hledger

NAME

hledger - a robust, friendly plain text accounting app (command line version).

SYNOPSIS

hledger
or
hledger COMMAND [OPTS] [ARGS]

DESCRIPTION

hledger is a robust, user-friendly, 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), and largely interconvertible with beancount(1).

This manual is for hledger's command line interface, version 1.99. It also describes the common options, file formats and concepts used by all hledger programs. It might accidentally teach you some bookkeeping/accounting as well! You don't need to know everything in here to use hledger productively, but when you have a question about functionality, this doc should answer it. It is detailed, so do skip ahead or skim when needed. You can read it on hledger.org, or as an info manual or man page on your system. You can also open a built-in copy, at a point of interest, by running
hledger help [TOPIC].

The main function of the hledger CLI is to read plain text files describing financial transactions, crunch the numbers, and print a useful report on the terminal (or save it as HTML, CSV, JSON or SQL). Many reports are available, as subcommands. hledger will also detect other hledger-* executables as extra subcommands.

hledger usually reads from (and appends to) a journal file specified by the LEDGER_FILE environment variable (defaulting to $HOME/.hledger.journal); or you can specify files with -f options. It can also read timeclock files, timedot files, or any CSV/SSV/TSV file with a date field.

Here is a small journal file, describing some starting balances and two transactions:

2025-01-01 * opening balances
  assets:bank:checking             $1000 = $1000
  assets:cash                       $100 = $100
  liabilities:creditcard            $-50 = $-50
  equity:opening/closing balances

2025-01-10 * gift received
  income:gifts                      $-20
  assets:cash                        $20

2025-01-12 farmers market
  assets:cash                       $-13
  expenses:food                      $13

Transactions are dated movements of money (etc.) between two or more accounts: bank accounts, your wallet, revenue/expense categories, people, etc. You can choose any account names you wish, using : to indicate subaccounts. There must be at least two spaces between account name and amount. Positive amounts are inflow to that account (debit), negatives are outflow from it (credit). (Some reports show revenue, liability and equity account balances as negative numbers as a result; this is normal.)

Some details from this example: the first entry records your real-world balances on a starting date, with the equity account absorbing the difference (its amount is inferred); the = AMOUNT parts are optional balance assertions, for extra error checking; the * after a date is an optional status mark, meaning "cleared"; and the currency symbols are optional, but a good habit.

hledger’s add command can help you add transactions, or you can install other data entry UIs like hledger-web or hledger-iadd. For more extensive/efficient changes, use a text editor: Emacs + ledger-mode, VIM + vim-ledger, or VS Code + hledger-vscode are some good choices (see https://hledger.org/editors.html).

To get started, run hledger add and follow the prompts, or save some entries like the above in $HOME/.hledger.journal, then try commands like:

$ hledger print -x
$ hledger aregister assets
$ hledger balance
$ hledger balancesheet
$ hledger incomestatement

Run hledger to list the commands.

In this manual, we'll cover all of hledger's functionality in detail. For a more gentle step by step introduction, see hledger by example, or for a faster intro, the 5 minute quick start.

For tips on configuring a default journal file, reconciling with your bank, closing a file at end of year, or migrating between hledger 1 and 2, see PART 6: COMMON TASKS.

PART 1: USER INTERFACE

Input

hledger reads one or more data files, each time you run it. You can specify a file with -f, like so

$ hledger -f FILE [-f FILE2 ...] print

Files are most often in hledger's journal format, with the .journal file extension (.hledger or .j also work); these files describe transactions, like an accounting general journal.

When no file is specified, hledger looks for .hledger.journal in your home directory.

But most people prefer to keep financial files in a dedicated folder, perhaps with version control. Also, starting a new journal file each year is common (it's not required, but helps keep things fast and organised). So we usually configure a different journal file, by setting the LEDGER_FILE environment variable, to something like ~/finance/2023.journal. For more about how to do that on your system, see Common tasks > Setting LEDGER_FILE.

Text encoding

hledger expects non-ascii input to be decodable with the system locale's text encoding. (For CSV/SSV/TSV files, this can be overridden by the encoding CSV rule.)

So, trying to read non-ascii files which have the wrong text encoding, or when no system locale is configured, will fail. To fix this, configure your system locale appropriately, and/or convert the files to your system's text encoding (using iconv on unix, or powershell or notepad on Windows). See Install: Text encoding for more tips.

hledger's output will use the system locale's encoding.

hledger's docs and example files mostly use UTF-8 encoding.

Data formats

Usually the data file is in hledger's journal format, but it can be in any of the supported file formats, which currently are:

These formats are described in more detail below.

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.

You can also force a specific reader/format by prefixing the file path with the format and a colon. Eg, to read a .dat file containing tab separated values:

$ hledger -f tsv:/some/file.dat stats

Standard input

The file name - means standard input:

$ cat FILE | hledger -f- print

If reading non-journal data in this way, you'll need to write the format as a prefix, like timeclock: here:

$ echo 'i 2009/13/1 08:00:00' | hledger print -f timeclock:-

Multiple files

You can specify multiple -f options, to read multiple files as one big journal. When doing this, note that certain features (described below) will be affected:

• Balance assertions will not see the effect of transactions in previous files. (Usually this doesn't matter as each file will set the corresponding opening balances.)
• Some directives will not affect previous or subsequent files.

If needed, you can work around these by using a single parent file which includes the others (this works with CSV files too), or concatenating the files into one, eg: cat a.journal b.journal | hledger -f- CMD.

Strict mode

hledger checks input files for valid data. By default, the most important errors are detected, while still accepting easy journal files without a lot of declarations:

• Are the input files parseable, with valid syntax ?
• Are all transactions balanced ?
• Do all balance assertions pass ?

With the -s/--strict flag, additional checks are performed:

• Are all accounts posted to, declared with an account directive ? (Account error checking)
• Are all commodities declared with a commodity directive ? (Commodity error checking)
• Are all commodity conversions declared explicitly ?

You can use the check command to run individual checks - the ones listed above and some more.

Commands

hledger provides various subcommands for getting things done. Most of these commands do not change the journal file; they just read it and output a report. A few commands assist with adding data and file management. Some commands to start with:

• hledger add - add transactions, with interactive prompts
• hledger print - show journal entries
• hledger aregister assets:checking (areg) - show one account's transactions and running balance
• hledger balancesheet (bs) - show assets, liabilities and net worth
• hledger incomestatement (is) - show revenues and expenses

To show a summary of commands, run hledger with no arguments. See also PART 2: COMMANDS below.

To use a particular command, run hledger CMD [CMDOPTS] [CMDARGS],

• CMD is the full command name, or its standard abbreviation shown in the commands list, or any unambiguous prefix of the name.

• CMDOPTS are command-specific options, if any. Command-specific options must be written after the command name. Eg: hledger print -x.

• CMDARGS are additional arguments to the command, if any. Most hledger commands accept arguments representing a query, to limit the data in some way. Eg: hledger reg assets:checking.

To list a command's options, arguments, and documentation in the terminal, run hledger CMD -h. Eg: hledger bal -h.

Add-on commands

In addition to the built-in commands, you can install add-on commands, which will also appear in hledger's commands list. Some of these can be installed as separate packages; others can be found in hledger's bin/ directory, documented at https://hledger.org/scripts.html.

Add-on commands are programs or scripts in your shell's PATH, whose name starts with "hledger-" and ends with no extension or a recognised extension (".bat", ".com", ".exe", ".hs", ".js", ".lhs", ".lua", ".php", ".pl", ".py", ".rb", ".rkt", or ".sh"), and (on unix and mac) which has executable permission for the current user.

You can run add-on commands directly: hledger-ui --watch.

Or you can run them with hledger, like built-in commands: hledger ui --watch. In this case hledger's config file will be used, so you can set custom options for the addon there. (Before hledger 1.50, an -- argument was needed before addon options, but not any more.)

Arguments written after the command name are passed on to the add-on unchanged, except for the options specific to the hledger CLI (--conf, --no-conf, -n), which hledger consumes. To send one of those to the add-on instead, write it after a -- argument: hledger ui -- -n. hledger consumes only that first --; later ones are passed on like any other argument.

