hledger_journal(5) hledger User Manuals hledger_journal(5) NAME Journal - hledger's default file format, representing a General Journal DESCRIPTION hledger's usual data source is a plain text file containing journal en- tries in hledger journal format. This file represents a standard ac- counting general journal. I use file names ending in .journal, but that's not required. The journal file contains a number of transaction entries, each describing a transfer of money (or any commodity) between two or more named accounts, in a simple format readable by both hledger and humans. hledger's journal format is a compatible subset, mostly, of ledger's journal format, so hledger can work with compatible ledger journal files as well. It's safe, and encouraged, to run both hledger and ledger on the same journal file, eg to validate the results you're get- ting. You can use hledger without learning any more about this file; just use the add or web or import commands to create and update it. Many users, though, edit the journal file with a text editor, and track changes with a version control system such as git. Editor addons such as ledger-mode or hledger-mode for Emacs, vim-ledger for Vim, and hledger-vscode for Visual Studio Code, make this easier, adding colour, formatting, tab completion, and useful commands. See Editor configura- tion at hledger.org for the full list. FILE FORMAT Here's a description of each part of the file format (and hledger's data model). These are mostly in the order you'll use them, but in some cases related concepts have been grouped together for easy refer- ence, or linked before they are introduced, so feel free to skip over anything that looks unnecessary right now. Transactions Transactions are the main unit of information in a journal file. They represent events, typically a movement of some quantity of commodities between two or more named accounts. Each transaction is recorded as a journal entry, beginning with a sim- ple date in column 0. This can be followed by any of the following op- tional fields, separated by spaces: o a status character (empty, !, or *) o a code (any short number or text, enclosed in parentheses) o a description (any remaining text until end of line or a semicolon) o a comment (any remaining text following a semicolon until end of line, and any following indented lines beginning with a semicolon) o 0 or more indented posting lines, describing what was transferred and the accounts involved. Here's a simple journal file containing one transaction: 2008/01/01 income assets:bank:checking $1 income:salary $-1 Dates Simple dates Dates in the journal file use simple dates format: YYYY-MM-DD or YYYY/MM/DD or YYYY.MM.DD, with leading zeros optional. The year may be omitted, in which case it will be inferred from the context: the cur- rent transaction, the default year set with a default year directive, or the current date when the command is run. Some examples: 2010-01-31, 2010/01/31, 2010.1.31, 1/31. (The UI also accepts simple dates, as well as the more flexible smart dates documented in the hledger manual.) Secondary dates Real-life transactions sometimes involve more than one date - eg the date you write a cheque, and the date it clears in your bank. When you want to model this, for more accurate daily balances, you can specify individual posting dates. Or, you can use the older secondary date feature (Ledger calls it aux- iliary date or effective date). Note: we support this for compatibil- ity, but I usually recommend avoiding this feature; posting dates are almost always clearer and simpler. A secondary date is written after the primary date, following an equals sign. If the year is omitted, the primary date's year is assumed. When running reports, the primary (left) date is used by default, but with the --date2 flag (or --aux-date or --effective), the secondary (right) date will be used instead. The meaning of secondary dates is up to you, but it's best to follow a consistent rule. Eg "primary = the bank's clearing date, secondary = date the transaction was initiated, if different", as shown here: 2010/2/23=2/19 movie ticket expenses:cinema $10 assets:checking $ hledger register checking 2010-02-23 movie ticket assets:checking $-10 $-10 $ hledger register checking --date2 2010-02-19 movie ticket assets:checking $-10 $-10 Posting dates You can give individual postings a different date from their parent transaction, by adding a posting comment containing a tag (see below) like date:DATE. This is probably the best way to control posting dates precisely. Eg in this example the expense should appear in May re- ports, and the deduction from checking should be reported on 6/1 for easy bank reconciliation: 2015/5/30 expenses:food $10 ; food purchased on saturday 5/30 assets:checking ; bank cleared it on monday, date:6/1 $ hledger -f t.j register food 2015-05-30 expenses:food $10 $10 $ hledger -f t.j register checking 2015-06-01 assets:checking $-10 $-10 DATE should be a simple date; if the year is not specified it will use the year of the transaction's date. You can set the secondary date similarly, with date2:DATE2. The date: or date2: tags must have a valid simple date value if they are present, eg a date: tag with no value is not allowed. Ledger's earlier, more compact bracketed date syntax is also supported: [DATE], [DATE=DATE2] or [=DATE2]. hledger will attempt to parse any square-bracketed sequence of the 0123456789/-.