hledger/doc/manual.md

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hledger User Manual

This reference manual is for hledger 0.25.98 and hledger-web 0.25.98.

Introduction

hledger is a program for tracking money, time, or any other commodity, using a simple, editable file format and double-entry accounting, inspired by and largely compatible with ledger. hledger is Free Software released under GPL version 3 or later.

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

You can use it to, eg:

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

hledger works on unix, mac and windows. See Download for installation help.

Usage

Basic usage is:

$ hledger COMMAND [OPTIONS] [ARGS]

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

Options are similar across most commands, with some variations; use hledger COMMAND --help for details.

Most options must appear after COMMAND, not before it; but the following general options can appear anywhere: -f, --rules-file, --alias, --ignore-assertions, --help, --debug, --version.

If an option is repeated, the last one takes precedence. Eg -p jan -p feb is equivalent to -p feb.

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

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

$ hledger
    # show available commands
$ hledger add
    # add more transactions to the journal file
$ hledger balance
    # all accounts with aggregated balances
$ hledger balance --help
    # show help for balance command
$ hledger balance --depth 1
    # only top-level accounts
$ hledger register
    # show account postings, with running total
$ hledger reg income
    # show postings to/from income accounts
$ hledger reg 'assets:some bank:checking'
    # show postings to/from this checking account
$ hledger print desc:shop
    # show transactions with shop in the description
$ hledger activity -W
    # show transaction counts per week as a bar chart

Data formats

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 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

Now let's explore the available journal file syntax in detail.

Entries

Each journal entry 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 two or more postings (of some amount to some account), each on their own line.

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

Dates

Simple dates

Within a journal (or timelog) file, dates are written as YYYY/MM/DD (year/month/day). Hyphen (-) and period (.) are also allowed as separators. Leading zeroes are optional. The year may be omitted, in which case it defaults to the current year, or you can set the default year with a default year directive.

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, write both dates separated by an equals sign. The primary date, on the left, is used by default; the secondary date, on the right, is used when the --date2 flag is specified (For Ledger compatibility, --aux-date or --effective also work.)

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

Example:

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

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

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

Posting dates

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

Ledger's bracketed posting date syntax ([DATE], [DATE=DATE2] or [=DATE2] in a posting comment) is also supported, as an alternate spelling of the date and date2 tags.

Note: if you do use either of these forms, be sure to give them a valid DATE or you'll get a parse error, eg an empty date: tag is not allowed.

Accounts

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

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

Amounts

After the account name, 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).

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

Prices

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Prices are fixed

In hledger, the price used in a given posting is fixed. This is what you want for eg recording purchases made while travelling abroad, but you can't (yet) track the value of stocks whose price fluctuates.

This is different from Ledger, where prices fluctuate by default. Ledger has a different syntax for specifying fixed prices: {=PRICE}. hledger parses that syntax, and (currently) ignores it.

Historical prices

hledger also parses, and currently ignores, ledger-style historical price directives:

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

Comments

• A semicolon (;) or hash (#) or asterisk (*) in column 0 starts a journal comment line, which hledger will ignore. (Asterisk allows you to embed emacs org/outline-mode nodes and treat your journal like an outline.)

• A semicolon after a transaction's description and/or indented on the following lines starts a transaction comment.

• A semicolon after a posting's amount and/or indented on the following lines starts a posting comment.

• With the comment and end comment keywords it is possible to have multiline comments.

Transaction and posting comments are displayed by print, can contain tags and can be queried.

Some examples:

# a journal comment

; also a journal comment

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

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

Tags

You can include tags (labels), optionally with values, in transaction and posting comments, and then query by tag. This is like Ledger's metadata feature, except hledger's tag values are simple strings.

A tag is any unspaced word immediately followed by a full colon, eg: sometag: . A tag's value is the characters following the colon, if any, until the next comma or newline, with any leading and trailing whitespace removed. Comma may be used to write multiple tags on one line.

For example, here is a transaction with three tags, the posting has one, and all tags have values except TAG1:

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

Things to note:

In the journal file, a hledger tag value can contain: text, internal whitespace, or punctuation, but not: commas, newlines, or leading/trailing whitespace (putting quotes around it doesn't work, but probably should).

The position of the comment containing the tag determines what is tagged - the whole transaction and all of its postings, or just a single posting (cf transaction comment or posting comment).

