hledger-1.17: hledger.txt
hledger(1) hledger User Manuals hledger(1)
NAME
hledger - a command-line accounting tool
SYNOPSIS
hledger [-f FILE] COMMAND [OPTIONS] [ARGS]
hledger [-f FILE] ADDONCMD -- [OPTIONS] [ARGS]
hledger
DESCRIPTION
hledger is a reliable, cross-platform set of programs for tracking
money, time, or any other commodity, using double-entry accounting and
a simple, editable file format. hledger is inspired by and largely
compatible with ledger(1).
This is hledger's command-line interface (there are also terminal and
web interfaces). Its basic function is to read a plain text file de-
scribing financial transactions (in accounting terms, a general jour-
nal) and print useful reports on standard output, or export them as
CSV. hledger can also read some other file formats such as CSV files,
translating them to journal format. Additionally, hledger lists other
hledger-* executables found in the user's $PATH and can invoke them as
subcommands.
hledger reads data from one or more files in hledger journal, time-
clock, timedot, or CSV format specified with -f, or $LEDGER_FILE, or
$HOME/.hledger.journal (on windows, perhaps
C:/Users/USER/.hledger.journal). If using $LEDGER_FILE, note this must
be a real environment variable, not a shell variable. You can specify
standard input with -f-.
Transactions are dated movements of money between two (or more) named
accounts, and are recorded with journal entries like this:
2015/10/16 bought food
expenses:food $10
assets:cash
For more about this format, see hledger_journal(5).
Most users use a text editor to edit the journal, usually with an edi-
tor mode such as ledger-mode for added convenience. hledger's interac-
tive add command is another way to record new transactions. hledger
never changes existing transactions.
To get started, you can either save some entries like the above in
~/.hledger.journal, or run hledger add and follow the prompts. Then
try some commands like hledger print or hledger balance. Run hledger
with no arguments for a list of commands.
COMMON TASKS
Here are some quick examples of how to do some basic tasks with
hledger. For more details, see the reference section below, the
hledger_journal(5) manual, or the more extensive docs at
https://hledger.org.
Getting help
$ hledger # show available commands
$ hledger --help # show common options
$ hledger CMD --help # show common and command options, and command help
$ hledger help # show available manuals/topics
$ hledger help hledger # show hledger manual as info/man/text (auto-chosen)
$ hledger help journal --man # show the journal manual as a man page
$ hledger help --help # show more detailed help for the help command
Find more docs, chat, mail list, reddit, issue tracker:
https://hledger.org#help-feedback
Constructing command lines
hledger has an extensive and powerful command line interface. We
strive to keep it simple and ergonomic, but you may run into one of the
confusing real world details described in OPTIONS, below. If that hap-
pens, here are some tips that may help:
o command-specific options must go after the command (it's fine to put
all options there) (hledger CMD OPTS ARGS)
o running add-on executables directly simplifies command line parsing
(hledger-ui OPTS ARGS)
o enclose "problematic" args in single quotes
o if needed, also add a backslash to hide regular expression metachar-
acters from the shell
o to see how a misbehaving command is being parsed, add --debug=2.
Starting a journal file
hledger looks for your accounting data in a journal file,
$HOME/.hledger.journal by default:
$ hledger stats
The hledger journal file "/Users/simon/.hledger.journal" was not found.
Please create it first, eg with "hledger add" or a text editor.
Or, specify an existing journal file with -f or LEDGER_FILE.
You can override this by setting the LEDGER_FILE environment variable.
It's a good practice to keep this important file under version control,
and to start a new file each year. So you could do something like
this:
$ mkdir ~/finance
$ cd ~/finance
$ git init
Initialized empty Git repository in /Users/simon/finance/.git/
$ touch 2020.journal
$ echo "export LEDGER_FILE=$HOME/finance/2020.journal" >> ~/.bashrc
$ source ~/.bashrc
$ hledger stats
Main file : /Users/simon/finance/2020.journal
Included files :
Transactions span : to (0 days)
Last transaction : none
Transactions : 0 (0.0 per day)
Transactions last 30 days: 0 (0.0 per day)
Transactions last 7 days : 0 (0.0 per day)
Payees/descriptions : 0
Accounts : 0 (depth 0)
Commodities : 0 ()
Market prices : 0 ()
Setting opening balances
Pick a starting date for which you can look up the balances of some
real-world assets (bank accounts, wallet..) and liabilities (credit
cards..).
To avoid a lot of data entry, you may want to start with just one or
two accounts, like your checking account or cash wallet; and pick a re-
cent starting date, like today or the start of the week. You can al-
ways come back later and add more accounts and older transactions, eg
going back to january 1st.
Add an opening balances transaction to the journal, declaring the bal-
ances on this date. Here are two ways to do it:
o The first way: open the journal in any text editor and save an entry
like this:
2020-01-01 * opening balances
assets:bank:checking $1000 = $1000
assets:bank:savings $2000 = $2000
assets:cash $100 = $100
liabilities:creditcard $-50 = $-50
equity:opening/closing balances
These are start-of-day balances, ie whatever was in the account at
the end of the previous day.
The * after the date is an optional status flag. Here it means
"cleared & confirmed".
The currency symbols are optional, but usually a good idea as you'll
be dealing with multiple currencies sooner or later.
The = amounts are optional balance assertions, providing extra error
checking.
o The second way: run hledger add and follow the prompts to record a
similar transaction:
$ hledger add
Adding transactions to journal file /Users/simon/finance/2020.journal
Any command line arguments will be used as defaults.
Use tab key to complete, readline keys to edit, enter to accept defaults.
An optional (CODE) may follow transaction dates.
An optional ; COMMENT may follow descriptions or amounts.
If you make a mistake, enter < at any prompt to go one step backward.
To end a transaction, enter . when prompted.
To quit, enter . at a date prompt or press control-d or control-c.
Date [2020-02-07]: 2020-01-01
Description: * opening balances
Account 1: assets:bank:checking
Amount 1: $1000
Account 2: assets:bank:savings
Amount 2 [$-1000]: $2000
Account 3: assets:cash
Amount 3 [$-3000]: $100
Account 4: liabilities:creditcard
Amount 4 [$-3100]: $-50
Account 5: equity:opening/closing balances
Amount 5 [$-3050]:
Account 6 (or . or enter to finish this transaction): .
2020-01-01 * opening balances
assets:bank:checking $1000
assets:bank:savings $2000
assets:cash $100
liabilities:creditcard $-50
equity:opening/closing balances $-3050
Save this transaction to the journal ? [y]:
Saved.
Starting the next transaction (. or ctrl-D/ctrl-C to quit)
Date [2020-01-01]: .
If you're using version control, this could be a good time to commit
the journal. Eg:
$ git commit -m 'initial balances' 2020.journal
Recording transactions
As you spend or receive money, you can record these transactions using
one of the methods above (text editor, hledger add) or by using the
hledger-iadd or hledger-web add-ons, or by using the import command to
convert CSV data downloaded from your bank.
Here are some simple transactions, see the hledger_journal(5) manual
and hledger.org for more ideas:
2020/1/10 * gift received
assets:cash $20
income:gifts
2020.1.12 * farmers market
expenses:food $13
assets:cash
2020-01-15 paycheck
income:salary
assets:bank:checking $1000
Reconciling
Periodically you should reconcile - compare your hledger-reported bal-
ances against external sources of truth, like bank statements or your
bank's website - to be sure that your ledger accurately represents the
real-world balances (and, that the real-world institutions have not
made a mistake!). This gets easy and fast with (1) practice and (2)
frequency. If you do it daily, it can take 2-10 minutes. If you let
it pile up, expect it to take longer as you hunt down errors and dis-
crepancies.
A typical workflow:
1. Reconcile cash. Count what's in your wallet. Compare with what
hledger reports (hledger bal cash). If they are different, try to
remember the missing transaction, or look for the error in the al-
ready-recorded transactions. A register report can be helpful
(hledger reg cash). If you can't find the error, add an adjustment
transaction. Eg if you have $105 after the above, and can't explain
the missing $2, it could be:
2020-01-16 * adjust cash
assets:cash $-2 = $105
expenses:misc
2. Reconcile checking. Log in to your bank's website. Compare today's
(cleared) balance with hledger's cleared balance (hledger bal check-
ing -C). If they are different, track down the error or record the
missing transaction(s) or add an adjustment transaction, similar to
the above. Unlike the cash case, you can usually compare the trans-
action history and running balance from your bank with the one re-
ported by hledger reg checking -C. This will be easier if you gen-
erally record transaction dates quite similar to your bank's clear-
ing dates.
3. Repeat for other asset/liability accounts.
Tip: instead of the register command, use hledger-ui to see a live-up-
dating register while you edit the journal: hledger-ui --watch --regis-
ter checking -C
After reconciling, it could be a good time to mark the reconciled
transactions' status as "cleared and confirmed", if you want to track
that, by adding the * marker. Eg in the paycheck transaction above,
insert * between 2020-01-15 and paycheck
If you're using version control, this can be another good time to com-
mit:
$ git commit -m 'txns' 2020.journal
Reporting
Here are some basic reports.
Show all transactions:
$ hledger print
2020-01-01 * opening balances
assets:bank:checking $1000
assets:bank:savings $2000
assets:cash $100
liabilities:creditcard $-50
equity:opening/closing balances $-3050
2020-01-10 * gift received
assets:cash $20
income:gifts
2020-01-12 * farmers market
expenses:food $13
assets:cash
2020-01-15 * paycheck
income:salary
assets:bank:checking $1000
2020-01-16 * adjust cash
assets:cash $-2 = $105
expenses:misc
Show account names, and their hierarchy:
$ hledger accounts --tree
assets
bank
checking
savings
cash
equity
opening/closing balances
expenses
food
misc
income
gifts
salary
liabilities
creditcard
Show all account totals:
$ hledger balance
$4105 assets
$4000 bank
$2000 checking
$2000 savings
$105 cash
$-3050 equity:opening/closing balances
$15 expenses
$13 food
$2 misc
$-1020 income
$-20 gifts
$-1000 salary
$-50 liabilities:creditcard
--------------------
0
Show only asset and liability balances, as a flat list, limited to
depth 2:
$ hledger bal assets liabilities --flat -2
$4000 assets:bank
$105 assets:cash
$-50 liabilities:creditcard
--------------------
$4055
Show the same thing without negative numbers, formatted as a simple
balance sheet:
$ hledger bs --flat -2
Balance Sheet 2020-01-16
|| 2020-01-16
========================++============
Assets ||
------------------------++------------
assets:bank || $4000
assets:cash || $105
------------------------++------------
|| $4105
========================++============
Liabilities ||
------------------------++------------
liabilities:creditcard || $50
------------------------++------------
|| $50
========================++============
Net: || $4055
The final total is your "net worth" on the end date. (Or use bse for a
full balance sheet with equity.)