= characters in this way. With this syntax, DATE infers its year from the transaction and DATE2 infers its year from DATE. Status Transactions, or individual postings within a transaction, can have a status mark, which is a single character before the transaction de- scription or posting account name, separated from it by a space, indi- cating one of three statuses: mark status ------------------ unmarked ! pending * cleared When reporting, you can filter by status with the -U/--unmarked, -P/--pending, and -C/--cleared flags; or the status:, status:!, and status:* queries; or the U, P, C keys in hledger-ui. Note, in Ledger and in older versions of hledger, the "unmarked" state is called "uncleared". As of hledger 1.3 we have renamed it to un- marked for clarity. To replicate Ledger and old hledger's behaviour of also matching pend- ing, combine -U and -P. Status marks are optional, but can be helpful eg for reconciling with real-world accounts. Some editor modes provide highlighting and short- cuts for working with status. Eg in Emacs ledger-mode, you can toggle transaction status with C-c C-e, or posting status with C-c C-c. What "uncleared", "pending", and "cleared" actually mean is up to you. Here's one suggestion: status meaning -------------------------------------------------------------------------- uncleared recorded but not yet reconciled; needs review pending tentatively reconciled (if needed, eg during a big reconcil- iation) cleared complete, reconciled as far as possible, and considered cor- rect With this scheme, you would use -PC to see the current balance at your bank, -U to see things which will probably hit your bank soon (like un- cashed checks), and no flags to see the most up-to-date state of your finances. Description A transaction's description is the rest of the line following the date and status mark (or until a comment begins). Sometimes called the "narration" in traditional bookkeeping, it can be used for whatever you wish, or left blank. Transaction descriptions can be queried, unlike comments. Payee and note You can optionally include a | (pipe) character in descriptions to sub- divide the description into separate fields for payee/payer name on the left (up to the first |) and an additional note field on the right (af- ter the first |). This may be worthwhile if you need to do more pre- cise querying and pivoting by payee or by note. Comments Lines in the journal beginning with a semicolon (;) or hash (#) or star (*) are comments, and will be ignored. (Star comments cause org-mode nodes to be ignored, allowing emacs users to fold and navigate their journals with org-mode or orgstruct-mode.) You can attach comments to a transaction by writing them after the de- scription and/or indented on the following lines (before the postings). Similarly, you can attach comments to an individual posting by writing them after the amount and/or indented on the following lines. Transac- tion and posting comments must begin with a semicolon (;). Some examples: # a file comment ; another file comment * also a file comment, useful in org/orgstruct mode comment A multiline file comment, which continues until a line containing just "end comment" (or end of file). end comment 2012/5/14 something ; a transaction comment ; the transaction comment, continued posting1 1 ; a comment for posting 1 posting2 ; a comment for posting 2 ; another comment line for posting 2 ; a file comment (because not indented) You can also comment larger regions of a file using comment and end comment directives. Tags Tags are a way to add extra labels or labelled data to postings and transactions, which you can then search or pivot on. A simple tag is a word (which may contain hyphens) followed by a full colon, written inside a transaction or posting comment line: 2017/1/16 bought groceries ; sometag: Tags can have a value, which is the text after the colon, up to the next comma or end of line, with leading/trailing whitespace removed: expenses:food $10 ; a-posting-tag: the tag value Note this means hledger's tag values can not contain commas or new- lines. Ending at commas means you can write multiple short tags on one line, comma separated: assets:checking ; a comment containing tag1:, tag2: some value ... Here, o "a comment containing" is just comment text, not a tag o "tag1" is a tag with no value o "tag2" is another tag, whose value is "some value ..." Tags in a transaction comment affect the transaction and all of its postings, while tags in a posting comment affect only that posting. For example, the following transaction has three tags (A, TAG2, third- tag) and the posting has four (those plus posting-tag): 1/1 a transaction ; A:, TAG2: ; third-tag: a third transaction tag, <- with a value (a) $1 ; posting-tag: Tags are like Ledger's metadata feature, except hledger's tag values are simple strings. Postings A posting is an addition of some amount to, or removal of some amount from, an account. Each posting line begins with at least one space or tab (2 or 4 spaces is common), followed by: o (optional) a status character (empty, !, or *), followed by a space o (required) an account name (any text, optionally containing single spaces, until end of line or a double space) o (optional) two or more spaces or tabs followed by an amount. Positive amounts are being added to the account, negative amounts are being removed. The amounts within a transaction must always sum up to zero. As a con- venience, one amount may be left blank; it will be inferred so as to balance the transaction. Be sure to note the unusual two-space delimiter between account name and amount. This makes it easy to write account names containing spa- ces. But if you accidentally leave only one space (or tab) before the amount, the amount will be considered part of the account name. Virtual Postings A posting with a parenthesised account name is called a virtual posting or unbalanced posting, which means it is exempt from the usual rule that a transaction's postings must balance add up to zero. This is not part of double entry accounting, so you might choose to avoid this feature. Or you can use it sparingly for certain special cases where it can be convenient. Eg, you could set opening balances without using a balancing equity account: 1/1 opening balances (assets:checking) $1000 (assets:savings) $2000 A posting with a bracketed account name is called a balanced virtual posting. The balanced virtual postings in a transaction must add up to zero (separately from other postings). Eg: 1/1 buy food with cash, update budget envelope subaccounts, & something else assets:cash $-10 ; <- these balance expenses:food $7 ; <- expenses:food $3 ; <- [assets:checking:budget:food] $-10 ; <- and these balance [assets:checking:available] $10 ; <- (something:else) $5 ; <- not required to balance Ordinary non-parenthesised, non-bracketed postings are called real postings. You can exclude virtual postings from reports with the -R/--real flag or real:1 query. Account names Account names typically have several parts separated by a full colon, from which hledger derives a hierarchical chart of accounts. They can be anything you like, but in finance there are traditionally five top- level accounts: assets, liabilities, income, expenses, and equity. Account names may contain single spaces, eg: assets:accounts receiv- able. Because of this, they must always be followed by two or more spaces (or newline). Account names can be aliased. Amounts After the account name, there is usually an amount. (Important: be- tween account name and amount, there must be two or more spaces.) hledger's amount format is flexible, supporting several international formats. Here are some examples. Amounts have a number (the "quan- tity"): 1 ..and usually a currency or commodity name (the "commodity"). This is a symbol, word, or phrase, to the left or right of the quantity, with or without a separating space: $1 4000 AAPL If the commodity name contains spaces, numbers, or punctuation, it must be enclosed in double quotes: 3 "no. 42 green apples" Amounts can be negative. The minus sign can be written before or after a left-side commodity symbol: -$1 $-1 Scientific E notation is allowed: 1E-6 EUR 1E3 A decimal mark (decimal point) can be written with a period or a comma: 1.23 1,23456780000009 Digit group marks In the integer part of the quantity (left of the decimal mark), groups of digits can optionally be separated by a "digit group mark" - a space, comma, or period (different from the decimal mark): $1,000,000.00 EUR 2.000.000,00 INR 9,99,99,999.00 1 000 000.9455 Note, a number containing a single group mark and no decimal mark is ambiguous. Are these group marks or decimal marks ? 1,000 1.000 hledger will treat them both as decimal marks by default (cf #793). If you use digit group marks, to prevent confusion and undetected typos we recommend you write commodity directives at the top of the file to ex- plicitly declare the decimal mark (and optionally a digit group mark). Note, these formats ("amount styles") are specific to each commodity, so if your data uses multiple formats, hledger can handle it: commodity $1,000.00 commodity EUR 1.000,00 commodity INR 9,99,99,999.00 commodity 1 000 000.9455 Amount display style For each commodity, hledger chooses a consistent format to use when displaying amounts. (Except price amounts, which are always displayed as written). The display style is chosen as follows: o If there is a commodity directive (or default commodity directive) for the commodity, that format is used (see examples above). o Otherwise the format of the first posting amount in that commodity seen in the journal is used. But the number of decimal places ("pre- cision") will be the maximum from all posting amounts in that comm- modity. o Or if there are no such amounts in the journal, a default format is used (like $1000.00). Transaction prices don't affect the amount display style directly, but occasionally they can do so indirectly (eg when an posting's amount is inferred using a transaction price). If you find this causing prob- lems, use a commodity directive to fix the display style. In summary: amounts will be displayed much as they appear in your jour- nal, with the max observed number of decimal places. If you want to see fewer decimal places in reports, use a commodity directive to over- ride that. Transaction prices Within a transaction, you can note an amount's price in another commod- ity. This can be used to document the cost (in a purchase) or selling price (in a sale). For example, transaction prices are useful to record purchases of a foreign currency. Note transaction prices are fixed at the time of the transaction, and do not change over time. See also market prices, which represent prevailing exchange rates on a cer- tain date. There are several ways to record a transaction price: 1. Write the price per unit, as @ UNITPRICE after the amount: 2009/1/1 assets:euros EUR100 @ $1.35 ; one hundred euros purchased at $1.35 each assets:dollars ; balancing amount is -$135.00 2. Write the total price, as @@ TOTALPRICE after the amount: 2009/1/1 assets:euros EUR100 @@ $135 ; one hundred euros purchased at $135 for the lot assets:dollars 3. Specify amounts for all postings, using exactly two commodities, and let hledger infer the price that balances the transaction: 2009/1/1 assets:euros EUR100 ; one hundred euros purchased assets:dollars $-135 ; for $135 (Ledger users: Ledger uses a different syntax for fixed prices, {=UNIT- PRICE}, which hledger currently ignores). Use the -B/--cost flag to convert amounts to their transaction price's commodity, if any. (mnemonic: "B" is from "cost Basis", as in Ledger). Eg here is how -B affects the balance report for the example above: $ hledger bal -N --flat $-135 assets:dollars EUR100 assets:euros $ hledger bal -N --flat -B $-135 assets:dollars $135 assets:euros # <- the euros' cost Note -B is sensitive to the order of postings when a transaction price is inferred: the inferred price will be in the commodity of the last amount. So if example 3's postings are reversed, while the transaction is equivalent, -B shows something different: 2009/1/1 assets:dollars $-135 ; 135 dollars sold assets:euros EUR100 ; for 100 euros $ hledger bal -N --flat -B EUR-100 assets:dollars # <- the dollars' selling price EUR100 assets:euros Balance Assertions hledger supports Ledger-style balance assertions in journal files. These look like, for example, = EXPECTEDBALANCE following a posting's amount. Eg here we assert the expected dollar balance in accounts a and b after each posting: 2013/1/1 a $1 =$1 b =$-1 2013/1/2 a $1 =$2 