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hledger - a command-line accounting tool
hledger [-f FILE] COMMAND [OPTIONS] [ARGS]
hledger [-f FILE] ADDONCMD -- [OPTIONS] [ARGS]
hledger
hledger is a cross-platform program 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).
Tested on unix, mac, windows, hledger aims to be a reliable, practical tool for daily use.
This is hledger's command-line interface (there are also curses and web interfaces). Its basic function is to read a plain text file describing financial transactions (in accounting terms, a general journal) 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, timeclock, 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 editor mode such as ledger-mode for added convenience. hledger's interactive 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.
Two simple transactions in hledger journal format:
2015/9/30 gift received assets:cash $20 income:gifts 2015/10/16 farmers market expenses:food $10 assets:cash
Some basic reports:
$ hledger print 2015/09/30 gift received assets:cash $20 income:gifts $-20 2015/10/16 farmers market expenses:food $10 assets:cash $-10
$ hledger accounts --tree assets cash expenses food income gifts
$ hledger balance $10 assets:cash $10 expenses:food $-20 income:gifts -------------------- 0
$ hledger register cash 2015/09/30 gift received assets:cash $20 $20 2015/10/16 farmers market assets:cash $-10 $10
More commands:
$ hledger # show available commands $ hledger add # add more transactions to the journal file $ hledger balance # all accounts with aggregated balances $ hledger balance --help # show detailed help for balance command $ hledger balance --depth 1 # only top-level accounts $ hledger register # show account postings, with running total $ hledger reg income # show postings to/from income accounts $ hledger reg 'assets:some bank:checking' # show postings to/from this checking account $ hledger print desc:shop # show transactions with shop in the description $ hledger activity -W # show transaction counts per week as a bar chart
To see general usage help, including general options which are supported by most hledger commands, run hledger -h.
General help options:
General input options:
General reporting options:
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.
To see options for a particular command, including command-specific options, 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 options after a double-hyphen, eg: hledger ui -- --watch. Or, you can run the addon executable directly: hledger-ui --watch.
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, one per line, and then reuse them by writing @FILENAME in a command line. To prevent this expansion of @-arguments, precede them with a -- argument. For more, see Save frequently used options.
Option and argument values which contain problematic characters should be escaped with double quotes, backslashes, or (best) single quotes. Problematic characters means spaces, and also characters which are significant to your command shell, such as less-than/greater-than. Eg: hledger register -p 'last year' "accounts receivable (receivable|payable)" amt:\>100.
Characters which are significant both to the shell and in regular expressions sometimes need to be double-escaped. 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:\\$.
When hledger is invoking an addon executable (like hledger-ui), options and arguments get de-escaped once more, so you might need triple-escaping. Eg: hledger ui cur:'\\$' or hledger ui cur:\\\\$ in bash. (The number of backslashes in fish shell is left as an exercise for the reader.)
Inside a file used for argument expansion, one less level of escaping is enough. (And in this case, backslashes seem to work better than quotes. Eg: cur:\$).
If in doubt, keep things simple:
If you're really stumped, add --debug=2 to troubleshoot.
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 some Ledger journals | .journal .j .hledger .ledger |
timeclock | timeclock files (precise time logging) | .timeclock |
timedot | timedot files (approximate time logging) | .timedot |
csv | comma-separated values (data interchange) | .csv |
If needed (eg to ensure correct error messages when a file has the “wrong” extension), you can force a specific reader/format by prepending 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:
If you need those, either use the include directive, or concatenate the files, eg: cat a.journal b.journal | hledger -f- CMD.
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, 2004.9.1 | exact date, several separators allowed. Year 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, tomorrow | -1, 0, 1 days from today |
last/this/next day/week/month/quarter/year | -1, 0, 1 periods from the current period |
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 results:
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 |
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. One important thing to be aware of when specifying end dates: as in Ledger, end dates are exclusive, so you need to write the date after the last day you want to include.
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 |
A report interval can be specified so that commands like register, balance 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 complex intervals may be specified with a period expression. Report intervals can not be specified with a query, currently.
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; equivalent to “2009/1/1 to 2009/2/1” |
-p "2009/1/1" | just that day; equivalent to “2009/1/1 to 2009/1/2” |
The argument of -p can also begin with, or be, a report interval expression. The basic report intervals are daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, 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 expression specifies different explicit start and end date.
