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hledger/hledger-ui/hledger-ui.txt
Simon Michael 549823a783 ;doc: update manuals
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HLEDGER-UI(1) hledger User Manuals HLEDGER-UI(1)
NAME
hledger-ui - robust, friendly plain text accounting (TUI version)
SYNOPSIS
hledger-ui [OPTS] [QUERYARGS]
hledger ui -- [OPTS] [QUERYARGS]
DESCRIPTION
This manual is for hledger's terminal interface, version 1.31.99. See
also the hledger manual for common concepts and file formats.
hledger is a robust, user-friendly, cross-platform set of programs for
tracking money, time, or any other commodity, using double-entry ac-
counting and a simple, editable file format. hledger is inspired by
and largely compatible with ledger(1), and largely interconvertible
with beancount(1).
hledger-ui is hledger's terminal interface, providing an efficient
full-window text UI for viewing accounts and transactions, and some
limited data entry capability. It is easier than hledger's command-
line interface, and sometimes quicker and more convenient than the web
interface.
Like hledger, it reads from (and appends to) a journal file specified
by the LEDGER_FILE environment variable (defaulting to
$HOME/.hledger.journal); or you can specify files with -f options. It
can also read timeclock files, timedot files, or any CSV/SSV/TSV file
with a date field. (See hledger(1) -> Input for details.)
Unlike hledger, hledger-ui hides all future-dated transactions by de-
fault. They can be revealed, along with any rule-generated periodic
transactions, by pressing the F key (or starting with --forecast) to
enable "forecast mode".
OPTIONS
Any QUERYARGS are interpreted as a hledger search query which filters
the data.
hledger-ui provides the following options:
-w --watch
watch for data and date changes and reload automatically
--theme=default|terminal|greenterm
use this custom display theme
--menu start in the menu screen
--cash start in the cash accounts screen
--bs start in the balance sheet accounts screen
--is start in the income statement accounts screen
--all start in the all accounts screen
--register=ACCTREGEX
start in the (first) matched account's register screen
--change
show period balances (changes) at startup instead of historical
balances
-l --flat
show accounts as a flat list (default)
-t --tree
show accounts as a tree
hledger-ui also supports many of hledger's general options (and the
hledger manual's command line tips also apply here):
General help options
-h --help
show general or COMMAND help
--man show general or COMMAND user manual with man
--info show general or COMMAND user manual with info
--version
show general or ADDONCMD version
--debug[=N]
show debug output (levels 1-9, default: 1)
General input options
-f FILE --file=FILE
use a different input file. For stdin, use - (default:
$LEDGER_FILE or $HOME/.hledger.journal)
--rules-file=RULESFILE
Conversion rules file to use when reading CSV (default:
FILE.rules)
--separator=CHAR
Field separator to expect when reading CSV (default: ',')
--alias=OLD=NEW
rename accounts named OLD to NEW
--anon anonymize accounts and payees
--pivot FIELDNAME
use some other field or tag for the account name
-I --ignore-assertions
disable balance assertion checks (note: does not disable balance
assignments)
-s --strict
do extra error checking (check that all posted accounts are de-
clared)
General reporting options
-b --begin=DATE
include postings/txns on or after this date (will be adjusted to
preceding subperiod start when using a report interval)
-e --end=DATE
include postings/txns before this date (will be adjusted to fol-
lowing subperiod end when using a report interval)
-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
using period expressions syntax
--date2
match the secondary date instead (see command help for other ef-
fects)
--today=DATE
override today's date (affects relative smart dates, for
tests/examples)
-U --unmarked
include only unmarked postings/txns (can combine with -P or -C)
-P --pending
include only pending postings/txns
-C --cleared
include only cleared postings/txns
-R --real
include only non-virtual postings
-NUM --depth=NUM
hide/aggregate accounts or postings more than NUM levels deep
-E --empty
show items with zero amount, normally hidden (and vice-versa in
hledger-ui/hledger-web)
-B --cost
convert amounts to their cost/selling amount at transaction time
-V --market
convert amounts to their market value in default valuation com-
modities
-X --exchange=COMM
convert amounts to their market value in commodity COMM
--value
convert amounts to cost or market value, more flexibly than
-B/-V/-X
--infer-equity
infer conversion equity postings from costs
--infer-costs
infer costs from conversion equity postings
--infer-market-prices
use costs as additional market prices, as if they were P direc-
tives
--forecast
generate transactions from periodic rules, between the latest
recorded txn and 6 months from today, or during the specified
PERIOD (= is required). Auto posting rules will be applied to
these transactions as well. Also, in hledger-ui make future-
dated transactions visible.