Options

Run hledger -h to see general command line help. Options can be written either before or after the command name. These options are specific to the hledger CLI:

Flags:
     --conf=CONFFILE        Use extra options defined in this config file. If
                            not specified, searches upward and in XDG config
                            dir for hledger.conf (or .hledger.conf in $HOME).
  -n --no-conf              ignore any config file

And the following general options are common to most hledger commands:

General input flags:
  -f --file=[FMT:]FILE      Use this as the journal file (- means stdin). If
                            not specified, $LEDGER_FILE or ~/.hledger.journal
                            will be used. If specified more than once, the
                            files will be read in order. Each file's format
                            (journal, csv, timeclock, timedot, rules..) is
                            inferred from the file extension or a FMT: prefix.
                            Some commands (add, import) write to the (first)
                            file, and expect it to be in journal format.
     --rules=RULESFILE      Use rules defined in this rules file for
                            converting subsequent CSV/SSV/TSV files. If not
                            specified, uses FILE.csv.rules for each FILE.csv.
     --alias=A=B|/RGX/=RPL  transform account names from A to B, or by
                            replacing regular expression matches
     --auto                 generate extra postings by applying auto posting
                            rules ("=") to all transactions
     --forecast[=PERIOD]    Generate extra transactions from periodic rules
                            ("~"), from after the latest ordinary transaction
                            until 6 months from now. Or, during the specified
                            PERIOD (the equals is required). Auto posting rules
                            will also be applied to these transactions. In
                            hledger-ui, also make future-dated transactions
                            visible at startup.
     --ignore-assertions    don't check balance assertions by default
     --ignore-lots          don't do lot tracking or checking by default
  -I                        shortcut for --ignore-assertions --ignore-lots
     --txn-balancing=...    how to check that transactions are balanced:
                            'old':   - use global display precision
                            'exact': - use transaction precision (default)
     --infer-costs          infer costs from conversion equity postings
     --infer-equity         infer conversion equity postings from costs
     --infer-market-prices  infer market prices from costs
     --pivot=TAGNAME        use a different field or tag as account names
  -s --strict               do extra error checks (and override -I)

General output flags (affecting some commands):
  -b --begin=DATE           include postings/transactions on/after this date
  -e --end=DATE             include postings/transactions before this date
                            (with a report interval, will be adjusted to
                            following subperiod end)
  -D --daily                set report interval: 1 day
  -W --weekly               set report interval: 1 week
  -M --monthly              set report interval: 1 month
  -Q --quarterly            set report interval: 1 quarter
  -Y --yearly               set report interval: 1 year
  -p --period=PERIODEXP     set begin date, end date, and/or report interval,
                            with more flexibility
     --today=DATE           override today's date (affects relative dates)
     --date2                match/use secondary dates instead (deprecated)
  -U --unmarked             include only unmarked postings/transactions
  -P --pending              include only pending postings/transactions
  -C --cleared              include only cleared postings/transactions
                            (-U/-P/-C can be combined)
  -R --real                 include only non-virtual postings
  -E --empty                Show zero items, which are normally hidden.
                            In hledger-ui & hledger-web, do the opposite.
     --depth=DEPTHEXP       if a number (or -NUM): show only top NUM levels
                            of accounts. If REGEXP=NUM, only apply limiting to
                            accounts matching the regular expression.
  -B --cost                 convert amounts to their cost/sale amount (@/@@)
  -V --market               valuation mode: show amounts converted to market
                            value at period end(s) in their default valuation
                            commodity. Short for --value=end.
  -X --exchange=COMM        valuation mode: show amounts converted to market
                            value at period end(s) in the specified commodity.
                            Short for --value=end,COMM.
     --value=WHEN[,COMM]    valuation mode: show amounts converted to market
                            value on the specified date(s) in their default
                            valuation commodity or a specified commodity. WHEN
                            can be:
                            'then':     value on transaction dates
                            'end':      value at period end(s)
                            'now':      value today
                            YYYY-MM-DD: value on given date
     --lots                 show lot subaccounts and other lot details
  -c --commodity-style=S    Override a commodity's display style.
                            Eg: -c '.' or -c '1.000,00 EUR'
     --pretty[=YN]          Use box-drawing characters in text output? The
                            optional 'y'/'yes' or 'n'/'no' arg requires =.
     --title=T              set or customise a report title
     --subreport-titles=TS  customise subreport headings in compound reports
                            (|-separated)
     --period-titles=OPT    customise headings in periodic reports:
                            'compact': readable period names when possible
                            'dates':   exact dates/date ranges always

General help flags:
  -?                        show the hledger quick reference
  -h --help                 show this command's usage help
     --info                 show this command's manual with info
     --man                  show this command's manual with man
     --webman               show this command's manual on the web
     --examples             show examples for this command
     --version              show version information
     --debug=[1-9]          show this much debug output (default: 1)
     --pager=YN             use a pager when needed ? y/yes (default) or n/no
     --color=YNA --colour   use ANSI color ? y/yes, n/no, or auto (default)

Usually hledger accepts any unambiguous flag prefix, eg you can write --dry instead of --dry-run.

You can combine short flags which don't take arguments, eg you can write -MAST instead of -M -A -S -T. Flags requiring an argument can't be combined in this way (-If FILE won't work).

If the same option appears more than once in a command line, usually the last (right-most) wins. Similarly, if mutually exclusive flags are used together, the right-most wins. (When flags are mutually exclusive, they'll usually have a group prefix in --help.)

With most commands, arguments are interpreted as a hledger query which filters the data. Some queries can be expressed either with options or with arguments.

Config files

You can configure default command line options and arguments conveniently in a hledger config file. Config file options will be inserted near the start of your command line, so you can override them with command line options.

You can specify a config file with the --conf option. Otherwise, hledger will search for a default config file, in this order:

• hledger.conf in the current directory or above
• .hledger.conf in your home directory
• hledger.conf in your XDG config (~/.config/hledger/hledger.conf).

Only one config file is used. Here's a small example:

# General options, used with all hledger commands that support them.
--pretty

# Command-specific options.
[print]
--explicit --infer-costs

And here is a commented starter config file: https://github.com/hledgerorg/hledger/blob/main/hledger.conf.sample

You can put not only options, but also arguments in a config file.

You can ignore all config files by adding the -n/--no-conf flag to the command line. This is recommended when using hledger in scripts. When both --conf and --no-conf options are used, the right-most wins.

Command aliases

In a config file you can also define command aliases: your own custom commands, which expand to a longer command line (similar to git's aliases). (Since 1.99.4.) Eg:

[alias]
p     = print
p1    = print --oneline
rev10 = balance type:R -2 -X$ -p 'every 10 years from 2000'

With this in your config file, you'll see a rev10 command in the hledger help commands list, and hledger rev10 will run the balance command above. Options or arguments written at the command line will be added at the end, usually overriding those in the alias; eg hledger rev10 -X € will convert to € instead of $. Command aliases can also be used in run command scripts and at the repl prompt.

Each line in an [alias] section should look like NAME = COMMAND [ARGS..]. A command line can be continued on following lines by indenting them more than the NAME; the indented lines are joined to the command line. Blank lines and comment lines within it are ignored, so you can space it out or comment out individual lines. Eg:

[alias]
rev10 = balance
    type:R
    -2
    -X$
    -p 'every 10 years from 2000'
    # --drop 1

Command aliases override addon commands with the same name, but they can't override builtin command names or abbreviations like balance or bal. If the same alias name is defined more than once, the last definition wins.

An alias's command can be a hledger builtin command, addon command, or another alias. If there's a [COMMAND] options section for an alias's resolved builtin command, that will also be applied.

Or if an alias's command line begins with !, the rest is run as a shell command (with any extra command line arguments appended). Eg:

[alias]
git-commit = ! git commit -p
jj-commit  = ! jj commit -i

For safety, shell command aliases run only if defined in a trusted config file: one you gave explicitly with --conf, or your user config file (~/.hledger.conf or the XDG hledger.conf). Shell commands in a nearby automatically-found hledger.conf, in the current directory or a parent directory, will not run - this prevents a config file from an untrusted downloaded or shared directory from running arbitrary shell commands.

Config file troubleshooting

A default config file (one which hledger finds and uses automatically, without a --conf option) is convenient, but it can surprise you, eg by quietly changing report output, or breaking scripts which use hledger. Some tips:

1. Be mindful about what you put in your config file; consider the effect on all your reports.
2. If a hledger command isn't doing what you expect, try it again with -n, to see if a config file is to blame.
3. Run hledger setup to list the currently active config file. (setup is not affected by config files.)
4. Add --debug or --debug=8 to any command to see config/command line debug output.
5. In scripts, and in examples you share with others, add -n so that a config file can't change the result.
6. When you download hledger data from elsewhere, watch out for directories containing a hledger.conf file.

Environment

These environment variables affect hledger:

HLEDGER_LESS If less is your pager, this variable specifies the less options hledger should use. (Otherwise, LESS + custom options are used.)

LEDGER_FILE The default journal file, to be used when no -f/--file option is provided. For example, it could be ~/finance/main.journal. This can also be a glob pattern, eg ./2???.journal. (If the glob matches multiple files, only the alphanumerically first one is used.) If LEDGER_FILE points to a non-existent file, an error will be raised. If the value is the empty string, it is ignored.

If LEDGER_FILE is not set and -f is not provided, the default journal file is $HOME/.hledger.journal (or if a home directory can't be detected, ./.hledger.journal).

See also Common tasks > Setting LEDGER_FILE.

NO_COLOR If this environment variable exists (with any value, including empty), hledger will not use ANSI color codes in terminal output, unless overridden by an explicit --color=y or --colour=y option.

PART 2: COMMANDS

Here are hledger's standard commands. You can list these by running hledger help commands, or as a more compact list by running hledger. If you have installed more add-on commands, they also will be listed.

In the following command docs, each command's specific options are shown. Most commands also support the general options described above, though some of them might have no effect. (Usually if there's a sensible way for a general option to affect a command, it will.) You can list all of a command's options by running hledger CMD -h.

