HLEDGER(1) hledger User Manuals HLEDGER(1) NAME A command-line accounting tool for both power users and folks new to accounting. SYNOPSIS hledger hledger [-f FILE] COMMAND [OPTIONS] [ARGS] hledger [-f FILE] ADDONCMD -- [OPTIONS] [ARGS] 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) -s --strict do extra error checking (check that all posted accounts are de- clared) 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/selling amount at transaction time -V --market convert amounts to their market value in default valuation com- modities -X --exchange=COMM convert amounts to their market value in commodity COMM --value convert amounts to cost or market value, more flexibly than -B/-V/-X --infer-value with -V/-X/--value, also infer market prices from transactions --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. --color=WHEN (or --colour=WHEN) Should color-supporting commands use ANSI color codes in text output. 'auto' (default): whenever stdout seems to be a color- supporting terminal. 'always' or 'yes': always, useful eg when piping output into 'less -R'. 'never' or 'no': never. A NO_COLOR environment variable overrides this. 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 add-on, you may need to put its op- tions after a double-hyphen, eg: hledger ui -- --watch. Or, you can run the add-on 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 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 add-on 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 add-ons by running the add- on 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 be in any of the supported file formats, which currently are: Reader: Reads: Used for file exten- sions: ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- journal hledger journal files and some Ledger .journal .j .hledger journals, for transactions .ledger time- timeclock files, for precise time log- .timeclock clock ging timedot timedot files, for approximate time .timedot logging csv comma/semicolon/tab/other-separated .csv .ssv .tsv values, for data import hledger detects the format automatically based on the file extensions shown above. If it can't recognise the file extension, it assumes journal format. So for non-journal files, it's important to use a recognised file extension, so as to either read successfully or to show relevant error messages. When you can't ensure the right file extension, not to worry: you can force a specific reader/format by prefixing the file path with the for- mat and a colon. Eg to read a .dat file as csv: $ hledger -f csv:/some/csv-file.dat stats $ echo 'i 2009/13/1 08:00:00' | hledger print -ftimeclock:- You can 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 either of those things, you can o use a single parent file which includes the others o or concatenate the files into one before reading, eg: cat a.journal b.journal | hledger -f- CMD. Strict mode hledger checks input files for valid data. By default, the most impor- tant errors are detected, while still accepting easy journal files without a lot of declarations: o Are the input files parseable, with valid syntax ? o Are all transactions balanced ? o Do all balance assertions pass ? With the -s/--strict flag, additional checks are performed: o Are all accounts posted to, declared with an account directive ? (Account error checking) o Are all commodities declared with a commodity directive ? (Commodity error checking) See also: https://hledger.org/checking-for-errors.html experimental. 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), JSON (json) and SQL (sql). This is con- trolled 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 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) Notes about SQL output: o SQL output is also marked experimental, and much like JSON could use real-world feedback. o SQL output is expected to work with sqlite, MySQL and PostgreSQL o SQL output is structured with the expectations that statements will be executed in the empty database. If you already have tables cre- ated via SQL output of hledger, you would probably want to either clear tables of existing data (via delete or truncate SQL statements) or drop tables completely as otherwise your postings will be duped. 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. If they're not doing what you expect, it's important to know exactly what they support: 1. they are case insensitive 2. they are infix matching (they do not need to match the entire thing being matched) 3. they are POSIX ERE (extended regular expressions) 4. they also support GNU word boundaries (\b, \B, \<, \>) 5. they do not support backreferences; if you write \1, it will match the digit 1. Except when doing text replacement, eg in account aliases, where backreferences can be used in the replacement string to reference capturing groups in the search regexp. 6. they do not support mode modifiers ((?s)), character classes (\w, \d), or anything else not mentioned above. 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 (.. can also be re- placed with -) 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 ".." or "-". 