--auto generate extra postings by applying auto posting rules to all
txns (not just forecast txns)
--verbose-tags
add visible tags indicating transactions or postings which have
been generated/modified
--commodity-style
Override the commodity style in the output for the specified
commodity. For example 'EUR1.000,00'.
--color=WHEN (or --colour=WHEN)
Should color-supporting commands use ANSI color codes in text
output. 'auto' (default): whenever stdout seems to be a color-
supporting terminal. 'always' or 'yes': always, useful eg when
piping output into 'less -R'. 'never' or 'no': never. A
NO_COLOR environment variable overrides this.
--pretty[=WHEN]
Show prettier output, e.g. using unicode box-drawing charac-
ters. Accepts 'yes' (the default) or 'no' ('y', 'n', 'always',
'never' also work). If you provide an argument you must use
'=', e.g. '--pretty=yes'.
When a reporting option appears more than once in the command line, the
last one takes precedence.
Some reporting options can also be written as query arguments.
MOUSE
In most modern terminals, you can navigate through the screens with a
mouse or touchpad:
o Use mouse wheel or trackpad to scroll up and down
o Click on list items to go deeper
o Click on the left margin (column 0) to go back.
KEYS
Keyboard gives more control.
? shows a help dialog listing all keys. (Some of these also appear in
the quick help at the bottom of each screen.) Press ? again (or ES-
CAPE, or LEFT, or q) to close it. The following keys work on most
screens:
The cursor keys navigate: RIGHT or ENTER goes deeper, LEFT returns to
the previous screen, UP/DOWN/PGUP/PGDN/HOME/END move up and down
through lists. Emacs-style (CTRL-p/CTRL-n/CTRL-f/CTRL-b) and VI-style
(k,j,l,h) movement keys are also supported. A tip: movement speed is
limited by your keyboard repeat rate, to move faster you may want to
adjust it. (If you're on a mac, the karabiner app is one way to do
that.)
With shift pressed, the cursor keys adjust the report period, limiting
the transactions to be shown (by default, all are shown). SHIFT-
DOWN/UP steps downward and upward through these standard report period
durations: year, quarter, month, week, day. Then, SHIFT-LEFT/RIGHT
moves to the previous/next period. T sets the report period to today.
With the -w/--watch option, when viewing a "current" period (the cur-
rent day, week, month, quarter, or year), the period will move automat-
ically to track the current date. To set a non-standard period, you
can use / and a date: query.
(Mac users: SHIFT-DOWN/UP keys do not work by default in Terminal, as
of MacOS Monterey. You can configure them as follows: open Terminal,
press CMD-comma to open preferences, click Profiles, select your cur-
rent terminal profile on the left, click Keyboard on the right, click +
and add this for Shift-Down: \033[1;2B, click + and add this for Shift-
Up: \033[1;2A. Press the Escape key to enter the \033 part, you can't
type it directly.)
/ lets you set a general filter query limiting the data shown, using
the same query terms as in hledger and hledger-web. While editing the
query, you can use CTRL-a/e/d/k, BS, cursor keys; press ENTER to set
it, or ESCAPEto cancel. There are also keys for quickly adjusting some
common filters like account depth and transaction status (see below).
BACKSPACE or DELETE removes all filters, showing all transactions.
As mentioned above, by default hledger-ui hides future transactions -
both ordinary transactions recorded in the journal, and periodic trans-
actions generated by rule. F toggles forecast mode, in which fu-
ture/forecasted transactions are shown.
