hledger is...

• free GPLv3+ accounting software that runs on unix, mac, windows, and the web
• based on readable, version-controllable, future-proof plain text files
• the most user friendly plain text accounting app
• interoperable with Ledger, Beancount, Fava, Paisa, ...
• fast, lightweight, and dependable (we pay $50 for regression reports/fixes)
• local, not cloud-based (your private financial data remains under your control)
• free from vendor lock-in
• shipped with command line, terminal, and web UIs
• good at importing CSV from banks and other financial institutions
• good for tracking money, investments, time, or any countable commodity
• good for learning more about double entry bookkeeping
• comfortable for technical users, also usable by non-techies (command line skills are useful but not essential)
• automatable and scripting-friendly
• built with the powerful, high assurance Haskell language
• actively used, developed and supported by Simon Michael and contributors since 2007
• strengthened by community feedback and funding

More about Features.

Welcome! Don't hesitate to ask questions. Or explore the documentation links in the sidebar (if not visible, click/tap the icon at top left).

Quick start

This plain text accounting stuff is both useful and more fun than it sounds - care to give it a try ? Read on... or see Get Started for more detailed tutorials.

1. Install hledger

The Install page shows how to get an up-to-date version quickly.

2. Record transactions

hledger reads transactions from a journal file - usually ~/.hledger.journal, or C:\Users\USER\.hledger.journal, or whatever you've set LEDGER_FILE to.

Transactions are recorded like this:

2025-04-10 MyGas
  Expenses:Automotive              $20
  Liabilities:Acme Credit Card

A date and description, followed by several indented account postings, with two or more spaces between each account name and its amount. Colons indicate subaccounts. Here are the parts in more detail:

A transaction is a movement of money between accounts. So the amounts in a transaction must add up to zero. If you leave one amount blank, it will be calculated automatically ($-20 in this case).

A positive amount means "added to this account", a negative amount means "removed from this account" (debit and credit).

Here's the start of a journal, with comments. To follow along with these examples, save this as your journal file. You can use a text editor; or you could run hledger add or hledger web and enter these transactions interactively (no need to enter the comments).

2023-01-01 opening balances            ; <- First transaction sets starting balances.
    assets:bank:checking        $1000  ; <- Account names can be anything.
    assets:bank:savings         $2000  ; <- Colons indicate subaccounts.
    assets:cash                  $100  ; <- 2+ spaces are required before the amount.
    liabilities:credit card      $-50  ; <- A debt; these are negative.
    equity:opening/closing     $-3050  ; <- Starting balances come from equity.
                                       ;    Equity is also usually negative.
                                       ;    (Reports can show as positive when needed.)

2023-02-01 GOODWORKS CORP              ; <- Date order is recommended but optional.
    assets:bank:checking       $1000
    income:salary                      ; <- $-1000 is inferred here to balance the txn.
                                       ;    Income amounts are negative.

2023-02-15 market
    expenses:food             $50
    assets:cash                        ; <- $-50 is inferred here.

Some people record all transactions by hand in this way. But you can also import them from bank data, as we'll see below.

3. Add declarations

Transaction entries like the above are all you need to get started, so feel free to skip this step till later. But we usually add some declarations at the top of the file to enable more error checking.

First, declare your currencies/commodities, and their display style. In this case there's only one, $:

commodity $1000.00

or it could be:

commodity $ 1.000,00

Now, you can check that all amounts have a valid commodity symbol:

$ hledger check commodities
$

Next, declare your top level accounts and their type, eg like this (or in other languages: ar da de en es fr ja ko no pt se zh ...):

account assets                   ; type:A
account liabilities              ; type:L
account equity                   ; type:E
account income                   ; type:R
account expenses                 ; type:X

account assets:bank              ; type:C
account assets:cash              ; type:C

account equity:conversion        ; type:V

This helps reports show the right accounts. It also sets their preferred display order.

If you'd like more error checking, declare all account names, not just the top-level ones:

account assets                   ; type:A
account assets:bank              ; type:C
account assets:bank:checking
account assets:bank:savings
account assets:cash              ; type:C

account liabilities              ; type:L
account liabilities:credit card

account equity                   ; type:E
account equity:conversion        ; type:V
account equity:opening/closing

account income                   ; type:R
account income:salary
account income:gifts

account expenses                 ; type:X
account expenses:rent
account expenses:food
account expenses:gifts

Then you can check that all transactions use valid account names:

$ hledger check accounts
$

You can also use strict mode, which enables both of these checks, by adding -s to any command (or to your config file).

Here's the above journal in full.

4. Run reports

Now you can see reports, such as...