Help commands

• help (h) - show documentation

User interface commands

• repl - run multiple commands from an interactive prompt
• run - run multiple commands from a file or command line
• ui - (if installed) run hledger's terminal UI
• web - (if installed) run hledger's web UI

Data entry commands

• add - add transactions using terminal prompts
• import - add new transactions from other files, eg CSV files

Basic report commands

• accounts (acc) - show account names
• codes - show transaction codes
• commodities (comm) - show commodity/currency symbols
• descriptions (desc) - show transaction descriptions
• files - show input files in use
• notes - show note part of transaction descriptions
• payees - show payee part of transaction descriptions
• prices - show market prices
• stats - show journal statistics
• tags - show tag names
• transactions (tx) - show transactions, one per line

Standard report commands

• print - show journal entries, or export journal data
• aregister (areg) - show transactions & running balance in one account
• register (reg) - show postings & running total across accounts
• balancesheet (bs) - show assets, liabilities and net worth
• balancesheetequity (bse) - show assets, liabilities and equity
• cashflow (cf) - show changes in liquid assets
• incomestatement (is) - show revenues and expenses

Advanced report commands

• balance (bal) - show balance changes, end balances, gains, budgets..
• holdings - show investment holdings
• roi - show return on investments

Chart commands

• activity - show posting counts as a bar chart

Data generation commands

• close - generate transactions to zero/restore/assert balances
• get - fetch new transactions and market price data
• rewrite - generate auto postings, like print --auto

Maintenance commands

• check - check for various kinds of error in the data
• diff - compare an account's transactions in two journals
• setup - check and show the status of the hledger installation
• test - run self tests

Next, these commands are described in detail.

Help commands

help

(h)

Show some part of hledger's documentation.

Flags:
  -i                       use info when showing the manual
  -m                       use man when showing the manual
  -p                       use less (or $PAGER) when showing the manual
  -w                       use a web browser when showing the manual
  -l                       just list the manual topics matching TOPIC
     --builtins            with commands: show only builtin commands
     --addons              with commands: show only addon commands
     --aliases             with commands: show only command aliases

The part shown is selected by arguments:

• quickref (or no args): a quick reference / overview
• commands: all commands, including addons and aliases (or just one category, with --builtins/--addons/--aliases)
• usage [CMD]: command line options help (like -h/--help)
• examples [CMD]: command line examples
• manual [TOPIC]: view a topic in the manual, or list them all
• TOPIC: (like manual TOPIC)
• home|install|relnotes|docs|support|sponsor: browse hledger.org pages

TOPIC is a section heading in the hledger, hledger-ui or hledger-web manual, or part of one, matched case insensitively. Enclose it in quotes if it contains spaces. With no TOPIC (hledger help manual), all manual topics are listed, indented to show (most of) their hierarchy.

The manual will be shown in a default viewer (info, man, pager, web browser), or you can choose with -i/-m/-p/-w.

The manual is built in to your hledger executable, so it can be useful when offline, or when you prefer the terminal to a web browser, or when the appropriate hledger manual or viewers are not installed properly on your system.

By default it chooses the best viewer found in $PATH, trying in this order: info, man, $PAGER, less, more, stdout. (If a TOPIC is specified, $PAGER and more are not tried.) You can force the use of info, man, or a pager with the -i, -m, or -p flags. If no viewer can be found, or if running non-interactively, it just prints the manual to stdout.

Examples:

$ hledger help                    # show the quick reference
$ hledger help -h                 # show the help command's options
$ hledger help commands           # list all commands
$ hledger help commands --aliases # list just the command aliases
$ hledger help 'time periods'     # show the "Time periods" section in the manual
$ hledger help keys               # show the "KEYS" section in the hledger-ui manual
$ hledger help -l                 # list the manual's topics
$ hledger help -l journal         # list the manual topics matching "journal"
$ hledger help examples add       # show examples for the add command

User interface commands

repl

Start an interactive prompt for running hledger commands. Input files are reloaded only when they change, so commands run faster.

Flags:
     --no-watch             disable automatic reloading of changed input
                            files, config aliases and addon commands

hledger repl starts a read-eval-print loop (REPL) where you can enter commands interactively. As with the run command, each input file (or each input file/input options combination) is parsed just once, so commands will run more quickly than if you ran them individually at the command line.

The input file(s) specified for the repl command will be used throughout the session; but you can override this temporarily by specifying new -f options for a command.

Before running a command, any input files which have changed on disk are automatically reloaded (including CSV rules files). Also command aliases are reloaded if the config file has changed, and addon commands are re-detected if PATH's contents have changed. The --no-watch flag disables all of this reloading, so as to work with a stable snapshot of the data, or to avoid file/directory polling on a slow network drive.

Any other general flags given to repl - input, reporting, or display flags such as -I, --strict, --alias, -b/-e, --depth, --cost, --value, --color - are also applied to every command you run. A command can still override them by specifying its own flags.

The command syntax is the same as with run:

• enter one hledger command at a time, without the usual hledger first word
• empty lines and comment text from # to end of line are ignored
• enclose arguments in quotes if they contain spaces.

Use help (or h) to show the quick reference, or help commands to list commands. Addons in PATH and command aliases defined in a config file can also be used. Generally repl should feel much like using hledger at the command line. But repl requires full command names or official abbreviations (it does not recognise ad hoc abbreviations).

To run a single shell command, type ! SHELLCMD (eg ! ls or ! git status).

While it is running, the REPL remembers your command history, and you can navigate in the usual ways:

• Keypad or Emacs navigation keys to edit the current command line
• UP/DOWN or control-P/control-N to step back/forward through history
• control-R to search for a past command
• TAB to complete file paths.

You can type control-C to cancel a long-running command (but only once; typing it a second time will exit the REPL).

In most shells you can type control-Z to temporarily exit to the shell (and then fg to return to the REPL).

To exit the REPL, use control-D or q or quit or exit.

Examples

Start the REPL and enter some commands:

$ hledger repl 
hledger 1.52
Enter hledger commands. To exit, enter 'quit' or 'exit', or send EOF / control-d.
2025> stats
Main file           : .../2025.journal
...
2025> stats -f 2024/2024.journal 
Main file           : .../2024.journal
...
2025> stats
Main file           : .../2025.journal
...

or:

$ hledger repl -f some.journal
hledger 1.52
Enter hledger commands. To exit, enter 'quit' or 'exit', or send EOF / control-d.
some> bs
...
some> print -b 'last week'
...
some> bs -f other.journal
...

run

Run a sequence of hledger commands, provided as files or command line arguments. Input files are parsed just once, so the commands run faster.

Flags:
no command-specific flags

You can use run in three ways:

• hledger run -- CMD1 -- CMD2 -- CMD3 - read commands from the command line, separated by --
• hledger run SCRIPTFILE1 SCRIPTFILE2 - read commands from one or more files
• cat SCRIPTFILE1 | hledger run - read commands from standard input.

run first loads the input file(s) specified by LEDGER_FILE or by -f options, in the usual way. Then it runs each command in turn, each using the same input data. But if you want a particular command to use different input, you can specify an -f option within that command. This will override (not add to) the default input, just for that command.

Any other general flags given to run - input, reporting, or display flags such as -I, --strict, --alias, -b/-e, --depth, --cost, --value, --color - are also applied to every command it runs. A command can still override them by specifying its own flags.

Each input file (more precisely, each combination of input file and input options) is parsed only once. This means that commands will not see any changes made to these files, until the next run. But the commands will run more quickly than if run individually (typically about twice as fast).

Command scripts, whether in a file or written on the command line, have a simple syntax:

• each line may contain a single hledger command and its arguments, without the usual hledger first word
• empty lines are ignored
• text from # to end of line is a comment, and ignored
• you can use single or double quotes to quote arguments when needed, as on the command line
• these extra commands are available: echo TEXT prints some text (interpreting the backslash escapes \n, \t, \r, \\), and exit or quit ends the run.

On unix systems you can use #!/usr/bin/env hledger run in the first line of a command file to make it a runnable script. If that gives an error, use #!/usr/bin/env -S hledger run.

It's ok to use the run command recursively within a command script.

Command aliases defined in a config file can also be used in command scripts.

You may find some differences in behaviour between run command lines and normal hledger command lines. run is a little stricter; eg it requires full command names or official abbreviations (as seen in the commands list), and command options must be written after the command name.

Examples

Run commands from the command line:

hledger -f some.journal run -- balance assets --depth 2 -- balance liabilities -f /some/other.journal --depth 3 --transpose -- stats

This would load some.journal, run balance assets --depth 2 on it, then run balance liabilities --depth 3 --transpose on /some/other.journal, and finally run stats on some.journal

Run commands from standard input:

(echo "files"; echo "stats") | hledger -f some.journal run

Run commands as a script:

$ cat report
#!/usr/bin/env -S hledger run -f some.journal

echo "List of accounts in some.journal"
accounts

echo "Assets of some.journal"
balance assets --depth 2

echo "Liabilities from /some/other.journal"
balance liabilities -f /some/other.journal --depth 3 --transpose

echo "Commands from another.script, applied to another.journal"
run -f another.journal another.script

$ chmod +x report
$ ./report
List of accounts in some.journal
...

ui

Runs hledger-ui, a terminal UI (if installed).

web

Runs hledger-web, a web UI (if installed).

Data entry commands

add

Add new transactions to a journal file, with interactive prompting.

Flags:
     --no-new-accounts      don't allow creating new accounts
     --layout=hledger1|COL  how should posting amounts be aligned ?
                            hledger1 - right-align amounts, as in hledger 1
                            COL      - align decimal marks at column COL
                            (default: 53)

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 transactions, and appends them to the main journal file (which should be in journal format). Existing transactions are not changed. This is one of the few hledger commands that writes to the journal file (see also import).

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:

• add tries to provide useful defaults, using the most similar (by description) and nearest-dated transaction (filtered by the query, if any) as a template.
• You can also set the initial defaults with command line arguments.
• Readline-style edit keys can be used during data entry.
• The tab key will auto-complete whenever possible - accounts, payees/descriptions, dates (yesterday, today, tomorrow). If the input area is empty, it will insert the default value.
• A parenthesised transaction code may be entered following a date.
• Comments and tags may be entered following a description or amount.
• If you make a mistake, enter < at any prompt to go one step backward.
• Input prompts are displayed in a different colour when the terminal supports it.

