Welcome to hledger!
hledger is a partial haskell clone of John Wiegley's text-based accounting
tool, ledger (http://wiki.github.com/jwiegley/ledger). hledger generates
ledger-compatible register & balance reports from a plain text journal,
allows precise batch-mode or interactive querying, and demonstrates a pure
functional implementation of ledger. For more information, see
http://hledger.org .
Copyright (c) 2007-2009 Simon Michael <simon@joyful.com>
Released under GPL version 3 or later.
Installation
------------
Building hledger requires GHC (http://haskell.org/ghc); it is known to
build with GHC 6.8 and up. hledger should work on any platform which GHC
supports.
Also, installing hledger easily requires the "cabal" command-line tool,
version 0.6.0 and up (http://www.haskell.org/cabal/download.html). (You
can manually download and install each dependency mentioned in
hledger.cabal from hackage.org, but installing cabal is much quicker.)
Here's how to download and install the latest hledger release::
cabal update
cabal install hledger (add -f happs to include the web ui)
Or, to get the latest development code::
darcs get http://joyful.com/repos/hledger
Usage
-----
hledger looks for your ledger file at ~/.ledger by default. To use a
different file, specify it with the LEDGER environment variable or -f
option (which may be - for standard input). Basic usage is::
hledger [OPTIONS] COMMAND [PATTERNS]
where COMMAND is one of balance, print, register, ui, web, test; and
PATTERNS are zero or more regular expressions used to narrow the results.
Here are some commands to try::
hledger --help
export LEDGER=sample.ledger
hledger balance
hledger bal --depth 1
hledger register
hledger reg income
hledger reg desc:shop
hledger ui
hledger web # if you installed with -f happs
Time reporting
--------------
hledger will also read timeclock.el-format timelog entries. As a
convenience, if you invoke the hledger executable via a link or copy named
"hours", it looks for your timelog file (~/.timelog, or the file specified
by $TIMELOG or -f), and parses arguments slightly differently::
hours [OPTIONS] [PERIOD [COMMAND [PATTERNS]]]
where PERIOD is a ledger-style period expression, defaulting to "today",
and COMMAND is one of the commands above. Timelog entries look like this::
i 2009/03/31 22:21:45 some:project
o 2009/04/01 02:00:34
The clock-in project is treated as an account. Here are some time queries to try::
export TIMELOG=/my/timelog # if it's not ~/.timelog
hours # today's balances
hours today # the same
hours 'this week' # so far this week
hours lastmonth # the space is optional
hours 'from 1/15' register # sessions since last january 15
hours 'monthly in 2009' reg --depth 1 # monthly time summary, top level only
Features
--------
This version of hledger mimics a subset of ledger 3.x, and adds some
features of its own. We currently support regular ledger entries, timelog
entries, multiple commodities, virtual transactions, account and
description patterns, the LEDGER environment variable, and these commands
and options::
Commands:
balance [REGEXP]... show balance totals for matching accounts
register [REGEXP]... show register of matching transactions
print [REGEXP]... print all matching entries
Basic options:
-h, --help show summarized help
-f, --file FILE read ledger data from FILE
Report filtering:
-b, --begin DATE report on entries on or after this date
-e, --end DATE report on entries prior to this date
-p, --period EXPR report on entries during the specified period
and/or with the specified reporting interval
-C, --cleared report only on cleared entries
-R, --real report only on real (non-virtual) transactions
Output customization:
-B, --basis, --cost report cost of commodities
-d, --display EXPR display only transactions matching EXPR (limited support)
-E, --empty show empty/zero things which are normally elided
--no-total balance report: hide the final total
-W, --weekly register report: show weekly summary
-M, --monthly register report: show monthly summary
-Y, --yearly register report: show yearly summary
Misc:
-V, --version show version information
-v, --verbose show verbose test output
--debug show some debug output
--debug-no-ui run ui commands with no output
We handle (almost) the full period expression syntax, and very limited
display expressions consisting of a simple date predicate. Also the
following new commands are supported::
ui a simple interactive text ui (only on unix platforms)
web a simple web ui
test run self-tests
ledger features not supported
.............................
ledger features not currently supported include: modifier and periodic
entries, and options such as these::
Basic options:
-o, --output FILE write output to FILE
-i, --init-file FILE initialize ledger using FILE (default: ~/.ledgerrc)
-a, --account NAME use NAME for the default account (useful with QIF)
Report filtering:
-c, --current show only current and past entries (not future)
--period-sort EXPR sort each report period's entries by EXPR
-U, --uncleared consider only uncleared transactions
-L, --actual consider only actual (non-automated) transactions
-r, --related calculate report using related transactions
--budget generate budget entries based on periodic entries
--add-budget show all transactions plus the budget
--unbudgeted show only unbudgeted transactions
--forecast EXPR generate forecast entries while EXPR is true
-l, --limit EXPR calculate only transactions matching EXPR
-t, --amount EXPR use EXPR to calculate the displayed amount
-T, --total EXPR use EXPR to calculate the displayed total
Output customization:
-n, --collapse Only show totals in the top-most accounts.
-s, --subtotal other: show subtotals
-P, --by-payee show summarized totals by payee
-x, --comm-as-payee set commodity name as the payee, for reporting
--dow show a days-of-the-week report
-S, --sort EXPR sort report according to the value expression EXPR
-w, --wide for the default register report, use 132 columns
--head COUNT show only the first COUNT entries (negative inverts)
--tail COUNT show only the last COUNT entries (negative inverts)
--pager PAGER send all output through the given PAGER program
-A, --average report average transaction amount
-D, --deviation report deviation from the average
-%, --percentage report balance totals as a percentile of the parent
--totals in the "xml" report, include running total
-j, --amount-data print only raw amount data (useful for scripting)
-J, --total-data print only raw total data
-y, --date-format STR use STR as the date format (default: %Y/%m/%d)
-F, --format STR use STR as the format; for each report type, use:
--balance-format --register-format --print-format
--plot-amount-format --plot-total-format --equity-format
--prices-format --wide-register-format
Commodity reporting:
--price-db FILE sets the price database to FILE (def: ~/.pricedb)
-L, --price-exp MINS download quotes only if newer than MINS (def: 1440)
-Q, --download download price information when needed
-O, --quantity report commodity totals (this is the default)
-V, --market report last known market value
-g, --performance report gain/loss for each displayed transaction
-G, --gain report net gain/loss
Commands:
xml [REGEXP]... print matching entries in XML format
equity [REGEXP]... output equity entries for matching accounts
prices [REGEXP]... display price history for matching commodities
entry DATE PAYEE AMT output a derived entry, based on the arguments
Other differences
.................
* hledger calls the "note" field "description"
* hledger recognises description and negative patterns by "desc:" and "not:" prefixes,
unlike ledger 3's free-form parser
* hledger keeps differently-priced amounts of the same commodity separate
* hledger doesn't require a space before command-line option values, eg: -f-
* hledger's weekly reporting intervals always start on mondays
* hledger shows start and end dates of the intervals requested, not just the span containing data
* hledger period expressions don't support "biweekly", "bimonthly", or "every N days/weeks/..."
* hledger always shows timelog balances in hours
* hledger splits multi-day timelog sessions at midnight
* hledger register report always sorts transactions by date