In tag queries, remember the tag name must match exactly, while the value part is the usual case-insensitive infix regular expression match.

Directives

Account aliases

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

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

See also How to use account aliases.

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 option on the command line. This affects all entries. It's useful for trying out aliases interactively:

--alias 'OLD=NEW'

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:

1. alias directives, most recently seen first (recent directives take precedence over earlier ones; directives not yet seen are ignored)
2. 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

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 parent account

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

account home

2010/1/1
    food    $10
    cash

end

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

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

Included files are also affected, eg:

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

Default year

You can set a default year, to be used for all subsequent simple dates which don't specify a year. This is a line beginning with Y followed by the year, like so:

Y2009

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

Y2010

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

This directive can also be used in timelog files.

Including other files

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

include path/to/file.journal

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

CSV

hledger can also read CSV files, converting each CSV record into a journal entry (transaction), if you provide some conversion hints in a "rules file". This file should be named like the CSV file with an additional .rules suffix (eg: mybank.csv.rules); or, you can specify the file with --rules-file PATH. hledger will create it if necessary, with some default rules which you'll need to adjust. At minimum, the rules file must specify the date and amount fields. For an example, see How to read CSV files.

(For CSV output, see CSV output.)

CSV rules

The following six kinds of rule can appear in the rules file, in any order. Blank lines and lines beginning with # or ; are ignored.

skip N
Skip this number of CSV records at the beginning. You'll need this when your CSV contains header lines. Eg:

# ignore the first CSV line
skip 1

date-format DATEFMT
When your CSV date fields are not formatted like YYYY/MM/DD (or YYYY-MM-DD or YYYY.MM.DD), you'll need to specify the format. DATEFMT is a strptime-like date parsing pattern, which must parse the date field values completely. Examples:

# parses "6/11/2013":
date-format %-d/%-m/%Y

# parses "11/06/2013":
date-format %m/%d/%Y

# parses "2013-Nov-06":
date-format %Y-%h-%d

# parses "11/6/2013 11:32 PM":
date-format %-m/%-d/%Y %l:%M %p

fields CSVFIELDNAME1, CSVFIELDNAME2...
(Field list)
This (a) names the CSV fields (names may not contain whitespace), and (b) assigns them to journal entry fields if you use any of these standard field names:

date, date2, status, code, description, comment, account1, account2, amount, amount-in, amount-out, currency.

Eg:

# use the 1st, 2nd and 4th CSV fields as the entry date, description and amount
# give the 7th and 8th fields custom names for later reference
fields date, description, , amount, , , somefield, anotherfield

ENTRYFIELDNAME FIELDVALUE
(Field assignment)
This sets a journal entry field (one of the standard names above) to the given text value, which can include CSV field values interpolated by name (%CSVFIELDNAME) or 1-based position (%N).

Field assignments can be used instead of or in addition to a field list. Eg:

# set the amount to the 4th CSV field with "USD " prepended
amount USD %4

# combine three fields to make a comment (containing two tags)
comment note: %somefield - %anotherfield, date: %1

if PATTERN
    FIELDASSIGNMENTS...
or
if
PATTERN
PATTERN...
    FIELDASSIGNMENTS...
(Conditional block)
This applies one or more field assignments, only to those CSV records matched by one of the PATTERNs. The patterns are case-insensitive regular expressions which match anywhere within the whole CSV record (it's not yet possible to match within a specific field). When there are multiple patterns they should be written on separate lines, unindented. The field assignments are on separate lines indented by at least one space. Examples:

# if the CSV record contains "groceries", set account2 to "expenses:groceries"
if groceries
 account2 expenses:groceries

# if the CSV record contains any of these patterns, set account2 and comment as shown
if
monthly service fee
atm transaction fee
banking thru software
 account2 expenses:business:banking
 comment  XXX deductible ? check

include RULESFILE
Include another rules file at this point. RULESFILE is either an absolute file path or a path relative to the current file's directory. Eg:

# rules reused with several CSV files
include common.rules

Other CSV tips

Each generated journal entry will have two postings, to account1 and account2 respectively. Currently it's not possible to generate entries with more than two postings.

If the CSV has debit/credit amounts in separate fields, assign to the amount-in and amount-out pseudo fields instead of amount.