ESCAPE resets the UI state and jumps back to the top screen, restoring
the app's initial state at startup. Or, it cancels minibuffer data en-
try or the help dialog.
CTRL-l redraws the screen and centers the selection if possible (selec-
tions near the top won't be centered, since we don't scroll above the
top).
g reloads from the data file(s) and updates the current screen and any
previous screens. (With large files, this could cause a noticeable
pause.)
I toggles balance assertion checking. Disabling balance assertions
temporarily can be useful for troubleshooting.
a runs command-line hledger's add command, and reloads the updated
file. This allows some basic data entry.
A is like a, but runs the hledger-iadd tool, which provides a terminal
interface. This key will be available if hledger-iadd is installed in
$path.
E runs $HLEDGER_UI_EDITOR, or $EDITOR, or a default (emacsclient -a ""
-nw) on the journal file. With some editors (emacs, vi), the cursor
will be positioned at the current transaction when invoked from the
register and transaction screens, and at the error location (if possi-
ble) when invoked from the error screen.
B toggles cost mode, showing amounts in their cost's commodity (like
toggling the -B/--cost flag).
V toggles value mode, showing amounts' current market value in their
default valuation commodity (like toggling the -V/--market flag).
Note, "current market value" means the value on the report end date if
specified, otherwise today. To see the value on another date, you can
temporarily set that as the report end date. Eg: to see a transaction
as it was valued on july 30, go to the accounts or register screen,
press /, and add date:-7/30 to the query.
At most one of cost or value mode can be active at once.
There's not yet any visual reminder when cost or value mode is active;
for now pressing b b v should reliably reset to normal mode.
q quits the application.
Additional screen-specific keys are described below.
SCREENS
At startup, hledger-ui shows a menu screen by default. From here you
can navigate to other screens using the cursor keys: UP/DOWN to select,
RIGHT to move to the selected screen, LEFT to return to the previous
screen. Or you can use ESC to return directly to the top menu screen.
You can also use a command line flag to specific a different startup
screen (--cs, --bs, --is, --all, or --register=ACCT).
Menu
This is the top-most screen. From here you can navigate to several
screens listing accounts of various types. Note some of these may not
show anything until you have configured account types.
Cash accounts
This screen shows "cash" (ie, liquid asset) accounts (like hledger bal-
ancesheet type:c). It always shows balances (historical ending bal-
ances on the date shown in the title line).
Balance sheet accounts
This screen shows asset, liability and equity accounts (like hledger
balancesheetequity). It always shows balances.
Income statement accounts
This screen shows revenue and expense accounts (like hledger incomes-
tatement). It always shows changes (balance changes in the period
shown in the title line).
All accounts
This screen shows all accounts in your journal (unless filtered by a
query; like hledger balance). It shows balances by default; you can
toggle showing changes with the H key.
Register
This screen shows the transactions affecting a particular account.
Each line represents one transaction, and shows:
o the other account(s) involved, in abbreviated form. (If there are
both real and virtual postings, it shows only the accounts affected
by real postings.)
o the overall change to the current account's balance; positive for an
inflow to this account, negative for an outflow.
o the running total after the transaction. With the H key you can tog-
gle between
o the period total, which is from just the transactions displayed
o or the historical total, which includes any undisplayed transac-
tions before the start of the report period (and matching the fil-
ter query if any). This will be the running historical balance
(what you would see on a bank's website, eg) if not disturbed by a
query.
Transactions affecting this account's subaccounts will be included in
the register if the accounts screen is in tree mode, or if it's in list
mode but this account has subaccounts which are not shown due to a
depth limit. In other words, the register always shows the transac-
tions contributing to the balance shown on the accounts screen. Tree
mode/list mode can be toggled with t here also.
U toggles filtering by unmarked status, showing or hiding unmarked
transactions. Similarly, P toggles pending transactions, and C toggles
cleared transactions. (By default, transactions with all statuses are
shown; if you activate one or two status filters, only those transac-
tions are shown; and if you activate all three, the filter is removed.)
