hledger/MANUAL.markdown

title
hledger manual

hledger manual

About

hledger is a program for tracking money, time, or any other commodity, using a simple, editable file format and the powerful principles of double-entry accounting. It was inspired by ledger.

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 aims to help both computer experts and regular folks gain clarity in their finances. For the moment, it may be a little more suited to techies. Please give it a try and let me know how we're doing.

hledger is copyright (c) 2007-2010 Simon Michael simon@joyful.com and contributors, and released as Free Software under GPL version 3 or later.

This is the manual for hledger 0.13.0.

Installing

hledger works on all major platforms. You can download and run current release binaries from the download page.

You can also build the current release from source using cabal-install. Ensure you have a working haskell environment, then:

$ cabal update
$ cabal install hledger

(Add -fweb, -fvty, or -fchart to cabal install those extra features. Next release these will be separate packages.)

(Both methods above require some extra support files for the web interface, see the download page. Next release will not require this.)

Or, you can build the latest development version:

$ darcs get --lazy http://joyful.com/repos/hledger
$ cd hledger
$ make install

If you have any trouble, please see Troubleshooting and/or seek Support.

Usage

hledger looks for data in a journal file named .journal in your home directory, creating it if it doesn't exist. Or you can specify a different file with the -f option or the LEDGER environment variable. Basic usage is:

$ hledger [OPTIONS] COMMAND [PATTERNS]

where the command is one of the commands described below. Filter patterns may be used to select a subset of the journal data, eg to report only food-related transactions. Options may appear anywhere on the command line.

To try it out, just run hledger add and enter some transactions. (Or, you could save the sample file as .journal in your home directory.) Now try some of these commands:

$ hledger --help                        # show command-line help
$ hledger add                           # add some new transactions to the journal file
$ hledger balance                       # all accounts with aggregated balances
$ hledger bal --depth 1                 # only top-level accounts
$ hledger register                      # transaction register
$ hledger reg income                    # transactions to/from an income account
$ hledger reg checking                  # checking transactions
$ hledger reg desc:shop                 # transactions with shop in the description
$ hledger histogram                     # transactions per day, or other interval

You'll find more examples below.

Frequently asked questions

• How does hledger relate to John Wiegley's ledger project ?

  hledger was inspired by and modelled closely on ledger (called "c++ ledger" in these docs.) The two projects (indeed the whole family of ledger-inspired projects) collaborate freely, and we share ledger's IRC channel.

  After using and contributing to c++ ledger for a while, I wrote hledger because I wanted to develop financial tools in the Haskell programming language and ecosystem, whose advantages I believe are compelling.

  I have also tried to make hledger a little more simple, user-friendly, installable, and documented, and to offer additional user interfaces (add, vty, web) and other things that I find useful.

  C++ ledger has more command-line power-user features (periodic transactions, budgets, capital gains tracking, value expressions, custom output formats, ...) and remains faster and more memory efficient on large data sets.

  We try to stay compatible with c++ ledger as far as possible; it's intended that you can use both tools on the same journal file. Here is more detail about compatibility.

Reference

Overview

This version of hledger mimics a subset of ledger 3.x, and adds some features of its own. We currently support regular journal transactions, timelog entries, multiple commodities, (fixed) price history, virtual postings, filtering by account and description, the familiar print, register & balance commands and several new commands. We handle (almost) the full period expression syntax, and very limited display expressions consisting of a simple date predicate.

Here is the command-line help:

Usage: hledger [OPTIONS] COMMAND [PATTERNS]
       hledger [OPTIONS] convert CSVFILE
       hledger [OPTIONS] stats

hledger reads your ~/.journal file, or another specified with $LEDGER or -f FILE

COMMAND is one of (may be abbreviated):
  add       - prompt for new transactions and add them to the journal
  balance   - show accounts, with balances
  convert   - read CSV bank data and display in journal format
  histogram - show a barchart of transactions per day or other interval
  print     - show transactions in journal format
  register  - show transactions as a register with running balance
  stats     - show various statistics for a journal
  vty       - run a simple curses-style UI (if installed with -fvty)
  web       - run a simple web-based UI (if installed with -fweb
  chart     - generate balances pie charts (if installed with -fchart)
  test      - run self-tests

PATTERNS are regular expressions which filter by account name.
Prefix with desc: to filter by transaction description instead.
Prefix with not: to negate a pattern. When using both, not: comes last.