b $-1 =$-2 After reading a journal file, hledger will check all balance assertions and report an error if any of them fail. Balance assertions can pro- tect you from, eg, inadvertently disrupting reconciled balances while cleaning up old entries. You can disable them temporarily with the -I/--ignore-assertions flag, which can be useful for troubleshooting or for reading Ledger files. (Note: this flag currently does not disable balance assignments, below). Assertions and ordering hledger sorts an account's postings and assertions first by date and then (for postings on the same day) by parse order. Note this is dif- ferent from Ledger, which sorts assertions only by parse order. (Also, Ledger assertions do not see the accumulated effect of repeated post- ings to the same account within a transaction.) So, hledger balance assertions keep working if you reorder differently- dated transactions within the journal. But if you reorder same-dated transactions or postings, assertions might break and require updating. This order dependence does bring an advantage: precise control over the order of postings and assertions within a day, so you can assert intra- day balances. Assertions and included files With included files, things are a little more complicated. Including preserves the ordering of postings and assertions. If you have multi- ple postings to an account on the same day, split across different files, and you also want to assert the account's balance on the same day, you'll have to put the assertion in the right file. Assertions and multiple -f options Balance assertions don't work well across files specified with multiple -f options. Use include or concatenate the files instead. Assertions and commodities The asserted balance must be a simple single-commodity amount, and in fact the assertion checks only this commodity's balance within the (possibly multi-commodity) account balance. This is how assertions work in Ledger also. We could call this a "partial" balance assertion. To assert the balance of more than one commodity in an account, you can write multiple postings, each asserting one commodity's balance. You can make a stronger "total" balance assertion by writing a double equals sign (== EXPECTEDBALANCE). This asserts that there are no other unasserted commodities in the account (or, that their balance is 0). 2013/1/1 a $1 a 1EUR b $-1 c -1EUR 2013/1/2 ; These assertions succeed a 0 = $1 a 0 = 1EUR b 0 == $-1 c 0 == -1EUR 2013/1/3 ; This assertion fails as 'a' also contains 1EUR a 0 == $1 It's not yet possible to make a complete assertion about a balance that has multiple commodities. One workaround is to isolate each commodity into its own subaccount: 2013/1/1 a:usd $1 a:euro 1EUR b 2013/1/2 a 0 == 0 a:usd 0 == $1 a:euro 0 == 1EUR Assertions and prices Balance assertions ignore transaction prices, and should normally be written without one: 2019/1/1 (a) $1 @ EUR1 = $1 We do allow prices to be written there, however, and print shows them, even though they don't affect whether the assertion passes or fails. This is for backward compatibility (hledger's close command used to generate balance assertions with prices), and because balance assign- ments do use them (see below). Assertions and subaccounts The balance assertions above (= and ==) do not count the balance from subaccounts; they check the account's exclusive balance only. You can assert the balance including subaccounts by writing =* or ==*, eg: 2019/1/1 equity:opening balances checking:a 5 checking:b 5 checking 1 ==* 11 Assertions and virtual postings Balance assertions are checked against all postings, both real and vir- tual. They are not affected by the --real/-R flag or real: query. Assertions and precision Balance assertions compare the exactly calculated amounts, which are not always what is shown by reports. Eg a commodity directive may limit the display precision, but this will not affect balance asser- tions. Balance assertion failure messages show exact amounts. Balance Assignments Ledger-style balance assignments are also supported. These are like balance assertions, but with no posting amount on the left side of the equals sign; instead it is calculated automatically so as to satisfy the assertion. This can be a convenience during data entry, eg when setting opening balances: ; starting a new journal, set asset account balances 2016/1/1 opening balances assets:checking = $409.32 assets:savings = $735.24 assets:cash = $42 equity:opening balances or when adjusting a balance to reality: ; no cash left; update balance, record any untracked spending as a generic expense 2016/1/15 assets:cash = $0 expenses:misc The calculated amount depends on the account's balance in the commodity at that point (which depends on the previously-dated postings of the commodity to that account since the last balance assertion or assign- ment). Note that using balance assignments makes your journal a little less explicit; to know the exact amount posted, you have to run hledger or do the calculations yourself, instead of just reading it. Balance assignments and prices A transaction price in a balance assignment will cause the calculated amount to have that price attached: 2019/1/1 (a) = $1 @ EUR2 $ hledger print --explicit 2019-01-01 (a) $1 @ EUR2 = $1 @ EUR2 Directives A directive is a line in the journal beginning with a special keyword, that influences how the journal is processed. hledger's directives are based on a subset of Ledger's, but there are many differences (and also some differences between hledger versions). Directives' behaviour and interactions can get a little bit complex, so here is a table summarising the directives and their effects, with links to more detailed docs. direc- end di- subdi- purpose can affect (as of tive rective rec- 2018/06) tives ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ account any document account names, de- all entries in all text clare account types & dis- files, before or play order after alias end rewrite account names following in- aliases