57 KiB
hledger User Manual
This reference manual is for hledger 0.23.98 (the latest pre-0.24 HEAD).
and hledger-web 0.23.
- #Introduction
- #Usage
- #Data format
- #Options
- #Query arguments
- #Commands
- #Known limitations
- #Troubleshooting
Introduction
home is a program for tracking money, time, or any other commodity, using a simple, editable file format and double-entry accounting, inspired by and largely compatible with ledger. hledger is Free Software released under GPL version 3 or later.
hledger's basic function is to read a plain text file describing (eg) financial transactions, and quickly generate useful reports via the command line. It can also help you record transactions, or (via add-ons) provide a local web interface for editing, or publish live financial data on the web.
You can use it to, eg:
- track spending and income
- track unpaid or due invoices
- track time and report by day/week/month/project
- get accurate numbers for client billing and tax filing
hledger works on linux, mac and windows. People most often build the latest release with cabal-install, like so:
$ cabal update
$ cabal install hledger [hledger-web]
...
$ hledger --version
hledger 0.22.1
For more help with this, and other install options, see the installing.
Usage
Basic usage is:
$ hledger COMMAND [OPTIONS] [ARGS]
Most commands query or operate on a
journal file, which by default is .hledger.journal
in your home directory. You can specify a different file with the -f
option or LEDGER_FILE
environment variable, or standard input with -f-
.
Options are similar across most commands, with some variations; use
hledger COMMAND --help
for details. Most options must appear
somewhere after COMMAND, not before it. These input and help-related
options can appear anywhere: -f
, --rules-file
, --alias
,
--ignore-assertions
, --help
, --debug
, --version
.
Arguments are also command-specific, but usually they form a query which selects a subset of the journal, eg transactions in a certain account.
To create an initial journal, run hledger add
and follow the prompts to
enter some transactions. Or, save this
sample file as
.hledger.journal
in your home directory. Now try commands like these:
$ hledger # show available commands
$ hledger add # add more transactions to the journal file
$ hledger balance # all accounts with aggregated balances
$ hledger balance --help # show help for balance command
$ hledger balance --depth 1 # only top-level accounts
$ hledger register # show 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
Data format
Journal files
hledger's usual data source is a plain text file containing journal entries in hledger journal format.
This file represents a standard accounting general journal.
I use file names ending in .journal
, but that's not required.
The journal file contains a number of transaction entries,
each describing a transfer of money (or any commodity) between two or more named accounts,
in a simple format readable by both hledger and humans.
hledger's journal format is a compatible subset, mostly, of ledger's journal format, so hledger can work with compatible ledger journal files as well. It's safe, and encouraged, to run both hledger and ledger on the same journal file, eg to validate the results you're getting.
You can use hledger without learning any more about this file; just use the add or web commands to create and update it. Many users, though, also edit the journal file directly with a text editor, perhaps assisted by the helper modes for emacs or vim.
Here's an example:
; A sample journal file. This is a comment.
2008/01/01 income ; <- transaction's first line starts in column 0, contains date and description
assets:bank:checking $1 ; <- posting lines start with whitespace, each contains an account name
income:salary $-1 ; followed by at least two spaces and an amount
2008/06/01 gift
assets:bank:checking $1 ; <- at least two postings in a transaction
income:gifts $-1 ; <- their amounts must balance to 0
2008/06/02 save
assets:bank:saving $1
assets:bank:checking ; <- one amount may be omitted; here $-1 is inferred
2008/06/03 eat & shop ; <- description can be anything
expenses:food $1
expenses:supplies $1 ; <- this transaction debits two expense accounts
assets:cash ; <- $-2 inferred
2008/12/31 * pay off ; <- an optional * or ! after the date means "cleared" (or anything you want)
liabilities:debts $1
assets:bank:checking
Now let's explore the available journal file syntax in detail.
Entries
Each journal entry begins with a simple date in
column 0, followed by three optional fields with spaces between them:
a status flag (*
or !
or nothing), a transaction code (eg a check
number), and/or a description; then two or more postings (of some
amount to some account), each on their own line.
The posting amounts within a transaction must always balance, ie add up to 0. You can leave one amount blank and it will be inferred.
Dates
Simple dates
Within a journal 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
...
Secondary dates
Real-life transactions sometimes involve more than one date - eg the date
you write a cheque, and the date it clears in your bank. When you want to
model this, eg for more accurate balances, write both dates separated by
an equals sign. The primary date, on the left, is used by default; the
secondary date, on the right, is used when the --date2
flag is specified
(--aux-date
or --effective
will also work).
Their meaning is up to you, but it's best to follow a consistent rule. I write the bank's clearing date as primary, and the date I initiated the transaction as secondary (if needed).