DATES can be y/m/d or ledger-style smart dates like "last month".

Use --help-options to see OPTIONS, or --help-all/-H.

Options:

  -f FILE  --file=FILE        use a different journal/timelog file; - means stdin
           --no-new-accounts  don't allow to create new accounts
  -b DATE  --begin=DATE       report on transactions on or after this date
  -e DATE  --end=DATE         report on transactions before this date
  -p EXPR  --period=EXPR      report on transactions during the specified period
                              and/or with the specified reporting interval
  -C       --cleared          report only on cleared transactions
  -U       --uncleared        report only on uncleared transactions
  -B       --cost, --basis    report cost of commodities
           --depth=N          hide sub-accounts deeper than this
  -d EXPR  --display=EXPR     show only transactions matching EXPR (where
                              EXPR is 'dOP[DATE]' and OP is <, <=, =, >=, >)
           --effective        use transactions' effective dates, if any
  -E       --empty            show empty/zero things which are normally elided
  -R       --real             report only on real (non-virtual) transactions
           --flat             balance: show full account names, unindented
           --drop=N           balance: with --flat, elide first N account name components
           --no-total         balance: hide the final total
  -D       --daily            register, stats: report by day
  -W       --weekly           register, stats: report by week
  -M       --monthly          register, stats: report by month
  -Q       --quarterly        register, stats: report by quarter
  -Y       --yearly           register, stats: report by year
  -v       --verbose          show more verbose output
           --debug            show extra debug output; implies verbose
           --binary-filename  show the download filename for this hledger build
  -V       --version          show version information
  -h       --help             show basic command-line usage
           --help-options     show command-line options
  -H       --help-all         show command-line usage and options

Journal file

hledger reads data from a plain text file, called a journal because it represents a standard accounting general journal. It contains a number of transactions, 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.

You can use hledger without learning any more about this file; just use the add or web commands.

Many users, though, edit the journal file directly with a text editor. This is a distinguishing feature of hledger (and c++ ledger.) You can even do this while the web interface is running, and see the changes right away.

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 * after the date means "cleared" (or anything you want)
    liabilities:debts     $1
    assets:bank:checking

Each transaction has a date, optional description, and two or more postings, of some amount to some account. The amounts within a transaction must balance, ie add up to 0. Or, you can leave one amount blank and it will be inferred.

Note that account names may contain single spaces, while the amount must be separated from the account name by at least two spaces.

An amount is a number, with an optional currency symbol or commodity name on either the left or right. Commodity names which contain more than just letters should be enclosed in double quotes. Negative amounts usually have the minus sign next to the number ($-1), but it may also go before the currency symbol/commodity name (-$1).

hledger's file format aims to be compatible with c++ ledger, so you can use both tools on your journal. For more details, see File format compatibility.

Commands

Here are the commands hledger supports. Note,

• the most frequently used commands are print, register and balance.

• except where noted, all commands are read-only, that is they never modify your data. The exceptions are add and web.

add

This command can append to your journal file.

The add command prompts interactively for new transactions, and appends them to the journal file. Each transaction is appended when you complete it by entering . (period) at the account prompt. Enter control-D or control-C when you are done.

The add command tries to be helpful, providing:

• Sensible defaults

• History awareness: if there are existing transactions approximately matching the description you enter, they will be displayed and the best match will provide defaults for the other fields. If you specify filter pattern(s) on the command line, only matching transactions will be considered as history.