line/included en- tries until end of current file or end directive apply end apply prepend a common parent to following in- account account account names line/included en- tries until end of current file or end directive comment end com- ignore part of journal following in- ment line/included en- tries until end of current file or end directive commod- format declare a commodity and its number notation: ity number notation & display following entries style in that commodity in all files; dis- play style: amounts of that commodity in reports D declare a commodity to be default commodity: used for commodityless following commod- amounts, and its number no- ityless entries un- tation & display style til end of current file; number nota- tion: following en- tries in that com- modity until end of current file; dis- play style: amounts of that commodity in reports include include entries/directives what the included from another file directives affect P declare a market price for a amounts of that commodity commodity in re- ports, when -V is used Y declare a year for yearless following in- dates line/included en- tries until end of current file And some definitions: subdi- optional indented directive line immediately following a parent rec- directive tive number how to interpret numbers when parsing journal entries (the iden- nota- tity of the decimal separator character). (Currently each com- tion modity can have its own notation, even in the same file.) dis- how to display amounts of a commodity in reports (symbol side play and spacing, digit groups, decimal separator, decimal places) style direc- which entries and (when there are multiple files) which files tive are affected by a directive scope As you can see, directives vary in which journal entries and files they affect, and whether they are focussed on input (parsing) or output (re- ports). Some directives have multiple effects. If you have a journal made up of multiple files, or pass multiple -f options on the command line, note that directives which affect input typically last only until the end of their defining file. This pro- vides more simplicity and predictability, eg reports are not changed by writing file options in a different order. It can be surprising at times though. Comment blocks A line containing just comment starts a commented region of the file, and a line containing just end comment (or the end of the current file) ends it. See also comments. Including other files You can pull in the content of additional files by writing an include directive, like this: include path/to/file.journal If the path does not begin with a slash, it is relative to the current file. The include file path may contain common glob patterns (e.g. *). The include directive can only be used in journal files. It can in- clude journal, timeclock or timedot files, but not CSV files. Default year You can set a default year to be used for subsequent dates which don't specify a year. This is a line beginning with Y followed by the year. Eg: Y2009 ; set default year to 2009 12/15 ; equivalent to 2009/12/15 expenses 1 assets Y2010 ; change default year to 2010 2009/1/30 ; specifies the year, not affected expenses 1 assets 1/31 ; equivalent to 2010/1/31 expenses 1 assets Declaring commodities The commodity directive has several functions: 1. It declares commodities which may be used in the journal. This is currently not enforced, but can serve as documentation. 2. It declares what decimal mark character (period or comma) to expect when parsing input - useful to disambiguate international number formats in your data. (Without this, hledger will parse both 1,000 and 1.000 as 1). 3. It declares the amount display style to use in output - decimal and digit group marks, number of decimal places, symbol placement etc. You are likely to run into one of the problems solved by commodity di- rectives, sooner or later, so it's a good idea to just always use them to declare your commodities. A commodity directive is just the word commodity followed by an amount. It may be written on a single line, like this: ; commodity EXAMPLEAMOUNT ; display AAAA amounts with the symbol on the right, space-separated, ; using period as decimal point, with four decimal places, and ; separating thousands with comma. commodity 1,000.0000 AAAA or on multiple lines, using the "format" subdirective. (In this case the commodity symbol appears twice and should be the same in both places.): ; commodity SYMBOL ; format EXAMPLEAMOUNT ; display indian rupees with currency name on the left, ; thousands, lakhs and crores comma-separated, ; period as decimal point, and two decimal places. commodity INR format INR 1,00,00,000.00 The quantity of the amount does not matter; only the format is signifi- cant. The number must include a decimal mark: either a period or a comma, followed by 0 or more decimal digits. Default commodity The D directive sets a default commodity, to be used for amounts with- out a commodity symbol (ie, plain numbers). This commodity will be ap- plied to all subsequent commodity-less amounts, or until the next D di- rective. (Note, this is different from Ledger's D.) For compatibility/historical reasons, D also acts like a commodity di- rective, setting the commodity's display style (for output) and decimal mark (for parsing input). As with commodity, the amount must always be written with a decimal mark (period or comma). If both directives are used, commodity's style takes precedence. The syntax is D AMOUNT. Eg: ; commodity-less amounts should be treated as dollars ; (and displayed with the dollar sign on the left, thousands separators and two decimal places) D $1,000.00 1/1 a 5 ; <- commodity-less amount, parsed as $5 and displayed as $5.00 b Market prices The P directive declares a market price, which is an exchange rate be- tween two commodities on a certain date. (In Ledger, they are called "historical prices".) These are often obtained from a stock exchange, cryptocurrency exchange, or the foreign exchange market. Here is