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" Or you can specify a single quarter like so: -p "2009Q1" first quarter of 2009, equivalent to "2009/1/1 to 2009/4/1" -p "q4" fourth quarter of the cur- rent year 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, fortnightly, bimonthly, every day|week|month|quarter|year, ev- ery 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 WEEKDAYNAME (eg mon|tue|wed|thu|fri|sat|sun), every Nth day [of month], every Nth WEEK- DAYNAME [of month], every MM/DD [of year], every Nth MMM [of year], ev- ery 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 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 Instead of reporting amounts in their original commodity, hledger can convert them to cost/sale amount (using the conversion rate recorded in the transaction), or to market value (using some market price on a cer- tain date). This is controlled by the --value=TYPE[,COMMODITY] option, but we also provide the simpler -B/-V/-X flags, and usually one of those is all you need. -B: Cost The -B/--cost flag converts amounts to their cost or sale amount at transaction time, if they have a transaction price specified. -V: Value The -V/--market flag converts amounts to market value in their default valuation commodity, using the market prices in effect on the valuation date(s), if any. More on these in a minute. -X: Value in specified commodity The -X/--exchange=COMM option is like -V, except you tell it which cur- rency you want to convert to, and it tries to convert everything to that. Valuation date Since market prices can change from day to day, market value reports have a valuation date (or more than one), which determines which market prices will be used. For single period reports, if an explicit report end date is specified, that will be used as the valuation date; otherwise the valuation date is "today". For multiperiod reports, each column/period is valued on the last day of the period, by default. Market prices (experimental) To convert a commodity A to its market value in another commodity B, hledger looks for a suitable market price (exchange rate) as follows, in this order of preference : 1. A declared market price or inferred market price: A's latest market price in B on or before the valuation date as declared by a P direc- tive, or (with the --infer-value flag) inferred from transaction prices. 2. A reverse market price: the inverse of a declared or inferred market price from B to A. 3. A a forward chain of market prices: a synthetic price formed by com- bining the shortest chain of "forward" (only 1 above) market prices, leading from A to B. 4. A any chain of market prices: a chain of any market prices, includ- ing both forward and reverse prices (1 and 2 above), leading from A to B. Amounts for which no applicable market price can be found, are not con- verted. --infer-value: market prices from transactions (experimental) Normally, market value in hledger is fully controlled by, and requires, P directives in your journal. Since adding and updating those can be a chore, and since transactions usually take place at close to market value, why not use the recorded transaction prices as additional market prices (as Ledger does) ? We could produce value reports without need- ing P directives at all. Adding the --infer-value flag to -V, -X or --value enables this. So for example, hledger bs -V --infer-value will get market prices both from P directives and from transactions. There is a downside: value reports can sometimes be affected in confus- ing/undesired ways by your journal entries. If this happens to you, read all of this Valuation section carefully, and try adding --debug or --debug=2 to troubleshoot. --infer-value can infer market prices from: o multicommodity transactions with explicit prices (@/@@) o multicommodity transactions with implicit prices (no @, two commodi- ties, unbalanced). (With these, the order of postings matters. hledger print -x can be useful for troubleshooting.) o but not, currently, from "more correct" multicommodity transactions (no @, multiple commodities, balanced). Valuation commodity (experimental) When you specify a valuation commodity (-X COMM or --value TYPE,COMM): hledger will convert all amounts to COMM, wherever it can find a suit- able market price (including by reversing or chaining prices). When you leave the valuation commodity unspecified (-V or --value TYPE): For each commodity A, hledger picks a default valuation commodity as follows, in this order of preference: 1. The price commodity from the latest P-declared market price for A on or before valuation date. 2. The price commodity from the latest P-declared market price for A on any date. (Allows conversion to proceed when there are inferred prices before the valuation date.) 3. If there are no P directives at all (any commodity or date) and the --infer-value flag is used: the price commodity from the latest transaction-inferred price for A on or before valuation date. This means: o If you have P directives, they determine which commodities -V will convert, and to what. o If you have no P directives, and use the --infer-value flag, transac- tion prices determine it. Amounts for which no valuation commodity can be found are not con- verted. Simple valuation examples Here are some quick examples 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 --value: Flexible valuation -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 selects cost or value and valuation date: --value=cost Convert amounts to cost, using the prices recorded in transac- tions. --value=then Convert amounts to their value in the default valuation commod- ity, using market prices on each posting's date. This is cur- rently supported only by the print and register commands. --value=end Convert amounts to their value in the default valuation commod- ity, 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 the default valuation commod- ity using current market prices (as of when report is gener- ated). --value=YYYY-MM-DD Convert amounts to their value in the default valuation commod- ity using market prices on this date. 