• Readline-style input: during data entry, the usual editing keys should work.

• Auto-completion for account names: while entering account names, the tab key will auto-complete as far as possible, or list the available options.

• Default commodity awareness: if the journal specifies a default commodity directive, that will be applied to any bare numbers entered.

Examples:

$ hledger add
$ hledger -f home.journal add equity:bob

balance

The balance command displays accounts and their balances, indented to show the account hierarchy. Examples:

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

A final total is displayed, use --no-total to suppress this. Also, the --depth N option shows accounts only to the specified depth, useful for an overview:

$ for y in 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010; do echo; echo $y; hledger -f $y.journal balance ^expenses --depth 2; done

With --flat, a non-hierarchical list of full account names is displayed instead. This mode shows just the accounts actually contributing to the balance, making the arithmetic a little more obvious to non-hledger users. In this mode you can also use --drop N to elide the first few account name components. Note --depth doesn't work too well with --flat currently; it hides deeper accounts rather than aggregating them.

convert

The convert command reads a CSV file you have downloaded from your bank, and prints out the transactions in journal format, suitable for adding to your journal. It does not alter your journal directly.

This can be a lot quicker than entering every transaction by hand. (The downside is that you are less likely to notice if your bank makes an error!) Use it like this:

$ hledger convert FILE.csv >FILE.journal

where FILE.csv is your downloaded csv file. This will convert the csv data using conversion rules defined in FILE.rules (auto-creating this file if needed), and save the output into a temporary journal file. Then you should review FILE.journal for problems; update the rules and convert again if needed; and finally copy/paste transactions which are new into your main journal.

convert requires a *.rules file containing data definitions and rules for assigning destination accounts to transactions; it will be auto-created if missing. Typically you will have one csv file and one rules file per bank account. Here's an example rules file for converting csv data from a Wells Fargo checking account:

base-account assets:bank:checking
date-field 0
description-field 4
amount-field 1
currency $

; account-assigning rules:

SPECTRUM
expenses:health:gym

ITUNES
BLKBSTR=BLOCKBUSTER
expenses:entertainment

(TO|FROM) SAVINGS
assets:bank:savings

This says:

• the account corresponding to this csv file is assets🏦checking
• the first csv field is the date, the second is the amount, the fifth is the description
• prepend a dollar sign to the amount field
• if description contains SPECTRUM (case-insensitive), the transaction is a gym expense
• if description contains ITUNES or BLKBSTR, the transaction is an entertainment expense; also rewrite BLKBSTR as BLOCKBUSTER
• if description contains TO SAVINGS or FROM SAVINGS, the transaction is a savings transfer

Notes:

• Lines beginning with ; or # are ignored (but avoid using inside an account rule)

• Definitions must come first, one per line, all in one paragraph. Each is a name and a value separated by whitespace. Supported names are: base-account, date-field, status-field, code-field, description-field, amount-field, currency-field, currency. All are optional and will use defaults if not specified.

• The remainder of the file is account-assigning rules. Each is a paragraph consisting of one or more description-matching patterns (case-insensitive regular expressions), one per line, followed by the account name to use when the transaction's description matches any of these patterns.

• A match pattern may be followed by a replacement pattern, separated by =, which rewrites the matched part of the description. Use this if you want to clean up messy bank data. To rewrite the entire description, use a match pattern like .*PAT.*=REPL. Within a replacement pattern, you can refer to the matched text with \0 and any regex groups with \1, \2 in the usual way.

histogram

The histogram command displays a quick bar chart showing transaction counts by day, week, month or other reporting interval.

Examples:

$ hledger histogram -p weekly dining

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.

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

register

The register command displays postings, one per line, and their running total. With no filter patterns, 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 --depth option limits the amount of sub-account detail displayed:

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

With a reporting interval it shows aggregated summary postings within each interval:

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

stats

The stats command displays quick summary information for the whole journal, or by period.

