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hledger user manual

User manual

For: latest developer version

Introduction

hledger 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. You can fund ready-to-run binaries of the latest release - see the download page. Otherwise, fetch and build the latest release from Hackage with cabal-install. Eg:

$ cabal update
$ cabal install hledger [hledger-web]
...
$ hledger --version
hledger 0.19.3

For more help with this, see the Installation Guide.

Basic 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. The -f option can appear anywhere.

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 formats

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 c++ ledger's journal format, so hledger can work with compatible c++ 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. Note the file uses unix line endings on all platforms.

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.

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.

hledger supports flexible decimal points and digit group separators so you can use your country's convention. 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 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 amount seen in a commodity (which may be in a default commodity directive. The precision is the highest precision seen among all amounts in the commmodity.

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 tags.

Default commodity

You can set a default commodity, to be used for any subsequent amounts which have no commodity symbol, with the D directive:

; set british pound as default commodity
; also sets canonical style for pound amounts, since it's the first one
; (pound symbol on left, comma thousands separator, two decimal places)
D £1,000.00

2010/1/1
  a  2340    ; no symbol, will use pound
  b

A default commodity directive may also influence the canonical amount style for the commodity.

Prices

Transaction 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

Historical prices

You can also record a series of historical prices for a commodity using P directives. Typically these are used to record daily market prices or exchange rates. ledger uses them to calculate market value with -V, but hledger currently ignores them. They look like this:

    ; 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

Balance Assertions

ledger supports balance assertions: following a posting's amount, an equals sign and another amount which is the expected balance in this account at this point. hledger does not currently enforce these but will ignore them, so you can put them in your journal and test with ledger if needed.

Fixed Lot Prices

Similarly, we ignore ledger's fixed lot prices. hledger's prices always work like ledger's fixed lot prices.

Comments

A semicolon in the journal file marks the start of a comment. You can write comments on their own line between transactions, like so:

; Also known as a "journal comment". Whitespace before the ; is allowed.

You can also write transaction- or posting-specific comments following the transaction's first line or the posting, on the same line and/or indented on following lines. Some examples:

; a journal comment
2012/5/14 something  ; and now a transaction comment
  ; another comment for this transaction
  posting1  1  ; a comment for posting 1
  posting2
  ; a comment for posting 2
  ; another comment for posting 2
; another journal comment (because not indented)

Currently print preserves transaction and posting comments but not journal comments.

A "tag comment" is a transaction or posting comment containing a tag, explained in the next section.

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. For an example, see How to use account aliases.

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 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 on the same or following lines.

These are followed by one or more indented field assignment lines.
In this example, any CSV record containing "groc" (case insensitive, anywhere within the whole record) will have its account2 and comment set as shown:

if groc
 account2 expenses:groceries
 comment  household stuff

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. Some common values:

%-d/%-m/%Y
%-m/%-d/%Y
%Y-%h-%d

Typically you'll keep one rules file for each account which you download as CSV. For an example, see How to read CSV files.

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 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.

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 a query 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

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

Reporting commands

These are the commands for querying your ledger.

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, but it might not preserve the original content absolutely intact (eg comments.)

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

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

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

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 to increase the width to 120 characters, or -wN to set any desired width (at least 50 recommended, with no space before the N - eg -w200 or --width=200,

The --related/-r flag shows the other postings in the transactions of the postings which would normally be shown.

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.

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, liability and equity (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'

Add-on commands

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

web

The web command (provided by the hledger-web package) runs a web 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 editing.

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.)

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 --port 5010 --base-url http://some.vhost.com --debug

vty

The vty command (provided by the hledger-vty package) 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

chart

The chart command (provided by the hledger-chart package) 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

Reporting options

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

Queries

Most commands accept an optional query expression, written as arguments after the command name, to filter the data (or in some cases, to modify the output). The 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. Each query term can be any of the following:

REGEX - match account names by this regular expression
acct:REGEX - same as above
desc:REGEX - match transaction descriptions by regular expression
date:PERIODEXPR - match dates within the specified period
edate:PERIODEXPR - as above, but match secondary dates
status:1 or status:0 - match cleared/uncleared transactions
tag:NAME[=REGEX] - match by exact tag name, and optionally match the tag value by regular expression
depth:N - match (or display, depending on command) accounts at or above this depth
not: before any of the above negates the match

Multiple query terms will 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

With the print command, they select 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

Note many of the above query terms can also be expressed as command-line flags; you can use either, or both at once.

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.

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)

Troubleshooting

Here are some issues you might encounter when you run hledger: Please also seek support from the IRC channel, mail list or bug tracker.

#. hledger installed, but running hledger says something like 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.

#. hledger fails to parse some valid ledger files
See file format compatibility.

#. hledger gives "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`).

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User manual

Introduction

Basic Usage

Data formats

Journal files

Transactions

Account names

Amounts

Amount styles

Simple dates

Secondary dates

Posting dates

Default commodity

Prices

Transaction prices

Historical prices

Balance Assertions

Fixed Lot Prices

Comments

Tags

Including other files

Default parent account

Account aliases

CSV files

Timelog files

Commands

Misc commands

add

test

Reporting commands

print

register

balance

incomestatement

balancesheet

cashflow

activity

stats

Add-on commands

web

vty

chart

Reporting options

Queries

Smart dates

Period expressions

Reporting interval

Display expressions

Depth limiting

Custom output formats

Troubleshooting

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