Notes:

• If you enter a number with no commodity symbol, and you have declared a default commodity with a D directive, you might expect add to add this symbol for you. It does not do this; we assume that if you are using a D directive you prefer not to see the commodity symbol repeated on amounts in the journal.
• add creates entries in journal format; it won't work with timeclock or timedot files.
• There is a known issue on Windows if this hledger version is built from stackage: the prompts will show ANSI junk instead of colours (#2410). You can avoid this by using official hledger release binaries or by building it with haskeline >=0.8.4; or by running add with --color=no, perhaps configured in your config file.

Examples:

• Record new transactions, saving to the default journal file:

  hledger add

• Add transactions to 2024.journal, but also load 2023.journal for completions:

  hledger add --file 2024.journal --file 2023.journal

• Provide answers for the first four prompts:

  hledger add today 'best buy' expenses:supplies '$20'

There is a detailed tutorial at https://hledger.org/add.html.

add and balance assertions

You can add a balance assertion by writing AMOUNT = BALANCE when asked for an amount. Eg 100 = 500.

Also, each time you enter a new amount, hledger re-checks all balance assertions in the journal and rejects the new amount if it would make any of them fail. You can run add with -I or --ignore-assertions to disable balance assertion checking.

add and balance assignments

Adding a new balance assignment
When entering a posting amount, you can write a = BALANCEAMOUNT balance assignment (or ==, =*, ==*) instead. The posting amount required to produce this balance will be calculated automatically. (Since 1.51)

Adding a posting dated before an existing balance assignment
add won't let you add a posting dated earlier than an existing balance assignment in that account. (Because it calculates balance assignments only once at startup, converting them to assertions, so adding the new amount causes an assertion failure.) To work around this, run add with balance assertions ignored: hledger add -I.

import

Import new transactions from one or more data files to the main journal. Or with no arguments, import from the rules files in rules/.

Flags:
  -g --get                  fetch new data first by running the get command
     --catchup              just mark all transactions as already imported
     --dry-run              just show the transactions to be imported
     --layout=hledger1|COL  how should posting amounts be aligned ?
                            hledger1 - right-align amounts, as in hledger 1
                            COL      - align decimal marks at column COL
                            (default: 53)

This command detects new transactions in one or more data files specified as arguments, and appends them to the main journal.

You can import from any input file format hledger supports, but CSV/SSV/TSV files, downloaded from financial institutions, are the most common import source.

The import destination is the default journal file, or another specified in the usual way with $LEDGER_FILE or -f/--file. It should be in journal format.

Examples:

$ hledger import bank1-checking.csv bank1-savings.csv

$ hledger import *.csv

Default import sources

If import is run with no file arguments, it looks in the journal's rules/ directory (next to the main journal file) and imports from every .rules file found there, in alphabetical order. Files whose name begins with . or _ are skipped: the _ prefix is for rules files that are either disabled, or shared/common rules included by other rules files and not meant to be read directly.

So a typical setup might be:

~/finance/2026.journal
~/finance/rules/bank1-checking.rules
~/finance/rules/bank1-savings.rules
~/finance/rules/_common.rules       # included by others, not read directly
~/finance/rules/_brokerage.rules    # disabled

and hledger import reads bank1-checking.rules then bank1-savings.rules.

If the rules/ directory does not exist or contains no usable .rules files, import reports an error.

Fetching new data first

With -g/--get, import runs the get command first, which runs your data/getdata and prices/getprices scripts (if any) to download new transaction and price data. The import then proceeds normally, with the new transaction data (if any) readable by your rules files' source rules.

Import dry run

It's useful to preview the import by running first with --dry-run, to sanity check the range of dates being imported, and to check the effect of your conversion rules if converting from CSV. Eg:

$ hledger import bank.csv --dry-run

The dry run output is valid journal format, so hledger can re-parse it. If the output is large, you could show just the uncategorised transactions like so:

$ hledger import --dry-run bank.csv | hledger -f- -I print unknown

You could also run this repeatedly to see the effect of edits to your conversion rules:

$ watchexec -- "hledger import --dry-run bank.csv | hledger -f- -I print unknown"

Once the conversion and dates look good enough to import to your journal, perhaps with some manual fixups to follow, you would do the actual import:

$ hledger import bank.csv

Overlap detection

Reading CSV files is built in to hledger, and not specific to import; so you could also import by doing hledger -f bank.csv print >>$LEDGER_FILE.

But import is easier and provides some advantages. The main one is that it avoids re-importing transactions it has seen on previous runs. This means you don't have to worry about overlapping data in successive downloads of your bank CSV; just download and import as often as you like, and only the new transactions will be imported each time.

We don't call this "deduplication", as it's generally not possible to reliably detect duplicates in bank CSV. Instead, import remembers the latest date processed previously in each CSV file (saving it in a hidden file), and skips any records prior to that date. This works well for most real-world CSV, where:

1. the data file name is stable (does not change) across imports
2. the item dates are stable across imports
3. the order of same-date items is stable across imports
4. the newest items have the newest dates

(Occasional violations of 2-4 are often harmless; you can reduce the chance of disruption by downloading and importing more often.)

Overlap detection is automatic, and shouldn't require much attention from you, except perhaps at first import (see below). But here's how it works:

• For each FILE being imported from:

  1. hledger reads a file named .latest.FILE file in the same directory, if any. This file contains the latest record date previously imported from FILE, in YYYY-MM-DD format. If multiple records with that date were imported, the date is repeated on N lines.

  2. hledger reads records from FILE. If a latest date was found in step 1, any records before that date, and the first N records on that date, are skipped.

• After a successful import from all FILEs, without error and without --dry-run, hledger updates each FILE's .latest.FILE for next time.

If this goes wrong, it's relatively easy to repair:

• You'll notice it before import when you preview with import --dry-run.
• Or after import when you try to reconcile your hledger account balances with your bank.
• hledger print -f FILE.csv will show all recently downloaded transactions. Compare these with your journal. Copy/paste if needed.
• Update your conversion rules and print again, if needed.
• You can manually update or remove the .latest file, or use import --catchup FILE.
• Download and import more often, eg twice a week, at least while you are learning. It's easier to review and troubleshoot when there are fewer transactions.

First import

The first time you import from a file, when no corresponding .latest file has been created yet, all of the records will be imported.

But perhaps you have been entering the data manually, so you know that all of these transactions are already recorded in the journal. In this case you can run hledger import --catchup once. This will create a .latest file containing the latest CSV record date, so that none of those records will be re-imported.

Or, if you know that some but not all of the transactions are in the journal, you can create the .latest file yourself. Eg, let's say you previously recorded foobank transactions up to 2024-10-31 in the journal. Then in the directory where you'll be saving foobank.csv, you would create a .latest.foobank.csv file containing

2024-10-31

Or if you had three foobank transactions recorded with that date, you would repeat the date that many times:

2024-10-31
2024-10-31
2024-10-31

Then hledger import foobank.csv [--dry-run] will import only the newer records.

Importing balance assignments

Journal entries added by import will have all posting amounts made explicit (like print -x).

This means that any balance assignments in the imported entries would need to be evaluated. But this generally isn't possible, as the main file's account balances are not visible during import. So try to avoid generating balance assignments with your CSV rules, or importing from a journal that contains balance assignments. (Balance assignments are best avoided anyway.)

But if you must use them, eg because your CSV includes only balances: you can import with print, which leaves implicit amounts implicit. (print can also do overlap detection like import, with the --new flag):

$ hledger print --new -f bank.csv >> $LEDGER_FILE

(If you think import should preserve implicit balances, please test that and send a pull request.)

Import and commodity styles

Amounts in entries added by import will be formatted according to the journal's canonical commodity styles, as declared by commodity directives or inferred from the journal's amounts.

Related: CSV > Amount decimal places.

Import archiving

When importing from a CSV rules file (hledger import bank.rules), you can use the archive rule to enable automatic archiving of the data file.

After a successful import, the data file specified by source will be moved (or data generated by a command will be saved) to an archive directory. This can be useful for troubleshooting, detecting variations in your banks' CSV data, regenerating entries with improved rules, etc.

The archive directory is data/archive/, next to the main journal file, auto-created. The archive file name will be similar to the rules file, with a date added: the original data file's modification date, or today's date if the data was command-generated.

The archive rule also causes import to handle source glob patterns differently: when there are multiple matched files, it will pick the oldest, not the newest.

Import special cases

Multiple journals in the same directory

You might want to keep each journal you are importing to in its own directory. That way, each will have its own rules/, data/, and data/archive/ directories (if those are used).

Otherwise, imports to the same-directory journals will potentially use the same rules/, data/ and data/archive/ directories (depending on commands and rules configuration). This is not necessarily a problem; it might even be desirable in some cases. But see below:

Import configurations to avoid

A few unusual workflows which you should generally avoid:

• Don't import from one input file to different journals. The imports' overlap detection would overwrite the same .latest.FILE state file. (In effect, the journals would compete for the new records.)

• Don't import from multiple data files on the same day, reusing the same rules file for all, with archive enabled. The archived file names in data/archive/ would clash, causing some archives to be overwritten.

• Don't do argument-less hledger import to more than one journal in the same directory. That would read from the same files in rules/, potentially disrupting both overlap detection and archiving.

Deduplication

Here are two kinds of "deduplication" which import does not handle (and should not, because these can happen legitimately in financial data):

• Two or more of the new CSV records are identical, and generate identical new journal entries.
• A new CSV record generates a journal entry identical to one(s) already in the journal.