Example:
; PRIMARY=SECONDARY
; The secondary date's year is optional, defaulting to the primary's
2010/2/23=2/19 movie ticket
expenses:cinema $10
assets:checking
$ hledger register checking
2010/02/23 movie ticket assets:checking $-10 $-10
$ hledger register checking --date2
2010/02/19 movie ticket assets:checking $-10 $-10
Posting dates
Comments and tags are covered below, but while we are talking
about dates: you can give individual postings a different date from their
parent transaction, by adding a posting tag like date:DATE
, where DATE is
a simple date. The secondary date can be set with
date2:DATE2
. If present, these dates will take precedence in reports.
Ledger's bracketed posting date syntax ([DATE]
,
[DATE=DATE2]
or [=DATE2]
in a posting comment)
is also supported, as an alternate spelling of the date and date2 tags.
Note: if you do use either of these forms, be sure to give them a valid DATE
or you'll get a parse error, eg an empty date:
tag is not allowed.
Accounts
Account names typically have several parts separated by a full colon, from
which hledger derives a hierarchical chart of accounts. They can be
anything you like, but in finance there are traditionally five top-level
accounts: assets
, liabilities
, income
, expenses
, and equity
.
Account names may contain single spaces, eg: assets:accounts receivable
.
Amounts
After the account name, there is usually an amount. Important: between account name and amount, there must be two or more spaces.
The amount is a number, optionally with a currency symbol or commodity name on either the left or right.
Negative amounts may have the minus sign either before or after the currency symbol (-$1
or $-1
).
Commodity names which contain more than just letters should be enclosed in double quotes (1 "person hours"
).
Decimal points and digit groups
hledger supports flexible decimal point and digit group separator styles,
to support international variations. Numbers can use either a period (.
)
or a comma (,
) as decimal point. They can also have digit group
separators at any position (eg thousands separators) which can be comma or
period - whichever one you did not use as a decimal point. If you use
digit group separators, you must also include a decimal point in at least
one number in the same commodity, so that hledger knows which character is
which. Eg, write $1,000.00
or $1.000,00
.
Amount display styles
Based on how you format amounts, hledger will infer canonical display styles for each commodity, and use these when displaying amounts in that commodity. Amount styles include:
- the position (left or right) and spacing (space or no separator) of the commodity symbol
- the digit group separator character (comma or period) and digit group sizes, if any
- the decimal point character (period or comma)
- the display precision (number of decimal places displayed)
The canonical style is generally the style of the first posting amount seen in a commodity The precision is the highest precision seen among all posting amounts in the commmodity.
Balance Assertions
hledger supports ledger-style
balance assertions
in journal files.
These look like =EXPECTEDBALANCE
following a posting's amount. Eg in
this example we assert the expected dollar balance in accounts a and b after
each posting:
2013/1/1
a $1 =$1
b =$-1
2013/1/2
a $1 =$2
b $-1 =$-2
After reading a journal file, hledger will check all balance
assertions and report an error if any of them fail. Balance assertions
can protect you from, eg, inadvertently disrupting reconciled balances
while cleaning up old entries. You can disable them temporarily with
the --ignore-assertions
flag, which can be useful for
troubleshooting or for reading Ledger files.
Assertions and ordering
hledger sorts an account's postings and assertions first by date and then (for postings on the same day) by parse order. Note this is different from Ledger, which sorts assertions only by parse order. (Also, Ledger assertions do not see the accumulated effect of repeated postings to the same account within a transaction.)
So, hledger balance assertions keep working if you reorder differently-dated transactions within the journal. But if you reorder same-dated transactions or postings, assertions might break and require updating. This order dependence does bring an advantage: precise control over the order of postings and assertions within a day, so you can assert intra-day balances.
With #including-other-files, things are a little more complicated. Including preserves the ordering of postings and assertions. If you have multiple postings to an account on the same day, split across different files, and you also want to assert the account's balance on the same day, you'll have to put the assertion in the right file.
Assertions and commodities
The asserted balance must be a simple single-commodity amount, and in fact the assertion checks only this commodity's balance within the (possibly multi-commodity) account balance. We could call this a partial balance assertion. This is compatible with Ledger, and makes it possible to make assertions about accounts containing multiple commodities.
To assert each commodity's balance in such a multi-commodity account, you can add multiple postings (with amount 0 if necessary). But note that no matter how many assertions you add, you can't be sure the account does not contain some unexpected commodity. (We'll add support for this kind of total balance assertion if there's demand.)
Prices
When recording an amount, you can also record its price in another commodity. This documents an exchange rate that was applied within this transaction (or to be precise, within the posting). There are three ways to specify a transaction price:
-
Write the unit price (exchange rate) explicitly as
@ UNITPRICE
after the amount:2009/1/1 assets:foreign currency €100 @ $1.35 ; one hundred euros at $1.35 each assets:cash
-
Or write the total price for this amount as
@@ TOTALPRICE
:2009/1/1 assets:foreign currency €100 @@ $135 ; one hundred euros at $135 for the lot assets:cash
-
Or fully specify all posting amounts using exactly two commodities:
2009/1/1 assets:foreign currency €100 ; one hundred euros assets:cash $-135 ; exchanged for $135
You can use the --cost/-B
flag with reporting commands to see such
amounts converted to their price's commodity. Eg, using any of the above
examples we get:
$ hledger print --cost
2009/01/01
assets:foreign currency $135.00
assets $-135.00
Fixed Lot Prices
ledger has another syntax for
fixed lot prices.