the format: P DATE COMMODITYA COMMODITYBAMOUNT o DATE is a simple date o COMMODITYA is the symbol of the commodity being priced o COMMODITYBAMOUNT is an amount (symbol and quantity) in a second com- modity, giving the price in commodity B of one unit of commodity A. These two market price directives say that one euro was worth 1.35 US dollars during 2009, and $1.40 from 2010 onward: P 2009/1/1 EUR $1.35 P 2010/1/1 EUR $1.40 The -V/--value flag can be used to convert reported amounts to another commodity using these prices. Declaring accounts account directives can be used to pre-declare accounts. Though not re- quired, they can provide several benefits: o They can document your intended chart of accounts, providing a refer- ence. o They can store extra information about accounts (account numbers, notes, etc.) o They can help hledger know your accounts' types (asset, liability, equity, revenue, expense), useful for reports like balancesheet and incomestatement. o They control account display order in reports, allowing non-alpha- betic sorting (eg Revenues to appear above Expenses). o They help with account name completion in the add command, hledger- iadd, hledger-web, ledger-mode etc. The simplest form is just the word account followed by a hledger-style account name, eg: account assets:bank:checking Account comments Comments, beginning with a semicolon, can be added: o on the same line, after two or more spaces (because ; is allowed in account names) o on the next lines, indented An example of both: account assets:bank:checking ; same-line comment, note 2+ spaces before ; ; next-line comment ; another with tag, acctno:12345 (not used yet) Same-line comments are not supported by Ledger, or hledger <1.13. Account subdirectives We also allow (and ignore) Ledger-style indented subdirectives, just for compatibility.: account assets:bank:checking format blah blah ; <- subdirective, ignored Here is the full syntax of account directives: account ACCTNAME [ACCTTYPE] [;COMMENT] [;COMMENTS] [LEDGER-STYLE SUBDIRECTIVES, IGNORED] Account types hledger recognises five types (or classes) of account: Asset, Liabil- ity, Equity, Revenue, Expense. This is used by a few accounting-aware reports such as balancesheet, incomestatement and cashflow. Auto-detected account types If you name your top-level accounts with some variation of assets, lia- bilities/debts, equity, revenues/income, or expenses, their types are detected automatically. Account types declared with tags More generally, you can declare an account's type with an account di- rective, by writing a type: tag in a comment, followed by one of the words Asset, Liability, Equity, Revenue, Expense, or one of the letters ALERX (case insensitive): account assets ; type:Asset account liabilities ; type:Liability account equity ; type:Equity account revenues ; type:Revenue account expenses ; type:Expense Account types declared with account type codes Or, you can write one of those letters separated from the account name by two or more spaces, but this should probably be considered depre- cated as of hledger 1.13: account assets A account liabilities L account equity E account revenues R account expenses X Overriding auto-detected types If you ever override the types of those auto-detected english account names mentioned above, you might need to help the reports a bit. Eg: ; make "liabilities" not have the liability type - who knows why account liabilities ; type:E ; we need to ensure some other account has the liability type, ; otherwise balancesheet would still show "liabilities" under Liabilities account - ; type:L Account display order Account directives also set the order in which accounts are displayed, eg in reports, the hledger-ui accounts screen, and the hledger-web sidebar. By default accounts are listed in alphabetical order. But if you have these account directives in the journal: account assets account liabilities account equity account revenues account expenses you'll see those accounts displayed in declaration order, not alphabet- ically: $ hledger accounts -1 assets liabilities equity revenues expenses Undeclared accounts, if any, are displayed last, in alphabetical order. Note that sorting is done at each level of the account tree (within each group of sibling accounts under the same parent). And currently, this directive: account other:zoo would influence the position of zoo among other's subaccounts, but not the position of other among the top-level accounts. This means: o you will sometimes declare parent accounts (eg account other above) that you don't intend to post to, just to customize their display or- der o sibling accounts stay together (you couldn't display x:y in between a:b and a:c). Rewriting accounts You can define account alias rules which rewrite your account names, or parts of them, before generating reports. This can be useful for: o expanding shorthand account names to their full form, allowing easier data entry and a less verbose journal o adapting old journals to your current chart of accounts o experimenting with new account organisations, like a new hierarchy or combining two accounts into one o customising reports Account aliases also rewrite account names in account directives. They do not affect account names being entered via hledger add or hledger- web. See also Rewrite account names. Basic aliases To set an account alias, use the alias directive in your journal file. This affects all subsequent journal entries in the current file or its included files. The spaces around the = are optional: alias OLD = NEW Or, you can use the --alias 'OLD=NEW' option on the command line. This affects all entries. It's useful for trying out aliases interactively. OLD and NEW are case sensitive full account names. hledger will re- place any occurrence of the old account name with the new one. Subac- counts are also affected. Eg: alias checking = assets:bank:wells fargo:checking ; rewrites "checking" to "assets:bank:wells fargo:checking", or "checking:a" to "assets:bank:wells fargo:checking:a" Regex aliases There is also a more powerful variant that uses a regular expression, indicated by the forward slashes: alias /REGEX/ = REPLACEMENT or --alias '/REGEX/=REPLACEMENT'. REGEX is a case-insensitive regular expression. Anywhere it matches inside an account name, the matched part will be replaced by REPLACE- MENT. If REGEX contains parenthesised match groups, these can be ref- erenced by the usual numeric backreferences in REPLACEMENT. Eg: alias /^(.