For example:
-p "weekly from 2009/1/1 to 2009/4/1" – starts on 2008/12/29, closest preceeding Monday |
-p "monthly in 2008/11/25" – starts on 2018/11/01 |
-p "quarterly from 2009-05-05 to 2009-06-01" - starts on 2009/04/01, ends on 2009/06/30, which are first and last days of Q2 2009 |
-p "yearly from 2009-12-29" - starts on 2009/01/01, first day of 2009 |
The following more complex report intervals are also supported: biweekly, 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 preceeding Monday |
-p "every 5 month from 2009/03" – periods will have boundaries on 2009/03/01, 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 week" – periods will go from Tue to Tue |
-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"
With the --depth N option (short form: -N), commands like account, balance and register will show only the uppermost accounts in the account tree, down to level N. Use this when you want a summary with less detail. This flag has the same effect as a depth: query argument (so -2, --depth=2 or depth:2 are basically equivalent).
Normally hledger sums amounts, and organizes them in a hierarchy, based on account name. The --pivot FIELD option causes it to sum and organize hierarchy based on the value of some other field instead. FIELD can be: code, description, payee, note, or the full name (case insensitive) of any tag. As with account names, values containing colon:separated: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, described 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
The -B/--cost flag converts amounts to their cost at transaction time, if they have a transaction price specified.
The -V/--value flag converts reported amounts to their current market value.
Specifically, when there is a market price (P directive) for the amount's commodity, dated on or before today's date (or the report end date if specified), the amount will be converted to the price's commodity.
When there are multiple applicable P directives, -V chooses the most recent one, or in case of equal dates, the last-parsed one.
For example:
# one euro is worth this many dollars from nov 1 P 2016/11/01 € $1.10 # purchase some euros on nov 3 2016/11/3 assets:euros €100 assets:checking # the euro is worth fewer dollars by dec 21 P 2016/12/21 € $1.03
How many euros do I have ?
$ hledger -f t.j bal -N euros €100 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
Currently, hledger's -V only uses market prices recorded with P directives, not transaction prices (unlike Ledger).
Currently, -V has a limitation in multicolumn balance reports: it uses the market prices on the report end date for all columns. (Instead of the prices on each column's end date.)
Using -B/–cost and -V/–value together is currently allowed, but the results are probably not meaningful. Let us know if you find a use for this.
Some commands (print, register, stats, the balance commands) can write their output to a destination other than the console. This is controlled by the -o/--output-file option.
$ hledger balance -o - # write to stdout (the default) $ hledger balance -o FILE # write to FILE
Some commands can write their output in other formats. Eg print and register can output CSV, and the balance commands can output CSV or HTML. This is controlled by the -O/--output-format option, or by specifying a .csv or .html file extension with -o/--output-file.
$ hledger balance -O csv # write CSV to stdout $ hledger balance -o FILE.csv # write CSV to FILE.csv
hledger uses regular expressions in a number of places:
hledger's regular expressions come from the regex-tdfa library. In general they:
Some things to note:
One of hledger's strengths is being able to quickly report on precise subsets of your data. Most commands accept an optional query expression, written as arguments after the command name, to filter the data by date, account name or other criteria. 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):
The print command instead shows transactions which:
The following kinds of search terms can be used. Remember these can also be prefixed with not:, eg to exclude a particular subaccount.
The following special search term is used automatically in hledger-web, only:
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).
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 incomestatement). 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 detailed command help.
Show account names. Alias: a.
This command lists account names, either declared with account directives (–declared), posted to (–used), or both (default). With query arguments, only matched account names and account names referenced 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 components. Account names can be depth-clipped with --depth N or depth:N.
Examples:
$ hledger accounts --tree assets bank checking saving cash expenses food supplies income gifts salary liabilities debts
$ hledger accounts --drop 1 bank:checking bank:saving cash food supplies gifts salary debts
$ hledger accounts assets:bank:checking assets:bank:saving assets:cash expenses:food expenses:supplies income:gifts income:salary liabilities:debts
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.
$ hledger activity --quarterly 2008-01-01 ** 2008-04-01 ******* 2008-07-01 2008-10-01 **
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 transactions, 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:
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 restart the transaction. 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> $
Show accounts and their balances. Aliases: b, bal.