({=PRICE}
). In ledger, this is equivalent to @ PRICE
, except you
can provide both and then ledger generates an automatic Capital Losses
posting covering the difference.
hledger will parse this syntax, but ignore it.
Historical prices
hledger will parse and ignore ledger-style historical price directives:
; Historical price directives look like: P DATE COMMODITYSYMBOL UNITPRICE
; These say the euro's exchange rate is $1.35 during 2009 and
; $1.40 from 2010/1/1 on.
P 2009/1/1 € $1.35
P 2010/1/1 € $1.40
Comments
-
A semicolon (
;
) or hash (#
) in column 0 starts a journal comment line, which hledger will ignore. -
A semicolon after a transaction's description and/or indented on the following lines starts a transaction comment.
-
A semicolon after a posting's amount and/or indented on the following lines starts a posting comment.
Transaction and posting comments are displayed by #print, can contain #tags and can be #queries.
Some examples:
# a journal comment
; also a journal comment
2012/5/14 something ; a transaction comment
; the transaction comment, continued
posting1 1 ; a comment for posting 1
posting2
; a comment for posting 2
; another comment line for posting 2
; a journal comment (because not indented)
Tags
You can include tags (labels), optionally with values, in transaction and posting comments, and then query by tag. This is like Ledger's metadata feature, except hledger's tag values are simple strings.
A tag is any unspaced word immediately followed by a full colon, eg: sometag:
.
A tag's value is the text following the colon, if any, until the next newline or comma,
with leading and trailing whitespace removed. Comma may be used to write multiple
tags on one line.
For example, here is a transaction with three tags, the posting has one, and all tags have values except TAG1:
1/1 a transaction ; TAG1:, TAG2: tag2's value
; TAG3: a third transaction tag
a $1 ; TAG4: a posting tag
Directives
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.
Eg:
alias expenses = equity:draw:personal
To forget all aliases defined to this point, use:
end aliases
You can also specify aliases on the command line:
$ hledger --alias 'my earning=income:business' ...
Journal directive aliases are applied first, then command-line aliases, and at most one of each will be applied to each account name.
See also How to use account aliases.
Default commodity
You can set a default commodity, to be used for amounts without one. Use the D directive with a sample amount. The commodity (and the sample amount's display style) will be applied to all subsequent commodity-less amounts, up to the next D directive. (Note this is different from Ledger's default commodity directive.)
Also note the directive itself does not influence the commodity's default #amount-display-styles, but the amount it is applied to might. Here's an example:
; set £ as the default commodity
D £1,000.00
2010/1/1
a 2340
b
2014/1/1
c £1000
d
$ hledger print
2010/01/01
a £2,340.00
b £-2,340.00
2014/01/01
c £1,000.00
d £-1,000.00
Default parent account
You can specify a parent account which will be prepended to all accounts
within a section of the journal. Use the account
directive like so:
account home
2010/1/1
food $10
cash
end
If !end
is omitted, the effect lasts to the end of the file.
The above is equivalent to:
2010/01/01
home:food $10
home:cash $-10
Included files are also affected, eg:
account business
include biz.journal
end
account personal
include personal.journal
end
Including other files
You can pull in the content of additional journal files, by writing lines like this:
include path/to/file.journal
The include
directive may only be used in journal files, and currently
it may only include other journal files (eg, not CSV or timelog files.)
CSV files
hledger can also read
CSV files,
translating the CSV records into journal entries on the fly.
We must provide some some conversion hints in a "rules file", named
like the CSV file with an extra .rules
suffix (you can choose another name with --rules-file
).
If the rules file does not exist, it will be created with default rules, which you'll need to tweak. Here's a minimal rules file. It says that the first and second CSV fields are the journal entry's date and amount:
fields date, amount
Lines beginning with #
or ;
and blank lines are ignored.
The following kinds of rule can appear in any order:
fields CSVFIELDNAME1, CSVFIELDNAME1, ...\
(Field list) This names the CSV fields (names may not contain whitespace or ;
or #
),
and also assigns them to journal entry fields when you use any of these names:
date
date2
status
code
description
comment
account1
account2
currency
amount
amount-in
amount-out
JOURNALFIELDNAME FIELDVALUE\
(Field assignment) This assigns the given text value
to a journal entry field (one of the field names above).
CSV fields can be referenced with %CSVFIELDNAME
or %N
(N starts at 1) and will be interpolated.
You can use a field list, field assignments, or both.