Varying file name

If you have a download whose file name varies, you could rename it to a fixed name after each download. Or you could use a CSV source rule with a suitable glob pattern, and import from the .rules file.

Multiple versions

Say you download bank.csv, import it, but forget to delete it from your downloads folder. The next time you download it, your web browser will save it as (eg) bank (2).csv. The source rule's glob patterns are for just this situation: instead of specifying source bank.csv, specify source bank*.csv. Then hledger -f bank.rules CMD or hledger import bank.rules will automatically pick the newest matched file (bank (2).csv).

Alternately, what if you download, but forget to import or delete, then download again ? Now each of bank.csv and bank (2).csv might contain data that's not in the other, and not in your journal. In this case, it's best to import each of them in turn, oldest first (otherwise, overlap detection could cause new records to be skipped). Enabling import archiving ensures this. Then hledger import bank.rules; hledger import bank.rules will import and archive first bank.csv, then bank (2).csv.

Basic report commands

accounts

(acc)

List the account names used or declared in the journal.

Flags:
  -u --used                 list accounts used
  -d --declared             list accounts declared
     --undeclared           list accounts used but not declared
     --unused               list accounts declared but not used
     --find                 list the first account matched by the first
                            argument (a case-insensitive infix regexp)
     --directives           show as account directives, for use in journals
     --locations            also show where accounts were declared
     --types                also show account types when known
  -l --flat                 list/tree mode: show accounts as a flat list
                            (default)
  -t --tree                 list/tree mode: show accounts as a tree
     --drop=N               flat mode: omit N leading account name parts

This command lists account names - all of them by default, or just the ones which have been used in transactions (-u/--used), or declared with account directives (-d/--declared), or used but not declared (--undeclared), or declared but not used (--unused), or just the first one matched by a pattern (--find, returning a non-zero exit code if it fails).

You can add query arguments to select a subset of transactions or accounts. Note that transaction-specific query terms like date: will exclude declared-but-unused accounts, which don't have that field.

With --directives, it shows valid account directives which could be pasted into a journal file. This is useful together with --undeclared when updating your account declarations to satisfy hledger check accounts.

With --locations, it also shows the file and line number of each account's declaration, if any, and the account's overall declaration order; these may be useful when troubleshooting account display order.

With --types, it also shows each account's type, if it's known. (See Declaring accounts > Account types.)

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 components. 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

$ hledger accounts --undeclared --directives >> $LEDGER_FILE
$ hledger check accounts

codes

List the codes seen in transactions, in the order parsed.

Flags:
no command-specific flags

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:

2022/1/1 (123) Supermarket   
 Food       $5.00
 Checking    

2022/1/2 (124) Post Office
 Postage    $8.32
 Checking

2022/1/3 Supermarket
 Food      $11.23
 Checking 

2022/1/4 (126) Post Office
 Postage    $3.21
 Checking

$ hledger codes
123
124
126

$ hledger codes -E
123
124

126

commodities

(comm)

List the commodity symbols used or declared in the journal.

Flags:
     --used                 list commodities used in transactions
     --priced               list commodities appearing in P directives
     --declared             list commodities declared by commodity directives
     --undeclared           list commodities used or priced but not declared
     --unused               list commodities declared but not used or priced
     --find                 list the first commodity matched by the first
                            argument (a case-insensitive infix regexp)
     --directives           show as commodity directives (with their display
                            styles), for use in journals

Most of these flags can be combined. With --directives, it shows valid commodity directives, declaring each commodity's (declared or inferred) display style, which could be pasted into a journal file. Some kinds of query argument are supported: cur:, tag:, and date: (also -b/-e/-p report period options).

Providing a date query will affect which commodities are reported, as follows:

Example:

$ hledger commodities
$
AAPL
EUR

descriptions

(desc)

List the unique descriptions used in transactions.

Flags:
no command-specific flags

This command lists the unique descriptions that appear in transactions, in alphabetic order. You can add a query to select a subset of transactions.

Example:

$ hledger descriptions
Store Name
Gas Station | Petrol
Person A

files

List all input files used by the journal(s). With a REGEX argument, only file names matching the regular expression (case sensitive) are shown.

Flags:
no command-specific flags

Examples:

$ hledger -f main.journal files
/home/user/finance/main.journal
/home/user/finance/2024.journal

$ hledger -f main.journal files 2024
/home/user/finance/2024.journal

notes

List the unique notes that appear in transactions.

Flags:
no command-specific flags

This command lists the unique notes that appear in transactions, in alphabetic order. You can add a query to select a subset of transactions. 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

payees

List the payee/payer names used or declared in the journal.

Flags:
     --used                 list payees used
     --declared             list payees declared
     --undeclared           list payees used but not declared
     --unused               list payees declared but not used
     --find                 list the first payee matched by the first
                            argument (a case-insensitive infix regexp)
     --directives           show as payee directives, for use in journals

This command lists unique payee/payer names - all of them by default, or just the ones which have been used in transaction descriptions, or declared with payee directives, or used but not declared, or declared but not used, or just the first one matched by a pattern (with --find, returning a non-zero exit code if it fails).

The payee/payer name is the part of the transaction description before a | character (or if there is no |, the whole description).

With --directives, it shows valid payee directives, which could be pasted into a journal file.

You can add query arguments to select a subset of transactions or payees. Note that transaction-specific query terms like date: will exclude declared-but-unused payees, which don't have that field.

Example:

$ hledger payees
Store Name
Gas Station
Person A

prices

Print the market prices declared with P directives. With --infer-market-prices, also show any additional prices inferred from costs. With --show-reverse, also show additional prices inferred by reversing known prices.

Flags:
     --show-reverse         also show the prices inferred by reversing known
                            prices
     --summary              summarise declared prices per commodity instead
                            of listing them
     --locations            also show where prices where declared

With --locations, each price line gets a trailing ; location: FILE:LINE comment showing where it came from. Declared prices point at their P directive; prices inferred from costs point at the parent transaction's first line. Reversed prices keep the source position of the directive they were derived from.

Price amounts are always displayed with their full precision, except for reverse prices which are limited to 8 decimal digits.

Prices can be filtered by a date:, cur: or amt: query.

Generally if you run this command with --infer-market-prices --show-reverse, it will show the same prices used internally to calculate value reports. But if in doubt, you can inspect those directly by running the value report with --debug=2.

Examples:

$ hledger prices
P 2024-01-01 AAPL $150
P 2024-02-01 AAPL $160
P 2024-02-01 EUR $1.08

$ hledger prices --infer-market-prices
P 2024-01-01 AAPL $150
P 2024-01-05 AAPL $150
P 2024-02-01 AAPL $160
P 2024-02-01 EUR $1.08

prices summary

With --summary, instead of listing individual prices, prices prints one row per commodity used in the journal (other than the base currency), with the following columns:

• Commodity — the commodity, as an ISO 4217 code if possible.
• Prices — the number of market price declarations for that commodity.
• Earliest / Latest — the date range of those prices.
• Period — the duration between earliest and latest.
• Coverage — the percentage of weekdays in that period that have a price declared (or blank when fewer than two prices).

Summary mode is a quick way to spot gaps in your price data, and pairs naturally with getprices. Only prices declared with P directives are counted; prices inferred with --show-reverse or --infer-market-prices are ignored.

Queries (cur:, date:, amt:) can be used to narrow the prices that are summarised.

stats

Show journal and performance statistics.

Flags:
  -q --oneline              show a single line of output
  -v --verbose              show more detailed output
  -o --output-file=FILE     write output to FILE.

The stats command shows summary information for the whole journal, or a matched part of it. With a reporting interval, it shows a report for each report period.

It also shows some performance statistics:

• how long the program ran for
• the number of transactions processed per second
• the peak live memory in use by the program to do its work
• the peak allocated memory as seen by the program

By default, the output is reasonably discreet; it reveals the main file name, your activity level, and the speed of your machine.

With -v/--verbose, more details are shown: the full paths of all files, and the names of the commodities you work with.

With -q/--oneline, only one line of output is shown, in a machine-friendly tab-separated format: the program version, the main journal file name, and the performance stats,

The run time of stats is similar to that of a balance report.

Example:

$ hledger stats -f examples/1ktxns-1kaccts.journal 
Main file           : .../1ktxns-1kaccts.journal
Included files      : 0
Txns span           : 2000-01-01 to 2002-09-27 (1000 days)
Last txn            : 2002-09-26 (7827 days ago)
Txns                : 1000 (1.0 per day)
Txns last 30 days   : 0 (0.0 per day)
Txns last 7 days    : 0 (0.0 per day)
Payees/descriptions : 1000
Accounts            : 1000 (depth 10)
Commodities         : 26
Base currency       : B
Market prices       : 1000
Runtime stats       : 0.12 s elapsed, 8266 txns/s, 4 MB live, 16 MB alloc

$ hledger stats -q -f examples/10ktxns-1kaccts.journal
1.50.99-g0835a2485-20251119, mac-aarch64    10ktxns-1kaccts.journal 0.66 s elapsed  15244 txns/s    28 MB live  86 MB alloc

This command supports the -o/--output-file option (but not -O/--output-format).

tags

List the tag names used or declared in the journal, or their values.