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, deducing market prices as described above. More valuation examples 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 valuation on reports Here is a reference for how valuation is supposed to affect each part of hledger's reports (and a glossary). (It's wide, you'll have to scroll sideways.) It may be useful when troubleshooting. If you find problems, please report them, ideally with a reproducible example. Re- lated: #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 jour- DATE/today today nal end balance as- unchanged unchanged unchanged unchanged unchanged ser- tions/as- signments register starting cost value at day not sup- value at day value at balance before report ported before report DATE/today (-H) or journal or journal start start posting cost value at re- value at value at re- value at amounts port end or posting date port or jour- DATE/today today nal end 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 in- interval terval 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) balance sums of costs value at re- not sup- value at re- value at changes port end or ported port or jour- DATE/today of today of sums nal end of sums of post- of postings sums of post- ings ings budget like balance like balance not sup- like balances like balance amounts changes changes ported changes (--budget) grand total sum of dis- sum of dis- not sup- sum of dis- sum of dis- played values played values ported played values played values balance (bs, bse, cf, is) with report interval starting sums of costs value at re- not sup- value at re- sums of post- balances of postings port start of ported port start of ings before (-H) before report sums of all sums of all report start start postings be- postings be- fore report fore report start start balance sums of costs same as not sup- balance value at changes of postings --value=end ported change in DATE/today of (bal, is, in period each period, sums of post- bs valued at pe- ings --change, riod ends cf --change) end bal- sums of costs same as not sup- period end value at ances (bal of postings --value=end ported balances, DATE/today of -H, is --H, from before valued at pe- sums of post- bs, cf) report start riod ends ings to period end budget like balance like balance not sup- like balances like balance amounts changes/end changes/end ported changes/end (--budget) balances balances balances row totals, sums, aver- sums, aver- not sup- sums, aver- sums, aver- row aver- ages of dis- ages of dis- ported ages of dis- ages of dis- ages (-T, played values played values played values played values -A) column to- sums of dis- sums of dis- not sup- sums of dis- sums of dis- tals played values played values ported played values played values grand to- sum, average sum, average not sup- sum, average sum, average tal, grand of column to- of column to- ported of column to- of column to- average tals tals tals tals --cumulative is omitted to save space, it works like -H but with a zero starting balance. Glossary: 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). COMMANDS hledger provides a number of commands for producing reports and manag- ing your data. Run hledger with no arguments to list the commands available. To run a command, write its name (or its abbreviation shown in the com- mands list, or any unambiguous prefix of the name) as hledger's first argument. Eg: hledger balance or hledger bal. Here are the built-in commands: Data entry (these modify the journal file): o add - add transactions using guided prompts o import - add any new transactions from other files (eg csv) Data management: o check - check for various kinds of issue in the data o close (equity) - generate balance-resetting transactions o diff - compare account transactions in two journal files o rewrite - generate extra postings, similar to print --auto Financial statements: o aregister (areg) - show transactions in a particular account o balancesheet (bs) - show assets, liabilities and net worth o balancesheetequity (bse) - show assets, liabilities and equity o cashflow (cf) - show changes in liquid assets o incomestatement (is) - show revenues and expenses o roi - show return on investments Miscellaneous reports: o accounts (a) - show account names o activity - show postings-per-interval bar charts o balance (b, bal) - show balance changes/end balances/budgets in ac- counts o codes - show transaction codes o commodities - show commodity/currency symbols o descriptions - show unique transaction descriptions o files - show input file paths o notes - show unique note segments of transaction descriptions o payees - show unique payee segments of transaction descriptions o prices - show market price records o print (p, txns) - show transactions (journal entries) o print-unique - show only transactions with unique descriptions o register (r, reg) - show postings in one or more accounts & running total o register-match - show a recent posting that best matches a descrip- tion o stats - show journal statistics o tags - show tag names o test - run self tests Next, the detailed command docs, in alphabetical order. 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. Any arguments will be used as default inputs for the first N prompts. 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]: $ On Microsoft Windows, the add command makes sure that no part of the file path ends with a period, as that would cause problems (#1056). aregister aregister, areg Show transactions affecting a particular account, and the account's running balance. aregister shows the transactions affecting a particular account (and its subaccounts), from the point of view of that account. Each line shows: o the transaction's (or posting's, see below) date o the names of the other account(s) involved o the net change to this account's balance o the account's historical running balance (including balance from transactions before the report start date). With aregister, each line represents a whole transaction - as in hledger-ui, hledger-web, and your bank statement. By contrast, the register command shows individual postings, across all accounts. You might prefer aregister for reconciling with real-world asset/liability accounts, and register for reviewing detailed revenues/expenses. An account must be specified as the first