The balance command is hledger's most versatile command. Note, despite the name, it is not always used for showing real-world account balances; 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 balance during the entire period of the journal. Balance changes are calculated 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 balance. For a real-world account, typically you won't have all transactions in the journal; instead you'll have all transactions after a certain 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:
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 indented 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 compact 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
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)
Also, FMT can begin with an optional prefix to control how multi-commodity amounts are rendered:
There are some quirks. Eg in one-line mode, %(depth_spacer) has
no effect, instead %(account) has indentation built in.
Experimentation may be needed to get pleasing results.
Some example formats:
The balance command shows negative amounts in red, if:
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
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.
Multicolumn or tabular balance reports are a very useful hledger feature, and usually the preferred style. They share many of the above features, but they show the report as a table, with columns representing time periods. This mode is activated by providing a reporting interval.
There are three types of multicolumn balance report, showing different information:
$ 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
$ 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
$ 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
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 periods 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 period (without -E, leading and trailing columns with all zeroes are not shown). Second, all accounts which existed at the report start date will be considered, not just the ones with activity during the report period (use -E to include low-activity accounts which would otherwise would be omitted).
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
Limitations:
In multicolumn reports the -V/--value flag uses the market price on the report end date, for all columns (not the price on each column's end date).
Eliding of boring parent accounts in tree mode, as in the classic balance report, is not yet supported in multicolumn reports.
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 income, expenses, time usage, etc. –budget is most often combined with a report interval.
For example, you can take average monthly expenses in the common expense 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: || 2017/11 2017/12 ======================++================================================= <unbudgeted> || $20 $100 assets:bank:checking || $-2445 [99% of $-2480] $-2665 [107% of $-2480] 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
By default, only accounts with budget goals during the report period are shown. --show-unbudgeted shows unbudgeted accounts as well. Top-level accounts with no budget goals anywhere below them are grouped under <unbudgeted>.
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: || 2017/11/30 2017/12/31 ======================++================================================= <unbudgeted> || $20 $120 assets:bank:checking || $-2445 [99% of $-2480] $-5110 [103% of $-4960] 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
Note, the -S/--sort-amount flag is not yet fully supported with --budget.
For more examples, see Budgeting and Forecasting.
The balance command supports output destination and output format selection.
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). (bs)
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 balancesheet shows historical ending balances, which is what you need for a balance sheet; note this means it ignores report begin dates.
This command also supports output destination and output format selection.
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 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). (cf)
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.
This command also supports output destination and output format selection.
Check that transactions are sorted by increasing date. With a query, only matched transactions' dates are checked.
Report account names having the same leaf but different prefixes. An example: http://stefanorodighiero.net/software/hledger-dupes.html
Print closing/opening transactions that bring some or all account balances to zero and back. Can be useful for bringing asset/liability balances across file boundaries, or for closing out income/expenses for a period. This was formerly called “equity”, as in Ledger, and that alias is also accepted. See close –help for more.
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.
$ hledger help Please choose a manual by typing "hledger help MANUAL" (a substring is ok). Manuals: hledger hledger-ui hledger-web hledger-api 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 ...
Read new transactions added to each FILE since last run, and add them to the main journal file.
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 assuming 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
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, plural forms also allowed). Note this report shows all account balances with normal positive sign (like conventional financial statements, unlike balance/print/register) (experimental). (is)
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.
This command also supports output destination and output format selection.
Print all market prices from the journal.
Show transactions from the journal. Aliases: p, txns.
$ 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
The print command displays full journal entries (transactions) from the journal file in date order, tidily formatted. print's output is always a valid hledger journal. It preserves all transaction information, but it does not preserve directives or inter-transaction comments
Normally, the journal entry's explicit or implicit amount style is preserved. Ie when an amount is omitted in the journal, it will be omitted in the output. You can use the -x/--explicit flag to make all amounts explicit, which can be useful for troubleshooting or for making your journal more readable and robust against data entry errors. Note, -x will cause postings with a multi-commodity amount (these can arise when a multi-commodity transaction has an implicit amount) will be split into multiple single-commodity postings, for valid journal output.
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 transaction: 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 special 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 ignoring 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 increasing dates, and that transactions on the same day do not get reordered. See also the import command.