Examples:

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

test

This command runs hledger's internal self-tests and displays a quick report. The -v option shows more detail, and 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 test for smoke at any time.

Examples:

$ hledger test
$ hledger test -v balance

Add-on commands

The following extra commands will be available if they have been installed. Note, currently you must invoke them like, eg, $ hledger-web ... - not $ hledger web .... The hledger-NAME executables support the usual hledger options, and possible specific options of their own. Add-ons may have varying levels of support and maturity and may not be available on all platforms - if available, they are provided on the download page.

chart

Requires additional GTK-related libraries and possibly other things. On ubuntu: apt-get install libghc6-gtk-dev

The chart command saves an image file showing a pie chart of your top account balances. It is pretty rudimentary. Note that positive and negative balances will not be displayed together in the same chart; any balances not matching the sign of the first one will be ignored.

The output file is "hledger.png", or you can specify another with -o/--output. Use a different suffix (eg .gif or .jpg) to generate that format.

You can adjust the image resolution with --size=WIDTHxHEIGHT.

Set the number of accounts to show with --items=N (default is 10).

To show only accounts above a certain depth, use the --depth option; otherwise the chart can include accounts of any depth. When a parent and child account both appear in a chart, the parent's balance will be exclusive of the child's.

Examples:

$ hledger-chart assets --depth 2
$ hledger-chart liabilities --depth 2
$ hledger-chart ^expenses -o balance.png --size 1000x600 --items 20
$ for m in 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12; do hledger-chart -p 2009/$m ^expenses --depth 2 -o expenses-2009$m.png --size 400x300; done

vty

Not available on microsoft windows, except possibly via cygwin.

The vty command starts a simple curses-style (full-screen, text) user interface, which allows interactive navigation of the print/register/balance reports. This lets you browse around your numbers and get quick insights with less typing.

Examples:

$ hledger-vty
$ hledger-vty -BE food

web

Requires GHC 6.12 or greater.

This command can edit or overwrite your journal file.

The web command starts a web server providing a web-based user interface, and if possible, opens a web browser to view it. The web UI combines the features of the print, register, balance and add commands, and adds a general edit command.

Examples:

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

Warning: unlike all other hledger features, the edit form can alter your existing journal data. You can edit, or erase, the journal file through the web ui. There is currently no access control. A numbered backup of the file will be saved at each edit, in normal circumstances (eg if file permissions allow, disk is not full, etc.)

There are some hledger-web-specific options:

--port=N           serve on tcp port N (default 5000)

The server listens on port 5000 by default; use --port to change that.

--base-url=URL     use this base url (default http://localhost:PORT)

If you want to visit the web UI from other machines, you'll need to use this option to fix the hyperlinks. Just give your machine's host name or ip address instead of localhost. This option is also lets you conform to a custom url scheme when running hledger-web behind a reverse proxy as part of a larger site. Note that the PORT in the base url need not be the same as the --port argument.

Other features

Here are some additional hledger features and concepts that affect most commands.

Filter patterns

Most commands accept one or more filter pattern arguments after the command name, to select a subset of transactions or postings. There are two kinds of pattern:

• an account pattern, which is a regular expression. This is matched against postings' accounts. Optionally, it may be prefixed with not: in which case the match is negated.

• a description pattern, like the above but prefixed with desc:. This is matched against transactions' descriptions. Note, when negating a desc: pattern, not: goes last, eg: desc:not:someregexp.

When you specify multiple filter patterns, hledger generally selects the transactions or postings which match (or negatively match)

any of the account patterns AND any of the description patterns

The print command selects transactions which

match any of the description patterns AND have any postings matching any of the positive account patterns AND have no postings matching any of the negative account patterns

Dates

Simple dates

Within a journal file, dates must follow a fairly simple year/month/day format. Examples:

2010/01/31 or 2010/1/31 or 2010-1-31 or 2010.1.31

The year is optional if you define a default year.