+):bank:([^:]+)(.*)/ = \1:\2 \3 ; rewrites "assets:bank:wells fargo:checking" to "assets:wells fargo checking" Also note that REPLACEMENT continues to the end of line (or on command line, to end of option argument), so it can contain trailing white- space. Combining aliases You can define as many aliases as you like, using journal directives and/or command line options. Recursive aliases - where an account name is rewritten by one alias, then by another alias, and so on - are allowed. Each alias sees the effect of previously applied aliases. In such cases it can be important to understand which aliases will be applied and in which order. For (each account name in) each journal entry, we apply: 1. alias directives preceding the journal entry, most recently parsed first (ie, reading upward from the journal entry, bottom to top) 2. --alias options, in the order they appeared on the command line (left to right). In other words, for (an account name in) a given journal entry: o the nearest alias declaration before/above the entry is applied first o the next alias before/above that will be be applied next, and so on o aliases defined after/below the entry do not affect it. This gives nearby aliases precedence over distant ones, and helps pro- vide semantic stability - aliases will keep working the same way inde- pendent of which files are being read and in which order. In case of trouble, adding --debug=6 to the command line will show which aliases are being applied when. end aliases You can clear (forget) all currently defined aliases with the end aliases directive: end aliases Default parent account You can specify a parent account which will be prepended to all ac- counts within a section of the journal. Use the apply account and end apply account directives like so: apply account home 2010/1/1 food $10 cash end apply account which is equivalent to: 2010/01/01 home:food $10 home:cash $-10 If end apply account is omitted, the effect lasts to the end of the file. Included files are also affected, eg: apply account business include biz.journal end apply account apply account personal include personal.journal Prior to hledger 1.0, legacy account and end spellings were also sup- ported. A default parent account also affects account directives. It does not affect account names being entered via hledger add or hledger-web. If account aliases are present, they are applied after the default parent account. Periodic transactions Periodic transaction rules describe transactions that recur. They al- low hledger to generate temporary future transactions to help with forecasting, so you don't have to write out each one in the journal, and it's easy to try out different forecasts. Secondly, they are also used to define the budgets shown in budget reports. Periodic transactions can be a little tricky, so before you use them, read this whole section - or at least these tips: 1. Two spaces accidentally added or omitted will cause you trouble - read about this below. 2. For troubleshooting, show the generated transactions with hledger print --forecast tag:generated or hledger register --forecast tag:generated. 3. Forecasted transactions will begin only after the last non-fore- casted transaction's date. 4. Forecasted transactions will end 6 months from today, by default. See below for the exact start/end rules. 5. period expressions can be tricky. Their documentation needs im- provement, but is worth studying. 6. Some period expressions with a repeating interval must begin on a natural boundary of that interval. Eg in weekly from DATE, DATE must be a monday. ~ weekly from 2019/10/1 (a tuesday) will give an error. 7. Other period expressions with an interval are automatically expanded to cover a whole number of that interval. (This is done to improve reports, but it also affects periodic transactions. Yes, it's a bit inconsistent with the above.) Eg: ~ every 10th day of month from 2020/01, which is equivalent to ~ every 10th day of month from 2020/01/01, will be adjusted to start on 2019/12/10. Periodic rule syntax A periodic transaction rule looks like a normal journal entry, with the date replaced by a tilde (~) followed by a period expression (mnemonic: ~ looks like a recurring sine wave.): ~ monthly expenses:rent $2000 assets:bank:checking There is an additional constraint on the period expression: the start date must fall on a natural boundary of the interval. Eg monthly from 2018/1/1 is valid, but monthly from 2018/1/15 is not. Partial or relative dates (M/D, D, tomorrow, last week) in the period expression can work (useful or not). They will be relative to today's date, unless a Y default year directive is in effect, in which case they will be relative to Y/1/1. Two spaces between period expression and description! If the period expression is followed by a transaction description, these must be separated by two or more spaces. This helps hledger know where the period expression ends, so that descriptions can not acciden- tally alter their meaning, as in this example: ; 2 or more spaces needed here, so the period is not understood as "every 2 months in 2020" ; || ; vv ~ every 2 months in 2020, we will review assets:bank:checking $1500 income:acme inc So, o Do write two spaces between your period expression and your transac- tion description, if any. o Don't accidentally write two spaces in the middle of your period ex- pression. Forecasting with periodic transactions With the --forecast flag, each periodic transaction rule generates fu- ture transactions recurring at the specified interval. These