hledger/MANUAL.md

title
hledger user manual

User manual

Introduction

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) 2007-2011 Simon Michael simon@joyful.com and contributors, and released as Free Software under GPL version 3 or later.

This is the user manual and reference for hledger version 0.14.0.

Installing

hledger works on all major platforms (except microsoft windows, as of version 0.13; to be fixed). You can download and run current release binaries from the download page.

Or, you can build the current release from source using cabal-install. Ensure you have GHC (6.12 or greater) or the Haskell Platform installed, then:

$ cabal update
$ cabal install hledger

You can also install some optional add-ons providing extra features. These vary in maturity and supportedness and may not be available on all platforms (check the download page to see platform support).

$ cabal install hledger-web
$ cabal install hledger-vty
$ cabal install hledger-chart
$ cabal install hledger-interest

Or, you can build the latest development version of (most of) these like so:

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

Installation notes:

• When installing with cabal, dependency problems are common. These can often be worked around by making sure to cabal update, using --constraint, and/or ghc-pkg unregister-ing obsolete package versions.
• If you have non-ascii journal data, you may need to set a suitable locale
• hledger-chart requires additional GTK-related libraries, see Gtk2Hs installation notes. On ubuntu, install the libghc6-gtk-dev package.
• hledger-vty requires curses-related libraries (ubuntu package: libncurses5-dev) and is not buildable on microsoft windows (except possibly via cygwin.)
• If you have trouble, please see Troubleshooting and ask for Support.

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 -. If the journal file does not exist, an empty one will be created. Aside from this, only the add and web commands can modify the journal.

Options are similar across most commands, with some variations; use hledger COMMAND --help for details. Most options must appear somewhere after COMMAND, not before it. The -f option can appear anywhere.

Arguments are also command-specific, but usually they are filter patterns which select a subset of the journal, eg transactions in a certain account.

To get started quickly, 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 some new 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 a register of postings from all transactions
$ hledger reg income                    # show postings to/from income accounts
$ hledger reg checking                  # show postings to/from checking account
$ hledger reg desc:shop                 # show postings with shop in the description
$ hledger activity                      # show transactions per day as a bar chart

The 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 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.

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

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

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

Transactions

Each transaction begins with a date in column 0, followed by an optional 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.

Account names

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

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

Amounts

After the account name, separated by two or more spaces, there is usually an amount. This is a number, optionally with a 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. Or it may go before the symbol: -$1.

The number may optionally have a decimal point, either a period (.) or a comma (,). hledger's reports will generally use the highest precision you have used in each commodity.

Numbers may also have digit group separators, eg thousands separators. hledger's reports will follow the digit groups you have used. The separator character is either comma or period - whichever one you did not use as a decimal point. If using digit group separators you should write at least one number with a decimal point, so hledger will know which is which. Eg: 1,000.00 or 1.000,00.

Simple dates

Within a journal file, transaction dates always follow a year/month/day format, although several different separator characters are accepted. Some examples:

2010/01/31, 2010/1/31, 2010-1-31, 2010.1.31

Writing the year is optional if you set a default year with a Y directive. This is a line containing Y and the year; it affects subsequent transactions, like so:

Y2009

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

Y2010

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

Actual & effective dates

Most of the time, a simple transaction date is all you need. However real-life transactions sometimes involve more than one date. For example, you buy a movie ticket on friday with a debit card, and the transaction is charged to your bank account on monday. Or you write a cheque to someone and they deposit it weeks later.

When you don't care about this, just pick one date for your journal transaction; either will do. But when you want to model reality more accurately (eg: to match your daily bank balance), write both dates, separated by an equals sign. Following ledger's convention, the actual date (or "bank date") goes on the left, and is used by default, the effective date (or "your date") goes on the right, and is used when the --effective flag is provided. Here are some mnemonics to prevent confusion:

• ACTUAL=EFFECTIVE. The actual date is (by definition) the one on the left. A before E.
• BANKDATE=MYDATE. You can usually think "actual is bank's, effective is mine".
• LATER=EARLIER. The effective date is usually the chronologically earlier one.
• "The cheque took EFFECT then, but ACTUALLY cleared weeks later."

Example:

; ACTUAL=EFFECTIVE
; The effective date's year is optional, defaulting to the actual date'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 --effective
2010/02/19 movie ticket         assets:checking                $-10         $-10

Default commodity

You can set a default commodity or currency with a D directive. The commodity will be used for any subsequent amounts which have no commodity symbol. This directive also influences the display format for amounts in that commodity.