At least the date
and amount
fields must be assigned.
if PATTERNS\ (INDENT)FIELDASSIGNMENTS\ (Conditional block) This applies the field assignments only to CSV records matched by one of the PATTERNS.
PATTERNS is one or more regular expressions, each on its own line.
The first pattern can optionally be written on the same line as
the if
; patterns on the following lines must start in column 0
(no indenting). The regular expressions are case insensitive, and
can match anywhere within the whole CSV record. (It's not yet
possible to match within a specific field.)
FIELDASSIGNMENTS is one or more field assignments (described above), each on its own line and indented by at least one space. (The indent is required for successful parsing.)
Example 1. The simplest conditional block has a single pattern and
a single field assignment. Here, any CSV record containing the
pattern groceries
will have its account2 field set to
expenses:groceries
.
if groceries
account2 expenses:groceries
Example 2. Here, CSV records containing any of these patterns will have their account2 and comment fields set as shown. The capitalisation is not required, that's just how I copied them from my bank's CSV.
if
MONTHLY SERVICE FEE
ATM TRANSACTION FEE
FOREIGN CURR CONV
OVERDRAFT TRANSFER FEE
BANKING THRU SOFTWARE:FEE
INTERNATIONAL PURCHASE TRANSACTION FEE
WIRE TRANS SVC CHARGE
FEE FOR TRANSFER
VISA ISA FEE
account2 expenses:business:banking
comment XXX probably deductible, check
skip [N]\ Skip this number of CSV records (1 by default). Use this to skip CSV header lines.
date-format DATEFMT\
This is required if the values for date
or date2
fields are not in YYYY/MM/DD format (or close to it).
DATEFMT specifies a strptime-style date parsing pattern containing year/month/date format codes.
Note the pattern must parse the CSV date value completely. Some examples:
# "6/11/2013"
date-format %-d/%-m/%Y
# "11/06/2013"
date-format %m/%d/%Y
# "2013-Nov-06"
date-format %Y-%h-%d
# "11/6/2013 11:32 PM"
date-format %-m/%-d/%Y %l:%M %p
include RULESFILE\ Include another rules file at this point. Useful for common rules shared across multiple CSV files.
Typically you'll keep one rules file for each account which you download as CSV. For an example, see How to read CSV files.
Other notes:
An amount value that is parenthesised will have the parentheses stripped and its sign flipped.
If the currency
pseudo field is assigned, its value will be prepended to every amount.
If the CSV has debit/credit amounts in separate fields, assign the amount-in
and amount-out
pseudo fields instead of amount
.
Generating entries with three or more postings is not supported at present.
Timelog files
hledger can also read time log files. These are (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
andto
scripts in the ledger 2.x repository. These rely on a "timeclock" executable which I think is just the ledger 2 executable renamed.
Options
Use hledger COMMAND --help
to list the options available for that
command. The following general options are common to most commands,
though not every one is applicable in all cases:
General flags:
-f --file=FILE use a different input file. For stdin, use -
--rules-file=RFILE CSV conversion rules file (default: FILE.rules)
--alias=OLD=NEW display accounts named OLD as NEW
--ignore-assertions ignore any balance assertions in the journal
-b --begin=DATE include postings/txns on or after this date
-e --end=DATE include postings/txns before this date
-D --daily multiperiod/multicolumn report by day
-W --weekly multiperiod/multicolumn report by week
-M --monthly multiperiod/multicolumn report by month
-Q --quarterly multiperiod/multicolumn report by quarter
-Y --yearly multiperiod/multicolumn report by year
-p --period=PERIODEXP set start date, end date, and/or reporting interval
all at once (overrides the flags above)
--date2 --aux-date use postings/txns' secondary dates instead
-C --cleared include only cleared postings/txns
-U --uncleared include only uncleared postings/txns
-R --real include only non-virtual postings
--depth=N hide accounts/postings deeper than N
-E --empty show empty/zero things which are normally omitted
-B --cost show amounts in their cost price's commodity
-h --help show general help or (after command) command help
--debug=N show debug output if N is 1-9 (default: 0)
--version show version information
Read on for some additional notes.
Smart dates
Unlike dates in the journal file, hledger's user interfaces accept a more flexible date syntax. These "smart" dates allow some english words, can be relative to today's date, and assume 1 when less-significant date parts are omitted.
Examples:
| 2009/1/1
, 2009/01/01
, 2009-1-1
, 2009.1.1
| simple dates, several separators allowed |
| 2009/1
, 2009
| same as above - a missing day or month defaults to 1 |
| 1/1
, january
, jan
, this year
| relative dates, meaning january 1 of the current year|
| next year
| january 1 of next year |
| this month
| the 1st of the current month |
| this week
| the most recent monday |
| last week
| the monday of the week before this one |
| today
, yesterday
, tomorrow
| |
| -pmonthlyfrom2/1tonextmonth
| the spaces are optional |
Reporting interval
A reporting interval can be specified so that commands like
#register, #balance and #activity will divide their
reports into multiple report periods. The basic intervals can be
selected with one of -D/--daily
, -W/--weekly
, -M/--monthly
,
-Q/--quarterly
, or -Y/--yearly
. More complex intervals may be
specified with a period expression.