argument, which should be the full account name or an account pattern (regular expression). aregis- ter will show transactions in this account (the first one matched) and any of its subaccounts. Any additional arguments form a query which will filter the transac- tions shown. Transactions making a net change of zero are not shown by default; add the -E/--empty flag to show them. This command also supports the output destination and output format op- tions The output formats supported are txt, csv, and json. aregister and custom posting dates Transactions whose date is outside the report period can still be shown, if they have a posting to this account dated inside the report period. (And in this case it's the posting date that is shown.) This ensures that aregister can show an accurate historical running balance, matching the one shown by register -H with the same arguments. To filter strictly by transaction date instead, add the --txn-dates flag. If you use this flag and some of your postings have custom dates, it's probably best to assume the running balance is wrong. Examples: Show all transactions and historical running balance in the first ac- count whose name contains "checking": $ hledger areg checking Show transactions and historical running balance in all asset accounts during july: $ hledger areg assets date:jul 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). This command also supports the output destination and output format op- tions The output formats supported are (in most modes): txt, csv, html, and json. The balance command can produce several styles of report: Single-period flat balance report This is the default for hledger's balance command: a flat list of all (or with a query, matched) accounts, showing full account names. Ac- counts are sorted by declaration order if any, and then by account name. Accounts which have zero balance are not shown unless -E/--empty is used. The reported balances' total is shown as the last line, un- less disabled by -N/--no-total. $ hledger bal $1 assets:bank:saving $-2 assets:cash $1 expenses:food $1 expenses:supplies $-1 income:gifts $-1 income:salary $1 liabilities:debts -------------------- 0 Single-period tree-mode balance report With the -t/--tree flag, accounts are displayed hierarchically, showing subaccounts as short names indented below their parent. (This is the default style in Ledger and in older hledger versions.) $ 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 For more compact output, "boring" accounts containing a single inter- esting subaccount and no balance of their own (assets:bank and liabili- ties here) are elided into the following line, unless --no-elide is used. And accounts which have zero balance and no non-zero subaccounts are omitted, unless -E/--empty is used. Account balances in tree mode are "inclusive" - they include the bal- ances of any subaccounts. Eg, the assets $-1 balance here includes the $1 from assets:bank:saving and the $-2 from assets:cash. (And it would include balance posted to the assets account itself, if there was any). Note this causes some repetition, and the final total (0) is the sum of the top-level balances, not of all the balances shown. Each group of sibling accounts is sorted separately, by declaration or- der and then by account name. Multi-period balance report Multi-period balance reports are a very useful hledger feature, acti- vated if you provide one of the reporting interval flags, such as -M/--monthly. They are similar to single-period balance reports, but they show the report as a table, with columns representing one or more successive time periods. This is the usually the preferred style of balance report in hledger (even for a single period). Multi-period balance reports come in several types, showing different information: 1. A balance change report: 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. A cumulative end balance report: with --cumulative, each column shows the end balance for that period, 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. A historical end balance report: with --historical/-H, each column shows the actual historical end balance for that period, accumulat- ing the changes across periods, and including the balance from any postings before the report start date. This is useful eg for a multi-period balance sheet, and when you want to see balances only after a certain 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. 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) The --transpose flag can be used to exchange the rows and columns of a multicolumn report. When showing multicommodity amounts, multicolumn balance reports will elide any amounts which have more than two commodities, since otherwise columns could get very wide. The --no-elide flag disables this. Hid- ing totals with the -N/--no-total flag can also help reduce the width of multicommodity reports. When the report is still too wide, a good workaround is to pipe it into less -RS (-R for colour, -S to chop long lines). Eg: hledger bal -D --color=yes | less -RS. Depth limiting With a depth:N query, or --depth N option, or just -N, balance reports will show accounts only to the specified depth. This is very useful to hide low-level accounts and get an overview. Eg, limiting to depth 1 shows the top-level accounts: $ hledger balance -N -1 $-1 assets $2 expenses $-2 income $1 liabilities Accounts at the depth limit will include the balances of any hidden subaccounts (even in flat mode, which normally shows exclusive bal- ances). You can also drop account name components from the start of account names, using --drop N. This can be useful to hide unwanted top-level detail. Colour support In terminal output, when colour is enabled, the balance command shows negative amounts in red. Sorting by amount With -S/--sort-amount, accounts with the largest (most positive) bal- ances are shown first. For example, hledger bal expenses -MAS shows your biggest averaged monthly expenses first. Revenues and liability balances are typically negative, however, so -S shows these in reverse order. To work around this, you can add --in- vert to flip the signs. Or, use one of the sign-flipping reports like balancesheet or incomestatement, which also support -S. Eg: hledger is -MAS. 