Flags:
     --used                 list tags used
     --declared             list tags declared
     --undeclared           list tags used but not declared
     --unused               list tags declared but not used
     --find                 list the first tag whose name is matched by the
                            first argument (a case-insensitive infix regexp)
     --values               list tag values instead of tag names
     --parsed               show them in the order they were parsed (mostly),
                            including duplicates
     --directives           show tag names as tag directives, for use in
                            journals

This command lists tag names - all of them by default, or just the ones which have been used on transactions/postings/accounts, or declared with tag directives, or used but not declared, or declared but not used, or just the first one matched by a pattern (with --find, returning a non-zero exit code if it fails).

Note this command's non-standard first argument: it is a case-insensitive infix regular expression for matching tag names, which limits the tags shown. Any additional arguments are standard query arguments, which limit the transactions, postings, or accounts providing tags.

With --values, the tags' unique non-empty values are listed instead.

With -E/--empty, blank/empty values are also shown.

With --parsed, tags or values are shown in the order they were parsed, with duplicates included. (Except, tags from account declarations are always shown first.)

With --directives, tag names are shown as valid tag directives, which could be pasted into a journal file.

Remember that accounts also acquire tags from their parents; postings also acquire tags from their account and transaction; and transactions also acquire tags from their postings.

Examples:

$ hledger tags
broker
receipt
trip

$ hledger tags --values
acme
paris

transactions

(tx)

List transactions, one per line.

Flags:
  -m --match=DESC           fuzzy search for one recent transaction with
                            description closest to DESC

This command shows each transaction's first line only (the date, status, code, description, and any same-line comment), giving a compact overview of a journal, in the manner of git log --oneline. You can add a query to select a subset of transactions. (To see full journal entries, use the print command.)

Example:

$ hledger transactions -f examples/sample.journal
2008-01-01 income
2008-06-01 gift
2008-06-02 save
2008-06-03 * eat & shop
2008-12-31 * pay off

Standard report commands

print

Show transactions' journal entries, or export journal data to another format.

Flags:
  -a --all                  show all details (--explicit --lots
                            --verbose-tags)
  -x --explicit             show all inferred info explicitly
     --verbose-tags         add tags indicating generated/modified data
     --invert               display all amounts with reversed sign
     --locations            add tags showing file paths and line numbers
     --export               reproduce the whole journal, with directives and
                            comments preserved and included files inlined
  -m --match=DESC           fuzzy search for one recent transaction with
                            description closest to DESC
     --new                  show only newer-dated transactions added in each
                            file since last run
     --round=TYPE           how much rounding or padding should be done when
                            displaying amounts ?
                            none - show original decimal digits,
                                   as in journal (default)
                            soft - just add or remove decimal zeros
                                   to match precision
                            hard - round posting amounts to precision
                                   (can unbalance transactions)
                            all  - also round cost amounts to precision
                                   (can unbalance transactions)
     --layout=hledger1|COL  how should posting amounts be aligned ?
                            hledger1 - right-align amounts, as in hledger 1
                            COL      - align decimal marks at column COL
                            (default: 53)
     --base-url=URLPREFIX   in html output, generate links to hledger-web,
                            with this prefix. (Usually the base url shown by
                            hledger-web; can also be relative.)
  -O --output-format=FMT    select the output format. Supported formats:
                            txt, ledger, beancount, csv, tsv, html, fods, json,
                            sql.
  -o --output-file=FILE     write output to FILE. A file extension matching
                            one of the above formats selects that format.

The print command displays full journal entries (transactions) from the journal file, sorted by date (or with --date2, by secondary date). (For a compact one-line-per-transaction overview, see the transactions command.)

By default, directives and inter-transaction comments are not shown (except for comment lines immediately preceding a transaction, which are shown with it), and entries are sorted by date. So the default print output is somewhat lossy. To reproduce the whole journal, including directives and comments, use --export (see below).

Eg:

$ hledger print -f examples/sample.journal date:200806
2008/06/01 gift
    assets:bank:checking            $1
    income:gifts                   $-1

2008/06/02 save
    assets:bank:saving              $1
    assets:bank:checking           $-1

2008/06/03 * eat & shop
    expenses:food                $1
    expenses:supplies            $1
    assets:cash                 $-2

print explicitness

Normally, whether posting amounts are implicit or explicit is preserved. For example, when an amount is omitted in the journal, it will not appear in the output. Similarly, if a conversion cost is implied but not written, it will not appear in the output.

You can use the -x/--explicit flag to force explicit display of all amounts and costs. This can be useful for troubleshooting or for making your journal more readable and robust against data entry errors. -x is also implied by using any of -B,-V,-X,--value.

The -x/--explicit flag will cause any postings with a multi-commodity amount (which can arise when a multi-commodity transaction has an implicit amount) to be split into multiple single-commodity postings, keeping the output parseable.

To see more details — not just inferred amounts and costs, but also lot subaccounts and postings, and the hidden tags that hledger adds to classify things — use -a/--all, which is equivalent to --explicit --lots --verbose-tags.

print layout

By default, print aligns posting amounts so that their decimal mark is at column 53 (or would be if they had a decimal mark). If needed, it will shift a transaction's amounts further to the right to ensure at least 2 spaces between account names and amounts. Also, any balance assertion/assignment operators (=, =* etc.) are aligned to the right of the posting amounts; and the assertion/assignment amounts will be aligned by their decimal marks.

You can customise this with --layout:

• --layout=COL — sets a different target column for posting amounts' decimal mark
• --layout=hledger1 — use hledger 1 layout (right-aligned posting amounts in each transaction).

If you want to change the default, put something like this in ~/.hledger.conf:

[print]
--layout=hledger1

Other print-like commands (close, import, rewrite, add) also accept --layout.

print amount style

Amounts will be displayed mostly in their commodity's display style, with standardised symbol placement, decimal mark, and digit group marks. This does not apply to their decimal digits; print normally shows the same decimal digits that are recorded in each journal entry.

You can override the decimal precisions with print's special --round option. --round tries to show amounts with their commodities' standard decimal precisions, increasingly strongly:

• --round=none show amounts with original precisions (default)
• --round=soft add/remove decimal zeros in amounts (except costs)
• --round=hard round amounts (except costs), possibly hiding significant digits
• --round=all round all amounts and costs

soft is good for non-lossy cleanup, displaying more consistent decimals where possible, without making entries unbalanced.

hard or all can be good for stronger cleanup, when decimal rounding is wanted. Note rounding can produce unbalanced journal entries, perhaps requiring manual fixup.

print parseability

Usually, print's output is a valid hledger journal, which you can pipe into a second hledger command for further processing. This is sometimes convenient for rewriting journal entries:

# Make today's shopping entry explicit. (-f - means read from standard input.)
$ hledger print date:today desc:shop | hledger -f- print -x

or for achieving certain kinds of query:

# Show running total of food expenses paid from cash.
$ hledger print assets:cash | hledger -f- reg expenses:food

But here are some things which can cause print's output to become unparseable:

• --round (see above) can disrupt transaction balancing.
• Account aliases or pivoting can disrupt account names, balance assertions, or balance assignments.
• Value reporting also can disrupt balance assertions or balance assignments.
• Auto postings can generate too many amountless postings.
• --infer-costs or --infer-equity can generate too-complex redundant costs.
• Because print always shows transactions in date order, balance assertions involving non-date-ordered transactions (and same-day postings) could be disrupted.

Also, printing a subset of journal entries can disrupt validation of balance assertions or lot entries. And print does not reproduce directives (unless --export is used). Lot entries are printed with their inferred cost basis annotations, so they can still be read without the commodity's lots: declaration when the default cost basis method is used; but with other methods, or lots: NONE accounts, the missing declarations will change how they are read. (--export output keeps lot entries as written, since it reproduces the declarations.) To suppress errors from these, we often use the -I flag (short for --ignore-assertions --ignore-lots. So any time you are reading from standard input with -f-, consider adding -I also.

print export mode

With --export, print reproduces the whole journal in its original order, with directives, top-level comment lines and comment blocks preserved verbatim, and with each transaction shown as print normally shows it (so -x, --round, --layout etc. still apply). Blank lines are normalised: there is one blank line between transactions, and between groups of directive or comment lines. The output can be read by hledger as an equivalent journal, so this is the mode to use when reformatting or regenerating a journal file. Some details:

• Included files are inlined at the position of their include directive, and the include line itself is dropped. If you want to preserve a multi-file structure rather than flattening it, currently the best way is: comment out the include directives (they will be preserved as comments), export each file individually, then uncomment the include directives in the exported main file. (A file which depends on directives in its parent file, such as Y or decimal-mark, might need those added temporarily while it is exported.)
• apply account, alias and their end directives are dropped, since their effect is already applied to the account names shown. (An account declaration inside an apply account block is reproduced as written, without the parent account prefix.)
• Directives which hledger ignores (for compatibility with Ledger) are not exported.
• By default, periodic transaction rules (~) and auto posting rules (=) are exported as directives. With --forecast and/or --auto, the generated transactions (at the end of the output) and postings are exported instead, and the rules are not. In other words, these flags materialise the rules. Postings generated by --infer-equity are exported too. (In Beancount output, these rules are never exported, only whatever has been generated.)
• A query still selects which transactions are shown, but all directives and comments are kept.
• Transactions from non-journal files (eg an included CSV file) are added at the end.
• The txt (default), ledger and beancount output formats are supported. With -O ledger, transactions use Ledger's lot syntax, and directives which hledger accepts but Ledger does not (decimal-mark, a one-line commodity directive with an amount, a periodic transaction rule with a description, an auto posting rule with *N amount multipliers) are commented out, with an explanatory comment. Other hledger-specific syntax may remain; see Ledger output. With -O beancount, Beancount option, commodity, open and price directives are generated from the journal's declarations and data, other directives (which have no Beancount equivalent) are dropped, and comments are converted to Beancount comments; see Beancount output. Note for both Ledger and Beancount, manual fixups may still be required in some cases; but the export will be a good start.

print, other features

With -B/--cost, amounts with costs are shown converted to cost.