A list of accounts, showing the hierarchy and types detected:

$ hledger accounts --tree --types
assets               ; type: A
  bank               ; type: C
    checking         ; type: C
    savings          ; type: C
  cash               ; type: C
liabilities          ; type: L
  credit card        ; type: L
equity               ; type: E
  conversion         ; type: V
  opening/closing    ; type: E
income               ; type: R
  salary             ; type: R
  gifts              ; type: R
expenses             ; type: X
  rent               ; type: X
  food               ; type: X
  gifts              ; type: X

A balance sheet, showing what you own and owe:

$ hledger bs
Balance Sheet 2023-02-15

                         || 2023-02-15 
=========================++============
 Assets                  ||            
-------------------------++------------
 assets:bank:checking    ||      $2000 
 assets:bank:savings     ||      $2000 
 assets:cash             ||        $50 
-------------------------++------------
                         ||      $4050 
=========================++============
 Liabilities             ||            
-------------------------++------------
 liabilities:credit card ||        $50 
-------------------------++------------
                         ||        $50 
=========================++============
 Net:                    ||      $4000 

An income statement (AKA profit and loss report), showing what you received and spent:

$ hledger is -MTA
Income Statement 2023-01-01..2023-02-28

               || Jan    Feb    Total  Average 
===============++==============================
 Revenues      ||                              
---------------++------------------------------
 income:salary ||   0  $1000    $1000     $500 
---------------++------------------------------
               ||   0  $1000    $1000     $500 
===============++==============================
 Expenses      ||                              
---------------++------------------------------
 expenses:food ||   0    $50      $50      $25 
---------------++------------------------------
               ||   0    $50      $50      $25 
===============++==============================
 Net:          ||   0   $950     $950     $475 

An account register, showing the transactions and running balance in a particular account:

$ hledger aregister checking
Transactions in assets:bank:checking and subaccounts:
2023-01-01 opening balances     as:ba:savings, as:..         $1000         $1000
2023-02-01 GOODWORKS CORP       in:salary                    $1000         $2000

Congratulations, you can now begin to track your daily finances with hledger!

Get Started has more detailed help. If you are new to bookkeeping, accounting, or plain text accounting, know that these are valuable skills, which take time to master. With practice, more doc reading, and support/discussion, you will gradually

• build up a set of account names best suited to you
• learn the proper journal entries for your real-world transactions
• learn how to produce the reports most useful for you
• and learn new workflows that you may find more convenient.

Other user interfaces

Instead of using the command line, you can use the ui or web interfaces (or repl, add, iadd, ...)

Time tracking

hledger can also read time logs, in timeclock format:

i 2023/03/27 09:00:00 projects:a
o 2023/03/27 17:00:34
i 2023/03/31 22:21:45 personal:reading:online
o 2023/04/01 02:00:34

$ hledger -f 2023.timeclock register -D
2023-03-27   projects:a                         8.01h         8.01h
2023-03-31   personal:reading:online            1.64h         9.65h
2023-04-01   personal:reading:online            2.01h        11.66h

or in timedot format:

2023/2/1
biz:research  .... ..
fos:hledger   .... .... ....

2023/2/2
fos:ledger    .
fos:haskell   ..
biz:client1   .... ....

$ hledger -f 2023.timedot balance -tDTA  # tree, Daily, Total, Average
Balance changes in 2023-02-01..2023-02-02:

            || 2023-02-01  2023-02-02    Total  Average 
============++==========================================
 biz        ||       1.50        2.00     3.50     1.75 
   client1  ||          0        2.00     2.00     1.00 
   research ||       1.50           0     1.50     0.75 
 fos        ||       3.00        0.75     3.75     1.88 
   haskell  ||          0        0.50     0.50     0.25 
   hledger  ||       3.00           0     3.00     1.50 
   ledger   ||          0        0.25     0.25     0.12 
------------++------------------------------------------
            ||       4.50        2.75     7.25     3.62 

CSV import

Most banks and financial institutions provide data in CSV format. hledger can read from any CSV (or SSV, TSV, or other character-separated) file representing transactions. Eg:

"Date","Notes","Amount"
"2023/2/22","DEPOSIT","50.00"
"2023/2/23","TRANSFER TO SAVINGS","-10.00"

# bank.csv.rules  # this rules file tells hledger how to read bank.csv
skip 1
fields date, description, amount
currency $
account1 assets:bank:checking

if WHOLE FOODS
 account2 expenses:food

if (TO|FROM) SAVINGS
 account2 assets:bank:savings

$ hledger -f bank.csv print
2023-02-22 DEPOSIT
    assets:bank:checking          $50.00
    income:unknown               $-50.00

2023-02-23 TRANSFER TO SAVINGS
    assets:bank:checking         $-10.00
    assets:bank:savings           $10.00

The import command detects just the new transactions, and adds them to the journal:

$ hledger import bank.csv
imported 2 new transactions from bank.csv

$ hledger import bank.csv
no new transactions found in bank.csv

$ hledger aregister checking
2023-01-01 opening balances     as:ba:savings, as:..      $1000.00      $1000.00
2023-02-01 GOODWORKS CORP       in:salary                 $1000.00      $2000.00
2023-02-22 DEPOSIT              in:unknown                  $50.00      $2050.00
2023-02-23 TRANSFER TO SAVINGS  as:ba:savings              $-10.00      $2040.00

More: Tutorial: Import CSV data

More examples...

• Charts and Graphs
• HTML reports
• Interop with other software
• Investing and trading
• Mobile apps
• Scripts and Scripting
• Workflows
• The hledger Cookbook
• The PTA Cookbook

Site tips

• Use the horizontal lines icon at top left to toggle the sidebar.
• Use the paintbrush icon to change theme.
• Use the magnifying-glass icon to search.
• Access keys are also available:
  s toggle sidebar, t theme, / search,
  1 home page, 2 recent changes, < previous page, > next page.