Show income and expense totals, formatted as an income statement:
hledger is
Income Statement 2020-01-01-2020-01-16
|| 2020-01-01-2020-01-16
===============++=======================
Revenues ||
---------------++-----------------------
income:gifts || $20
income:salary || $1000
---------------++-----------------------
|| $1020
===============++=======================
Expenses ||
---------------++-----------------------
expenses:food || $13
expenses:misc || $2
---------------++-----------------------
|| $15
===============++=======================
Net: || $1005
The final total is your net income during this period.
Show transactions affecting your wallet, with running total:
$ hledger register cash
2020-01-01 opening balances assets:cash $100 $100
2020-01-10 gift received assets:cash $20 $120
2020-01-12 farmers market assets:cash $-13 $107
2020-01-16 adjust cash assets:cash $-2 $105
Show weekly posting counts as a bar chart:
$ hledger activity -W
2019-12-30 *****
2020-01-06 ****
2020-01-13 ****
Migrating to a new file
At the end of the year, you may want to continue your journal in a new
file, so that old transactions don't slow down or clutter your reports,
and to help ensure the integrity of your accounting history. See the
close command.
If using version control, don't forget to git add the new file.
OPTIONS
General options
To see general usage help, including general options which are sup-
ported by most hledger commands, run hledger -h.
General help options:
-h --help
show general usage (or after COMMAND, command usage)
--version
show 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)
General reporting options:
-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
using period expressions syntax
--date2
match the secondary date instead (see command help for other ef-
fects)
-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 at transaction time (using the
transaction price, if any)
-V --value
convert amounts to their market value on the report end date
(using the most recent applicable market price, if any)
--auto apply automated posting rules to modify transactions.
--forecast
generate future transactions from periodic transaction rules,
for the next 6 months or till report end date. In hledger-ui,
also make ordinary future transactions visible.
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.
Command options
To see options for a particular command, including command-specific op-
tions, run: hledger COMMAND -h.
Command-specific options must be written after the command name, eg:
hledger print -x.
Additionally, if the command is an addon, you may need to put its op-
tions after a double-hyphen, eg: hledger ui -- --watch. Or, you can
run the addon executable directly: hledger-ui --watch.
Command arguments
Most hledger commands accept arguments after the command name, which
are often a query, filtering the data in some way.
You can save a set of command line options/arguments in a file, and
then reuse them by writing @FILENAME as a command line argument. Eg:
hledger bal @foo.args. (To prevent this, eg if you have an argument
that begins with a literal @, precede it with --, eg: hledger bal --
@ARG).
Inside the argument file, each line should contain just one option or
argument. Avoid the use of spaces, except inside quotes (or you'll see
a confusing error). Between a flag and its argument, use = (or noth-
ing). Bad:
assets depth:2
-X USD
Good:
assets
depth:2
-X=USD
For special characters (see below), use one less level of quoting than
you would at the command prompt. Bad:
-X"$"
Good:
-X$
See also: Save frequently used options.
Queries
One of hledger's strengths is being able to quickly report on precise
subsets of your data. Most commands accept an optional query expres-
sion, written as arguments after the command name, to filter the data
by date, account name or other criteria. The syntax is similar to a
web search: one or more space-separated search terms, quotes to enclose
whitespace, prefixes to match specific fields, a not: prefix to negate
the match.
We do not yet support arbitrary boolean combinations of search terms;
instead most commands show transactions/postings/accounts which match
(or negatively match):
o any of the description terms AND
o any of the account terms AND
o any of the status terms AND
o all the other terms.
The print command instead shows transactions which:
o match any of the description terms AND
o have any postings matching any of the positive account terms AND
o have no postings matching any of the negative account terms AND
o match all the other terms.
The following kinds of search terms can be used. Remember these can
also be prefixed with not:, eg to exclude a particular subaccount.
REGEX, acct:REGEX
match account names by this regular expression. (With no pre-
fix, acct: is assumed.) same as above
amt: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.
code:REGEX
match by transaction code (eg check number)
cur:REGEX
match postings or transactions including any amounts whose cur-
rency/commodity symbol is fully matched by REGEX. (For a par-
tial match, use .*REGEX.*). Note, to match characters which are
regex-significant, like the dollar sign ($), you need to prepend
\. And when using the command line you need to add one more
level of quoting to hide it from the shell, so eg do: hledger
print cur:'\$' or hledger print cur:\\$.
desc:REGEX
match transaction descriptions.
date:PERIODEXPR
match dates within the specified period. PERIODEXPR is a period
expression (with no report interval). Examples: date:2016,
date:thismonth, date:2000/2/1-2/15, date:lastweek-. If the
--date2 command line flag is present, this matches secondary
dates instead.
date2:PERIODEXPR
match secondary dates within the specified period.
depth:N
match (or display, depending on command) accounts at or above
this depth
note:REGEX
match transaction notes (part of description right of |, or
whole description when there's no |)
payee:REGEX
match transaction payee/payer names (part of description left of
|, or whole description when there's no |)
real:, real:0
match real or virtual postings respectively
status:, status:!, status:*
match unmarked, pending, or cleared transactions respectively
tag:REGEX[=REGEX]
match by tag name, and optionally also by tag value. Note a
tag: query is considered to match a transaction if it matches
any of the postings. Also remember that postings inherit the
tags of their parent transaction.
The following special search term is used automatically in hledger-web,
only:
inacct:ACCTNAME
tells hledger-web to show the transaction register for this ac-
count. Can be filtered further with acct etc.
Some of these can also be expressed as command-line options (eg depth:2
is equivalent to --depth 2). Generally you can mix options and query
arguments, and the resulting query will be their intersection (perhaps
excluding the -p/--period option).
Special characters in arguments and queries
In shell command lines, option and argument values which contain "prob-
lematic" characters, ie spaces, and also characters significant to your
shell such as <, >, (, ), | and $, should be escaped by enclosing them
in quotes or by writing backslashes before the characters. Eg:
hledger register -p 'last year' "accounts receivable (receiv-
able|payable)" amt:\>100.
More escaping
Characters significant both to the shell and in regular expressions may
need one extra level of escaping. These include parentheses, the pipe
symbol and the dollar sign. Eg, to match the dollar symbol, bash users
should do:
hledger balance cur:'\$'
or:
hledger balance cur:\\$
Even more escaping
When hledger runs an addon executable (eg you type hledger ui, hledger
runs hledger-ui), it de-escapes command-line options and arguments
once, so you might need to triple-escape. Eg in bash, running the ui
command and matching the dollar sign, it's:
hledger ui cur:'\\$'
or:
hledger ui cur:\\\\$
If you asked why four slashes above, this may help:
unescaped: $
escaped: \$
double-escaped: \\$
triple-escaped: \\\\$
(The number of backslashes in fish shell is left as an exercise for the
reader.)
You can always avoid the extra escaping for addons by running the addon
directly:
hledger-ui cur:\\$
Less escaping
Inside an argument file, or in the search field of hledger-ui or
hledger-web, or at a GHCI prompt, you need one less level of escaping
than at the command line. And backslashes may work better than quotes.
Eg:
ghci> :main balance cur:\$
Unicode characters
hledger is expected to handle non-ascii characters correctly:
o they should be parsed correctly in input files and on the command
line, by all hledger tools (add, iadd, hledger-web's search/add/edit
forms, etc.)
o they should be displayed correctly by all hledger tools, and on-
screen alignment should be preserved.
This requires a well-configured environment. Here are some tips:
o A system locale must be configured, and it must be one that can de-
code the characters being used. In bash, you can set a locale like
this: export LANG=en_US.UTF-8. There are some more details in Trou-
bleshooting. This step is essential - without it, hledger will quit
on encountering a non-ascii character (as with all GHC-compiled pro-
grams).
o your terminal software (eg Terminal.app, iTerm, CMD.exe, xterm..)
must support unicode
o the terminal must be using a font which includes the required unicode
glyphs
o the terminal should be configured to display wide characters as dou-
ble width (for report alignment)
o on Windows, for best results you should run hledger in the same kind
of environment in which it was built. Eg hledger built in the stan-
dard CMD.EXE environment (like the binaries on our download page)
might show display problems when run in a cygwin or msys terminal,
and vice versa. (See eg #961).
Input files
hledger reads transactions from a data file (and the add command writes
to it). By default this file is $HOME/.hledger.journal (or on Windows,
something like C:/Users/USER/.hledger.journal). You can override this
with the $LEDGER_FILE environment variable:
$ setenv LEDGER_FILE ~/finance/2016.journal
$ hledger stats
or with the -f/--file option:
$ hledger -f /some/file stats
The file name - (hyphen) means standard input:
$ cat some.journal | hledger -f-
Usually the data file is in hledger's journal format, but it can also
be one of several other formats, listed below. hledger detects the
format automatically based on the file extension, or if that is not
recognised, by trying each built-in "reader" in turn:
Reader: Reads: Used for file extensions:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
journal hledger's journal format, also .journal .j .hledger .ledger
some Ledger journals
time- timeclock files (precise time .timeclock
clock logging)
timedot timedot files (approximate time .timedot
logging)
csv comma-separated values (data .csv
interchange)
If needed (eg to ensure correct error messages when a file has the
"wrong" extension), you can force a specific reader/format by prepend-
ing it to the file path with a colon. Examples:
$ hledger -f csv:/some/csv-file.dat stats
$ echo 'i 2009/13/1 08:00:00' | hledger print -ftimeclock:-
You can also specify multiple -f options, to read multiple files as one
big journal. There are some limitations with this:
o directives in one file will not affect the other files
o balance assertions will not see any account balances from previous
files
If you need those, either use the include directive, or concatenate the
files, eg: cat a.journal b.journal | hledger -f- CMD.
