hledger User's Guide ==================== Welcome to hledger! hledger is a partial haskell clone of John Wiegley's "ledger" command-line accounting tool. hledger generates ledger-compatible register & balance reports from a plain text ledger file, 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 and contributors. Released under GPL version 3 or later. Installation ------------ Platform binaries are not yet being published; you could try asking for one on the #ledger channel. Building hledger requires GHC 6.8 or later (http://haskell.org/ghc). hledger should work on any platform which GHC supports. Also, installing hledger's dependencies easily requires cabal-install version 0.6 or later (http://www.haskell.org/cabal/download.html). Once these tools are installed on your system, do:: cabal update cabal install hledger [-fvty] [-fhapps] The vty and happs flags are optional; they enable hledger's "ui" and "web" commands respectively. vty is not available on the windows platform. 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]] COMMAND is one of balance, print, register, ui, web, test (defaulting to balance). PATTERNS are zero or more regular expressions used to filter by account name or transaction description. Here are some commands to try:: export LEDGER=sample.ledger hledger --help # show usage & options hledger balance # all accounts with aggregated balances hledger bal --depth 1 # only top-level accounts hledger register # transaction register hledger reg income # transactions to/from an income account hledger reg checking # checking transactions hledger reg desc:shop # transactions with shop in the description hledger histogram # transactions per day, or other interval hledger ui # curses ui, if installed with -fvty hledger web # web ui, if installed with -fhapps hledger -f new.ledger add # record transactions from the command line Time reporting -------------- hledger will also read timelog files in timeclock.el format. If you invoke hledger via a symlink or copy named "hours", it looks for your timelog file (~/.timelog or $TIMELOG) by default.:: hours [OPTIONS] [COMMAND [PATTERNS]] Timelog entries look like this:: i 2009/03/31 22:21:45 some:project o 2009/04/01 02:00:34 The clockin description is treated as an account name. Here are some queries to try:: ln -s `which hledger` ~/bin/hours # set up "hours" in your path export TIMELOG=sample.timelog hours # show all time balances hours -p 'last week' # last week hours -p thismonth # the space is optional hours -p 'from 1/15' register project # project sessions since jan 15 hours -p 'weekly' reg --depth 1 -E # weekly time summary 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 filtering, 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:: histogram show a barchart of transaction counts per interval add record transactions from the command line convert convert CSV bank data to ledger journal format ui a simple curses ui (only on unix platforms) web a simple web ui stats report some ledger statistics test run self-tests ledger features not supported ............................. ledger features not currently supported include: modifier and periodic entries, and the following options and commands:: 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 * hledger doesn't show description comments as part of the description * hledger print puts a blank line after the entry, not before it * hledger doesn't print trailing spaces after amount-elided postings