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

2010/1/1
  a  2340   ; no commodity symbol, will use the above
  b

Prices

You can specify a commodity's unit price or exchange rate, in terms of another commodity. To set the price for a single posting's amount, write @ UNITPRICE after the amount, where UNITPRICE is the per-unit price in a different commodity:

2009/1/2
 assets:cash:foreign currency       €100 @ $1.35  ; one hundred euros priced at $1.35 each
 assets:cash

Or, you can write @@ TOTALPRICE, which is sometimes more convenient:

2009/1/2
 assets:cash:foreign currency       €100 @@ $135  ; one hundred euros priced at $135 for the lot (equivalent to the above)
 assets:cash

Or, you can set the price for this commodity as of a certain date, using a historical price directive (P) as shown:

; the exchange rate for euro is $1.35 on 2009/1/1 (and thereafter, until a newer price directive is found)
; four space-separated fields: P, date, commodity symbol, unit price in 2nd commodity
P 2009/1/1 € $1.35  

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

Note: a time and numeric time zone are allowed in historical price directives, but currently ignored.

Or, you can write a transaction in two commodities, without prices but with all amounts specified, and a conversion price will be inferred so as to balance the transaction:

2009/1/2
 expenses:foreign currency       €100
 assets                         $-135

The print command shows any prices in effect. So the first example above gives:

$ hledger print
2009/01/02
    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

In other words the --cost/-B flag converts amounts to their price's commodity. (It will not look up the price of a price.)

Note hledger handles prices differently from c++ ledger in this 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 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

Account aliases

You can define account aliases to rewrite certain account names (and their subaccounts). This tends to be a little more reliable than post-processing with sed or similar. The directive is alias ORIG = ALIAS, where ORIG and ALIAS are full account names. To forget all aliases defined to this point, use end aliases.

Here's an example: say a sole proprietor has a personal.journal:

1/1
    expenses:food  $1
    assets:cash

and a business.journal:

1/1
    expenses:office supplies  $1
    assets:business checking

Here each entity has a simple journal with its own simple chart of accounts. But at tax reporting time, we need to view these as a single entity. So in unified.journal we adjust the personal account names to fit within the business chart of accounts:

alias expenses    = equity:draw:personal
alias assets:cash = assets:personal cash
include personal.journal
end aliases
include business.journal

giving:

$ hledger -f unified.journal print
2011/01/01
    equity:draw:personal:food            $1
    assets:personal cash                $-1

2011/01/01
    expenses:office supplies            $1
    assets:business checking           $-1

You can also specify aliases on the command line. This could be useful to rewrite account names when sharing a report with someone else, such as your accountant:

$ hledger --alias 'my earning=income:business'

Command-line alias options are applied after any alias directives in the journal. At most one alias directive and one alias option will be applied to each account name.

Commands

hledger provides a number of subcommands, in the style of git or darcs. Run hledger with no arguments to see a list. Most are built in to the core hledger package, while add-on commands will appear if you install additional hledger-* packages. You can also install your own subcommands by putting programs or scripts named hledger-NAME in your PATH.

Misc commands

Here are some miscellaneous commands you might use to get started:

add

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 has a default commodity directive, that will be applied to any bare numbers entered.

Examples:

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

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.

If you have many CSV files for each account, have many accounts in the same bank or for any other reason want to re-use the rules file you can state it explicitly with the --rules argument.

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

If your bank or external system uses two different columns for in and out movements, use the in-field and out-field rules instead of amount-field.

Note that the numbers are assumed to be positive, implying that an "out" movement gets recorded as a transaction with a negative amount.

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, effective-date-field, date-format, status-field, code-field, description-field, amount-field, currency-field, account-field, account2-field, currency. All are optional and will use defaults if not specified.

• If your file contains data corresponding to several accounts (for example - bulk export from other accounting software), you can use account-field to override value of base-account. When account-field value is empty, base-account will be used.

• If your file contains fields for both accounts in the transaction, you can use account2-field in addition to account-field. If account2-field is unspecified, the account-assigning rules will be used (see below).

• The date-format field contains the expected format for the input dates: this is the same as that accepted by the Haskell formatTime function. Notes: the '%d' and '%m' specifiers expect leading zeroes; the '%y' specifier works better when hledger is built with version 1.2.0.5 or greater of the time library.

• 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.