With --invert, posting amounts are shown with their sign flipped. It could be useful if you have accidentally recorded some transactions with the wrong signs.

With --new, print shows only transactions it has not seen on a previous run. This uses the same deduplication system as the import command. (See import's docs for details.)

With -m DESC/--match=DESC, print shows one recent transaction whose description is most similar to DESC. DESC should contain at least two characters. If there is no similar-enough match, no transaction will be shown and the program exit code will be non-zero.

With --locations, print adds the source file and line number to every transaction, as a tag.

print output format

This command also supports the output destination and output format options The output formats supported are txt, ledger, beancount, csv, tsv, html, fods, json and sql.

The ledger format is currently the same as txt except it renders amounts' cost basis using Ledger's lot syntax ([DATE] (LABEL) {COST}) instead of hledger's ({DATE, "LABEL", COST}).

The beancount format tries to produce Beancount-compatible output, as follows:

• Transaction and postings with unmarked status are converted to cleared (*) status.
• Transactions' payee and note are backslash-escaped and double-quote-escaped and wrapped in double quotes.
• Transaction and posting tags are converted to Beancount metadata lines.
• Commodity symbols are converted to upper case, and a small number of currency symbols like $ are converted to the corresponding currency names.
• Account name parts are capitalised and unsupported characters are replaced with -. The first part must be one of Assets, Liabilities, Equity, Income or Expenses; if it is not, but the account's type is known (declared or inferred), the corresponding one of those is prepended; otherwise an error is raised. (Or, use --alias options to bring your accounts into compliance.)
• Balance assignments are converted to explicit amounts.
• Virtual and balanced virtual postings are dropped.

By default only transactions are shown. With --export, the directives Beancount needs are also generated: options (a commented-out tolerance option, and operating_currency for the currencies used in costs), a commodity directive for each declared commodity, an open directive for each declared or used account (on the account's earliest posting date, or the earliest transaction date), and price directives. Account and commodity tags become metadata on those directives, and an account's lots: tag becomes the Beancount booking method. Other hledger directives are dropped, and top-level comments are converted to Beancount comments.

Here's an example of print's CSV output:

$ hledger print -Ocsv
"txnidx","date","date2","status","code","description","comment","account","amount","commodity","debit","credit","posting-status","posting-comment"
"1","2008/01/01","","","","income","","assets:bank:checking","1","$","1","","",""
"1","2008/01/01","","","","income","","income:salary","-1","$","","1","",""
"2","2008/06/01","","","","gift","","assets:bank:checking","1","$","1","","",""
"2","2008/06/01","","","","gift","","income:gifts","-1","$","","1","",""
"3","2008/06/02","","","","save","","assets:bank:saving","1","$","1","","",""
"3","2008/06/02","","","","save","","assets:bank:checking","-1","$","","1","",""
"4","2008/06/03","","*","","eat & shop","","expenses:food","1","$","1","","",""
"4","2008/06/03","","*","","eat & shop","","expenses:supplies","1","$","1","","",""
"4","2008/06/03","","*","","eat & shop","","assets:cash","-2","$","","2","",""
"5","2008/12/31","","*","","pay off","","liabilities:debts","1","$","1","","",""
"5","2008/12/31","","*","","pay off","","assets:bank:checking","-1","$","","1","",""

• There is one CSV record per posting, with the parent transaction's fields repeated.
• The "txnidx" (transaction index) field shows which postings belong to the same transaction. (This number might change if transactions are reordered within the file, files are parsed/included in a different order, etc.)
• The amount is separated into "commodity" (the symbol) and "amount" (numeric quantity) fields.
• The numeric amount is repeated in either the "debit" or "credit" column, for convenience. (Those names are not accurate in the accounting sense; it just puts zero or greater amounts under debit and negative amounts under credit.)

aregister

(areg)

Show the transactions and running balances in one account, with one entry per transaction.

Flags:
     --txn-dates            filter strictly by transaction date, not posting
                            date. Warning: this can show a wrong running
                            balance.
     --no-elide             don't show only 2 commodities per amount
     --cumulative           accumulation mode: show running total from report
                            start date
  -H --historical           accumulation mode: show historical running
                            total/balance (includes postings before report
                            start date) (default)
  -A --average              show running average of transaction amounts
                            instead of balance (implies --empty and, unless -H
                            is used, --cumulative)
  -r --related              show the other accounts in each transaction
                            (default)
     --matched              show the matched accounts (this account or its
                            subaccounts) instead
     --invert               display all amounts with reversed sign
     --drop=N               omit N leading account name parts
     --heading=YN           show heading row above table: yes (default) or no
  -w --width=N              set output width (default: terminal width). -wN,M
                            sets description width as well.
     --align-all            guarantee alignment across all lines (slower)
  -O --output-format=FMT    select the output format. Supported formats:
                            txt, html, csv, tsv, json.
  -o --output-file=FILE     write output to FILE. A file extension matching
                            one of the above formats selects that format.

aregister shows the overall transactions affecting a particular account (and any subaccounts). Each report line represents one transaction in this account. Transactions before the report start date are included in the running balance (--historical mode is the default). You can suppress this behaviour using the --cumulative option.

This is a more "real world", bank-like view than the register command (which shows individual postings, possibly from multiple accounts, not necessarily in historical mode). As a quick rule of thumb:

• aregister is best when reconciling real-world asset/liability accounts
• register is best when reviewing individual revenues/expenses.

Note this command's non-standard, and required, first argument; it specifies the account whose register will be shown. You can write the account's name, or (to save typing) a case-insensitive infix regular expression matching the name, which selects the alphabetically first matched account. (For example, if you have assets:personal checking and assets:business checking, hledger areg checking would select assets:business checking.)

Transactions involving subaccounts of this account will also be shown. aregister ignores depth limits, so its final total will always match a historical balance report with similar arguments.

Any additional arguments are standard query arguments, which will limit the transactions shown. Note some queries will disturb the running balance, causing it to be different from the account's real-world running balance.

An example: this shows the transactions and historical running balance during july, in the first account whose name contains "checking":

$ hledger areg checking date:jul

Each aregister line item shows:

• the transaction's date (or the relevant posting's date if different, see below)
• the names of all the other account(s) involved in this transaction (probably abbreviated)
• the total change to this account's balance from this transaction
• the account's historical running balance after this transaction.

The account column normally shows the other accounts in each transaction (this is also selectable with -r/--related). With --matched, it shows the matched accounts instead: this account, or the subaccounts of it that were posted to. This is useful when the account has subaccounts, eg:

$ hledger areg expenses --matched

shows which expense categories each transaction touched. Any additional query arguments also narrow the matched accounts shown. The amounts and running balance are the same in both modes.

Transactions making a net change of zero are not shown by default; add the -E/--empty flag to show them.

The -A/--average flag shows the running average change per transaction, instead of the running balance, so the last number shown is the average for the whole report period. It implies --empty, since zero-change transactions also affect the average. Unlike aregister's other reports, it is not historical by default; add -H to include the transactions before the report start date in the average. Like register -A, it works best with a single commodity.

For performance reasons, column widths are chosen based on the first 1000 lines; this means unusually wide values in later lines can cause visual discontinuities as column widths are adjusted. If you want to ensure perfect alignment, at the cost of more time and memory, use the --align-all flag.

By default, aregister shows a heading above the data. However, when reporting in a language different from English, it is easier to omit this heading and prepend your own one. For this purpose, use the --heading=no option.

This command also supports the output destination and output format options. The output formats supported are txt, csv, tsv, html, fods and json.

aregister and posting dates

aregister always shows one entry (and one date and amount) per transaction. (With a single commodity, this means line = one transaction. But multi-commodity amounts will be shown with one line per commodity.) But sometimes transactions have postings with different dates. Also, not all of a transaction's postings may be within the report period. To resolve this, aregister shows the earliest of the transaction's date and posting dates that is in-period, and the sum of the in-period postings. In other words it will show a combined line item with just the earliest date, and the running balance will (temporarily, until the transaction's last posting) be inaccurate. Use register -H if you need to see the individual postings.

There is also a --txn-dates flag, which filters strictly by transaction date, ignoring posting dates. This too can cause an inaccurate running balance.

register

(reg)

Show postings & running total across accounts.

Flags:
     --cumulative           accumulation mode: show running total from report
                            start date (default)
  -H --historical           accumulation mode: show historical running
                            total/balance (includes postings before report
                            start date)
  -A --average              show running average of posting amounts instead
                            of total (implies --empty)
  -m --match=DESC           fuzzy search for one recent posting with
                            description closest to DESC
  -r --related              show postings' siblings instead
     --invert               display all amounts with reversed sign
     --drop=N               omit N leading account name parts
     --sort=FIELDS          sort by: date, desc, account, amount, absamount,
                            or a comma-separated combination of these. For a
                            descending sort, prefix with -. (Default: date)
  -w --width=N              set output width (default: terminal width). -wN,M
                            sets description width as well.
     --align-all            guarantee alignment across all lines (slower)
     --base-url=URLPREFIX   in html output, generate links to hledger-web,
                            with this prefix. (Usually the base url shown by
                            hledger-web; can also be relative.)
  -O --output-format=FMT    select the output format. Supported formats:
                            txt, csv, tsv, html, fods, json.
  -o --output-file=FILE     write output to FILE. A file extension matching
                            one of the above formats selects that format.