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. Customising single-period balance reports You can customise the layout of single-period balance reports with --format FMT, which sets the format of each line. Eg: $ 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 Budget report There is also a special balance report mode for showing budget perfor- mance. The --budget flag activates extra columns showing the budget goals for each account and period, if any. For this report, budget goals are defined by periodic transactions. This is very useful for comparing planned and actual income, expenses, time usage, etc. 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] 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, budget goal amounts are shown, and the actual/goal percentage. (Note: bud- get goals should be in the same commodity as the actual amount.) 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 and notes, see Budgeting. Budget report start date This might be a bug, but for now: when making budget reports, it's a good idea to explicitly set the report's start date to the first day of a reporting period, because a periodic rule like ~ monthly generates its transactions on the 1st of each month, and if your journal has no regular transactions on the 1st, the default report start date could exclude that budget goal, which can be a little surprising. Eg here the default report period is just the day of 2020-01-15: ~ monthly in 2020 (expenses:food) $500 2020-01-15 expenses:food $400 assets:checking $ hledger bal expenses --budget Budget performance in 2020-01-15: || 2020-01-15 ==============++============ || $400 --------------++------------ || $400 To avoid this, specify the budget report's period, or at least the start date, with -b/-e/-p/date:, to ensure it includes the budget goal transactions (periodic transactions) that you want. Eg, adding -b 2020/1/1 to the above: $ hledger bal expenses --budget -b 2020/1/1 Budget performance in 2020-01-01..2020-01-15: || 2020-01-01..2020-01-15 ===============++======================== expenses:food || $400 [80% of $500] ---------------++------------------------ || $400 [80% of $500] 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] balancesheet balancesheet, bs This command displays a balance sheet, showing historical ending bal- ances of asset and liability accounts. (To see equity as well, use the balancesheetequity command.) Amounts are shown with normal positive sign, as in conventional financial statements. The asset and liability accounts shown are those accounts declared with the Asset or Cash or Liability type, or otherwise all accounts under a top-level asset or liability account (case insensitive, plurals al- lowed). 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 This command displays a balance sheet, showing historical ending bal- ances of asset, liability and equity accounts. Amounts are shown with normal positive sign, as in conventional financial statements. The asset, liability and equity accounts shown are those accounts de- clared with the Asset, Cash, Liability or Equity type, or otherwise all accounts under a top-level asset, liability or equity account (case in- sensitive, plurals allowed). 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 cashflow statement, showing the inflows and outflows affecting "cash" (ie, liquid) assets. Amounts are shown with normal positive sign, as in conventional financial statements. The "cash" accounts shown are those accounts declared with the Cash type, or otherwise all accounts under a top-level asset account (case insensitive, plural allowed) which do not have fixed, investment, re- ceivable or A/R in their name. 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 check Check for various kinds of errors in your data. experimental hledger provides a number of built-in error checks to help prevent problems in your data. Some of these are run automatically; or, you can use this check command to run them on demand, with no output and a zero exit code if all is well. Some examples: hledger check # basic checks hledger check -s # basic + strict checks hledger check ordereddates uniqueleafnames # basic + specified checks Here are the checks currently available: Basic checks These are always run by this command and other commands: o parseable - data files are well-formed and can be successfully parsed o autobalanced - all transactions are balanced, inferring missing amounts where necessary, and possibly converting commodities using transaction prices or automatically-inferred transaction prices o assertions - all balance assertions in the journal are passing. (This check can be disabled with -I/--ignore-assertions.) Strict checks These are always run by this and other commands when -s/--strict is used (strict mode): o accounts - all account names used by transactions have been declared o commodities - all commodity symbols used have been declared Other checks These checks can be run by specifying their names as arguments to the check command: o ordereddates - transactions are ordered by date (similar to the old check-dates command) o uniqueleafnames - all account leaf names are unique (similar to the old check-dupes command) Add-on checks Some checks are not yet integrated with this command, but are available as add-on commands in https://github.com/simonmichael/hledger/tree/mas- ter/bin: o hledger-check-tagfiles - all tag values containing / (a forward slash) exist as file paths o hledger-check-fancyassertions - more complex balance assertions are passing You could make your own similar scripts to perform custom checks; Cook- book -> Scripting may be helpful. 