Output destination
hledger commands send their output to the terminal by default. You can
of course redirect this, eg into a file, using standard shell syntax:
$ hledger print > foo.txt
Some commands (print, register, stats, the balance commands) also pro-
vide the -o/--output-file option, which does the same thing without
needing the shell. Eg:
$ hledger print -o foo.txt
$ hledger print -o - # write to stdout (the default)
Output format
Some commands (print, register, the balance commands) offer a choice of
output format. In addition to the usual plain text format (txt), there
are CSV (csv), HTML (html) and JSON (json). This is controlled by the
-O/--output-format option:
$ hledger print -O csv
or, by a file extension specified with -o/--output-file:
$ hledger balancesheet -o foo.html # write HTML to foo.html
The -O option can be used to override the file extension if needed:
$ hledger balancesheet -o foo.txt -O html # write HTML to foo.txt
Some notes about JSON output:
o This feature is marked experimental, and not yet much used; you
should expect our JSON to evolve. Real-world feedback is welcome.
o Our JSON is rather large and verbose, as it is quite a faithful rep-
resentation of hledger's internal data types. To understand the
JSON, read the Haskell type definitions, which are mostly in
https://github.com/simonmichael/hledger/blob/master/hledger-
lib/Hledger/Data/Types.hs.
o The JSON output from hledger commands is essentially the same as the
JSON served by hledger-web's JSON API, but pretty printed, using line
breaks and indentation. Our pretty printer has the ability to elide
data in certain cases - rendering non-strings as if they were
strings, or displaying "FOO.." instead of FOO's full details. This
should never happen in hledger's JSON output; if you see otherwise,
please report as a bug.
o hledger represents quantities as Decimal values storing up to 255
significant digits, eg for repeating decimals. Such numbers can
arise in practice (from automatically-calculated transaction prices),
and would break most JSON consumers. So in JSON, we show quantities
as simple Numbers with at most 10 decimal places. We don't limit the
number of integer digits, but that part is under your control. We
hope this approach will not cause problems in practice; if you find
otherwise, please let us know. (Cf #1195)
Regular expressions
hledger uses regular expressions in a number of places:
o query terms, on the command line and in the hledger-web search form:
REGEX, desc:REGEX, cur:REGEX, tag:...=REGEX
o CSV rules conditional blocks: if REGEX ...
o account alias directives and options: alias /REGEX/ = REPLACEMENT,
--alias /REGEX/=REPLACEMENT
hledger's regular expressions come from the regex-tdfa library. In
general they:
o are case insensitive
o are infix matching (do not need to match the entire thing being
matched)
o are POSIX extended regular expressions
o also support GNU word boundaries (\<, \>, \b, \B)
o and parenthesised capturing groups and numeric backreferences in re-
placement strings
o do not support mode modifiers like (?s)
Some things to note:
o In the alias directive and --alias option, regular expressions must
be enclosed in forward slashes (/REGEX/). Elsewhere in hledger,
these are not required.
o In queries, to match a regular expression metacharacter like $ as a
literal character, prepend a backslash. Eg to search for amounts
with the dollar sign in hledger-web, write cur:\$.
o On the command line, some metacharacters like $ have a special mean-
ing to the shell and so must be escaped at least once more. See Spe-
cial characters.
Smart dates
hledger's user interfaces accept a flexible "smart date" syntax (unlike
dates in the journal file). Smart dates allow some english words, can
be relative to today's date, and can have less-significant date parts
omitted (defaulting to 1).
Examples:
2004/10/1, 2004-01-01, exact date, several separators allowed. Year
2004.9.1 is 4+ digits, month is 1-12, day is 1-31
2004 start of year
2004/10 start of month
10/1 month and day in current year
21 day in current month
october, oct start of month in current year
yesterday, today, tomor- -1, 0, 1 days from today
row
last/this/next -1, 0, 1 periods from the current period
day/week/month/quar-
ter/year
20181201 8 digit YYYYMMDD with valid year month and day
201812 6 digit YYYYMM with valid year and month
Counterexamples - malformed digit sequences might give surprising re-
sults:
201813 6 digits with an invalid month is parsed as start of
6-digit year
20181301 8 digits with an invalid month is parsed as start of
8-digit year
20181232 8 digits with an invalid day gives an error
201801012 9+ digits beginning with a valid YYYYMMDD gives an error
Report start & end date
Most hledger reports show the full span of time represented by the
journal data, by default. So, the effective report start and end dates
will be the earliest and latest transaction or posting dates found in
the journal.
Often you will want to see a shorter time span, such as the current
month. You can specify a start and/or end date using -b/--begin,
-e/--end, -p/--period or a date: query (described below). All of these
accept the smart date syntax.
Some notes:
o As in Ledger, end dates are exclusive, so you need to write the date
after the last day you want to include.
o As noted in reporting options: among start/end dates specified with
options, the last (i.e. right-most) option takes precedence.
o The effective report start and end dates are the intersection of the
start/end dates from options and that from date: queries. That is,
date:2019-01 date:2019 -p'2000 to 2030' yields January 2019, the
smallest common time span.
Examples:
-b 2016/3/17 begin on St. Patrick's day 2016
-e 12/1 end at the start of december 1st of the current year
(11/30 will be the last date included)
-b thismonth all transactions on or after the 1st of the current month
-p thismonth all transactions in the current month
date:2016/3/17- the above written as queries instead
date:-12/1
date:thismonth-
date:thismonth
Report intervals
A report interval can be specified so that commands like register, bal-
ance and activity will divide their reports into multiple subperiods.
The basic intervals can be selected with one of -D/--daily,
-W/--weekly, -M/--monthly, -Q/--quarterly, or -Y/--yearly. More com-
plex intervals may be specified with a period expression. Report in-
tervals can not be specified with a query.
Period expressions
The -p/--period option accepts period expressions, a shorthand way of
expressing a start date, end date, and/or report interval all at once.
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, as
long as you don't run two dates together. "to" can also be written as
"-". These are equivalent to the above:
-p "2009/1/1 2009/4/1"
-p2009/1/1to2009/4/1
-p2009/1/1-2009/4/1
Dates are smart dates, so if the current year is 2009, the above can
also be written as:
-p "1/1 4/1"
-p "january-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; equiva-
lent 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 argument of -p can also begin with, or be, a report interval ex-
pression. The basic report intervals are daily, weekly, monthly, quar-
terly, or yearly, which have the same effect as the -D,-W,-M,-Q, or -Y
flags. Between report interval and start/end dates (if any), the word
in is optional. Examples:
-p "weekly from 2009/1/1 to 2009/4/1"
-p "monthly in 2008"
-p "quarterly"
Note that weekly, monthly, quarterly and yearly intervals will always
start on the first day on week, month, quarter or year accordingly, and
will end on the last day of same period, even if associated period ex-
pression specifies different explicit start and end date.
For example:
-p "weekly from 2009/1/1 starts on 2008/12/29, closest preceding Mon-
to 2009/4/1" day
-p "monthly in starts on 2018/11/01
2008/11/25"
-p "quarterly from starts on 2009/04/01, ends on 2009/06/30,
2009-05-05 to 2009-06-01" which are first and last days of Q2 2009
-p "yearly from starts on 2009/01/01, first day of 2009
2009-12-29"
The following more complex report intervals are also supported: bi-
weekly, bimonthly, every day|week|month|quarter|year, every N
days|weeks|months|quarters|years.
All of these will start on the first day of the requested period and
end on the last one, as described above.
Examples:
-p "bimonthly from 2008" periods will have boundaries on 2008/01/01,
2008/03/01, ...
-p "every 2 weeks" starts on closest preceding Monday
-p "every 5 month from periods will have boundaries on 2009/03/01,
2009/03" 2009/08/01, ...
If you want intervals that start on arbitrary day of your choosing and
span a week, month or year, you need to use any of the following:
every Nth day of week, every <weekday>, every Nth day [of month], every
Nth weekday [of month], every MM/DD [of year], every Nth MMM [of year],
every MMM Nth [of year].
Examples:
-p "every 2nd day of periods will go from Tue to Tue
week"
-p "every Tue" same
-p "every 15th day" period boundaries will be on 15th of each
month
-p "every 2nd Monday" period boundaries will be on second Monday of
each month
-p "every 11/05" yearly periods with boundaries on 5th of Nov
-p "every 5th Nov" same
-p "every Nov 5th" same
Show historical balances at end of 15th each month (N is exclusive end
date):
hledger balance -H -p "every 16th day"
Group postings from start of wednesday to end of next tuesday (N is
start date and exclusive end date):
hledger register checking -p "every 3rd day of week"
Depth limiting
With the --depth N option (short form: -N), commands like account, bal-
ance 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 de-
tail. This flag has the same effect as a depth: query argument (so -2,
--depth=2 or depth:2 are basically equivalent).
Pivoting
Normally hledger sums amounts, and organizes them in a hierarchy, based
on account name. The --pivot FIELD option causes it to sum and orga-
nize hierarchy based on the value of some other field instead. FIELD
can be: code, description, payee, note, or the full name (case insensi-
tive) of any tag. As with account names, values containing colon:sepa-
rated:parts will be displayed hierarchically in reports.
--pivot is a general option affecting all reports; you can think of
hledger transforming the journal before any other processing, replacing
every posting's account name with the value of the specified field on
that posting, inheriting it from the transaction or using a blank value
if it's not present.
An example:
2016/02/16 Member Fee Payment
assets:bank account 2 EUR
income:member fees -2 EUR ; member: John Doe
Normal balance report showing account names:
$ hledger balance
2 EUR assets:bank account
-2 EUR income:member fees
--------------------
0
Pivoted balance report, using member: tag values instead:
$ hledger balance --pivot member
2 EUR
-2 EUR John Doe
--------------------
0
One way to show only amounts with a member: value (using a query, de-
scribed below):
$ hledger balance --pivot member tag:member=.
-2 EUR John Doe
--------------------
-2 EUR
Another way (the acct: query matches against the pivoted "account
name"):
$ hledger balance --pivot member acct:.
-2 EUR John Doe
--------------------
-2 EUR
Valuation
-B: Cost
The -B/--cost flag converts amounts to their cost (or selling price) at
transaction time, if they have a transaction price specified. This
flag is equivalent to --value=cost, described below.
-V: Market value
The -V/--market flag converts reported amounts to their market value in
a default valuation commodity, using the market prices in effect on a
default valuation date. For single period reports, the valuation date
is today (equivalent to --value=now); for multiperiod reports, it is
the last day of each subperiod (equivalent to --value=end).
The default valuation commodity is the one referenced in the latest ap-
plicable market price dated on or before the valuation date. If most
of your P declarations lead to a single home currency, this will usu-
ally be what you want. (To specify the commodity, see -X below.)
Note that in hledger, market prices are always declared explicitly with
P directives; we do not infer them from transaction prices as Ledger
does.
Here's a quick example of -V:
; one euro is worth this many dollars from nov 1
P 2016/11/01 EUR $1.10
; purchase some euros on nov 3
2016/11/3
assets:euros EUR100
assets:checking
; the euro is worth fewer dollars by dec 21
P 2016/12/21 EUR $1.03
How many euros do I have ?
$ hledger -f t.j bal -N euros
EUR100 assets:euros
What are they worth at end of nov 3 ?
$ hledger -f t.j bal -N euros -V -e 2016/11/4
$110.00 assets:euros
What are they worth after 2016/12/21 ? (no report end date specified,
defaults to today)
$ hledger -f t.j bal -N euros -V
$103.00 assets:euros
-X: Market value in specified commodity
The -X/--exchange option is like -V, except it specifies the target
commodity you would like to convert to. It is equivalent to
--value=now,COMM or --value=end,COMM.
--value: Flexible valuation
(experimental, added 201905)
-B, -V and -X are special cases of the more general --value option:
--value=TYPE[,COMM] TYPE is cost, then, end, now or YYYY-MM-DD.
COMM is an optional commodity symbol.
Shows amounts converted to:
- cost commodity using transaction prices (then optionally to COMM using market prices at period end(s))
- default valuation commodity (or COMM) using market prices at posting dates
- default valuation commodity (or COMM) using market prices at period end(s)
- default valuation commodity (or COMM) using current market prices
- default valuation commodity (or COMM) using market prices at some date
The TYPE part basically selects either "cost", or "market value" plus a
valuation date:
--value=cost
Convert amounts to cost, using the prices recorded in transac-
tions.
--value=then
Convert amounts to their value in a default valuation commodity,
using market prices on each posting's date. This is currently
supported only by the print and register commands.