Period expressions
The -p/--period
option accepts period expressions, a shorthand way
of expressing a start date, end date, and or reporting interval all at
once. Note a period expression on the command line will cause any other date
flags (-b
/-e
/-D
/-W
/-M
/-Q
/-Y
) to be ignored.
hledger's period expressions are similar to Ledger's, though not identical. Here's a basic period expression specifying the first quarter of 2009. Note hledger always treats start dates as inclusive and end dates as exclusive:
-p "from 2009/1/1 to 2009/4/1"
Keywords like "from" and "to" are optional, and so are the spaces. Just don't run two dates together:
-p2009/1/1to2009/4/1
-p"2009/1/1 2009/4/1"
Dates are smart dates, so if the current year is 2009, the above can also be written as:
-p "1/1 to 4/1"
-p "january to apr"
-p "this year to 4/1"
If you specify only one date, the missing start or end date will be the earliest or latest transaction in your journal:
-p "from 2009/1/1" (everything after january 1, 2009)
-p "from 2009/1" (the same)
-p "from 2009" (the same)
-p "to 2009" (everything before january 1, 2009)
A single date with no "from" or "to" defines both the start and end date like so:
-p "2009" (the year 2009; equivalent to "2009/1/1 to 2010/1/1")
-p "2009/1" (the month of jan; equivalent to "2009/1/1 to 2009/2/1")
-p "2009/1/1" (just that day; equivalent to "2009/1/1 to 2009/1/2")
Period expressions can also start with (or be) a reporting interval:
daily
, weekly
, monthly
, quarterly
, yearly
, or one of the
every ...
expressions below. Optionally the word in
may appear
between the reporting interval and the start/end dates.
Examples:
-p "weekly from 2009/1/1 to 2009/4/1"
-p "monthly in 2008"
-p "bimonthly from 2008"
-p "quarterly"
-p "every 2 weeks"
-p "every 5 days from 1/3"
-p "every 15th day of month"
-p "every 4th day of week"
Depth limiting
With the --depth N
option, commands like #account, #balance
and #register will show only the uppermost accounts in the account
tree, down to level N. Use this when you want a summary with less detail.
Query arguments
Part of hledger's usefulness is being able to report on just a precise subset of your data.
Most commands accept an optional query expression, written as arguments after the command name,
to filter the data by date, account name or other criteria. Query expressions are also used
in the #web's search form.
The query syntax is similar to a Google search expression: one or more space-separated search terms, optional prefixes to match specific fields, quotes to enclose whitespace, etc. A query term can be any of the following:
REGEX
- match account names by this regular expressionacct:REGEX
- same as abovecode:REGEX
- match by transaction code (eg check number)desc:REGEX
- match transaction descriptionsdate:PERIODEXPR
- match dates within the specified #period-expressions. Actually, full period syntax is not yet supported.date2:PERIODEXPR
- as above, but match secondary datestag:NAME[=REGEX]
- match by (exact, case sensitive) #tags name, and optionally match the tag value by regular expression. Notetag:
will match a transaction if it or any its postings have the tag, and will match posting if it or its parent transaction has the tag.depth:N
- match (or display, depending on command) accounts at or above this #depth-limitingstatus:1
orstatus:0
- match cleared/uncleared transactionsreal:1
orreal:0
- match real/virtual-nessempty:1
orempty:0
- match if amount is/is not zeroamt:N
,amt:<N
,amt:<=N
,amt:>N
,amt:>=N
- match postings with a single-commodity amount that is equal to, less than, or greater than N. (Multi-commodity amounts are not tested, and will always match.) The comparison has two modes: if N is preceded by a+
or-
sign (or is 0), the two signed numbers are compared. Otherwise, the absolute magnitudes are compared, ignoring sign.cur:REGEX
- match postings or transactions including any amounts whose currency/commodity symbol is fully matched by REGEX. (For a partial match, use.*REGEX.*
). Note, to match characters which are regex-significant, like the dollar sign ($
), you need to prepend\
. And when using the command line you need to add one more level of quoting to hide it from the shell, so eg do:hledger print cur:'\$'
orhledger print cur:\\$
.not:
before any of the above negates the match
Combining query arguments
hledger query expressions don't support full boolean logic. Instead, multiple query terms are combined as follows:
- The #print command selects transactions which:
- match any of the description terms AND
- have any postings matching any of the positive account terms AND
- have no postings matching any of the negative account terms AND
- match all the other terms.
- Other reporting commands (eg #register and #balance) select transactions/postings/accounts which match (or negatively match):
- any of the description terms AND
- any of the account terms AND
- all the other terms.