are not saved in the journal, but appear in all reports. They will look like normal transactions, but with an extra tag: o generated-transaction:~ PERIODICEXPR - shows that this was generated by a periodic transaction rule, and the period There is also a hidden tag, with an underscore prefix, which does not appear in hledger's output: o _generated-transaction:~ PERIODICEXPR This can be used to match transactions generated "just now", rather than generated in the past and saved to the journal. Forecast transactions start on the first occurrence, and end on the last occurrence, of their interval within the forecast period. The forecast period: o begins on the later of o the report start date if specified with -b/-p/date: o the day after the latest normal (non-periodic) transaction in the journal, or today if there are no normal transactions. o ends on the report end date if specified with -e/-p/date:, or 180 days from today. where "today" means the current date at report time. The "later of" rule ensures that forecast transactions do not overlap normal transac- tions in time; they will begin only after normal transactions end. Forecasting can be useful for estimating balances into the future, and experimenting with different scenarios. Note the start date logic means that forecasted transactions are automatically replaced by normal transactions as you add those. Forecasting can also help with data entry: describe most of your trans- actions with periodic rules, and every so often copy the output of print --forecast to the journal. You can generate one-time transactions too: just write a period expres- sion specifying a date with no report interval. (You could also write a normal transaction with a future date, but remember this disables forecast transactions on previous dates.) Budgeting with periodic transactions With the --budget flag, currently supported by the balance command, each periodic transaction rule declares recurring budget goals for the specified accounts. Eg the first example above declares a goal of spending $2000 on rent (and also, a goal of depositing $2000 into checking) every month. Goals and actual performance can then be com- pared in budget reports. For more details, see: balance: Budget report and Budgeting and Fore- casting. Auto postings / transaction modifiers Transaction modifier rules, AKA auto posting rules, describe changes to be applied automatically to certain matched transactions. Currently just one kind of change is possible - adding extra postings, which we call "automated postings" or just "auto postings". These rules become active when you use the --auto flag. A transaction modifier rule looks much like a normal transaction except the first line is an equals sign followed by a query that matches cer- tain postings (mnemonic: = suggests matching). And each "posting" is actually a posting-generating rule: = QUERY ACCOUNT AMOUNT ACCOUNT [AMOUNT] ... These posting-generating rules look like normal postings, except the amount can be: o a normal amount with a commodity symbol, eg $2. This will be used as-is. o a number, eg 2. The commodity symbol (if any) from the matched post- ing will be added to this. o a numeric multiplier, eg *2 (a star followed by a number N). The matched posting's amount (and total price, if any) will be multiplied by N. o a multiplier with a commodity symbol, eg *$2 (a star, number N, and symbol S). The matched posting's amount will be multiplied by N, and its commodity symbol will be replaced with S. A query term containing spaces must be enclosed in single or double quotes, as on the command line. Eg, note the quotes around the second query term below: = expenses:groceries 'expenses:dining out' (budget:funds:dining out) *-1 These rules have global effect - a rule appearing anywhere in your data can potentially affect any transaction, including transactions recorded above it or in another file. Some examples: ; every time I buy food, schedule a dollar donation = expenses:food (liabilities:charity) $-1 ; when I buy a gift, also deduct that amount from a budget envelope subaccount = expenses:gifts assets:checking:gifts *-1 assets:checking *1 2017/12/1 expenses:food $10 assets:checking 2017/12/14 expenses:gifts $20 assets:checking $ hledger print --auto 2017-12-01 expenses:food $10 assets:checking (liabilities:charity) $-1 2017-12-14 expenses:gifts $20 assets:checking assets:checking:gifts -$20 assets:checking $20 Auto postings and dates A posting date (or secondary date) in the matched posting, or (taking precedence) a posting date in the auto posting rule itself, will also be used in the generated posting. Auto postings and transaction balancing / inferred amounts / balance asser- tions Currently, transaction modifiers are applied / auto postings are added: o after missing amounts are inferred, and transactions are checked for balancedness, o but before balance assertions are checked. Note this means that journal entries must be balanced both before and after auto postings are added. This changed in hledger 1.12+; see #893 for background. Auto posting tags Postings added by transaction modifiers will have some extra tags: o generated-posting:= QUERY - shows this was generated by an auto post- ing rule, and the query o _generated-posting:= QUERY - a hidden tag, which does not appear in hledger's output. This can be used to match postings generated "just now", rather than generated in the past and saved to the journal. Also, any transaction that has been changed by transaction modifier rules will have these tags added: o modified: - this transaction was modified o _modified: - a hidden tag not appearing in the comment; this transac- tion was modified "just now". 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) 2007-2019 Simon Michael. Released under GNU GPL v3 or later. SEE ALSO hledger(1), hledger-ui(1), hledger-web(1), hledger-api(1), hledger_csv(5), hledger_journal(5), hledger_timeclock(5), hledger_time- dot(5), ledger(1) http://hledger.org hledger 1.17 March 2020 hledger_journal(5)