--value=end
Convert amounts to their value in a default valuation commodity,
using market prices on the last day of the report period (or if
unspecified, the journal's end date); or in multiperiod reports,
market prices on the last day of each subperiod.
--value=now
Convert amounts to their value in default valuation commodity
using current market prices (as of when report is generated).
--value=YYYY-MM-DD
Convert amounts to their value in default valuation commodity
using market prices on this date.
The default valuation commodity is the commodity mentioned in the most
recent applicable market price declaration. When all your price decla-
rations lead to a single home currency, this will usually do what you
want.
To select a different valuation commodity, add the optional ,COMM part:
a comma, then the target commodity's symbol. Eg: --value=now,EUR.
hledger will do its best to convert amounts to this commodity, using:
o declared prices (from source commodity to valuation commodity)
o reverse prices (declared prices from valuation to source commodity,
inverted)
o indirect prices (prices calculated from the shortest chain of de-
clared or reverse prices from source to valuation commodity)
in that order.
Here are some examples showing the effect of --value as seen with
print:
P 2000-01-01 A 1 B
P 2000-02-01 A 2 B
P 2000-03-01 A 3 B
P 2000-04-01 A 4 B
2000-01-01
(a) 1 A @ 5 B
2000-02-01
(a) 1 A @ 6 B
2000-03-01
(a) 1 A @ 7 B
Show the cost of each posting:
$ hledger -f- print --value=cost
2000-01-01
(a) 5 B
2000-02-01
(a) 6 B
2000-03-01
(a) 7 B
Show the value as of the last day of the report period (2000-02-29):
$ hledger -f- print --value=end date:2000/01-2000/03
2000-01-01
(a) 2 B
2000-02-01
(a) 2 B
With no report period specified, that shows the value as of the last
day of the journal (2000-03-01):
$ hledger -f- print --value=end
2000-01-01
(a) 3 B
2000-02-01
(a) 3 B
2000-03-01
(a) 3 B
Show the current value (the 2000-04-01 price is still in effect today):
$ hledger -f- print --value=now
2000-01-01
(a) 4 B
2000-02-01
(a) 4 B
2000-03-01
(a) 4 B
Show the value on 2000/01/15:
$ hledger -f- print --value=2000-01-15
2000-01-01
(a) 1 B
2000-02-01
(a) 1 B
2000-03-01
(a) 1 B
You may need to explicitly set a commodity's display style, when re-
verse prices are used. Eg this output might be surprising:
P 2000-01-01 A 2B
2000-01-01
a 1B
b
$ hledger print -x -X A
2000-01-01
a 0
b 0
Explanation: because there's no amount or commodity directive specify-
ing a display style for A, 0.5A gets the default style, which shows no
decimal digits. Because the displayed amount looks like zero, the com-
modity symbol and minus sign are not displayed either. Adding a com-
modity directive sets a more useful display style for A:
P 2000-01-01 A 2B
commodity 0.00A
2000-01-01
a 1B
b
$ hledger print -X A
2000-01-01
a 0.50A
b -0.50A
Effect of --value on reports
Here is a reference for how --value currently affects each part of
hledger's reports. It's work in progress, but may be useful for trou-
bleshooting or reporting bugs. See also the definitions and notes be-
low. If you find problems, please report them, ideally with a repro-
ducible example. Related: #329, #1083.
Report type -B, -V, -X --value=then --value=end --value=DATE,
--value=cost --value=now
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
print
posting cost value at re- value at value at re- value at
amounts port end or posting date port or DATE/today
today journal end
balance as- unchanged unchanged unchanged unchanged unchanged
sertions /
assignments
register
starting cost value at day not supported value at day value at
balance before re- before re- DATE/today
(with -H) port or port or
journal journal
start start
posting cost value at re- value at value at re- value at
amounts (no port end or posting date port or DATE/today
report in- today journal end
terval)
summary summarised value at pe- sum of post- value at pe- value at
posting cost riod ends ings in in- riod ends DATE/today
amounts terval, val-
(with report ued at inter-
interval) val start
running to- sum/average sum/average sum/average sum/average sum/average
tal/average of displayed of displayed of displayed of displayed of displayed
values values values values values
balance (bs,
bse, cf,
is..)
balances (no sums of value at re- not supported value at re- value at
report in- costs port end or port or DATE/today of
terval) today of journal end sums of post-
sums of of sums of ings
postings postings
balances sums of value at pe- not supported value at pe- value at
(with report costs riod ends of riod ends of DATE/today of
interval) sums of sums of sums of post-
postings postings ings
starting sums of sums of not supported sums of sums of post-
balances costs of postings be- postings be- ings before
(with report postings be- fore report fore report report start
interval and fore report start start
-H) start
budget like bal- like bal- not supported like bal- like balances
amounts with ances ances ances
--budget
grand total sum of dis- sum of dis- not supported sum of dis- sum of dis-
(no report played val- played val- played val- played values
interval) ues ues ues
row to- sums/aver- sums/aver- not supported sums/aver- sums/averages
tals/aver- ages of dis- ages of dis- ages of dis- of displayed
ages (with played val- played val- played val- values
report in- ues ues ues
terval)
column to- sums of dis- sums of dis- not supported sums of dis- sums of dis-
tals played val- played val- played val- played values
ues ues ues
grand to- sum/average sum/average not supported sum/average sum/average
tal/average of column of column of column of column to-
totals totals totals tals
Additional notes
cost calculated using price(s) recorded in the transaction(s).
value market value using available market price declarations, or the
unchanged amount if no conversion rate can be found.
report start
the first day of the report period specified with -b or -p or
date:, otherwise today.
report or journal start
the first day of the report period specified with -b or -p or
date:, otherwise the earliest transaction date in the journal,
otherwise today.
report end
the last day of the report period specified with -e or -p or
date:, otherwise today.
report or journal end
the last day of the report period specified with -e or -p or
date:, otherwise the latest transaction date in the journal,
otherwise today.
report interval
a flag (-D/-W/-M/-Q/-Y) or period expression that activates the
report's multi-period mode (whether showing one or many subperi-
ods).
Combining -B, -V, -X, --value
The rightmost of these flags wins.
COMMANDS
hledger provides a number of subcommands; hledger with no arguments
shows a list.
If you install additional hledger-* packages, or if you put programs or
scripts named hledger-NAME in your PATH, these will also be listed as
subcommands.
Run a subcommand by writing its name as first argument (eg hledger in-
comestatement). You can also write one of the standard short aliases
displayed in parentheses in the command list (hledger b), or any any
unambiguous prefix of a command name (hledger inc).
Here are all the builtin commands in alphabetical order. See also
hledger for a more organised command list, and hledger CMD -h for de-
tailed command help.
accounts
accounts, a
Show account names.
This command lists account names, either declared with account direc-
tives (--declared), posted to (--used), or both (the default). With
query arguments, only matched account names and account names refer-
enced by matched postings are shown. It shows a flat list by default.
With --tree, it uses indentation to show the account hierarchy. In
flat mode you can add --drop N to omit the first few account name com-
ponents. Account names can be depth-clipped with depth:N or --depth N
or -N.
Examples:
$ hledger accounts
assets:bank:checking
assets:bank:saving
assets:cash
expenses:food
expenses:supplies
income:gifts
income:salary
liabilities:debts
activity
activity
Show an ascii barchart of posting counts per interval.
The activity command displays an ascii histogram showing transaction
counts by day, week, month or other reporting interval (by day is the
default). With query arguments, it counts only matched transactions.
Examples:
$ hledger activity --quarterly
2008-01-01 **
2008-04-01 *******
2008-07-01
2008-10-01 **
add
add
Prompt for transactions and add them to the journal.
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, which prompts interactively on the console for new trans-
actions, and appends them to the journal file (if there are multiple -f
FILE options, the first file is used.) Existing transactions are not
changed. This is the only hledger command that writes to the journal
file.
To use it, 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.
Features:
o add tries to provide useful defaults, using the most similar (by de-
scription) recent transaction (filtered by the query, if any) as a
template.
o You can also set the initial defaults with command line arguments.
o Readline-style edit keys can be used during data entry.
o The tab key will auto-complete whenever possible - accounts, descrip-
tions, dates (yesterday, today, tomorrow). If the input area is
empty, it will insert the default value.
o If the journal defines a default commodity, it will be added to any
bare numbers entered.
o A parenthesised transaction code may be entered following a date.
o Comments and tags may be entered following a description or amount.
o If you make a mistake, enter < at any prompt to go one step backward.
o Input prompts are displayed in a different colour when the terminal
supports it.
Example (see the tutorial for a detailed explanation):
$ hledger add
Adding transactions to journal file /src/hledger/examples/sample.journal
Any command line arguments will be used as defaults.
Use tab key to complete, readline keys to edit, enter to accept defaults.
An optional (CODE) may follow transaction dates.
An optional ; COMMENT may follow descriptions or amounts.
If you make a mistake, enter < at any prompt to go one step backward.
To end a transaction, enter . when prompted.
To quit, enter . at a date prompt or press control-d or control-c.
Date [2015/05/22]:
Description: supermarket
Account 1: expenses:food
Amount 1: $10
Account 2: assets:checking
Amount 2 [$-10.0]:
Account 3 (or . or enter to finish this transaction): .
2015/05/22 supermarket
expenses:food $10
assets:checking $-10.0
Save this transaction to the journal ? [y]:
Saved.
Starting the next transaction (. or ctrl-D/ctrl-C to quit)
Date [2015/05/22]: <CTRL-D> $
On Microsoft Windows, the add command makes sure that no part of the
file path ends with a period, as it can cause data loss on that plat-
form (cf #1056).
balance
balance, bal, b
Show accounts and their balances.
The balance command is hledger's most versatile command. Note, despite
the name, it is not always used for showing real-world account bal-
ances; the more accounting-aware balancesheet and incomestatement may
be more convenient for that.
By default, it displays all accounts, and each account's change in bal-
ance during the entire period of the journal. Balance changes are cal-
culated by adding up the postings in each account. You can limit the
postings matched, by a query, to see fewer accounts, changes over a
different time period, changes from only cleared transactions, etc.
If you include an account's complete history of postings in the report,
the balance change is equivalent to the account's current ending bal-
ance. For a real-world account, typically you won't have all transac-
tions in the journal; instead you'll have all transactions after a cer-
tain date, and an "opening balances" transaction setting the correct
starting balance on that date. Then the balance command will show
real-world account balances. In some cases the -H/--historical flag is
used to ensure this (more below).
The balance command can produce several styles of report:
Classic balance report
This is the original balance report, as found in Ledger. It usually
looks like this:
$ hledger balance
$-1 assets
$1 bank:saving
$-2 cash
$2 expenses
$1 food
$1 supplies
$-2 income
$-1 gifts
$-1 salary
$1 liabilities:debts
--------------------
0
By default, accounts are displayed hierarchically, with subaccounts in-
dented below their parent. At each level of the tree, accounts are
sorted by account code if any, then by account name. Or with
-S/--sort-amount, by their balance amount.