Query arguments vs options
On the command line, some of the query terms above can also be expressed as command-line flags.
Generally you can mix and match query arguments and flags, and the resulting query will be their intersection.
Remember that a -p
#period-expressions flag will cause any other -b
, -e
or -p
flags on the command line to be ignored.
Commands
hledger provides a number of subcommands out of the box; run hledger
with no arguments to see a list.
More add-on commands will appear if you install additional hledger-*
packages,
or if you put programs or scripts named hledger-NAME
in your PATH.
To select which command to run, write it as the first command-line
argument. You can write its full name (eg balance
), or one of the
standard short aliases displayed in parentheses in the command list
(eg bs
), or any unambiguous prefix of a command (eg inc
).
Data entry
Many hledger users edit their journals directly with a text editor, or generate them from CSV.
For more interactive data entry, there is the add
command and also the web
add-on (below).
add
The add command prompts interactively for new transactions, and appends
them to the journal file. Just run hledger add
and follow the prompts.
You can add as many transactions as you like; when you are finished,
enter .
or press control-d or control-c to exit.
Additional convenience features:
-
add tries to provide useful defaults, using the most similar recent transaction (by description) as a template.
-
You can also set the initial defaults with command line arguments.
-
Readline-style edit keys can be used during data entry.
-
The tab key will auto-complete whenever possible - accounts, descriptions, dates (
yesterday
,today
,tomorrow
). If the input area is empty, it will insert the default value. -
If the journal defines a #default-commodity, it will be added to any bare numbers entered.
-
A parenthesised transaction #entries may be entered following a date.
-
#comments and tags may be entered following a description or amount.
-
If you make a mistake, enter
<
at any prompt to restart the transaction. -
Input prompts are displayed in a different colour when the terminal supports it.
Here's step-by-step#record-a-transaction-with-hledger-add.
Reporting
These are the commands for actually querying your ledger.
accounts
This command lists matched account names, in a flat list by default, or in hierarchy
with the --tree
flag. With no query arguments, all account names are listed.
The print command displays full transactions from the journal file, tidily formatted and showing all amounts explicitly. The output of print is always a valid hledger journal, but it does always not preserve all original content exactly (eg directives).
hledger's print command also shows all unit prices in effect, or (with -B/--cost) shows cost amounts.
Examples:
$ hledger print
$ hledger print employees:bob | hledger -f- register expenses
register
The register command displays postings, one per line, and their running total. With no query terms, this is not all that different from print:
$ hledger register
More typically, use it to see a specific account's activity:
$ hledger register assets:bank:checking
The --depth
option limits the amount of sub-account detail displayed:
$ hledger register assets:bank:checking --depth 2
The --average
/-A
flag shows the running average posting amount
instead of the running total (so, the final number displayed is the
average for the whole report period). This flag implies --empty
(see below).
It works best when showing just one account and one commodity.
The --related
/-r
flag shows the other postings in the transactions
of the postings which would normally be shown.
The --width
/-w
option adjusts the width of the output. By default,
this is 80 characters. To allow more space for descriptions and account
names, use -w N
to increase the width to N characters (the argument is required).
With a reporting interval register shows aggregated summary postings, within each interval:
$ hledger register --monthly rent
$ hledger register --monthly -E food --depth 4
One summary posting will be shown for each account in each interval.
Summary postings with a zero amount are not shown; use the --empty
/-E
flag to show them.
If necessary, use the --depth
option to summarise the accounts.
It's often most useful to see just one line per interval.
When using report intervals, the report's normal start/end dates are "enlarged" to contain a whole number of intervals, so that the first and last intervals will be "full" and comparable to the others.
balance
The balance command displays accounts and their balances.
Simple balance reports
Simple balance reports have no #reporting-interval. They show the sum of matched postings in each account. (If postings are not date-restricted, this is usually the same as the ending balance).
$ hledger balance
$ hledger balance -p 'last month' expenses:food
By default, simple balance reports display the accounts as a hierarchy, with subaccounts indented below their parent. Each account's balance is the "inclusive" balance - it includes the balances of any subaccounts.
"Boring parent accounts" (containing a single interesting subaccount
and no balance of their own) are elided into the following line for
more compact output. Use --no-elide
to prevent this.
Accounts which have zero balance (and no non-zero subaccounts) are
omitted. Use -E/--empty
to show them.
A final total is displayed by default; use --no-total
to suppress it.
Flat mode
To see a flat list of full account names instead of the hierarchy, use --flat
.
In this mode, each account's balance is the "exclusive" balance - it excludes subaccount balances
(except when aggregating deeper accounts at the depth limit, see below).
Also, you can use --drop N
to omit the first few account name components.
Depth limiting
With --depth N
, balance shows accounts only to the specified depth.
In flat mode, it also aggregates and summarises deeper accounts at the depth limit.
This is very useful to summarise complex charts of accounts.