• Amount may contain the total or per-unit price. For example, lets assume that your base account "bank-current" is in GBP, and your CSV specifies amount of "10 USD @@ 15 GBP", and account-assigning rules selected account "travel-expenses" for this transaction. As a result, "travel-expenses" would be credited by "10 USD @@ 15 GBP", and "bank-current" would be debited by "-15 GBP". This way you could track the expenses in the currencies there were made, while keeping your base account in single currency

• If you want to combine more than one field from the CVS row into the description field you can use an formatting expression for description-field. For example:

  CSV input:

    11/2009/09,Flubber Co,50,My comment
  

  description-field in rules file:

    $ description-field %(1)/%(3)
  

  converted output:

    2009/09/11 Flubber Co/My comment
        income:unknown             $50
        Assets:MyAccount          $-50
  

• The convert command also supports converting standard input if you're streaming a CSV file from the web or another tool. Use - (or nothing) as the input file and hledger will read from stdin. You must specify the rules file in this case:

    $ cat foo.csv | fixup | hledger convert --rules foo.rules
  

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

Reporting commands

These are the commands for querying your ledger.

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.

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

activity

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

Examples:

$ hledger activity -p weekly dining

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'

Add-on commands

The following extra commands will be available if they have been installed (run hledger by itself to find out):

chart

The chart command saves an image file, by default "hledger.png", showing a basic pie chart of your top account balances. 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.

chart-specific options:

-o/--chart-output=IMGFILE  output filename (default: hledger.png)

You can specify a different output file name with -o/--output. The data currently will always be in PNG format.

--chart-items=N            number of accounts to show (default: 10)

The number of top accounts to show (default is 10).

--chart-size=WIDTHxHEIGHT  image size (default: 600x400)

You can adjust the image resolution with --size=WIDTHxHEIGHT (in pixels).

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

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 and explore your numbers quickly with less typing.

vty-specific options:

--debug-vty  run with no terminal output, showing console

Examples:

$ hledger vty
$ hledger vty -BE food

web

The web command runs a HTTP server providing a web-based user interface (release demo, latest demo). The web UI provides reporting, including a more useful account register view, and also data entry and modification.

web-specific options:

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

Warning: Unlike other hledger commands, web can alter existing journal data, via the edit form. A numbered backup of the file will be saved on each edit, normally (ie if file permissions allow, disk is not full, etc.) Also, there is no built-in access control. So unless you run it behind an authenticating proxy, any visitor to your server will be able to see and overwrite the journal file (and included files.)

Support files

hledger-web requires certain support files (images, stylesheets, javascript etc.) to be present in a particular location when it runs. Specifically, they need to be in a web directory, under the .hledger directory, under the current directory when you start hledger-web. To make this easy, hledger-web will auto-create these files in ./.hledger/web/ if they do not exist. Currently, after doing this it will exit, with a notice explaining what happened, and you'll have to run it a second time.

The above is a compromise to satisfy certain technical constraints, but there is an advantage: you can easily customise the web UI's appearance (even while it is running) by editing these files. This is useful eg for integrating with an existing site. You can also run with different customisations by starting hledger-web from a different current directory. Note this means you should be aware of where you start hledger-web from, otherwise it may just create a new copy of the support files and ignore your stylings. To keep things simple you might choose to always run it from the same place, eg your home directory.

Also note that when you upgrade hledger-web in future, these files will need to be upgraded too, probably by removing them and letting them be recreated. So if you do customise them, remember what you changed; a version control system such as darcs will help here.

File changes are detected

As noted, changes to the support files will take effect immediately, without a restart. This applies to the journal data too; you can directly edit the journal file(s) (or, eg, commit a change within a version control system) while the web UI is running, and the changes will be visible on the next page reload.

Malformed edits are rejected

The journal file must remain in good hledger format so that hledger can parse it. The web add and edit forms ensure this by not allowing edits which would introduce parse errors. If a direct edit makes the journal file unparseable, the web UI will show the error instead of data, until the file has been fixed.

Examples:

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

Reporting options

The following additional features and options allow for fine-grained reporting. They are common to most commands, where applicable.

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

Smart dates

Unlike the journal file, hledger's user interface accepts more flexible "smart dates", for example in the -b and -e options, period expressions, display expressions, the add command and the web add form. Smart dates allow some natural english words, will assume 1 where less-significant date parts are unspecified, and can be relative to today's date. Examples:

• 2009/1/1, 2009/01/01, 2009-1-1, 2009.1.1 (simple dates)
• 2009/1, 2009 (these also mean january 1, 2009)
• 1/1, january, jan, this year (relative dates, meaning january 1 of 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 in smart dates are optional, so eg: -b lastmonth is valid.

