commodity account, you can add multiple postings (with amount 0 if necessary). But note that no matter how many assertions you add, you can’t be sure the account does not contain some unexpected commodity. (We’ll add support for this kind of total balance assertion if there’s demand.)

Assertions and subaccounts

Balance assertions do not count the balance from subaccounts; they check the posted account’s exclusive balance. For example:

1/1
  checking:fund   1 = 1  ; post to this subaccount, its balance is now 1
  checking        1 = 1  ; post to the parent account, its exclusive balance is now 1
  equity

The balance report’s flat mode shows these exclusive balances more clearly:

$ hledger bal checking --flat
                   1  checking
                   1  checking:fund
--------------------
                   2

Assertions and virtual postings

Balance assertions are checked against all postings, both real and virtual. They are not affected by the --real/-R flag or real: query.

Prices

Transaction prices

When recording a transaction, you can also record an amount’s price in another commodity. This documents the exchange rate, cost (of a purchase), or selling price (of a sale) that was in effect within this particular transaction (or more precisely, within the particular posting). These transaction prices are fixed, and do not change.

Such priced amounts can be displayed in their transaction price’s commodity, by using the --cost/-B flag (B for “cost Basis”), supported by most hledger commands.

There are three ways to specify a transaction price:

Write the unit price (aka exchange rate), as @ UNITPRICE after the amount:

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

Or write the total price, as @@ TOTALPRICE after the amount:

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

Or let hledger infer the price so as to balance the transaction. To permit this, you must fully specify all posting amounts, and their sum must have a non-zero amount in exactly two commodities:
```
2009/1/1
  assets:foreign currency   €100          ; one hundred euros
  assets:cash              $-135          ; exchanged for $135
```

With any of the above examples we get:

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

Example use for transaction prices: recording the effective conversion rate of purchases made in a foreign currency.

Market prices

Market prices are not tied to a particular transaction; they represent historical exchange rates between two commodities, usually from some public market which publishes such rates.

When market prices are known, the -V/--value option will use them to convert reported amounts to their market value as of the report end date. This option is currently available only with the balance command.

You record market prices (Ledger calls them historical prices) with a P directive, in the journal or perhaps in a separate included file. Market price directives have the format:

P DATE COMMODITYSYMBOL UNITPRICE

For example, the following directives say that the euro’s exchange rate was 1.35 US dollars during 2009, and $1.40 from 2010 onward (and unknown before 2009).

P 2009/1/1 € $1.35
P 2010/1/1 € $1.40

Example use for market prices: tracking the value of stocks.

Comments

Lines in the journal beginning with a semicolon (;) or hash (#) or asterisk (*) are comments, and will be ignored. (Asterisk comments make it easy to treat your journal like an org-mode outline in emacs.)

Also, anything between comment and end comment directives is a (multi-line) comment. If there is no end comment, the comment extends to the end of the file.

You can attach comments to a transaction by writing them after the description and/or indented on the following lines (before the postings). Similarly, you can attach comments to an individual posting by writing them after the amount and/or indented on the following lines.

Some examples:

# a journal comment

; also a journal comment

comment
This is a multiline comment,
which continues until a line
where the "end comment" string
appears on its own.
end comment

2012/5/14 something  ; a transaction comment
    ; the transaction comment, continued
    posting1  1  ; a comment for posting 1
    posting2
    ; a comment for posting 2
    ; another comment line for posting 2
; a journal comment (because not indented)

Directives

Account aliases

You can define aliases which rewrite your account names (after reading the journal, before generating reports). hledger’s account aliases can be useful for:

expanding shorthand account names to their full form, allowing easier data entry and a less verbose journal
adapting old journals to your current chart of accounts
experimenting with new account organisations, like a new hierarchy or combining two accounts into one
customising reports

Basic aliases

To set an account alias, use the alias directive in your journal file. This affects all subsequent journal entries in the current file or its included files. The spaces around the = are optional:

alias OLD = NEW

Or, you can use the --alias 'OLD=NEW' option on the command line. This affects all entries. It’s useful for trying out aliases interactively.