If the CSV has the currency in a separate field, assign that to the currency pseudo field which will be automatically prepended to the amount. (Or you can do the same thing with a field assignment.)

If an amount value is parenthesised, it will be de-parenthesised and sign-flipped automatically.

The generated journal entries will be sorted by date. The original order of same-day entries will be preserved, usually.

Timelog

hledger can also read timelog files. As with Ledger, these are (a subset of) timeclock.el's format, containing clock-in and clock-out entries like so:

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

The date is a simple date, so hyphen (-) and period (.) are also allowed as separators, leading zeroes are optional, the year may be omitted (and a default year directive can be used to set it).

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).

hledger treats each clock-in/clock-out pair as a transaction posting some number of hours to a (single) account. Or, several transactions if the session spans more than one day. Eg for the above time log, hledger print gives:

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.timelog to download and some queries to try:

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

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

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

• at the command line, use these bash aliases:

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

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

Options

Use hledger COMMAND --help to list the options available for that command. The following general options are common to most commands, though not every one is applicable in all cases:

General flags:
  -f --file=FILE          use a different input file. For stdin, use -
     --rules-file=RFILE   CSV conversion rules file (default: FILE.rules)
     --alias=OLD=NEW      display accounts named OLD as NEW
     --ignore-assertions  ignore any balance assertions in the journal
  -b --begin=DATE         include postings/txns on or after this date
  -e --end=DATE           include postings/txns before this date
  -D --daily              multiperiod/multicolumn report by day
  -W --weekly             multiperiod/multicolumn report by week
  -M --monthly            multiperiod/multicolumn report by month
  -Q --quarterly          multiperiod/multicolumn report by quarter
  -Y --yearly             multiperiod/multicolumn report by year
  -p --period=PERIODEXP   set start date, end date, and/or reporting interval
                          all at once (overrides the flags above)
     --date2 --aux-date   use postings/txns' secondary dates instead
  -C --cleared            include only cleared postings/txns
     --pending            include only pending postings/txns
  -U --uncleared          include only uncleared (and pending) postings/txns
  -R --real               include only non-virtual postings
     --depth=N            hide accounts/postings deeper than N
  -E --empty              show empty/zero things which are normally omitted
  -B --cost               show amounts in their cost price's commodity
  -h --help               show general help or (after command) command help
     --debug=N            show debug output if N is 1-9 (default: 0)
     --version            show version information

Read on for some additional notes.

Smart dates

Unlike dates in the journal file, hledger's user interfaces accept a more flexible date syntax. These "smart" dates allow some english words, can be relative to today's date, and assume 1 when less-significant date parts are omitted.

Examples:

|--------------------------------------------------|------------------------------------------------------| | 2009/1/1, 2009/01/01, 2009-1-1, 2009.1.1   | simple dates, several separators allowed | | 2009/1, 2009 | same as above - a missing day or month defaults to 1 | | 1/1, january, jan, this year | relative dates, meaning january 1 of the current year| | next year | january 1 of next year | | this month | the 1st of the current month | | this week | the most recent monday | | last week | the monday of the week before this one | | lastweek | spaces are optional | | today, yesterday, tomorrow | |

Reporting interval

A reporting interval can be specified so that commands like register, balance and activity will divide their reports into multiple report periods. The basic intervals can be selected with one of -D/--daily, -W/--weekly, -M/--monthly, -Q/--quarterly, or -Y/--yearly. More complex intervals may be specified with a period expression.

Period expressions

The -p/--period option accepts period expressions, a shorthand way of expressing a start date, end date, and or reporting interval all at once. Note a period expression on the command line will cause any other date flags (-b/-e/-D/-W/-M/-Q/-Y) to be ignored.

hledger's period expressions are similar to Ledger's, though not identical. 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. Just don't run two dates together:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Period expressions can also start with (or be) a reporting interval: daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, yearly, or one of the every ... expressions below. Optionally the word in may appear between the reporting interval and the start/end dates. Examples:

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

Depth limiting

With the --depth N option, commands like account, balance and register will show only the uppermost accounts in the account tree, down to level N. Use this when you want a summary with less detail.

Queries

One of hledger's strengths is being able to quickly report on precise subsets of your data.
Most commands accept an optional query expression, written as arguments after the command name, to filter the data by date, account name or other criteria. Query expressions are also used in the web ui's search form.