R toggles real mode, in which virtual postings are ignored.
z toggles nonzero mode, in which only transactions posting a nonzero
change are shown (hledger-ui shows zero items by default, unlike com-
mand-line hledger).
Press RIGHT to view the selected transaction in detail.
Transaction
This screen shows a single transaction, as a general journal entry,
similar to hledger's print command and journal format (hledger_jour-
nal(5)).
The transaction's date(s) and any cleared flag, transaction code, de-
scription, comments, along with all of its account postings are shown.
Simple transactions have two postings, but there can be more (or in
certain cases, fewer).
UP and DOWN will step through all transactions listed in the previous
account register screen. In the title bar, the numbers in parentheses
show your position within that account register. They will vary de-
pending on which account register you came from (remember most transac-
tions appear in multiple account registers). The #N number preceding
them is the transaction's position within the complete unfiltered jour-
nal, which is a more stable id (at least until the next reload).
On this screen (and the register screen), the E key will open your text
editor with the cursor positioned at the current transaction if possi-
ble.
This screen has a limitation with showing file updates: it will not
show them until you exit and re-enter it. So eg to see the effect of
using the E key, currently you must: - press E, edit and save the file,
then exit the editor, returning to hledger-ui - press g to reload the
file (or use -w/--watch mode) - press LEFT then RIGHT to exit and re-
enter the transaction screen.
Error
This screen will appear if there is a problem, such as a parse error,
when you press g to reload. Once you have fixed the problem, press g
again to reload and resume normal operation. (Or, you can press escape
to cancel the reload attempt.)
TIPS
Watch mode
One of hledger-ui's best features is the auto-reloading -w/--watch
mode. With this flag, it will update the display automatically when-
ever changes are saved to the data files.
This is very useful when reconciling. A good workflow is to have your
bank's online register open in a browser window, for reference; the
journal file open in an editor window; and hledger-ui in watch mode in
a terminal window, eg:
$ hledger-ui --watch --register checking -C
As you mark things cleared in the editor, you can see the effect imme-
diately without having to context switch. This leaves more mental
bandwidth for your accounting. Of course you can still interact with
hledger-ui when needed, eg to toggle cleared mode, or to explore the
history.
There are currently some limitations with --watch:
It may not work correctly for you, depending on platform or system con-
figuration. (Eg #836.)
At least on mac, there can be a slow build-up of CPU usage over time,
until the program is restarted (or, suspending and restarting with
CTRL-z fg may be enough).
It will not detect file changes made by certain editors, such as Jet-
brains IDEs or gedit, or on certain less common filesystems. (To work
around, press g to reload manually, or try #1617's fs.ino-
tify.max_user_watches workaround and let us know.)
If you are viewing files mounted from another machine, the system
clocks on both machines should be roughly in agreement.
Debug output
You can add --debug[=N] to the command line to log debug output. This
will be logged to the file hledger-ui.log in the current directory. N
ranges from 1 (least output, the default) to 9 (maximum output).
ENVIRONMENT
COLUMNS The screen width to use. Default: the full terminal width.
LEDGER_FILE The main journal file to use when not specified with
-f/--file. Default: $HOME/.hledger.journal.
BUGS
We welcome bug reports in the hledger issue tracker (shortcut:
http://bugs.hledger.org), or on the #hledger chat or hledger mail list
(https://hledger.org/support).
Some known issues:
-f- doesn't work (hledger-ui can't read from stdin).
If you press g with large files, there could be a noticeable pause.
The Transaction screen does not update from file changes until you exit
and re-endter it (see SCREENS > Transaction above).
--watch is not yet fully robust on all platforms (see Watch mode
above).
AUTHORS
Simon Michael <simon@joyful.com> and contributors.
See http://hledger.org/CREDITS.html
COPYRIGHT
Copyright 2007-2023 Simon Michael and contributors.
LICENSE
Released under GNU GPL v3 or later.
SEE ALSO
hledger(1), hledger-ui(1), hledger-web(1), ledger(1)
hledger-ui-1.31.99 September 2023 HLEDGER-UI(1)
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