Smart dates

In period expressions, the -b and -e options, the add command and the web add form, more flexible "smart dates" are allowed. Here are some examples:

• 2009/1/1, 2009/01/01, 2009-1-1, 2009.1.1, 2009/1, 2009 (january 1, 2009)
• 1/1, january, jan, this year (january 1, this year)
• next year (january 1, 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)
• today, yesterday, tomorrow

Spaces are optional, so eg: -b lastmonth is valid.

Actual & effective dates

Real-life transactions sometimes have more than one date. For example, you might buy a movie ticket on friday with a bank debit card, and the transaction might appear in your bank account on monday. hledger and ledger users call these the effective date and actual date respectively. We say:

"The ticket purchase took EFFECT on friday, but ACTUALly appeared in my bank balance on monday."

You can often think of effective date as "my date" and actual date as "bank's date".

When these dates differ, as in the example above, hledger's daily balances will not exactly match your bank's. But exact daily reconciling can be quite useful, to see precisely when disagreements arise. There are several ways you can handle this:

1. don't bother with exact daily reconciling; accept temporary disagreements between hledger and bank balances.

2. adjust manually recorded transactions to actual bank dates when necessary. Your hledger balance will match your bank's exactly, but you no longer have a record of when transactions really happened.

3. record both dates separated by an equals sign: the actual date on the left and the effective date on the right. The year is optional in the second date.

Here's an example of the last approach: on friday 19 you record:

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

hledger shows $10 less in your checking account through saturday and sunday.. but your online bank statement does not. It shows the transaction clearing a few days later, on monday 23. So you then insert that actual date:

    ;  ACTUAL=EFFECTIVE
    2010/2/23=2010/2/19 movie
      expenses:cinema          $10
      assets:checking

Now your hledger reports match your bank's daily balance exactly, since they use the actual date by preference. To report based on effective dates instead, use the --effective flag.

Default year

You can set a default year with a Y directive in the journal, then subsequent dates may be written as month/day. Eg:

Y2009

12/15  ; <- equivalent to 2009/12/15

Y2010

1/31  ; <- equivalent to 2010/1/31

Period expressions

hledger supports flexible "period expressions" with the -p/--period option to select transactions within a period of time (eg in 2009) and/or with a reporting interval (eg weekly). hledger period expressions are similar but not identical to c++ ledger's.

Here is a basic period expression specifying the first quarter of 2009 (start date is always included, end date is always excluded):

-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")

The -b/--begin and -e/--end options may be used as a shorthand for -p 'from ...' and -p 'to ...' respectively. But note -p overrides other flags.

Reporting interval

You can also specify a reporting interval, which causes the "register" command to summarise the transactions in each interval. It goes before the dates, and can be: "daily", "weekly", "monthly", "quarterly", or "yearly". An "in" keyword is optional, and so are the dates:

-p "weekly from 2009/1/1 to 2009/4/1"
-p "monthly in 2008"
-p "monthly from 2008"
-p "quarterly"

A reporting interval may also be specified with the -D/--daily, -W/--weekly, -M/--monthly, -Q/--quarterly, and -Y/--yearly options. But note...

-p overrides other flags

A -p/--period option on the command line will cause any -b/-e/-D/-W/-M/-Q/-Y flags to be ignored.

Display expressions

A display expression with the -d/--display option selects which transactions will be displayed (unlike a period expression, which selects the transactions to be used for calculation).

hledger currently supports a very small subset of c++ ledger's display expressions, namely: transactions before or after a date. This is useful for displaying a portion of your checking register with an accurate running total. Eg, to show the balance since the first of the month:

$ hledger register -d "d>=[1]"

Depth limiting

With the --depth N option, reports will show only the uppermost accounts in the account tree, down to level N. See the balance, register and chart examples.

Prices

You can specify a commodity's unit price, or exchange rate, in terms of another commodity. There are two ways.