"Boring" accounts, which contain a single interesting subaccount and no
balance of their own, are elided into the following line for more com-
pact output. (Eg above, the "liabilities" account.) Use --no-elide to
prevent this.
Account balances are "inclusive" - they include the balances of any
subaccounts.
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 -N/--no-total to suppress
it, eg:
$ hledger balance -p 2008/6 expenses --no-total
$2 expenses
$1 food
$1 supplies
Customising the classic balance report
You can customise the layout of classic balance reports with --format
FMT:
$ hledger balance --format "%20(account) %12(total)"
assets $-1
bank:saving $1
cash $-2
expenses $2
food $1
supplies $1
income $-2
gifts $-1
salary $-1
liabilities:debts $1
---------------------------------
0
The FMT format string (plus a newline) specifies the formatting applied
to each account/balance pair. It may contain any suitable text, with
data fields interpolated like so:
%[MIN][.MAX](FIELDNAME)
o MIN pads with spaces to at least this width (optional)
o MAX truncates at this width (optional)
o FIELDNAME must be enclosed in parentheses, and can be one of:
o depth_spacer - a number of spaces equal to the account's depth, or
if MIN is specified, MIN * depth spaces.
o account - the account's name
o total - the account's balance/posted total, right justified
Also, FMT can begin with an optional prefix to control how multi-com-
modity amounts are rendered:
o %_ - render on multiple lines, bottom-aligned (the default)
o %^ - render on multiple lines, top-aligned
o %, - render on one line, comma-separated
There are some quirks. Eg in one-line mode, %(depth_spacer) has no ef-
fect, instead %(account) has indentation built in. Experimentation may
be needed to get pleasing results.
Some example formats:
o %(total) - the account's total
o %-20.20(account) - the account's name, left justified, padded to 20
characters and clipped at 20 characters
o %,%-50(account) %25(total) - account name padded to 50 characters,
total padded to 20 characters, with multiple commodities rendered on
one line
o %20(total) %2(depth_spacer)%-(account) - the default format for the
single-column balance report
Colour support
The balance command shows negative amounts in red, if:
o the TERM environment variable is not set to dumb
o the output is not being redirected or piped anywhere
Flat mode
To see a flat list instead of the default hierarchical display, use
--flat. In this mode, accounts (unless depth-clipped) show their full
names and "exclusive" balance, excluding any subaccount balances. In
this mode, you can also use --drop N to omit the first few account name
components.
$ hledger balance -p 2008/6 expenses -N --flat --drop 1
$1 food
$1 supplies
Depth limited balance reports
With --depth N or depth:N or just -N, balance reports show accounts
only to the specified numeric depth. This is very useful to summarise
a complex set of accounts and get an overview.
$ hledger balance -N -1
$-1 assets
$2 expenses
$-2 income
$1 liabilities
Flat-mode balance reports, which normally show exclusive balances, show
inclusive balances at the depth limit.
Percentages
With -% or --percent, balance reports show each account's value ex-
pressed as a percentage of the column's total. This is useful to get
an overview of the relative sizes of account balances. For example to
obtain an overview of expenses:
$ hledger balance expenses -%
100.0 % expenses
50.0 % food
50.0 % supplies
--------------------
100.0 %
Note that --tree does not have an effect on -%. The percentages are
always relative to the total sum of each column, they are never rela-
tive to the parent account.
Since the percentages are relative to the columns sum, it is usually
not useful to calculate percentages if the signs of the amounts are
mixed. Although the results are technically correct, they are most
likely useless. Especially in a balance report that sums up to zero
(eg hledger balance -B) all percentage values will be zero.
This flag does not work if the report contains any mixed commodity ac-
counts. If there are mixed commodity accounts in the report be sure to
use -V or -B to coerce the report into using a single commodity.
Multicolumn balance report
Multicolumn or tabular balance reports are a very useful hledger fea-
ture, and usually the preferred style. They share many of the above
features, but they show the report as a table, with columns represent-
ing time periods. This mode is activated by providing a reporting in-
terval.
There are three types of multicolumn balance report, showing different
information:
1. 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:
$ hledger balance --quarterly income expenses -E
Balance changes in 2008:
|| 2008q1 2008q2 2008q3 2008q4
===================++=================================
expenses:food || 0 $1 0 0
expenses:supplies || 0 $1 0 0
income:gifts || 0 $-1 0 0
income:salary || $-1 0 0 0
-------------------++---------------------------------
|| $-1 $1 0 0
2. With --cumulative: each column shows the ending balance for that pe-
riod, accumulating the changes across periods, starting from 0 at
the report start date:
$ hledger balance --quarterly income expenses -E --cumulative
Ending balances (cumulative) in 2008:
|| 2008/03/31 2008/06/30 2008/09/30 2008/12/31
===================++=================================================
expenses:food || 0 $1 $1 $1
expenses:supplies || 0 $1 $1 $1
income:gifts || 0 $-1 $-1 $-1
income:salary || $-1 $-1 $-1 $-1
-------------------++-------------------------------------------------
|| $-1 0 0 0
3. 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-period balance sheet, and when you are showing
only the data after a certain start date:
$ hledger balance ^assets ^liabilities --quarterly --historical --begin 2008/4/1
Ending balances (historical) in 2008/04/01-2008/12/31:
|| 2008/06/30 2008/09/30 2008/12/31
======================++=====================================
assets:bank:checking || $1 $1 0
assets:bank:saving || $1 $1 $1
assets:cash || $-2 $-2 $-2
liabilities:debts || 0 0 $1
----------------------++-------------------------------------
|| 0 0 0
Note that --cumulative or --historical/-H disable --row-total/-T, since
summing end balances generally does not make sense.
Multicolumn balance reports display accounts in flat mode by default;
to see the hierarchy, use --tree.
With a reporting interval (like --quarterly above), the report
start/end dates will be adjusted if necessary so that they encompass
the displayed report periods. This is so that the first and last peri-
ods will be "full" and comparable to the others.
The -E/--empty flag does two things in multicolumn balance reports:
first, the report will show all columns within the specified report pe-
riod (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).
The -T/--row-total flag adds an additional column showing the total for
each row.
The -A/--average flag adds a column showing the average value in each
row.
Here's an example of all three:
$ hledger balance -Q income expenses --tree -ETA
Balance changes in 2008:
|| 2008q1 2008q2 2008q3 2008q4 Total Average
============++===================================================
expenses || 0 $2 0 0 $2 $1
food || 0 $1 0 0 $1 0
supplies || 0 $1 0 0 $1 0
income || $-1 $-1 0 0 $-2 $-1
gifts || 0 $-1 0 0 $-1 0
salary || $-1 0 0 0 $-1 0
------------++---------------------------------------------------
|| $-1 $1 0 0 0 0
(Average is rounded to the dollar here since all journal amounts are)
A limitation of multicolumn balance reports: eliding of boring parent
accounts in tree mode, as in the classic balance report, is not yet
supported.
The --transpose flag can be used to exchange the rows and columns of a
multicolumn report.
Budget report
With --budget, extra columns are displayed showing budget goals for
each account and period, if any. Budget goals are defined by periodic
transactions. This is very useful for comparing planned and actual in-
come, expenses, time usage, etc. --budget is most often combined with
a report interval.
For example, you can take average monthly expenses in the common ex-
pense categories to construct a minimal monthly budget:
;; Budget
~ monthly
income $2000
expenses:food $400
expenses:bus $50
expenses:movies $30
assets:bank:checking
;; Two months worth of expenses
2017-11-01
income $1950
expenses:food $396
expenses:bus $49
expenses:movies $30
expenses:supplies $20
assets:bank:checking
2017-12-01
income $2100
expenses:food $412
expenses:bus $53
expenses:gifts $100
assets:bank:checking
You can now see a monthly budget report:
$ hledger balance -M --budget
Budget performance in 2017/11/01-2017/12/31:
|| Nov Dec
======================++====================================================
assets || $-2445 [ 99% of $-2480] $-2665 [ 107% of $-2480]
assets:bank || $-2445 [ 99% of $-2480] $-2665 [ 107% of $-2480]
assets:bank:checking || $-2445 [ 99% of $-2480] $-2665 [ 107% of $-2480]
expenses || $495 [ 103% of $480] $565 [ 118% of $480]
expenses:bus || $49 [ 98% of $50] $53 [ 106% of $50]
expenses:food || $396 [ 99% of $400] $412 [ 103% of $400]
expenses:movies || $30 [ 100% of $30] 0 [ 0% of $30]
income || $1950 [ 98% of $2000] $2100 [ 105% of $2000]
----------------------++----------------------------------------------------
|| 0 [ 0] 0 [ 0]
Note this is different from a normal balance report in several ways:
o Only accounts with budget goals during the report period are shown,
by default.
o In each column, in square brackets after the actual amount, budgeted
amounts are shown, along with the percentage of budget used.
o All parent accounts are always shown, even in flat mode. Eg assets,
assets:bank, and expenses above.
o Amounts always include all subaccounts, budgeted or unbudgeted, even
in flat mode.
This means that the numbers displayed will not always add up! Eg above,
the expenses actual amount includes the gifts and supplies transac-
tions, but the expenses:gifts and expenses:supplies accounts are not
shown, as they have no budget amounts declared.
This can be confusing. When you need to make things clearer, use the
-E/--empty flag, which will reveal all accounts including unbudgeted
ones, giving the full picture. Eg:
$ hledger balance -M --budget --empty
Budget performance in 2017/11/01-2017/12/31:
|| Nov Dec
======================++====================================================
assets || $-2445 [ 99% of $-2480] $-2665 [ 107% of $-2480]
assets:bank || $-2445 [ 99% of $-2480] $-2665 [ 107% of $-2480]
assets:bank:checking || $-2445 [ 99% of $-2480] $-2665 [ 107% of $-2480]
expenses || $495 [ 103% of $480] $565 [ 118% of $480]
expenses:bus || $49 [ 98% of $50] $53 [ 106% of $50]
expenses:food || $396 [ 99% of $400] $412 [ 103% of $400]
expenses:gifts || 0 $100
expenses:movies || $30 [ 100% of $30] 0 [ 0% of $30]
expenses:supplies || $20 0
income || $1950 [ 98% of $2000] $2100 [ 105% of $2000]
----------------------++----------------------------------------------------
|| 0 [ 0] 0 [ 0]
You can roll over unspent budgets to next period with --cumulative:
$ hledger balance -M --budget --cumulative
Budget performance in 2017/11/01-2017/12/31:
|| Nov Dec
======================++====================================================
assets || $-2445 [ 99% of $-2480] $-5110 [ 103% of $-4960]
assets:bank || $-2445 [ 99% of $-2480] $-5110 [ 103% of $-4960]
assets:bank:checking || $-2445 [ 99% of $-2480] $-5110 [ 103% of $-4960]
expenses || $495 [ 103% of $480] $1060 [ 110% of $960]
expenses:bus || $49 [ 98% of $50] $102 [ 102% of $100]
expenses:food || $396 [ 99% of $400] $808 [ 101% of $800]
expenses:movies || $30 [ 100% of $30] $30 [ 50% of $60]
income || $1950 [ 98% of $2000] $4050 [ 101% of $4000]
----------------------++----------------------------------------------------
|| 0 [ 0] 0 [ 0]
For more examples, see Budgeting and Forecasting.