The query syntax is similar to a Google search expression: one or more space-separated search terms, optional prefixes to match specific fields, quotes to enclose whitespace, etc. A query term can be any of the following:

• REGEX - match account names by this regular expression
• acct:REGEX - same as above
• code:REGEX - match by transaction code (eg check number)
• desc:REGEX - match transaction descriptions
• date:PERIODEXPR - match dates within the specified period. Actually, full period syntax is not yet supported.
• date2:PERIODEXPR - as above, but match secondary dates
• tag:NAME[=REGEX] - match by (exact, case sensitive) tag name, and optionally match the tag value by regular expression. Note tag: will match a transaction if it or any its postings have the tag, and will match posting if it or its parent transaction has the tag.
• depth:N - match (or display, depending on command) accounts at or above this depth
• status:* or status:! or status: - match cleared, pending, or uncleared/pending transactions respectively
• real:1 or real:0 - match real/virtual-ness
• empty:1 or empty:0 - match if amount is/is not zero
• amt:N, amt:<N, amt:<=N, amt:>N, amt:>=N - match postings with a single-commodity amount that is equal to, less than, or greater than N. (Multi-commodity amounts are not tested, and will always match.) The comparison has two modes: if N is preceded by a + or - sign (or is 0), the two signed numbers are compared. Otherwise, the absolute magnitudes are compared, ignoring sign.
• cur:REGEX - match postings or transactions including any amounts whose currency/commodity symbol is fully matched by REGEX. (For a partial match, use .*REGEX.*). Note, to match characters which are regex-significant, like the dollar sign ($), you need to prepend \. And when using the command line you need to add one more level of quoting to hide it from the shell, so eg do: hledger print cur:'\$' or hledger print cur:\\$.
• not: before any of the above negates the match

Combining query arguments

hledger query expressions don't support full boolean logic. Instead, multiple query terms are combined as follows:

• The print command selects transactions which:
  • match any of the description terms AND
  • have any postings matching any of the positive account terms AND
  • have no postings matching any of the negative account terms AND
  • match all the other terms.

• Other reporting commands (eg register and balance) select transactions/postings/accounts which match (or negatively match):
  • any of the description terms AND
  • any of the account terms AND
  • all the other terms.

Query arguments or options ?

On the command line, some of the query terms above can also be expressed as command-line flags. Generally you can mix and match query arguments and flags, and the resulting query will be their intersection. Remember that a -p period flag will cause any other -b, -e or -p flags on the command line to be ignored.

Commands

hledger provides a number of subcommands out of the box; run hledger with no arguments to see a list. More add-on commands will appear if you install additional hledger-* packages, or if you put programs or scripts named hledger-NAME in your PATH.

To choose a command, write it as the first command-line argument. You can write its full name (eg balance), or one of the standard short aliases displayed in parentheses in the command list (eg bs), or any unambiguous prefix of a command (eg inc).

Overview

Built-in commands:

• accounts - show account names
• activity - show a histogram of transaction activity
• add - interactively prompt for new journal entries
• balance - show accounts and their balances in one or more periods
• balancesheet - show asset and liability balances
• cashflow - show changes in asset balances
• incomestatement - show revenues and expenses
• print - show journal entries
• register - show postings, usually to a specific account, in one or more periods
• stats - show some journal summary info
• test - run built-in unit tests

Add-on commands:

• autosync - downloads OFX data from banks, converts OFX to journal entries, and prints the new ones
• diff - compare two journal files and show differing transactions
• interest - generate interest transactions for various schemes
• irr - calculate the internal rate of return of an account
• web - a web UI for browsing transactions and accounts and adding new ones

Experimental commands:

• equity - generate an "opening balances" entry restoring all account balances
• print-unique - show only journal entries with unique descriptions
• rewrite - like print, but adds custom postings to matched entries

Built-in commands

accounts

This command lists matched account names, as a flat list by default, or (with the --tree flag) as a hierarchy. With no query arguments, all account names are listed.

activity

The activity command displays an ascii bar chart showing transaction counts by day, week, month or other reporting interval (by day is the default).

Examples:

$ hledger activity -p weekly dining

add

Many hledger users edit their journals directly with a text editor, or generate them from CSV. For more interactive data entry, there is the add command, which prompts interactively on the console for new transactions, and appends them to the journal file. This is the only built-in command which can write to your journal file.