First, you can set the price explicitly for a single posting by writing @ PRICE after the amount. PRICE is another amount in a different commodity. Eg, here one hundred euros was purchased at $1.35 per euro:

2009/1/2 x
 expenses:foreign currency       €100 @ $1.35
 assets

Secondly, you can set the price for a commodity as of a certain date, by entering a historical price record. These are lines beginning with "P", appearing anywhere in the journal between transactions. Eg, here we say the exchange rate for 1 euro is $1.35 on 2009/1/1 (and thereafter, until a newer price record is found):

P 2009/1/1 € $1.35  ; <- historical price: P, date, commodity symbol, price in 2nd commodity (space-separated)

2009/1/2 x
 expenses:foreign currency       €100
 assets

The print command shows any unit prices in effect. Either example above will show:

$ hledger print
2009/01/02 x
    expenses:foreign currency  €100 @ $1.35
    assets                     €-100 @ $1.35

To see amounts converted to their total cost, use the --cost/-B flag with any command:

$ hledger print --cost
2009/01/02 x
    expenses:foreign currency       $135.00
    assets                         $-135.00

The --cost/-B flag does only one lookup step, ie it will not look up the price of a price's commodity.

Note hledger handles prices differently from c++ ledger in one important respect: we assume unit prices do not vary over time. This is good for simple reporting of foreign currency transactions, but not for tracking fluctuating-value investments or capital gains.

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 timelog files.)

Default commodity

You can set a default commodity with a D directive in the journal. This will be used for any subsequent amounts with no commodity symbol, including the commodity display settings (left or right symbol, spacing, thousands separator, and precision.)

; default commodity: british pound, comma thousands separator, two decimal places
D £1,000.00

2010/1/1
  a  2340.11   ; <- no commodity symbol, so will use the above
  b

Default parent account

You can specify a default parent account within a section of the journal with the !account directive:

!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

Timelog reporting

hledger will also read timelog files in timeclock.el format. As a convenience, if you invoke hledger via an "hours" symlink or copy, it uses your timelog file (~/.timelog or $TIMELOG) by default, rather than your journal.

Timelog entries look like this:

i 2009/03/31 22:21:45 some:project
o 2009/04/01 02:00:34

The clockin description is treated as an account name. Here are some queries to try (after downloading sample.timelog):

ln -s `which hledger` ~/bin/hours            # set up "hours" in your path
export TIMELOG=sample.timelog
hours                                        # show all time balances
hours -p 'last week'                         # last week
hours -p thismonth                           # the space is optional
hours -p 'from 1/15' register project        # project sessions since jan 15
hours -p 'weekly' reg --depth 1 -E           # weekly time summary

This is a useful feature, if you can find a way to efficiently record timelog entries. The "ti" and "to" scripts may be available from the c++ ledger 2.x repository. I use timeclock-x.el and ledgerutils.el in emacs.

Compatibility with c++ ledger

Implementation

Unlike c++ ledger, hledger is written in the Haskell programming language. Haskell enables a coding style known as pure lazy functional programming, which holds the promise of more robust and maintainable software built with fewer lines of code. Haskell also provides a more abstracted, portable platform which can make deployment and installation easier in some cases. Haskell also brings some new challenges such as managing memory growth.

File format compatibility

hledger's file format is mostly identical with that of c++ ledger version 2, with some features (like modifier and periodic entries) being accepted, but ignored. There are also some subtle differences in parser behaviour (eg comments may be permissible in different places.) C++ ledger version 3 has introduced additional syntax, which current hledger probably fails to parse.

Generally, it's easy to keep a journal file that works with both hledger and c++ledger if you avoid the more esoteric syntax. Occasionally you'll need to make small edits to restore compatibility for one or the other.

hledger does not allow separate dates for individual postings, unlike c++ ledger.