Multi balance reports
With a #reporting-interval, multiple balance columns will be shown, one for each report period. There are three types of multi-column balance report, showing different information:
- By default: each column shows the sum of postings in that period, ie the account's change of balance in that period. This is useful eg for a monthly income statement.
-
With
--cumulative
: each column shows the ending balance for that period, accumulating the changes across periods, starting from 0 at the report start date. This mode is not often used. -
With
--historical/-H
: each column shows the actual historical ending balance for that period, accumulating the changes across periods, starting from the actual balance at the report start date. This is useful eg for a multi-year balance sheet.
Multi-column balance reports display accounts in flat mode by default;
to see the hierarchy, use --tree
.
Note that with a reporting interval, the report start/end dates will be "enlarged" if necessary so that they encompass the displayed report periods. This is so that the first and last periods will be "full" and comparable to the others.
The -E/--empty
flag does two things here: first, the report will
show all columns within the specified report period (without -E,
leading and trailing columns with all zeroes are not shown). Second,
all accounts which existed at the report start date will be
considered, not just the ones with activity during the report period
(use -E to include low-activity accounts which would otherwise would
be omitted).
Custom output formats
In simple balance reports (only), the --format FMT
option will customize
the format of output lines. FMT
is like a C printf/strftime-style
format string, except that field names are enclosed in parentheses:
%[-][MIN][.MAX]([FIELD])
If the minus sign is given, the text is left justified. The MIN
field
specified a minimum number of characters in width. After the value is
injected into the string, spaces is added to make sure the string is at
least as long as MIN
. Similary, the MAX
field specifies the maximum
number of characters. The string will be cut if the injected string is too
long.
%-(total)
the total of an account, left justified%20(total)
The same, right justified, at least 20 chars wide%.20(total)
The same, no more than 20 chars wide%-.20(total)
Left justified, maximum twenty chars wide
The following FIELD
types are currently supported:
account
inserts the account namedepth_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)
.
incomestatement
This command displays a simple
income statement. It
currently assumes that you have top-level accounts named income
(or
revenue
) and expense
(plural forms also allowed.)
balancesheet
This command displays a simple
balance sheet. It currently
assumes that you have top-level accounts named asset
and liability
(plural forms also allowed.)
cashflow
This command displays a simplified
cashflow statement
(without the traditional segmentation into operating, investing, and
financing cash flows.) It shows the change in all "cash" accounts for the
period. It currently assumes that cash accounts are under a top-level
account named asset
and do not contain receivable
or A/R
(plural
forms also allowed.)
activity
The activity command displays a simplistic 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'
Misc.
test
This command runs hledger's built-in unit tests and displays a quick report. A pattern can be provided to filter tests by name. It's mainly used in development, but it's also nice to be able to check hledger for smoke at any time.
Examples:
$ hledger test
$ hledger test -v balance
Add-on
Add-on commands are executables in your PATH whose name starts with
hledger-
and ends with no file extension or one of these common
executable extensions:
.hs
,.lhs
,.pl
,.py
,.rb
,.rkt
,.sh
,.bat
,.com
,.exe
.
(Also, add-on names may not be the same as any built-in command or alias).
hledger will detect these and act as a convenient front end, displaying them in
the command list and letting you invoke them with hledger ADDON
.
There are some tricks when specifying options:
- Options appearing before ADDON will be visible only to hledger and not be passed to the add-on.
Eg:
hledger --help web
shows hledger's help,hledger web --help
shows hledger-web's help. - Options understood only by the add-on must go after a
--
argument so that hledger does not reject them. Eg:hledger web -- --server
.
Add-ons which are written in haskell can take advantage of hledger's library API for journal parsing, reports, consistent command-line options etc. One notable add-on is #web, which is maintained along with hledger and supported on the same major platforms. Other add-ons may have different release schedules and platform support.
autosync
ledger-autosync,
which includes a hledger-autosync
alias, downloads transactions
from your bank(s) via OFX, and prints just the new ones as journal
entries which you can add to your journal. It can also operate on .OFX
files which you've downloaded manually. It can be a nice alternative
to hledger's built-in CSV reader, especially if your bank supports OFX
download.
interest
hledger-interest computes interests for a given account. Using command line flags, the program can be configured to use various schemes for day-counting, such as act/act, 30/360, 30E/360, and 30/360isda. Furthermore, it supports a (small) number of interest schemes, i.e. annual interest with a fixed rate and the scheme mandated by the German BGB288 (Basiszins für Verbrauchergeschäfte). See the package page for more.
irr
hledger-irr computes the internal rate of return, also known as the effective interest rate, of a given investment. After specifying what account holds the investment, and what account stores the gains (or losses, or fees, or cost), it calculates the hypothetical annual rate of fixed rate investment that would have provided the exact same cash flow. See the package page for more.
web
hledger-web provides a web-based user interface for viewing and modifying your ledger. It includes an account register view that is more useful than the command-line register, and basic data entry and editing. Try it out at http://demo.hledger.org.
web-specific options:
--server log requests, don't exit on inactivity
--port=N serve on tcp port N (default 5000)
--base-url=URL use this base url (default http://localhost:PORT/)
--static-root=URL use this base url for static files (default http://localhost:PORT/static)
By default, the web command starts a transient local web app and displays it in your default web browser ("local ui mode").