To use it, just run hledger add and follow the prompts. You can add as many transactions as you like; when you are finished, enter . or press control-d or control-c to exit.

Additional convenience features:

• add tries to provide useful defaults, using the most similar recent transaction (by description) as a template.

• You can also set the initial defaults with command line arguments.

• Readline-style edit keys can be used during data entry.

• The tab key will auto-complete whenever possible - accounts, descriptions, dates (yesterday, today, tomorrow). If the input area is empty, it will insert the default value.

• If the journal defines a default commodity, it will be added to any bare numbers entered.

• A parenthesised transaction code may be entered following a date.

• Comments and tags may be entered following a description or amount.

• If you make a mistake, enter < at any prompt to restart the transaction.

• Input prompts are displayed in a different colour when the terminal supports it.

Here's an example.

balance

The balance command displays accounts and their balances. It is the most complex and perhaps most useful command.

Simple balance reports

Simple balance reports have no reporting interval. They show the sum of matched postings in each account. (If postings are not date-restricted, this is usually the same as the ending balance).

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

By default, simple balance reports display the accounts as a hierarchy, with subaccounts indented below their parent. Each account's balance is the "inclusive" balance - it includes the balances of any subaccounts.

"Boring parent accounts" (containing a single interesting subaccount and no balance of their own) are elided into the following line for more compact output. Use --no-elide to prevent this.

Accounts which have zero balance (and no non-zero subaccounts) are omitted. Use -E/--empty to show them.

A final total is displayed by default; use -N/--no-total to suppress it.

Flat mode

To see a flat list of full account names instead of the default hierarchical display, use --flat. In this mode, accounts (unless depth-clipped) show their "exclusive" balance, excluding any subaccount balances. In this mode, you can also use --drop N to omit the first few account name components.

Depth limiting

With --depth N, balance shows accounts only to the specified depth. This is very useful to show a complex charts of accounts in less detail. In flat mode, balances from accounts below the depth limit will be shown as part of a parent account at the depth limit.

Multicolumn balance reports

With a reporting interval, multiple balance columns will be shown, one for each report period. There are three types of multi-column balance report, showing different information:

1. By default: each column shows the sum of postings in that period, ie the account's change of balance in that period. This is useful eg for a monthly income statement.

2. With --cumulative: each column shows the ending balance for that period, accumulating the changes across periods, starting from 0 at the report start date. This mode is not often used.

3. With --historical/-H: each column shows the actual historical ending balance for that period, accumulating the changes across periods, starting from the actual balance at the report start date. This is useful eg for a multi-year balance sheet.

Multi-column balance reports display accounts in flat mode by default; to see the hierarchy, use --tree.

Note that with a reporting interval, the report start/end dates will be "enlarged" if necessary so that they encompass the displayed report periods. This is so that the first and last periods will be "full" and comparable to the others.

The -E/--empty flag does two things here: first, the report will show all columns within the specified report period (without -E, leading and trailing columns with all zeroes are not shown). Second, all accounts which existed at the report start date will be considered, not just the ones with activity during the report period (use -E to include low-activity accounts which would otherwise would be omitted).

The -T/--row-total flag adds an additional column showing the total for each row. The -A/--average flag adds a column showing the average value in each row. Note in --H/--historical mode only the average is useful, and in --cumulative mode neither is useful.

Customising console output

(Tip: currently two commands, balance and register, can customise their console output, and they do it differently.)

In simple balance reports (not multi-column ones), the --format FMT option will customize the format of output lines. FMT is like a C printf/strftime-style format string, except that field names are enclosed in parentheses:

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

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

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

The following FIELD types are currently supported:

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

Examples:

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

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

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

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

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

Output destination

The balance, print and register commands can write their output to a destination other than the console. This is controlled by the -o/--output-file option. Eg:

• hledger balance -o - - write to stdout (the default)
• hledger balance -o FILE - write to FILE

CSV output

The balance, print and register commands can write their output as CSV. This is useful for exporting data to other applications, eg to make charts in a spreadsheet. This is controlled by the -O/--output-format option, or by specifying a .csv file extension with -o/--output-file. Eg:

• hledger balance -O csv - write CSV to stdout
• hledger balance -o FILE.csv - write CSV to FILE.csv

balancesheet

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

cashflow

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

incomestatement

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

print

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

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

Examples:

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

The print command also supports output destination and CSV output.

register

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

$ hledger register

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

$ hledger register assets:bank:checking

The --historical/-H flag adds the balance from any prior postings to the running total, to show the actual running account balance.