Features not supported

c++ ledger features not currently supported include: modifier and periodic entries, and the following c++ ledger options and commands:

Basic options:
-o, --output FILE      write output to FILE
-i, --init-file FILE   initialize ledger using FILE (default: ~/.ledgerrc)
-a, --account NAME     use NAME for the default account (useful with QIF)

Report filtering:
-c, --current          show only current and past entries (not future)
    --period-sort EXPR sort each report period's entries by EXPR
-L, --actual           consider only actual (non-automated) transactions
-r, --related          calculate report using related transactions
    --budget           generate budget entries based on periodic entries
    --add-budget       show all transactions plus the budget
    --unbudgeted       show only unbudgeted transactions
    --forecast EXPR    generate forecast entries while EXPR is true
-l, --limit EXPR       calculate only transactions matching EXPR
-t, --amount EXPR      use EXPR to calculate the displayed amount
-T, --total EXPR       use EXPR to calculate the displayed total

Output customization:
-n, --collapse         Only show totals in the top-most accounts.
-s, --subtotal         other: show subtotals
-P, --by-payee         show summarized totals by payee
-x, --comm-as-payee    set commodity name as the payee, for reporting
    --dow              show a days-of-the-week report
-S, --sort EXPR        sort report according to the value expression EXPR
-w, --wide             for the default register report, use 132 columns
    --head COUNT       show only the first COUNT entries (negative inverts)
    --tail COUNT       show only the last COUNT entries (negative inverts)
    --pager PAGER      send all output through the given PAGER program
-A, --average          report average transaction amount
-D, --deviation        report deviation from the average
-%, --percentage       report balance totals as a percentile of the parent
    --totals           in the "xml" report, include running total
-j, --amount-data      print only raw amount data (useful for scripting)
-J, --total-data       print only raw total data
-y, --date-format STR  use STR as the date format (default: %Y/%m/%d)
-F, --format STR       use STR as the format; for each report type, use:
    --balance-format      --register-format       --print-format
    --plot-amount-format  --plot-total-format     --equity-format
    --prices-format       --wide-register-format

Commodity reporting:
    --price-db FILE    sets the price database to FILE (def: ~/.pricedb)
-L, --price-exp MINS   download quotes only if newer than MINS (def: 1440)
-Q, --download         download price information when needed
-O, --quantity         report commodity totals (this is the default)
-V, --market           report last known market value
-g, --performance      report gain/loss for each displayed transaction
-G, --gain             report net gain/loss

Commands:
xml      [REGEXP]...   print matching entries in XML format
equity   [REGEXP]...   output equity entries for matching accounts
prices   [REGEXP]...   display price history for matching commodities
entry DATE PAYEE AMT   output a derived entry, based on the arguments

Other differences

• hledger recognises description and negative patterns by "desc:" and "not:" prefixes, unlike ledger 3's free-form parser

• hledger doesn't require a space before command-line option values, eg either -f- or -f - is fine

• hledger's weekly reporting intervals always start on mondays

• hledger shows start and end dates of the intervals requested, not just the span containing data

• hledger period expressions don't support "biweekly", "bimonthly", or "every N days/weeks/..."

• hledger always shows timelog balances in hours

• hledger splits multi-day timelog sessions at midnight

• hledger doesn't track the value of commodities with varying price; prices are fixed as of the transaction date

• hledger print shows amounts for all postings, and shows unit prices for amounts which have them. (This currently means that it does not print multi-commodity transactions in valid journal format.)

Troubleshooting

Installation issues

cabal builds a lot of fast-evolving software, and it's not always smooth sailing. Here are some known issues and things to try:

• Ask for help on #hledger or #haskell. Eg: join the #hledger channel with your IRC client and type: "sm: I did ... and ... happened", then leave that window open until you get helped.

• Did you cabal update ? If you didn't already, cabal update and try again.

• Do you have a new enough version of GHC ? hledger supports GHC 6.10 and 6.12. Building with the -fweb flag requires 6.12 or greater.

• An error while building non-hledger packages. Resolve these problem packages one at a time. Eg, cabal install pkg1. Look for the cause of the failure near the end of the output. If it's not apparent, try again with -v2 or -v3 for more verbose output.