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. Note the start date is always included and the 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.

Note, however: a -p/--period option in the command line will cause any -b/-e/-D/-W/-M/-Q/-Y flags to be ignored.

Reporting interval

Period expressions can also begin with (or be) a reporting interval, which affects commands like register and activity. The reporting interval can be daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, yearly, or one of the every ... expressions below, optionally followed by in. 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"

A reporting interval may also be specified with the -D/--daily, -W/--weekly, -M/--monthly, -Q/--quarterly, and -Y/--yearly options. But as noted above, a --period option will override these.

Display expressions

Unlike a period expression, which selects the transactions to be used for calculation, a display expression (specified with -d/--display) selects which transactions will be displayed. This useful, say, if you want to see your checking register just for this month, but with an accurate running balance based on all transactions. Eg:

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

meaning "make a register report of all checking transactions, but display only the ones with date on or after the 1st of this month." This the only kind of display expression we currently support, ie transactions before or after a given (smart) date.

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.

Timelog reporting

hledger can also read time log files in (a subset of) timeclock.el's format, containing clock-in and clock-out entries like so:

i 2009/03/31 22:21:45 projects:A
o 2009/04/01 02:00:34

hledger treats the clock-in description ("projects:A") as an account name, and creates a virtual transaction (or several - one per day) with the appropriate amount of hours. From the time log above, hledger print gives:

2009/03/31 * 22:21-23:59
    (projects:A)          1.6h

2009/04/01 * 00:00-02:00
    (projects:A)          2.0h

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 c++ ledger 2.x repository. These rely on a "timeclock" executable which I think is just the ledger 2 executable renamed.

Custom output formats

The --format FMT option will customize the line format of the balance command's output (only, for now). FMT is a C printf/strftime-style format string, with the exception 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)

Appendices

Compatibility with c++ ledger

hledger mimics a subset of ledger 3.x, and adds some features of its own (the add, web, vty, chart commands). We currently support:

• regular journal transactions
• journal format (we should be able to parse most ledger journals)
• timelog format
• multiple commodities
• prices and price history (with non-changing prices)
• virtual postings
• filtering by account and description
• print, register & balance commands
• period expressions quite similar to ledger's
• display expressions containing just a simple date predicate
• basic support (read: incomplete) for display formatting

We do not support:

• periodic and modifier transactions
• fluctuating prices
• display formats (actually, a small subset is supported)
• budget reports

And we add some features:

• add
• chart
• vty
• web

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, with some features being accepted but ignored (eg, modifier entries and periodic entries). There are subtle differences in parser behaviour, eg comments may be permissible in different places. hledger does not allow separate dates for individual postings, or AMT1=AMT2 or { } syntax.

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

See also: other differences, usage issues.

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 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's output follows the decimal point character, digit grouping, and digit group separator character used in the journal.

• 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.)

• hledger's default commodity directive (D) sets the commodity for subsequent commodityless amounts, and contributes to that commodity's display settings. ledger uses D only for commodity display settings and for the entry command.

• hledger generates a description for timelog sessions, instead of taking it from the clock-out entry

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.

• ExitFailure 11 from cabal Probably http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/hackage/ticket/777

• 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 an error in its code or package dependencies. You could try installing the latest development version.

• 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:

• non-ascii data gives "Illegal byte sequence" or "Invalid or incomplete multibyte or wide character" errors

  hledger and other executables produced by GHC will give this error if asked to read a non-ascii file when a proper system locale is not configured. Eg, it's common for journal files to be UTF-8-encoded, in which case the system must have a UTF-8-aware locale installed and selected. You can also select such a locale temporarily by setting the LANG environment variable on the command line. Here's an example, using ubuntu:

    $ file my.journal
    my.journal: UTF-8 Unicode text
    $ locale -a
    C
    en_US.utf8
    POSIX
    $ LANG=en_US.utf8 hledger -f my.journal print
  

  If we prefer, say, fr_FR.utf8, we'd better make sure it's installed:

    $ 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
  

  Also note that on ubuntu variant spellings of "utf8", like "fr_FR.UTF8", are allowed, while on mac osx it must be exactly "fr_FR.UTF-8".

  Here's one way to set LANG permanently:

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

• hledger fails to parse some valid ledger files

  See file format compatibility.

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
  

See also the examples directory.

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