Nested budgets
You can add budgets to any account in your account hierarchy. If you
have budgets on both parent account and some of its children, then bud-
get(s) of the child account(s) would be added to the budget of their
parent, much like account balances behave.
In the most simple case this means that once you add a budget to any
account, all its parents would have budget as well.
To illustrate this, consider the following budget:
~ monthly from 2019/01
expenses:personal $1,000.00
expenses:personal:electronics $100.00
liabilities
With this, monthly budget for electronics is defined to be $100 and
budget for personal expenses is an additional $1000, which implicitly
means that budget for both expenses:personal and expenses is $1100.
Transactions in expenses:personal:electronics will be counted both to-
wards its $100 budget and $1100 of expenses:personal , and transactions
in any other subaccount of expenses:personal would be counted towards
only towards the budget of expenses:personal.
For example, let's consider these transactions:
~ monthly from 2019/01
expenses:personal $1,000.00
expenses:personal:electronics $100.00
liabilities
2019/01/01 Google home hub
expenses:personal:electronics $90.00
liabilities $-90.00
2019/01/02 Phone screen protector
expenses:personal:electronics:upgrades $10.00
liabilities
2019/01/02 Weekly train ticket
expenses:personal:train tickets $153.00
liabilities
2019/01/03 Flowers
expenses:personal $30.00
liabilities
As you can see, we have transactions in expenses:personal:electron-
ics:upgrades and expenses:personal:train tickets, and since both of
these accounts are without explicitly defined budget, these transac-
tions would be counted towards budgets of expenses:personal:electronics
and expenses:personal accordingly:
$ hledger balance --budget -M
Budget performance in 2019/01:
|| Jan
===============================++===============================
expenses || $283.00 [ 26% of $1100.00]
expenses:personal || $283.00 [ 26% of $1100.00]
expenses:personal:electronics || $100.00 [ 100% of $100.00]
liabilities || $-283.00 [ 26% of $-1100.00]
-------------------------------++-------------------------------
|| 0 [ 0]
And with --empty, we can get a better picture of budget allocation and
consumption:
$ hledger balance --budget -M --empty
Budget performance in 2019/01:
|| Jan
========================================++===============================
expenses || $283.00 [ 26% of $1100.00]
expenses:personal || $283.00 [ 26% of $1100.00]
expenses:personal:electronics || $100.00 [ 100% of $100.00]
expenses:personal:electronics:upgrades || $10.00
expenses:personal:train tickets || $153.00
liabilities || $-283.00 [ 26% of $-1100.00]
----------------------------------------++-------------------------------
|| 0 [ 0]
Output format
This command also supports the output destination and output format op-
tions The output formats supported are txt, csv, (multicolumn non-bud-
get reports only) html, and (experimental) json.
balancesheet
balancesheet, bs
This command displays a simple balance sheet, showing historical ending
balances of asset and liability accounts (ignoring any report begin
date). It assumes that these accounts are under a top-level asset or
liability account (case insensitive, plural forms also allowed).
Note this report shows all account balances with normal positive sign
(like conventional financial statements, unlike balance/print/register)
(experimental).
Example:
$ hledger balancesheet
Balance Sheet
Assets:
$-1 assets
$1 bank:saving
$-2 cash
--------------------
$-1
Liabilities:
$1 liabilities:debts
--------------------
$1
Total:
--------------------
0
With a reporting interval, multiple columns will be shown, one for each
report period. As with multicolumn balance reports, you can alter the
report mode with --change/--cumulative/--historical. Normally bal-
ancesheet shows historical ending balances, which is what you need for
a balance sheet; note this means it ignores report begin dates (and
-T/--row-total, since summing end balances generally does not make
sense). Instead of absolute values percentages can be displayed with
-%.
This command also supports the output destination and output format op-
tions The output formats supported are txt, csv, html, and (experimen-
tal) json.
balancesheetequity
balancesheetequity, bse
Just like balancesheet, but also reports Equity (which it assumes is
under a top-level equity account).
Example:
$ hledger balancesheetequity
Balance Sheet With Equity
Assets:
$-2 assets
$1 bank:saving
$-3 cash
--------------------
$-2
Liabilities:
$1 liabilities:debts
--------------------
$1
Equity:
$1 equity:owner
--------------------
$1
Total:
--------------------
0
This command also supports the output destination and output format op-
tions The output formats supported are txt, csv, html, and (experimen-
tal) json.
cashflow
cashflow, cf
This command displays a simple cashflow statement, showing changes in
"cash" accounts. It assumes that these accounts are under a top-level
asset account (case insensitive, plural forms also allowed) and do not
contain receivable or A/R in their name. Note this report shows all
account balances with normal positive sign (like conventional financial
statements, unlike balance/print/register) (experimental).
Example:
$ hledger cashflow
Cashflow Statement
Cash flows:
$-1 assets
$1 bank:saving
$-2 cash
--------------------
$-1
Total:
--------------------
$-1
With a reporting interval, multiple columns will be shown, one for each
report period. Normally cashflow shows changes in assets per period,
though as with multicolumn balance reports you can alter the report
mode with --change/--cumulative/--historical. Instead of absolute val-
ues percentages can be displayed with -%.
This command also supports the output destination and output format op-
tions The output formats supported are txt, csv, html, and (experimen-
tal) json.
check-dates
check-dates
Check that transactions are sorted by increasing date. With --date2,
checks secondary dates instead. With --strict, dates must also be
unique. With a query, only matched transactions' dates are checked.
Reads the default journal file, or another specified with -f.
check-dupes
check-dupes
Reports account names having the same leaf but different prefixes. In
other words, two or more leaves that are categorized differently.
Reads the default journal file, or another specified as an argument.
An example: http://stefanorodighiero.net/software/hledger-dupes.html
close
close, equity
Prints a "closing balances" transaction and an "opening balances"
transaction that bring account balances to and from zero, respectively.
These can be added to your journal file(s), eg to bring asset/liability
balances forward into a new journal file, or to close out revenues/ex-
penses to retained earnings at the end of a period.
You can print just one of these transactions by using the --close or
--open flag. You can customise their descriptions with the --close-
desc and --open-desc options.
One amountless posting to "equity:opening/closing balances" is added to
balance the transactions, by default. You can customise this account
name with --close-acct and --open-acct; if you specify only one of
these, it will be used for both.
With --x/--explicit, the equity posting's amount will be shown. And if
it involves multiple commodities, a posting for each commodity will be
shown, as with the print command.
With --interleaved, the equity postings are shown next to the postings
they balance, which makes troubleshooting easier.
By default, transaction prices in the journal are ignored when generat-
ing the closing/opening transactions. With --show-costs, this cost in-
formation is preserved (balance -B reports will be unchanged after the
transition). Separate postings are generated for each cost in each
commodity. Note this can generate very large journal entries, if you
have many foreign currency or investment transactions.
close usage
If you split your journal files by time (eg yearly), you will typically
run this command at the end of the year, and save the closing transac-
tion as last entry of the old file, and the opening transaction as the
first entry of the new file. This makes the files self contained, so
that correct balances are reported no matter which of them are loaded.
Ie, if you load just one file, the balances are initialised correctly;
or if you load several files, the redundant closing/opening transac-
tions cancel each other out. (They will show up in print or register
reports; you can exclude them with a query like not:desc:'(open-
ing|closing) balances'.)
If you're running a business, you might also use this command to "close
the books" at the end of an accounting period, transferring income
statement account balances to retained earnings. (You may want to
change the equity account name to something like "equity:retained earn-
ings".)
By default, the closing transaction is dated yesterday, the balances
are calculated as of end of yesterday, and the opening transaction is
dated today. To close on some other date, use: hledger close -e OPEN-
INGDATE. Eg, to close/open on the 2018/2019 boundary, use -e 2019.
You can also use -p or date:PERIOD (any starting date is ignored).
Both transactions will include balance assertions for the closed/re-
opened accounts. You probably shouldn't use status or realness filters
(like -C or -R or status:) with this command, or the generated balance
assertions will depend on these flags. Likewise, if you run this com-
mand with --auto, the balance assertions will probably always require
--auto.
Examples:
Carrying asset/liability balances into a new file for 2019:
$ hledger close -f 2018.journal -e 2019 assets liabilities --open
# (copy/paste the output to the start of your 2019 journal file)
$ hledger close -f 2018.journal -e 2019 assets liabilities --close
# (copy/paste the output to the end of your 2018 journal file)
Now:
$ hledger bs -f 2019.journal # one file - balances are correct
$ hledger bs -f 2018.journal -f 2019.journal # two files - balances still correct
$ hledger bs -f 2018.journal not:desc:closing # to see year-end balances, must exclude closing txn
Transactions spanning the closing date can complicate matters, breaking
balance assertions:
2018/12/30 a purchase made in 2018, clearing the following year
expenses:food 5
assets:bank:checking -5 ; [2019/1/2]
Here's one way to resolve that:
; in 2018.journal:
2018/12/30 a purchase made in 2018, clearing the following year
expenses:food 5
liabilities:pending
; in 2019.journal:
2019/1/2 clearance of last year's pending transactions
liabilities:pending 5 = 0
assets:checking
commodities
commodities
List all commodity/currency symbols used or declared in the journal.
descriptions
descriptions Show descriptions.
This command lists all descriptions that appear in transactions.
Examples:
$ hledger descriptions
Store Name
Gas Station | Petrol
Person A
diff
diff
Compares a particular account's transactions in two input files. It
shows any transactions to this account which are in one file but not in
the other.
More precisely, for each posting affecting this account in either file,
it looks for a corresponding posting in the other file which posts the
same amount to the same account (ignoring date, description, etc.)
Since postings not transactions are compared, this also works when mul-
tiple bank transactions have been combined into a single journal entry.
This is useful eg if you have downloaded an account's transactions from
your bank (eg as CSV data). When hledger and your bank disagree about
the account balance, you can compare the bank data with your journal to
find out the cause.
Examples:
$ hledger diff -f $LEDGER_FILE -f bank.csv assets:bank:giro
These transactions are in the first file only:
2014/01/01 Opening Balances
assets:bank:giro EUR ...
...
equity:opening balances EUR -...
These transactions are in the second file only:
files
files
List all files included in the journal. With a REGEX argument, only
file names matching the regular expression (case sensitive) are shown.
help
help
Show any of the hledger manuals.
The help command displays any of the main hledger manuals, in one of
several ways. Run it with no argument to list the manuals, or provide
a full or partial manual name to select one.
hledger manuals are available in several formats. hledger help will
use the first of these display methods that it finds: info, man,
$PAGER, less, stdout (or when non-interactive, just stdout). You can
force a particular viewer with the --info, --man, --pager, --cat flags.
Examples:
$ hledger help
Please choose a manual by typing "hledger help MANUAL" (a substring is ok).