OLD and NEW are full account names. hledger will replace any occurrence of the old account name with the new one. Subaccounts are also affected. Eg:

alias checking = assets:bank:wells fargo:checking
# rewrites "checking" to "assets:bank:wells fargo:checking", or "checking:a" to "assets:bank:wells fargo:checking:a"

Regex aliases

There is also a more powerful variant that uses a regular expression, indicated by the forward slashes. (This was the default behaviour in hledger 0.24-0.25):

alias /REGEX/ = REPLACEMENT

or --alias '/REGEX/=REPLACEMENT'.

REGEX is a case-insensitive regular expression. Anywhere it matches inside an account name, the matched part will be replaced by REPLACEMENT. If REGEX contains parenthesised match groups, these can be referenced by the usual numeric backreferences in REPLACEMENT. Note, currently regular expression aliases may cause noticeable slow-downs. (And if you use Ledger on your hledger file, they will be ignored.) Eg:

alias /^(.+):bank:([^:]+)(.*)/ = \1:\2 \3
# rewrites "assets:bank:wells fargo:checking" to  "assets:wells fargo checking"

Multiple aliases

You can define as many aliases as you like using directives or command-line options. Aliases are recursive - each alias sees the result of applying previous ones. (This is different from Ledger, where aliases are non-recursive by default). Aliases are applied in the following order:

alias directives, most recently seen first (recent directives take precedence over earlier ones; directives not yet seen are ignored)
alias options, in the order they appear on the command line

end aliases

You can clear (forget) all currently defined aliases with the end aliases directive:

end aliases

account directive

The account directive predefines account names, as in Ledger and Beancount. This may be useful for your own documentation; hledger doesn’t make use of it yet.

; account ACCT
;   OPTIONAL COMMENTS/TAGS...

account assets:bank:checking
 a comment
 acct-no:12345

account expenses:food

; etc.

apply account directive

You can specify a parent account which will be prepended to all accounts within a section of the journal. Use the apply account and end apply account directives like so:

apply account home

2010/1/1
    food    $10
    cash

end apply account

which is equivalent to:

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

If end apply account is omitted, the effect lasts to the end of the file. Included files are also affected, eg:

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

Prior to hledger 0.28, legacy account and end spellings were also supported.

Multi-line comments

A line containing just comment starts a multi-line comment, and a line containing just end comment ends it. See comments.

Default commodity

You can set a default commodity, to be used for amounts without one. Use the D directive with a sample amount. The commodity (and the sample amount’s display style) will be applied to all subsequent commodity-less amounts, up to the next D directive. (Note this is different from Ledger’s default commodity directive.)

Also note the directive itself does not influence the commodity’s default display style, but the amount it is applied to might. Here’s an example:

; set £ as the default commodity
D £1,000.00

2010/1/1
  a  2340
  b

2014/1/1
  c  £1000
  d

$ hledger print
2010/01/01
    a     £2,340.00
    b    £-2,340.00

2014/01/01
    c     £1,000.00
    d    £-1,000.00

Default year

You can set a default year to be used for subsequent dates which don’t specify a year. This is a line beginning with Y followed by the year. Eg:

Y2009      ; set default year to 2009

12/15      ; equivalent to 2009/12/15
  expenses  1
  assets

Y2010      ; change default year to 2010

2009/1/30  ; specifies the year, not affected
  expenses  1
  assets

1/31       ; equivalent to 2010/1/31
  expenses  1
  assets

Including other files

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

include path/to/file.journal

If the path does not begin with a slash, it is relative to the current file.

Glob patterns (*) are not currently supported.

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

EDITOR SUPPORT

Add-on modes exist for various text editors, to make working with journal files easier. They add colour, navigation aids and helpful commands. For hledger users who edit the journal file directly (the majority), using one of these modes is quite recommended.

These were written with Ledger in mind, but also work with hledger files:

Emacs	http://www.ledger-cli.org/3.0/doc/ledger-mode.html
Vim	https://github.com/ledger/ledger/wiki/Getting-started
Sublime Text	https://github.com/ledger/ledger/wiki/Using-Sublime-Text
Textmate	https://github.com/ledger/ledger/wiki/Using-TextMate-2
Text Wrangler	https://github.com/ledger/ledger/wiki/Editing-Ledger-files-with-TextWrangler

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