hledger - a ledger-compatible text-based accounting tool
========================================================

Welcome to hledger! 

hledger is a limited haskell clone of John Wiegley's text-based accounting
tool, ledger (http://wiki.github.com/jwiegley/ledger). hledger generates
ledger-compatible register & balance reports from a plain text journal,
provides simple interactive querying, and demonstrates a functional
implementation of ledger.  For more information, see http://hledger.org .

Copyright (c) 2007-2009 Simon Michael <simon@joyful.com>
Released under GPL version 3 or later.


Installation
------------
Building hledger requires GHC (http://haskell.org/ghc); it is known to
build with GHC 6.8 and up. hledger should work on any platform which GHC
supports.

Also, installing hledger easily requires the "cabal" command-line tool,
version 0.6.0 and up (http://www.haskell.org/cabal/download.html). (You
can also manually download and install each dependency mentioned in
hledger.cabal from hackage.org, but installing cabal is much quicker.)

Here's how to download and install the latest hledger release::

 cabal update
 cabal install hledger

Or, to build with all optional features enabled (downloads additional
dependencies)::

 cabal install --flags="happs vty" hledger

The available flags are::

  happs - enable the webserver ui
  vty   - enable the curses text ui
  ansi  - enable the ansi text ui (use instead of vty on MS windows)

And for developers, here's how to get the latest development code::

 darcs get http://joyful.com/repos/hledger


Usage
-----
hledger looks for your ledger file at ~/.ledger by default. To use a
different file, specify it with the LEDGER environment variable or -f
option (which may be - for standard input). Here are some commands to try::

 hledger --help
 hledger -f sample.ledger balance
 export LEDGER=sample.ledger
 hledger balance --depth 1
 hledger register
 hledger reg income
 hledger reg desc:shop
 hledger ui


Time reporting
--------------
If hledger is invoked by the "hours" alias it looks for your timelog
(~/.timelog, or the file specified by $TIMELOG or -f), and parses
arguments slightly differently for convenient timelog querying::

 hours [OPTIONS] [PERIOD [COMMAND [PATTERNS]]]

where PERIOD and COMMAND are "today" and "balance" by default.
The timelog file is in timeclock.el's format, where an entry looks like::

 i 2009/03/31 22:21:45 work:hledger
 o 2009/04/01 02:00:34

Time categories are treated as accounts. Here are some time queries to try::

 export TIMELOG=/my/timelog            # if not ~/.timelog
 hours                                 # today's balances
 hours today                           # the same
 hours 'this week'                     # so far this week
 hours lastmonth                       # the space is optional
 hours 'from 1/15' register            # sessions since last january 15
 hours 'monthly in 2009' reg --depth 1 # monthly time summary, top level only

Features
--------

This version of hledger mimics a subset of ledger 3.x, and adds some
features of its own. We currently support regular ledger entries, timelog
entries, multiple commodities, virtual transactions, account and
description patterns, the LEDGER environment variable, and these commands
and options::

   Commands:
   balance  [REGEXP]...   show balance totals for matching accounts
   register [REGEXP]...   show register of matching transactions
   print    [REGEXP]...   print all matching entries

   Basic options:
   -h, --help             show summarized help
   -f, --file FILE        read ledger data from FILE
 
   Report filtering:
   -b, --begin DATE       report on entries on or after this date
   -e, --end DATE         report on entries prior to this date
   -p, --period EXPR      report on entries during the specified period
                          and/or with the specified reporting interval
   -C, --cleared          report only on cleared entries
   -R, --real             report only on real (non-virtual) transactions
 
   Output customization:
   -B, --basis, --cost    report cost of commodities
   -d, --display EXPR     display only transactions matching EXPR (limited support)
   -E, --empty            show empty/zero things which are normally elided
   --no-total             balance report: hide the final total
   -W, --weekly           register report: show weekly summary
   -M, --monthly          register report: show monthly summary
   -Y, --yearly           register report: show yearly summary

   Misc:
   -V, --version          show version information
   -v, --verbose          show verbose test output
   --debug                show some debug output 
   --debug-no-ui          run ui commands with no output

We handle (almost) the full period expression syntax, and very limited
display expressions consisting of a simple date predicate. Also the
following new commands are supported::

   ui                     a simple curses-based text ui (on windows, ansi-based)
   web                    a simple web-based ui
   test                   run self-tests

ledger features not supported
.............................

ledger features not currently supported include: modifier and periodic
entries, and options such as these::

   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
   -U, --uncleared        consider only uncleared transactions
   -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 calls the "note" field "description"
* hledger recognises description and negative patterns by  "desc:" and "not:" prefixes,
  unlike ledger 3's free-form parser
* hledger keeps differently-priced amounts of the same commodity separate
* hledger doesn't require a space before command-line option values, eg: -f-
* 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 register report always sorts transactions by date