Manuals: hledger hledger-ui hledger-web journal csv timeclock timedot
$ hledger help h --man
hledger(1) hledger User Manuals hledger(1)
NAME
hledger - a command-line accounting tool
SYNOPSIS
hledger [-f FILE] COMMAND [OPTIONS] [ARGS]
hledger [-f FILE] ADDONCMD -- [OPTIONS] [ARGS]
hledger
DESCRIPTION
hledger is a cross-platform program for tracking money, time, or any
...
import
import
Read new transactions added to each FILE since last run, and add them
to the main journal file. Or with --dry-run, just print the transac-
tions that would be added. Or with --catchup, just mark all of the
FILEs' transactions as imported, without actually importing any.
The input files are specified as arguments - no need to write -f before
each one. So eg to add new transactions from all CSV files to the main
journal, it's just: hledger import *.csv
New transactions are detected in the same way as print --new: by assum-
ing transactions are always added to the input files in increasing date
order, and by saving .latest.FILE state files.
The --dry-run output is in journal format, so you can filter it, eg to
see only uncategorised transactions:
$ hledger import --dry ... | hledger -f- print unknown --ignore-assertions
Importing balance assignments
Entries added by import will have their posting amounts made explicit
(like hledger print -x). This means that any balance assignments in
imported files must be evaluated; but, imported files don't get to see
the main file's account balances. As a result, importing entries with
balance assignments (eg from an institution that provides only balances
and not posting amounts) will probably generate incorrect posting
amounts. To avoid this problem, use print instead of import:
$ hledger print IMPORTFILE [--new] >> $LEDGER_FILE
(If you think import should leave amounts implicit like print does,
please test it and send a pull request.)
incomestatement
incomestatement, is
This command displays a simple income statement, showing revenues and
expenses during a period. It assumes that these accounts are under a
top-level revenue or income or expense account (case insensitive, plu-
ral forms also allowed). Note this report shows all account balances
with normal positive sign (like conventional financial statements, un-
like balance/print/register) (experimental).
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.)
$ hledger incomestatement
Income Statement
Revenues:
$-2 income
$-1 gifts
$-1 salary
--------------------
$-2
Expenses:
$2 expenses
$1 food
$1 supplies
--------------------
$2
Total:
--------------------
0
With a reporting interval, multiple columns will be shown, one for each
report period. Normally incomestatement shows revenues/expenses per
period, though as with multicolumn balance reports you can alter the
report mode with --change/--cumulative/--historical. Instead of abso-
lute values percentages can be displayed with -%.
This command also supports the output destination and output format op-
tions The output formats supported are txt, csv, html, and (experimen-
tal) json.
notes
notes Show notes.
This command lists all notes that appear in transactions.
Examples:
$ hledger notes
Petrol
Snacks
payees
payees Show payee names.
This command lists all payee names that appear in transactions.
Examples:
$ hledger payees
Store Name
Gas Station
Person A
prices
prices
Print market price directives from the journal. With --costs, also
print synthetic market prices based on transaction prices. With --in-
verted-costs, also print inverse prices based on transaction prices.
Prices (and postings providing prices) can be filtered by a query.
Price amounts are always displayed with their full precision.
print
print, txns, p
Show transaction journal entries, sorted by date.
The print command displays full journal entries (transactions) from the
journal file in date order, tidily formatted. With --date2, transac-
tions are sorted by secondary date instead.
print's output is always a valid hledger journal.
It preserves all transaction information, but it does not preserve di-
rectives or inter-transaction comments
$ hledger print
2008/01/01 income
assets:bank:checking $1
income:salary $-1
2008/06/01 gift
assets:bank:checking $1
income:gifts $-1
2008/06/02 save
assets:bank:saving $1
assets:bank:checking $-1
2008/06/03 * eat & shop
expenses:food $1
expenses:supplies $1
assets:cash $-2
2008/12/31 * pay off
liabilities:debts $1
assets:bank:checking $-1
Normally, the journal entry's explicit or implicit amount style is pre-
served. For example, when an amount is omitted in the journal, it will
not appear in the output. Similarly, when a transaction price is im-
plied but not written, it will not appear in the output. You can use
the -x/--explicit flag to make all amounts and transaction prices ex-
plicit, which can be useful for troubleshooting or for making your
journal more readable and robust against data entry errors. -x is also
implied by using any of -B,-V,-X,--value.
Note, -x/--explicit will cause postings with a multi-commodity amount
(these can arise when a multi-commodity transaction has an implicit
amount) to be split into multiple single-commodity postings, keeping
the output parseable.
With -B/--cost, amounts with transaction prices are converted to cost
using that price. This can be used for troubleshooting.
With -m/--match and a STR argument, print will show at most one trans-
action: the one one whose description is most similar to STR, and is
most recent. STR should contain at least two characters. If there is
no similar-enough match, no transaction will be shown.
With --new, for each FILE being read, hledger reads (and writes) a spe-
cial state file (.latest.FILE in the same directory), containing the
latest transaction date(s) that were seen last time FILE was read.
When this file is found, only transactions with newer dates (and new
transactions on the latest date) are printed. This is useful for ig-
noring already-seen entries in import data, such as downloaded CSV
files. Eg:
$ hledger -f bank1.csv print --new
(shows transactions added since last print --new on this file)
This assumes that transactions added to FILE always have same or in-
creasing dates, and that transactions on the same day do not get re-
ordered. See also the import command.
This command also supports the output destination and output format op-
tions The output formats supported are txt, csv, and (experimental)
json.
Here's an example of print's CSV output:
$ hledger print -Ocsv
"txnidx","date","date2","status","code","description","comment","account","amount","commodity","credit","debit","posting-status","posting-comment"
"1","2008/01/01","","","","income","","assets:bank:checking","1","$","","1","",""
"1","2008/01/01","","","","income","","income:salary","-1","$","1","","",""
"2","2008/06/01","","","","gift","","assets:bank:checking","1","$","","1","",""
"2","2008/06/01","","","","gift","","income:gifts","-1","$","1","","",""
"3","2008/06/02","","","","save","","assets:bank:saving","1","$","","1","",""
"3","2008/06/02","","","","save","","assets:bank:checking","-1","$","1","","",""
"4","2008/06/03","","*","","eat & shop","","expenses:food","1","$","","1","",""
"4","2008/06/03","","*","","eat & shop","","expenses:supplies","1","$","","1","",""
"4","2008/06/03","","*","","eat & shop","","assets:cash","-2","$","2","","",""
"5","2008/12/31","","*","","pay off","","liabilities:debts","1","$","","1","",""
"5","2008/12/31","","*","","pay off","","assets:bank:checking","-1","$","1","","",""
o There is one CSV record per posting, with the parent transaction's
fields repeated.
o The "txnidx" (transaction index) field shows which postings belong to
the same transaction. (This number might change if transactions are
reordered within the file, files are parsed/included in a different
order, etc.)
o The amount is separated into "commodity" (the symbol) and "amount"
(numeric quantity) fields.
o The numeric amount is repeated in either the "credit" or "debit" col-
umn, for convenience. (Those names are not accurate in the account-
ing sense; it just puts negative amounts under credit and zero or
greater amounts under debit.)
print-unique
print-unique
Print transactions which do not reuse an already-seen description.
Example:
$ cat unique.journal
1/1 test
(acct:one) 1
2/2 test
(acct:two) 2
$ LEDGER_FILE=unique.journal hledger print-unique
(-f option not supported)
2015/01/01 test
(acct:one) 1
register
register, reg, r
Show postings and their running total.
The register command displays postings in date order, one per line, and
their running total. This is typically used with a query selecting a
particular account, to see that account's activity:
$ hledger register checking
2008/01/01 income assets:bank:checking $1 $1
2008/06/01 gift assets:bank:checking $1 $2
2008/06/02 save assets:bank:checking $-1 $1
2008/12/31 pay off assets:bank:checking $-1 0
With --date2, it shows and sorts by secondary date instead.
The --historical/-H flag adds the balance from any undisplayed prior
postings to the running total. This is useful when you want to see
only recent activity, with a historically accurate running balance:
$ hledger register checking -b 2008/6 --historical
2008/06/01 gift assets:bank:checking $1 $2
2008/06/02 save assets:bank:checking $-1 $1
2008/12/31 pay off assets:bank:checking $-1 0
The --depth option limits the amount of sub-account detail displayed.
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
is affected by --historical. It works best when showing just one ac-
count and one commodity.
The --related/-r flag shows the other postings in the transactions of
the postings which would normally be shown.
The --invert flag negates all amounts. For example, it can be used on
an income account where amounts are normally displayed as negative num-
bers. It's also useful to show postings on the checking account to-
gether with the related account:
$ hledger register --related --invert assets:checking
With a reporting interval, register shows summary postings, one per in-
terval, aggregating the postings to each account:
$ hledger register --monthly income
2008/01 income:salary $-1 $-1
2008/06 income:gifts $-1 $-2
Periods with no activity, and summary postings with a zero amount, are
not shown by default; use the --empty/-E flag to see them:
$ hledger register --monthly income -E
2008/01 income:salary $-1 $-1
2008/02 0 $-1
2008/03 0 $-1
2008/04 0 $-1
2008/05 0 $-1
2008/06 income:gifts $-1 $-2
2008/07 0 $-2
2008/08 0 $-2
2008/09 0 $-2
2008/10 0 $-2
2008/11 0 $-2
2008/12 0 $-2
Often, you'll want to see just one line per interval. The --depth op-
tion helps with this, causing subaccounts to be aggregated:
$ hledger register --monthly assets --depth 1h
2008/01 assets $1 $1
2008/06 assets $-1 0
2008/12 assets $-1 $-1
Note when using report intervals, if you specify start/end dates these
will be adjusted outward if necessary to contain a whole number of in-
tervals. This ensures that the first and last intervals are full
length and comparable to the others in the report.
Custom register output
register uses the full terminal width by default, except on windows.
You can override this by setting the COLUMNS environment variable (not
a bash shell variable) or by using the --width/-w option.
The description and account columns normally share the space equally
(about half of (width - 40) each). You can adjust this by adding a de-
scription width as part of --width's argument, comma-separated: --width
W,D . Here's a diagram (won't display correctly in --help):
<--------------------------------- width (W) ---------------------------------->
date (10) description (D) account (W-41-D) amount (12) balance (12)
DDDDDDDDDD dddddddddddddddddddd aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa AAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAA
and some examples:
$ hledger reg # use terminal width (or 80 on windows)
$ hledger reg -w 100 # use width 100
$ COLUMNS=100 hledger reg # set with one-time environment variable
$ export COLUMNS=100; hledger reg # set till session end (or window resize)
$ hledger reg -w 100,40 # set overall width 100, description width 40
$ hledger reg -w $COLUMNS,40 # use terminal width, & description width 40
This command also supports the output destination and output format op-
tions The output formats supported are txt, csv, and (experimental)
json.
register-match
register-match
Print the one posting whose transaction description is closest to DESC,
in the style of the register command. If there are multiple equally
good matches, it shows the most recent. Query options (options, not
arguments) can be used to restrict the search space. Helps ledger-au-
tosync detect already-seen transactions when importing.
rewrite
rewrite
Print all transactions, rewriting the postings of matched transactions.