With --server
, it starts the web app, leaves it running, and also logs requests to the console ("server mode").
Typically in server mode you'll also want to use
--base-url
to set the protocol/hostname/port/path to be used in
hyperlinks.
You can use --port
to listen on a different TCP port, eg if you are running multiple hledger-web
instances. Note --port
's argument need not be the same as the PORT
in the base url.
The more advanced option --static-root
allows the static files served from a
separate base url. This enables the optimization that the static files can be
served from a generic web server like apache, which is good at handling static
files and caching. One can also serve the files in a separate domain to reduce
cookies overhead.
Note: unlike any other hledger command, web
can alter existing journal
data, via the edit form. A numbered backup of the file is 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.)
hledger-web disallows edits which would leave the journal file not in valid journal format. If the file becomes unparseable by other means, hledger-web will show an error until the file has been fixed.
Examples:
$ hledger-web
$ hledger-web -E -B --depth 2 -f some.journal
$ hledger-web --server --port 5010 --base-url http://some.vhost.com --debug=1
\ \ \ The following add-ons are examples and experiments provided in the extra directory in the hledger source. Add this directory to your PATH to make them available. The scripts are designed to run interpreted on unix systems (for tweaking), or you can compile them (for speed and robustness).
balance-csv
Like the balance command, but with CSV output.
equity
Like ledger's equity command, this prints a single journal entry with postings matching the current balance in each account (or the specified accounts) in the default journal. An entry like this is useful to carry over asset and liability balances when beginning a new journal file, eg at the start of the year.
You can also use the same entry with signs reversed to close out the old file, resetting balances to 0. This means you'll see the correct asset/liability balances whether you use one file or a whole sequence of files as input to hledger.
print-unique
Prints only journal entries which are unique (by description).
register-csv
Like the register command, but with CSV output.
rewrite
Prints all journal entries, adding specified custom postings to matched entries.
Known limitations
Here are some things to be aware of.
Add-on-specific options must follow --
When invoking an add-on via hledger, add-on flags which are not also
understood by the main hledger executable must have a --
argument
preceding them. Eg hledger-web's --server
flag must be used like so:
hledger web -- --server
.
-w/--width and --debug options must be written without whitespace
Up to hledger 0.23, these optional-value flags did not work with whitespace between the flag and value.
IE these worked: --debug
, -w
, --debug=2
, -w100
, but these did not: --debug 2
, -w 100
.
From 0.24, a value is required and the whitespace does not matter.
Not all of Ledger's journal file syntax is supported
See faq#file-format-differences.
balance is less speedy than Ledger's on large data files
hledger's balance command (in particular) takes more time, and uses more memory, than Ledger's. This becomes more noticeable with large data files.
Windows CMD.EXE
Non-ascii characters and colours are not supported.
Windows cygwin/msys/mintty
The tab key is not supported in hledger add.
Troubleshooting
Here are some issues you might encounter when you run hledger (and remember you can also seek help from the IRC channel, mail list or bug tracker):
Successfully installed, but "No command 'hledger' found"
cabal installs binaries into a special directory, which should be added to your PATH environment variable. On unix-like systems, it is ~/.cabal/bin.
"Illegal byte sequence" or "Invalid or incomplete multibyte or wide character" errors
In order to handle non-ascii letters and symbols (like £), hledger needs an appropriate locale. This is usually configured system-wide; you can also configure it temporarily. The locale may need to be one that supports UTF-8, if you built hledger with GHC < 7.2 (or possibly always, I'm not sure yet).
Here's an example of setting the locale temporarily, on ubuntu gnu/linux:
$ file my.journal
my.journal: UTF-8 Unicode text # <- the file is UTF8-encoded
$ locale -a
C
en_US.utf8 # <- a UTF8-aware locale is available
POSIX
$ LANG=en_US.utf8 hledger -f my.journal print # <- use it for this command
Here's one way to set it permanently, there are probably better ways:
$ echo "export LANG=en_US.UTF-8" >>~/.bash_profile
$ bash --login
If we preferred to use eg fr_FR.utf8
, we might have to install that first:
$ apt-get install language-pack-fr
$ locale -a
C
en_US.utf8
fr_BE.utf8
fr_CA.utf8
fr_CH.utf8
fr_FR.utf8
fr_LU.utf8
POSIX
$ LANG=fr_FR.utf8 hledger -f my.journal print
Note some platforms allow variant locale spellings, but not all (ubuntu
accepts fr_FR.UTF8
, mac osx requires exactly fr_FR.UTF-8
).