• Could not run happy. A package (eg haskell-src-exts) needs to run the happy executable. If not using the haskell platform, install the appropriate platform package which provides it (eg apt-get install happy).

• Undefined symbols: ... _iconv ... If cabal gives this error:

    Linking dist/build/hledger/hledger ...
    Undefined symbols:
      "_iconv_close", referenced from:
          _hs_iconv_close in libHSbase-4.2.0.2.a(iconv.o)
      "_iconv", referenced from:
          _hs_iconv in libHSbase-4.2.0.2.a(iconv.o)
      "_iconv_open", referenced from:
          _hs_iconv_open in libHSbase-4.2.0.2.a(iconv.o)
  

  you are probably on a mac with macports libraries installed, causing this issue. To work around temporarily, add this --extra-lib-dirs flag:

    $ cabal install hledger --extra-lib-dirs=/usr/lib
  

  or permanently, add this to ~/.cabal/config:

    extra-lib-dirs: /usr/lib
  

• A ghc: panic! (the 'impossible' happened) might be this issue

• This package indirectly depends on multiple versions of the same package. You may have previously installed some of hledger's dependencies depending on different versions of (eg) parsec. Then cabal install hledger gives an error like this:

    Warning: This package indirectly depends on multiple versions of the same
    package. This is highly likely to cause a compile failure.
    package yesod-0.5.0.3 requires parsec-2.1.0.1
    package csv-0.1.1 requires parsec-3.1.0
    ...
  

  The above example could be resolved by, eg:

    $ cabal install yesod --reinstall --constraint 'parsec == 3.1.0"
  

• Another error while building a hledger package. The current hledger release might have a coding error, or dependency error. You could try installing the previous version:

    $ cabal install hledger-0.x
  

  or (preferably) the latest development version: install darcs and then:

    $ darcs get --lazy http://joyful.com/repos/hledger
    $ cd hledger/hledger-lib
    $ cabal install
    $ cd ..
    $ cabal install [-f...]
  

• Do you have a new enough version of cabal-install ? Recent versions tend to be better at resolving dependencies. The error setup: failed to parse output of 'ghc-pkg dump' is another symptom of this. To update, do:

    $ cabal update
    $ cabal install cabal-install
    $ cabal clean
  

  then try installing hledger again.

• cabal fails to resolve dependencies. It's possible for cabal to get confused, eg if you have installed/updated many cabal package versions or GHC itself. You can sometimes work around this by using cabal install's --constraint option. Another (drastic) way is to purge all unnecessary package versions by removing (or renaming) ~/.ghc, then trying cabal install again.

Usage issues

Here are some issues you might encounter when you run hledger:

• hledger: ... hGetContents: invalid argument (Illegal byte sequence) You may get this error when running hledger built with GHC 6.12 on a machine using the default C locale, eg a mac:

    $ locale
    LANG=
    LC_COLLATE="C"
    LC_CTYPE="C"
    LC_MESSAGES="C"
    LC_MONETARY="C"
    LC_NUMERIC="C"
    LC_TIME="C"
    LC_ALL=
  

  if there is non-ascii text in your journal file:

    $ file my.journal
    .../.journal: UTF-8 Unicode C++ program text
  

  In this case you need to set the LANG environment variable to a locale suitable for the encoding shown (probably UTF-8). You can set it temporarily when you run hledger:

    $ LANG=en_US.UTF-8 hledger ...
  

  or permanently:

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

Examples and recipes

• Here's a bash function that will run hledger chart and display the image in your (graphical) emacs:

  function chart () {
    hledger chart $* && emacsclient -n hledger.png
  }
  

  Example:

  $ chart food --depth 2 -p jan
  

Other resources

• The rest of the hledger.org site.

• The c++ ledger site. Also the c++ ledger 2.x manual is slightly outdated but informative.

• Why you need accounting