penny-bin-0.6.0.0: examples/more-file-format-details.pny

# This file contains more details on the Penny file format. Read it if
# you are interested, or if you are getting error messages you don't
# understand when you use penny on your file.

# A complete EBNF grammar for the file format is in the file
# doc/ledger-file-format.org.

# Use a Unicode file format when you save your data. Penny works with
# UTF-8, which is the de-facto standard Unicode encoding on Unix
# systems. If you do not want to bother with Unicode, it's best to use
# just the ASCII subset of Unicode. Using a non-Unicode encoding might
# work, but I have not tested that. Also, if you want to put digit
# grouping characters in your penny file, Unicode is your only option,
# as the Unicode thin space (U+2009) is the only digit grouping
# character you can use.

# If you have no idea what all this encoding stuff is about, the first
# thing to remember is that there is no such thing as plain text. Read
# this:

# http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/Unicode.html

# Since you can use Unicode, feel free to use whatever currency
# symbols you want:

2012-12-20 Euroworks
    Income:Salary                                       > 2100 €
    Assets:Bank

# More detail on dates:

# Dates are written in the format YYYY-MM-DD. If the month or the day
# has only one digit, you must use leading zeroes. In addition, dates
# can include a time. Times are written in 24-hour format, either as
# HH:MM or as HH:MM:SS; again, if any component has only one digit,
# you must use a leading zero.

# You can use either a dash or a slash to separate YYYY and the MM and
# the DD.

# All dates and times are considered to be UTC. If you provide a time,
# you may optionall specify the time zone offset by using a leading
# plus or a leading minus.

# Here are some sample postings with various dates and times.

2012-12-17 02:23 Transfer from savings
    Assets:Savings                                      > $200.00
    Assets:Checking                                     < $200.00

2012-12-17 12:23:35 Transfer from savings
    Assets:Savings                                      > $200.00
    Assets:Checking                                     < $200.00

# Eastern time
2012-12-17 14:56:00 -0500 Transfer from savings
    Assets:Savings                                      > $200.00
    Assets:Checking                                     < $200.00

# Quoting for various fields:

# Usually you can write information in your ledger file without using
# characters to indicate which field is which. However, sometimes if
# you want to use slightly more unusual characters, you have to
# surround that field with characters. The canonical guide to what you
# must do is in the bin/doc/ledger-grammar.org file. Here are the highlights:

# Accounts can be unquoted if the very first character of the account
# is a letter (capital or lower-case, A-Z or a-z) or any character
# above Unicode code point 127 (e.g. ñ, or é, or í, or...). In
# addition every other character may be nearly any character except a
# space or an asterisk. Otherwise, you must surround your account with
# curly braces. Example:

2012-12-18 CVS
    {Expenses:Personal Care}                            < $52.35
        'Earplugs
    Liabilities:Amex

# You can assign payees to individual postings as well as to the
# entire transaction. Payees assigned to individual postings must be
# surrounded with tildes. You do not usually have to quote payees that
# are assigned to the whole transaction; however, you do have to quote
# them if the first character is not a letter. Examples:

2012-12-18 ~7-Eleven~
    Expenses:Food                                       < $12.99
    Liabilities:Amex

2012-12-19 Spacely Sprockets
    Income:Salary                                       > $2000.00
    ~State of Maryland~ Expenses:Taxes:State            < $200.00
    ~Healthco~ Expenses:Insurance:Health                < $75.00
    Assets:Checking

# Whether or not you have to quote commodities is complicated. For
# full details, look at bin/doc/ledger-grammar.org. The full rule set
# depends on whether the commodity appears on the left side or the
# right side of the quantity. (Whether there is a space between the
# commodity and the quantity is not relevant.)

# However, here is a simple rule that is always true. If your
# commodity name consists ONLY of letters, the dollar sign, and
# non-ASCII characters, you never need to quote it. Since most stock
# ticker symbols are only letters, and because this means that you
# never have to quote lone commodity symbols like $, €, ¥, etc, you
# should not usually have to quote commodities.