This command also supports output destination and output format selection. 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","","",""
Print transactions which do not reuse an already-seen description.
Show postings and their running total. Aliases: r, reg.
The register command displays postings, 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
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 account and one commodity.
The --related/-r flag shows the other postings in the transactions of the postings which would normally be shown.
With a reporting interval, register shows summary postings, one per interval, 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 option 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 intervals. This ensures that the first and last intervals are full length and comparable to the others in the report.
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 description width as part of –width's argument, comma-separated: --width W,D . Here's a diagram:
<--------------------------------- 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, and set description width
This command also supports output destination and output format selection.
Print the one posting whose transaction description is closest to DESC, in the style of the register command. Helps ledger-autosync detect already-seen transactions when importing.
Print all transactions, adding custom postings to the matched ones.
Show some journal statistics.
$ 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 ($)
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.
This command also supports output destination and output format selection.
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 additional QUERY arguments, only transactions matching the query are considered.
Run built-in unit tests.
$ hledger test Cases: 74 Tried: 74 Errors: 0 Failures: 0
This command runs hledger's built-in unit tests and displays a quick report. With a regular expression argument, it selects only tests with matching names. It's mainly used in development, but it's also nice to be able to check your hledger executable for smoke at any time.
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 extension (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,
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.
Here are some hledger add-ons available:
These are maintained and released along with hledger.
hledger-api serves hledger data as a JSON web API.
hledger-ui provides an efficient curses-style interface.
hledger-web provides a simple web interface.
These are maintained separately, and usually updated shortly after a hledger release.
hledger-diff shows differences in an account's transactions between one journal file and another.
hledger-iadd is a curses-style, more interactive replacement for the add command.
hledger-interest generates interest transactions for an account according to various schemes.
hledger-irr calculates the internal rate of return of an investment account.
These are available in source form in the hledger repo's bin/ directory; installing them is pretty easy. They may be less mature and documented than built-in commands. Reading and tweaking these is a good way to start making your own!
hledger-autosync is a symbolic link for easily running ledger-autosync, if installed. ledger-autosync does deduplicating conversion of OFX data and some CSV formats, and can also download the data if your bank offers OFX Direct Connect.
hledger-chart.hs is an old pie chart generator, in need of some love.
hledger-check.hs checks more powerful account balance assertions.
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.journal).
Reads data from one or more files in hledger journal, timeclock, timedot, or CSV format specified with -f, or $LEDGER_FILE, or $HOME/.hledger.journal (on windows, perhaps C:/Users/USER/.hledger.journal).
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.
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.
Here are some issues you might encounter when you run hledger (and remember you can also seek help from the IRC channel, mail list or bug tracker):
Successfully installed, but “No command `hledger' found”
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 supports UTF-8, if you built hledger with GHC < 7.2 (or possibly always, I'm not sure yet).
Here's an example of setting the locale temporarily, on ubuntu gnu/linux:
$ file my.journal my.journal: UTF-8 Unicode text # <- the file is UTF8-encoded $ locale -a C en_US.utf8 # <- a UTF8-aware locale is available POSIX $ LANG=en_US.utf8 hledger -f my.journal print # <- use it for this command
Here's one way to set it permanently, there are probably better ways:
$ echo "export LANG=en_US.UTF-8" >>~/.bash_profile $ bash --login
If we preferred to use eg fr_FR.utf8, we might have to install that first:
$ apt-get install language-pack-fr $ locale -a C en_US.utf8 fr_BE.utf8 fr_CA.utf8 fr_CH.utf8 fr_FR.utf8 fr_LU.utf8 POSIX $ LANG=fr_FR.utf8 hledger -f my.journal print
Note some platforms allow variant locale spellings, but not all (ubuntu accepts fr_FR.UTF8, mac osx requires exactly fr_FR.UTF-8).
Report bugs at http://bugs.hledger.org (or on the #hledger IRC channel or hledger mail list)
Simon Michael <simon@joyful.com> and contributors
Copyright (C) 2007-2016 Simon Michael.
Released under GNU GPL v3 or later.
hledger(1), hledger-ui(1), hledger-web(1), hledger-api(1), hledger_csv(5), hledger_journal(5), hledger_timeclock(5), hledger_timedot(5), ledger(1)
http://hledger.org
June 2018 | hledger 1.9.99 |