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 codes codes List the codes seen in transactions, in the order parsed. This command prints the value of each transaction's code field, in the order transactions were parsed. The transaction code is an optional value written in parentheses between the date and description, often used to store a cheque number, order number or similar. Transactions aren't required to have a code, and missing or empty codes will not be shown by default. With the -E/--empty flag, they will be printed as blank lines. You can add a query to select a subset of transactions. Examples: 1/1 (123) (a) 1 1/1 () (a) 1 1/1 (a) 1 1/1 (126) (a) 1 $ hledger codes 123 124 126 $ hledger codes -E 123 124 126 commodities commodities List all commodity/currency symbols used or declared in the journal. descriptions descriptions List the unique descriptions that appear in transactions. This command lists the unique descriptions that appear in transactions, in alphabetic order. You can add a query to select a subset of trans- actions. Example: $ 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.) Commodity display styles Imported amounts will be formatted according to the canonical commodity styles (declared or inferred) in the main journal file. incomestatement incomestatement, is This command displays an income statement, showing revenues and ex- penses during one or more periods. Amounts are shown with normal posi- tive sign, as in conventional financial statements. The revenue and expense accounts shown are those accounts declared with the Revenue or Expense type, or otherwise all accounts under a top- level revenue or income or expense account (case insensitive, plurals allowed). Example: $ 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 List the unique notes that appear in transactions. This command lists the unique notes that appear in transactions, in al- phabetic order. You can add a query to select a subset of transac- tions. The note is the part of the transaction description after a | character (or if there is no |, the whole description). Example: $ hledger notes Petrol Snacks 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. This command 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. Note, in some cases this report can fail, for these reasons: o Error (NotBracketed): No solution for Internal Rate of Return (IRR). Possible causes: IRR is huge (>1000000%), balance of investment be- comes negative at some point in time. o Error (SearchFailed): Failed to find solution for Internal Rate of Return (IRR). Either search does not converge to a solution, or con- verges too slowly. Examples: o Using roi to report unrealised gains: https://github.com/simon- michael/hledger/blob/master/examples/roi-unrealised.ledger More background: "ROI" stands for "return on investment". Traditionally this was com- puted as a difference between current value of investment and its ini- tial value, expressed in percentage of the initial value. However, this approach is only practical in simple cases, where invest- ments receives no in-flows or out-flows of money, and where rate of growth is fixed over time. For more complex scenarios you need differ- ent ways to compute rate of return, and this command implements two of them: IRR and TWR. Internal rate of return, or "IRR" (also called "money-weighted rate of return") takes into account effects of in-flows and out-flows. Naively, if you are withdrawing from your investment, your future gains would be smaller (in absolute numbers), and will be a smaller percent- age of your initial investment, and if you are adding to your invest- ment, you will receive bigger absolute gains (but probably at the same rate of return). IRR is a way to compute rate of return for each pe- riod between in-flow or out-flow of money, and then combine them in a way that gives you an annual rate of return that investment is expected to generate. As mentioned before, in-flows and out-flows would be any cash that you personally put in or withdraw, and for the "roi" command, these are transactions that involve account(s) matching --inv argument and NOT involve account(s) matching --pnl argument. Presumably, you will also record changes in the value of your invest- ment, and balance them against "profit and loss" (or "unrealized gains") account. Note that in order for IRR to compute the precise ef- fect of your in-flows and out-flows on the rate of return, you will need to record the value of your investement on or close to the days when in- or out-flows occur. Implementation of IRR in hledger should match the XIRR formula in Ex- cel. Second way to compute rate of return that roi command implements is called "time-weighted rate of return" or "TWR". Like IRR, it will also break the history of your investment into periods between in-flows and out-flows to compute rate of return per each period and then a compound rate of return. However, internal workings of TWR are quite different. In technical terms, IRR uses the same approach as computation of net present value, and tries to find a discount rate that makes net present value of all the cash flows of your investment to add up to zero. This could be hard to wrap your head around, especially if you haven't done discounted cash flow analysis before. TWR represents your investment as an imaginary "unit fund" where in- flows/ out-flows lead to buying or selling "units" of your investment and changes in its value change the value of "investment unit". Change in "unit price" over the reporting period gives you rate of return of your investment. References: * Explanation of rate of