For now the only rewrite available is adding new postings, like print
--auto.
This is a start at a generic rewriter of transaction entries. It reads
the default journal and prints the transactions, like print, but adds
one or more specified postings to any transactions matching QUERY. The
posting amounts can be fixed, or a multiplier of the existing transac-
tion's first posting amount.
Examples:
$ hledger-rewrite.hs ^income --add-posting '(liabilities:tax) *.33 ; income tax' --add-posting '(reserve:gifts) $100'
$ hledger-rewrite.hs expenses:gifts --add-posting '(reserve:gifts) *-1"'
$ hledger-rewrite.hs -f rewrites.hledger
rewrites.hledger may consist of entries like:
= ^income amt:<0 date:2017
(liabilities:tax) *0.33 ; tax on income
(reserve:grocery) *0.25 ; reserve 25% for grocery
(reserve:) *0.25 ; reserve 25% for grocery
Note the single quotes to protect the dollar sign from bash, and the
two spaces between account and amount.
More:
$ hledger rewrite -- [QUERY] --add-posting "ACCT AMTEXPR" ...
$ hledger rewrite -- ^income --add-posting '(liabilities:tax) *.33'
$ hledger rewrite -- expenses:gifts --add-posting '(budget:gifts) *-1"'
$ hledger rewrite -- ^income --add-posting '(budget:foreign currency) *0.25 JPY; diversify'
Argument for --add-posting option is a usual posting of transaction
with an exception for amount specification. More precisely, you can
use '*' (star symbol) before the amount to indicate that that this is a
factor for an amount of original matched posting. If the amount in-
cludes a commodity name, the new posting amount will be in the new com-
modity; otherwise, it will be in the matched posting amount's commod-
ity.
Re-write rules in a file
During the run this tool will execute so called "Automated Transac-
tions" found in any journal it process. I.e instead of specifying this
operations in command line you can put them in a journal file.
$ rewrite-rules.journal
Make contents look like this:
= ^income
(liabilities:tax) *.33
= expenses:gifts
budget:gifts *-1
assets:budget *1
Note that '=' (equality symbol) that is used instead of date in trans-
actions you usually write. It indicates the query by which you want to
match the posting to add new ones.
$ hledger rewrite -- -f input.journal -f rewrite-rules.journal > rewritten-tidy-output.journal
This is something similar to the commands pipeline:
$ hledger rewrite -- -f input.journal '^income' --add-posting '(liabilities:tax) *.33' \
| hledger rewrite -- -f - expenses:gifts --add-posting 'budget:gifts *-1' \
--add-posting 'assets:budget *1' \
> rewritten-tidy-output.journal
It is important to understand that relative order of such entries in
journal is important. You can re-use result of previously added post-
ings.
Diff output format
To use this tool for batch modification of your journal files you may
find useful output in form of unified diff.
$ hledger rewrite -- --diff -f examples/sample.journal '^income' --add-posting '(liabilities:tax) *.33'
Output might look like:
--- /tmp/examples/sample.journal
+++ /tmp/examples/sample.journal
@@ -18,3 +18,4 @@
2008/01/01 income
- assets:bank:checking $1
+ assets:bank:checking $1
income:salary
+ (liabilities:tax) 0
@@ -22,3 +23,4 @@
2008/06/01 gift
- assets:bank:checking $1
+ assets:bank:checking $1
income:gifts
+ (liabilities:tax) 0
If you'll pass this through patch tool you'll get transactions contain-
ing the posting that matches your query be updated. Note that multiple
files might be update according to list of input files specified via
--file options and include directives inside of these files.
Be careful. Whole transaction being re-formatted in a style of output
from hledger print.
See also:
https://github.com/simonmichael/hledger/issues/99
rewrite vs. print --auto
This command predates print --auto, and currently does much the same
thing, but with these differences:
o with multiple files, rewrite lets rules in any file affect all other
files. print --auto uses standard directive scoping; rules affect
only child files.
o rewrite's query limits which transactions can be rewritten; all are
printed. print --auto's query limits which transactions are printed.
o rewrite applies rules specified on command line or in the journal.
print --auto applies rules specified in the journal.
roi
roi
Shows the time-weighted (TWR) and money-weighted (IRR) rate of return
on your investments.
This command assumes that you have account(s) that hold nothing but
your investments and whenever you record current appraisal/valuation of
these investments you offset unrealized profit and loss into account(s)
that, again, hold nothing but unrealized profit and loss.
Any transactions affecting balance of investment account(s) and not
originating from unrealized profit and loss account(s) are assumed to
be your investments or withdrawals.
At a minimum, you need to supply a query (which could be just an ac-
count name) to select your investments with --inv, and another query to
identify your profit and loss transactions with --pnl.
It will compute and display the internalized rate of return (IRR) and
time-weighted rate of return (TWR) for your investments for the time
period requested. Both rates of return are annualized before display,
regardless of the length of reporting interval.
stats
stats
Show some journal statistics.
The stats command displays summary information for the whole journal,
or a matched part of it. With a reporting interval, it shows a report
for each report period.
Example:
$ hledger stats
Main journal file : /src/hledger/examples/sample.journal
Included journal files :
Transactions span : 2008-01-01 to 2009-01-01 (366 days)
Last transaction : 2008-12-31 (2333 days ago)
Transactions : 5 (0.0 per day)
Transactions last 30 days: 0 (0.0 per day)
Transactions last 7 days : 0 (0.0 per day)
Payees/descriptions : 5
Accounts : 8 (depth 3)
Commodities : 1 ($)
Market prices : 12 ($)
This command also supports output destination and output format selec-
tion.
tags
tags
List all the tag names used in the journal. With a TAGREGEX argument,
only tag names matching the regular expression (case insensitive) are
shown. With QUERY arguments, only transactions matching the query are
considered. With --values flag, the tags' unique values are listed in-
stead.
test
test
Run built-in unit tests.
This command runs the unit tests built in to hledger and hledger-lib,
printing the results on stdout. If any test fails, the exit code will
be non-zero.
This is mainly used by hledger developers, but you can also use it to
sanity-check the installed hledger executable on your platform. All
tests are expected to pass - if you ever see a failure, please report
as a bug!
This command also accepts tasty test runner options, written after a --
(double hyphen). Eg to run only the tests in Hledger.Data.Amount, with
ANSI colour codes disabled:
$ hledger test -- -pData.Amount --color=never
For help on these, see https://github.com/feuerbach/tasty#options (--
--help currently doesn't show them).
Add-on Commands
hledger also searches for external add-on commands, and will include
these in the commands list. These are programs or scripts in your PATH
whose name starts with hledger- and ends with a recognised file exten-
sion (currently: no extension, bat,com,exe, hs,lhs,pl,py,rb,rkt,sh).
Add-ons can be invoked like any hledger command, but there are a few
things to be aware of. Eg if the hledger-web add-on is installed,
o hledger -h web shows hledger's help, while hledger web -h shows
hledger-web's help.
o Flags specific to the add-on must have a preceding -- to hide them
from hledger. So hledger web --serve --port 9000 will be rejected;
you must use hledger web -- --serve --port 9000.
o You can always run add-ons directly if preferred: hledger-web --serve
--port 9000.
Add-ons are a relatively easy way to add local features or experiment
with new ideas. They can be written in any language, but haskell
scripts have a big advantage: they can use the same hledger (and
haskell) library functions that built-in commands do, for command-line
options, journal parsing, reporting, etc.
Two important add-ons are the hledger-ui and hledger-web user inter-
faces. These are maintained and released along with hledger:
ui
hledger-ui provides an efficient terminal interface.
web
hledger-web provides a simple web interface.
Third party add-ons, maintained separately from hledger, include:
iadd
hledger-iadd is a more interactive, terminal UI replacement for the add
command.
interest
hledger-interest generates interest transactions for an account accord-
ing to various schemes.
A few more experimental or old add-ons can be found in hledger's bin/
directory. These are typically prototypes and not guaranteed to work.
ENVIRONMENT
COLUMNS The screen width used by the register command. Default: the
full terminal width.
LEDGER_FILE The journal file path when not specified with -f. Default:
~/.hledger.journal (on windows, perhaps C:/Users/USER/.hledger.jour-
nal).
A typical value is ~/DIR/YYYY.journal, where DIR is a version-con-
trolled finance directory and YYYY is the current year. Or ~/DIR/cur-
rent.journal, where current.journal is a symbolic link to YYYY.journal.
On Mac computers, you can set this and other environment variables in a
more thorough way that also affects applications started from the GUI
(say, an Emacs dock icon). Eg on MacOS Catalina I have a ~/.MacOSX/en-
vironment.plist file containing
{
"LEDGER_FILE" : "~/finance/current.journal"
}
To see the effect you may need to killall Dock, or reboot.
FILES
Reads data from one or more files in hledger journal, timeclock, time-
dot, or CSV format specified with -f, or $LEDGER_FILE, or
$HOME/.hledger.journal (on windows, perhaps
C:/Users/USER/.hledger.journal).
LIMITATIONS
The need to precede addon command options with -- when invoked from
hledger is awkward.
When input data contains non-ascii characters, a suitable system locale
must be configured (or there will be an unhelpful error). Eg on POSIX,
set LANG to something other than C.
In a Microsoft Windows CMD window, non-ascii characters and colours are
not supported.
On Windows, non-ascii characters may not display correctly when running
a hledger built in CMD in MSYS/CYGWIN, or vice-versa.
In a Cygwin/MSYS/Mintty window, the tab key is not supported in hledger
add.
Not all of Ledger's journal file syntax is supported. See file format
differences.
On large data files, hledger is slower and uses more memory than
Ledger.
TROUBLESHOOTING
Here are some issues you might encounter when you run hledger (and re-
member you can also seek help from the IRC channel, mail list or bug
tracker):
Successfully installed, but "No command 'hledger' found"
stack and cabal install binaries into a special directory, which should
be added to your PATH environment variable. Eg on unix-like systems,
that is ~/.local/bin and ~/.cabal/bin respectively.
I set a custom LEDGER_FILE, but hledger is still using the default file
LEDGER_FILE should be a real environment variable, not just a shell
variable. The command env | grep LEDGER_FILE should show it. You may
need to use export. Here's an explanation.
"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 sup-
ports 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).
REPORTING BUGS
Report bugs at http://bugs.hledger.org (or on the #hledger IRC channel
or hledger mail list)
AUTHORS
Simon Michael <simon@joyful.com> and contributors
COPYRIGHT
Copyright (C) 2007-2019 Simon Michael.
Released under GNU GPL v3 or later.
SEE ALSO
hledger(1), hledger-ui(1), hledger-web(1), hledger-api(1),
hledger_csv(5), hledger_journal(5), hledger_timeclock(5), hledger_time-
dot(5), ledger(1)
http://hledger.org
hledger 1.17 March 2020 hledger(1)