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

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

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 works best when showing just one account and one commodity.

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

With a reporting interval register shows aggregated summary postings, within each interval:

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

One summary posting will be shown for each account in each interval. Summary postings with a zero amount are not shown; use the --empty/-E flag to show them.

If necessary, use the --depth option to summarise the accounts. It's often most useful to see just one line per interval.

When using report intervals, the report's normal start/end dates are "enlarged" to contain a whole number of intervals, so that the first and last intervals will be "full" and comparable to the others.

Customising console output

(Tip: currently two commands, balance and register, can customise their console output, and they do it differently.)

register uses the full terminal width by default, except on windows. You can override this by setting the COLUMNS environment variable (not a bash shell variable) or by using the --width/-w option.

The description and account columns normally share the space equally (about half of (width - 40) each). You can adjust this by adding a description width as part of --width's argument, comma-separated: --width W,D . Here's a diagram:

<--------------------------------- width (W) ---------------------------------->
date (10)  description (D)       account (W-41-D)     amount (12)   balance (12)
DDDDDDDDDD dddddddddddddddddddd  aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa  AAAAAAAAAAAA  AAAAAAAAAAAA

and some examples:

$ hledger reg                 # use terminal width on posix
$ hledger reg -w 100          # width 100, equal description/account widths
$ hledger reg -w 100,40       # width 100, wider description
$ hledger reg -w $COLUMNS,100 # terminal width, and set description width

The register command also supports output destination and CSV output.

stats

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

Examples:

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

test

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

Examples:

$ hledger test
$ hledger test -v balance

Add-on commands

Add-on commands are executables in your PATH whose name starts with hledger- and ends with no file extension or one of these common executable extensions: .hs,.lhs,.pl,.py,.rb,.rkt,.sh,.bat,.com,.exe. (Also, add-on names may not be the same as any built-in command or alias).

hledger will detect these and act as a convenient front end, displaying them in the command list and letting you invoke them with hledger ADDON. There are some tricks when specifying options:

• Options appearing before ADDON will be visible only to hledger and not be passed to the add-on. Eg: hledger --help web shows hledger's help, hledger web --help shows hledger-web's help.
• Options understood only by the add-on must go after a -- argument so that hledger does not reject them. Eg: hledger web -- --server.

Add-ons which are written in haskell can take advantage of hledger's library API for journal parsing, reports, consistent command-line options etc. One notable add-on is hledger-web, which is maintained along with hledger and supported on the same major platforms. Other add-ons may have different release schedules and platform support.

autosync

ledger-autosync, which includes a hledger-autosync alias, downloads transactions from your bank(s) via OFX, and prints just the new ones as journal entries which you can add to your journal. It can also operate on .OFX files which you've downloaded manually. It can be a nice alternative to hledger's built-in CSV reader, especially if your bank supports OFX download.

diff

hledger-diff compares two journal files. Given an account name, it prints out the transactions affecting that account which are in one journal file but not in the other. This can be useful for reconciling existing journals with bank statements.

interest

hledger-interest computes interests for a given account. Using command line flags, the program can be configured to use various schemes for day-counting, such as act/act, 30/360, 30E/360, and 30/360isda. Furthermore, it supports a (small) number of interest schemes, i.e. annual interest with a fixed rate and the scheme mandated by the German BGB288 (Basiszins für Verbrauchergeschäfte). See the package page for more.

irr

hledger-irr computes the internal rate of return, also known as the effective interest rate, of a given investment. After specifying what account holds the investment, and what account stores the gains (or losses, or fees, or cost), it calculates the hypothetical annual rate of fixed rate investment that would have provided the exact same cash flow. See the package page for more.

web

hledger-web provides a web-based user interface for viewing and modifying your ledger. It includes an account register view that is more useful than the command-line register, and basic data entry. You can see it running at demo.hledger.org.

web-specific options:

--server            log requests, don't exit on inactivity
--port=N            serve on tcp port N (default 5000)
--base-url=URL      use this base url (default http://localhost:PORT/)
--static-root=URL   use this base url for static files (default http://localhost:PORT/static)

By default, the web command starts a transient local web app and displays it in your default web browser ("local ui mode"). With --server, it starts the web app, leaves it running, and also logs requests to the console ("server mode").