return * Explanation of IRR * Ex- planation of TWR * Examples of computing IRR and TWR and discussion of the limitations of both metrics More examples: Lets say that we found an investment in Snake Oil that is proising to give us 10% annually: 2019-01-01 Investing in Snake Oil assets:cash -$100 investment:snake oil 2019-12-24 Recording the growth of Snake Oil investment:snake oil = $110 equity:unrealized gains For now, basic computation of the rate of return, as well as IRR and TWR, gives us the expected 10%: $ hledger roi -Y --inv investment --pnl "unrealized" +---++------------+------------++---------------+----------+-------------+-----++--------+--------+ | || Begin | End || Value (begin) | Cashflow | Value (end) | PnL || IRR | TWR | +===++============+============++===============+==========+=============+=====++========+========+ | 1 || 2019-01-01 | 2019-12-31 || 0 | 100 | 110 | 10 || 10.00% | 10.00% | +---++------------+------------++---------------+----------+-------------+-----++--------+--------+ However, lets say that shorty after investing in the Snake Oil we started to have second thoughs, so we prompty withdrew $90, leaving only $10 in. Before Christmas, though, we started to get the "fear of mission out", so we put the $90 back in. So for most of the year, our investment was just $10 dollars, and it gave us just $1 in growth: 2019-01-01 Investing in Snake Oil assets:cash -$100 investment:snake oil 2019-01-02 Buyers remorse assets:cash $90 investment:snake oil 2019-12-30 Fear of missing out assets:cash -$90 investment:snake oil 2019-12-31 Recording the growth of Snake Oil investment:snake oil = $101 equity:unrealized gains Now IRR and TWR are drastically different: $ hledger roi -Y --inv investment --pnl "unrealized" +---++------------+------------++---------------+----------+-------------+-----++-------+-------+ | || Begin | End || Value (begin) | Cashflow | Value (end) | PnL || IRR | TWR | +===++============+============++===============+==========+=============+=====++=======+=======+ | 1 || 2019-01-01 | 2019-12-31 || 0 | 100 | 101 | 1 || 9.32% | 1.00% | +---++------------+------------++---------------+----------+-------------+-----++-------+-------+ Here, IRR tells us that we made close to 10% on the $10 dollars that we had in the account most of the time. And TWR is ... just 1%? Why? Based on the transactions in our journal, TWR "think" that we are buy- ing back $90 worst of Snake Oil at the same price that it had at the beginning of they year, and then after that our $100 investment gets $1 increase in value, or 1% of $100. Let's take a closer look at what is happening here by asking for quarterly reports instead of annual: $ hledger roi -Q --inv investment --pnl "unrealized" +---++------------+------------++---------------+----------+-------------+-----++--------+-------+ | || Begin | End || Value (begin) | Cashflow | Value (end) | PnL || IRR | TWR | +===++============+============++===============+==========+=============+=====++========+=======+ | 1 || 2019-01-01 | 2019-03-31 || 0 | 10 | 10 | 0 || 0.00% | 0.00% | | 2 || 2019-04-01 | 2019-06-30 || 10 | 0 | 10 | 0 || 0.00% | 0.00% | | 3 || 2019-07-01 | 2019-09-30 || 10 | 0 | 10 | 0 || 0.00% | 0.00% | | 4 || 2019-10-01 | 2019-12-31 || 10 | 90 | 101 | 1 || 37.80% | 4.03% | +---++------------+------------++---------------+----------+-------------+-----++--------+-------+ Now both IRR and TWR are thrown off by the fact that all of the growth for our investment happens in Q4 2019. This happes because IRR compu- tation is still yielding 9.32% and TWR is still 1%, but this time these are rates for three month period instead of twelve, so in order to get an annual rate they should be multiplied by four! Let's try to keep a better record of how Snake Oil grew in value: 2019-01-01 Investing in Snake Oil assets:cash -$100 investment:snake oil 2019-01-02 Buyers remorse assets:cash $90 investment:snake oil 2019-02-28 Recording the growth of Snake Oil investment:snake oil equity:unrealized gains -$0.25 2019-06-30 Recording the growth of Snake Oil investment:snake oil equity:unrealized gains -$0.25 2019-09-30 Recording the growth of Snake Oil investment:snake oil equity:unrealized gains -$0.25 2019-12-30 Fear of missing out assets:cash -$90 investment:snake oil 2019-12-31 Recording the growth of Snake Oil investment:snake oil equity:unrealized gains -$0.25 Would our quartery report look better now? Almost: $ hledger roi -Q --inv investment --pnl "unrealized" +---++------------+------------++---------------+----------+-------------+------++--------+--------+ | || Begin | End || Value (begin) | Cashflow | Value (end) | PnL || IRR | TWR | +===++============+============++===============+==========+=============+======++========+========+ | 1 || 2019-01-01 | 2019-03-31 || 0 | 10 | 10.25 | 0.25 || 9.53% | 10.53% | | 2 || 2019-04-01 | 2019-06-30 || 10.25 | 0 | 10.50 | 0.25 || 10.15% | 10.15% | | 3 || 2019-07-01 | 2019-09-30 || 10.50 | 0 | 10.75 | 0.25 || 9.79% | 9.78% | | 4 || 2019-10-01 | 2019-12-31 || 10.75 | 90 | 101.00 | 0.25 || 8.05% | 1.00% | +---++------------+------------++---------------+----------+-------------+------++--------+--------+ Something is still wrong with TWR computation for Q4, and if you have been paying attention you know what it is already: big $90 buy-back is recorded prior to the only transaction that captures the change of value of Snake Oil that happened in this time period. Lets combine transactions from 30th and 31st of Dec into one: 2019-12-30 Fear of missing out and growth of Snake Oil assets:cash -$90 investment:snake oil equity:unrealized gains -$0.25 Now growth of investment properly affects its price at the time of buy- back: $ hledger roi -Q --inv investment --pnl "unrealized" +---++------------+------------++---------------+----------+-------------+------++--------+--------+ | || Begin | End || Value (begin) | Cashflow | Value (end) | PnL || IRR | TWR | +===++============+============++===============+==========+=============+======++========+========+ | 1 || 2019-01-01 | 2019-03-31 || 0 | 10 | 10.25 | 0.25 || 9.53% | 10.53% | | 2 || 2019-04-01 | 2019-06-30 || 10.25 | 0 | 10.50 | 0.25 || 10.15% | 10.15% | | 3 || 2019-07-01 | 2019-09-30 || 10.50 | 0 | 10.75 | 0.25 || 9.79% | 9.78% | | 4 || 2019-10-01 | 2019-12-31 || 10.75 | 90 | 101.00 | 0.25 || 8.05% | 9.57% | +---++------------+------------++---------------+----------+-------------+------++--------+--------+ And for annual report, TWR now reports the exact profitability of our investment: $ hledger roi -Y --inv investment --pnl "unrealized" +---++------------+------------++---------------+----------+-------------+------++-------+--------+ | || Begin | End || Value (begin) | Cashflow | Value (end) | PnL || IRR | TWR | +===++============+============++===============+==========+=============+======++=======+========+ | 1 || 2019-01-01 | 2019-12-31 || 0 | 100 | 101.00 | 1.00 || 9.32% | 10.00% | +---++------------+------------++---------------+----------+-------------+------++-------+--------+ 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 the unique tag names used in the journal. With a TAGREGEX argu- ment, only tag names matching the regular expression (case insensitive) are shown. With QUERY arguments, only transactions matching the query are considered. With the --values flag, the tags' unique values are listed instead. With --parsed flag, all tags or values are shown in the order they are parsed from the input data, including duplicates. With -E/--empty, any blank/empty values will also be shown, otherwise they are omitted. 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 Any programs or scripts in your PATH named named hledger-SOMETHING will also appear in the commands list (with a + mark). These are called add-on commands. These offical add-ons are maintained and released along with hledger: o ui an efficient terminal interface for hledger (TUI) o web a simple web interface for hledger (WUI) These add-ons are maintained separately: o iadd a more interactive alternative for the add command o interest generates interest transactions according to various schemes o stockquotes downloads market prices for your commodities from Alpha- Vantage (experimental) Additional experimental add-ons, which may not be in a working state, can be found in the bin/ directory in the hledger repo. Add-on command flags In a hledger command line, add-on command flags must have a double dash (--) preceding them. Eg you must write: $ hledger web -- --serve and not: $ hledger web --serve (because the --serve flag belongs to hledger-web, not hledger). The -h/--help and --version flags work without --, with their position deciding which program they refer to. Eg hledger -h web shows hledger's help, hledger web -h shows hledger-web's help. If you have any trouble with this, remember you can always run the add- on program directly, eg: $ hledger-web --serve Making add-on commands Add-on commands are programs or scripts in your PATH o whose name starts with hledger- o whose name ends with a recognised file extension: .bat,.com,.exe, .hs,.lhs,.pl,.py,.rb,.rkt,.sh or none o and (on unix, mac) which are executable by the current user. 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 library functions that built-in commands use for command-line options, parsing and reporting. ENVIRONMENT 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. COLUMNS The screen width used by the register command. Default: the full terminal width. NO_COLOR If this variable exists with any value, hledger will not use ANSI color codes in terminal output. This overrides the --color/--colour option. 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 add-on 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. Getting errors like "Illegal byte sequence" or "Invalid or incomplete multibyte or wide character" or "commitAndReleaseBuffer: invalid argu- ment (invalid character)" Programs compiled with GHC (hledger, haskell build tools, etc.) need to have a UTF-8-aware locale configured in the environment, otherwise they will fail with these kinds of errors when they encounter non-ascii characters. To fix it, set the LANG environment variable to some locale which sup- ports UTF-8. The locale you choose must be installed on your system. Here's an example of setting LANG temporarily, on Ubuntu GNU/Linux: $ file my.journal my.journal: UTF-8 Unicode text # the file is UTF8-encoded $ echo $LANG C # LANG is set to the default locale, which does not support UTF8 $ locale -a # which locales are installed ? C en_US.utf8 # here's a UTF8-aware one we can use POSIX $ LANG=en_US.utf8 hledger -f my.journal print # ensure it is used for this command If available, C.UTF-8 will also work. If your preferred locale isn't listed by locale -a, you might need to install it. Eg on Ubuntu/De- bian: $ 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 Here's how you could set it permanently, if you use a bash shell: $ echo "export LANG=en_US.utf8" >>~/.bash_profile $ bash --login Exact spelling and capitalisation may be important. Note the differ- ence on MacOS (UTF-8, not utf8). Some platforms (eg ubuntu) allow variant spellings, but others (eg macos) require it to be exact: $ locale -a | grep -iE en_us.*utf en_US.UTF-8 $ LANG=en_US.UTF-8 hledger -f my.journal print REPORTING BUGS Report bugs at http://bugs.hledger.org (or on the #hledger IRC channel or hledger mail list) AUTHORS Simon Michael and contributors COPYRIGHT Copyright (C) 2007-2020 Simon Michael. Released under GNU GPL v3 or later. SEE ALSO hledger(1), hledger-ui(1), hledger-web(1), ledger(1) hledger_journal(5), hledger_csv(5), hledger_timeclock(5), hledger_time- dot(5) hledger-1.20.3 December 2020 HLEDGER(1)