Typically in server mode you'll also want to use --base-url to set the protocol/hostname/port/path to be used in hyperlinks.

You can use --port to listen on a different TCP port, eg if you are running multiple hledger-web instances. Note --port's argument need not be the same as the PORT in the base url.

The more advanced option --static-root allows the static files served from a separate base url. This enables the optimization that the static files can be served from a generic web server like apache, which is good at handling static files and caching. One can also serve the files in a separate domain to reduce cookies overhead.

The web app detects changes in journal files (but not CSV or rules files, currently), showing the new data on the next request. If such a change makes the file unparseable, hledger-web will show an error until the file has been fixed.

Note there is no built-in access control, so unless you run it behind an authenticating proxy (such as apache or nginx), any visitor to your server will be able to see and add entries to the journal.

Examples:

$ hledger-web
$ hledger-web -E -B --depth 2 -f some.journal
$ hledger-web --server --port 5010 --base-url http://some.vhost.com --debug=1

Experimental commands

The following add-ons are examples and experiments provided in the extra directory in the hledger source. Add this directory to your PATH to make them available. The scripts are designed to run interpreted on unix systems (for tweaking), or you can compile them (for speed and robustness).

equity

Like ledger's equity command, this prints a single journal entry with postings matching the current balance in each account (or the specified accounts) in the default journal. An entry like this is useful to carry over asset and liability balances when beginning a new journal file, eg at the start of the year.

You can also use the same entry with signs reversed to close out the old file, resetting balances to 0. This means you'll see the correct asset/liability balances whether you use one file or a whole sequence of files as input to hledger.

print-unique

Prints only journal entries which are unique (by description).

rewrite

Prints all journal entries, adding specified custom postings to matched entries.

Appendices

Regular Expressions

hledger uses regular expressions in a number of places:

• query terms, on the command line and in the hledger-web search form: REGEX, desc:REGEX, cur:REGEX, tag:...=REGEX
• CSV rules conditional blocks: if REGEX ...
• account alias directives and options: alias /REGEX/ = REPLACEMENT, --alias /REGEX/=REPLACEMENT

hledger's regular expressions come from the regex-tdfa library. In general they:

• are case insensitive
• are infix matching (do not need to match the entire thing being matched)
• are POSIX extended regular expressions
• also support GNU word boundaries (\<, \>, \b, \B)
• and parenthesised capturing groups and numeric backreferences in replacement strings
• do not support mode modifiers like (?s)

Some things to note:

• In the alias directive and --alias option, regular expressions must be enclosed in forward slashes (/REGEX/). Elsewhere in hledger, these are not required.

• 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:\$.

• On the command line, some metacharacters like $ have a special meaning to the shell and so must be escaped a second time, with single or double quotes or another backslash. Eg, to match amounts with the dollar sign from the command line, write cur:'\$' or cur:\\$.

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-with-Vim | | 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 |

Troubleshooting

Run-time problems

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"

cabal installs binaries into a special directory, which should be added to your PATH environment variable. On unix-like systems, it is ~/.cabal/bin.

"Illegal byte sequence" or "Invalid or incomplete multibyte or wide character" errors

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Known limitations

Here are some things to be aware of.

Add-on-specific options must follow --

When invoking an add-on via hledger, add-on flags which are not also understood by the main hledger executable must have a -- argument preceding them. Eg hledger-web's --server flag must be used like so: hledger web -- --server.

-w/--width and --debug options must be written without whitespace

Up to hledger 0.23, these optional-value flags did not work with whitespace between the flag and value. IE these worked: --debug, -w, --debug=2, -w100, but these did not: --debug 2, -w 100. From 0.24, a value is required and the whitespace does not matter.

Not all of Ledger's journal file syntax is supported

See file format differences.

balance is less speedy than Ledger's on large data files

hledger's balance command (in particular) takes more time, and uses more memory, than Ledger's. This becomes more noticeable with large data files.

Windows CMD.EXE

Non-ascii characters and colours are not supported.

Windows cygwin/msys/mintty

The tab key is not supported in hledger add.