The register command displays matched postings, across all accounts, in date order, with their running total or running historical balance. (See also the aregister command, which shows matched transactions in a specific account.)

register normally shows line per posting, but note that multi-commodity amounts will occupy multiple lines (one line per commodity).

It is typically used with a query selecting a particular account, to see that account's activity:

$ hledger register checking
2008/01/01 income               assets:bank:checking            $1           $1
2008/06/01 gift                 assets:bank:checking            $1           $2
2008/06/02 save                 assets:bank:checking           $-1           $1
2008/12/31 pay off              assets:bank:checking           $-1            0

With --date2, it shows and sorts by secondary date instead.

For performance reasons, column widths are chosen based on the first 1000 lines; this means unusually wide values in later lines can cause visual discontinuities as column widths are adjusted. If you want to ensure perfect alignment, at the cost of more time and memory, use the --align-all flag.

The --historical/-H flag adds the balance from any undisplayed prior postings to the running total. This is useful when you want to see only recent activity, with a historically accurate running balance:

$ hledger register checking -b 2008/6 --historical
2008/06/01 gift                 assets:bank:checking            $1           $2
2008/06/02 save                 assets:bank:checking           $-1           $1
2008/12/31 pay off              assets:bank:checking           $-1            0

The --depth option limits the amount of sub-account detail displayed.

The --drop option will trim leading segments from account names.

The --average/-A flag shows the running average posting amount instead of the running total (so, the final number displayed is the average for the whole report period). This flag implies --empty (see below). It is affected by --historical. It works best when showing just one account and one commodity.

The --related/-r flag shows the other postings in the transactions of the postings which would normally be shown.

The --invert flag negates all amounts. For example, it can be used on an income account where amounts are normally displayed as negative numbers. It's also useful to show postings on the checking account together with the related account:

The --sort=FIELDS flag sorts by the fields given, which can be any of account, amount, absamount, date, or desc/description, optionally separated by commas. For example, --sort account,amount will group all transactions in each account, sorted by transaction amount. Each field can be negated by a preceding -, so --sort -amount will show transactions ordered from smallest amount to largest amount.

$ hledger register --related --invert assets:checking

With a reporting interval, register shows summary postings, one per interval, aggregating the postings to each account:

$ hledger register --monthly income
2008/01                 income:salary                          $-1          $-1
2008/06                 income:gifts                           $-1          $-2

Periods with no activity, and summary postings with a zero amount, are not shown by default; use the --empty/-E flag to see them:

$ hledger register --monthly income -E
2008/01                 income:salary                          $-1          $-1
2008/02                                                          0          $-1
2008/03                                                          0          $-1
2008/04                                                          0          $-1
2008/05                                                          0          $-1
2008/06                 income:gifts                           $-1          $-2
2008/07                                                          0          $-2
2008/08                                                          0          $-2
2008/09                                                          0          $-2
2008/10                                                          0          $-2
2008/11                                                          0          $-2
2008/12                                                          0          $-2

Often, you'll want to see just one line per interval. The --depth option helps with this, causing subaccounts to be aggregated:

$ hledger register --monthly assets --depth 1
2008/01                 assets                                  $1           $1
2008/06                 assets                                 $-1            0
2008/12                 assets                                 $-1          $-1

Note when using report intervals, if you specify start/end dates these will be adjusted outward if necessary to contain a whole number of intervals. This ensures that the first and last intervals are full length and comparable to the others in the report.

If you have a deeply nested account tree some reports might benefit from trimming leading segments from the account names using --drop.

$ hledger register --monthly income --drop 1
2008/01                 salary                                 $-1          $-1
2008/06                 gifts                                  $-1          $-2

With -m DESC/--match=DESC, register does a fuzzy search for one recent posting whose description is most similar to DESC. DESC should contain at least two characters. If there is no similar-enough match, no posting will be shown and the program exit code will be non-zero.

Custom register output

register normally uses the full terminal width (or 80 columns if it can't detect that). You can override this with the --width/-w option.

The description and account columns normally share the space equally (about half of (width - 40) each). You can adjust this by adding a description width as part of --width's argument, comma-separated: --width W,D . Here's a diagram (won't display correctly in --help):

<--------------------------------- width (W) ---------------------------------->
date (10)  description (D)       account (W-41-D)     amount (12)   balance (12)
DDDDDDDDDD dddddddddddddddddddd  aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa  AAAAAAAAAAAA  AAAAAAAAAAAA

and some examples:

$ hledger reg                     # use terminal width (or 80 on windows)
$ hledger reg -w 100              # use width 100
$ hledger reg -w 100,40           # set overall width 100, description width 40

This command also supports the output destination and output format options The output formats supported are txt, csv, tsv, and json.

balancesheet

(bs)

Show the end balances in asset and liability accounts. Amounts are shown with normal positive sign, as in conventional financial statements.

Flags:
     --sum                  calculation mode: show sum of posting amounts
                            (default)
     --valuechange          calculation mode: show total change of value of
                            period-end historical balances (caused by deposits,
                            withdrawals, market price fluctuations)
     --gain                 calculation mode: show unrealised capital
                            gain/loss (historical balance value minus cost
                            basis)
     --count                calculation mode: show the count of postings
     --change               accumulation mode: accumulate amounts from column
                            start to column end (in multicolumn reports)
     --cumulative           accumulation mode: accumulate amounts from report
                            start (specified by e.g. -b/--begin) to column end
  -H --historical           accumulation mode: accumulate amounts from
                            journal start to column end (includes postings
                            before report start date) (default)
  -l --flat                 list/tree mode: show accounts as a flat list
                            (default). Amounts exclude subaccount amounts,
                            except where the account is depth-clipped.
  -t --tree                 list/tree mode: show accounts as a tree. Amounts
                            include subaccount amounts.
     --drop=N               in list mode, omit N leading account name parts
     --declared             include non-parent declared accounts (best used
                            with -E)
  -A --average              show a row average column (in multicolumn
                            reports)
  -T --row-total            show a row total column (in multicolumn reports)
     --summary-only         display only row summaries (e.g. row total,
                            average) (in multicolumn reports)
  -N --no-total             omit the final total row
     --no-elide             in tree mode, don't squash boring parent
                            accounts; in list mode, also show parent accounts
                            (usually zero, hidden without -E)
     --full-names           in tree mode, show full account names instead of
                            indented leaf names
     --format=FORMATSTR     use this custom line format (in simple reports)
  -S --sort-amount          sort by amount instead of account code/name
  -% --percent              express values in percentage of each column's
                            total
     --layout=ARG           how to show multi-commodity amounts:
                            'wide[,WIDTH]': all commodities on one line
                            'tall'        : each commodity on a new line
                            'bare'        : bare numbers, symbols in a column
     --base-url=URLPREFIX   in html output, generate hyperlinks to
                            hledger-web, with this prefix. (Usually the base
                            url shown by hledger-web; can also be relative.)
  -O --output-format=FMT    select the output format. Supported formats:
                            txt, html, csv, tsv, json.
  -o --output-file=FILE     write output to FILE. A file extension matching
                            one of the above formats selects that format.

This command displays a balance sheet, showing historical ending balances of asset and liability accounts. (To see equity as well, use the balancesheetequity command.)

Accounts declared with the Asset, Cash or Liability type are shown (see account types). Or if no such accounts are declared, it shows top-level accounts named asset or liability (case insensitive, plurals allowed) and their subaccounts.

Example:

$ hledger balancesheet
Balance Sheet 2008-12-31

                    || 2008-12-31 
====================++============
 Assets             ||            
--------------------++------------
 assets:bank:saving ||         $1 
 assets:cash        ||        $-2 
--------------------++------------
                    ||        $-1 
====================++============
 Liabilities        ||            
--------------------++------------
 liabilities:debts  ||        $-1 
--------------------++------------
                    ||        $-1 
====================++============
 Net:               ||          0 

This command is a higher-level variant of the balance command, and supports many of that command's features, such as multi-period reports. It is similar to hledger balance -H assets liabilities, but with smarter account detection, and liabilities displayed with their sign flipped.

This command also supports the output destination and output format options The output formats supported are txt, csv, tsv, html, and json.

balancesheetequity

(bse)

Show a balance sheet, with historical ending balances of asset, liability and equity accounts. Amounts are shown with normal positive sign, as in conventional financial statements.

Flags:
     --sum                  calculation mode: show sum of posting amounts
                            (default)
     --valuechange          calculation mode: show total change of value of
                            period-end historical balances (caused by deposits,
                            withdrawals, market price fluctuations)
     --gain                 calculation mode: show unrealised capital
                            gain/loss (historical balance value minus cost
                            basis)
     --count                calculation mode: show the count of postings
     --change               accumulation mode: accumulate amounts from column
                            start to column end (in multicolumn reports)
     --cumulative           accumulation mode: accumulate amounts from report
                            start (specified by e.g. -b/--begin) to column end
  -H --historical           accumulation mode: accumulate amounts from
                            journal start to column end (includes postings
                            before report start date) (default)
  -l --flat                 list/tree mode: show accounts as a flat list
                            (default). Amounts exclude subaccount amounts,
                            except where the account is depth-clipped.
  -t --tree                 list/tree mode: show accounts as a tree. Amounts
                            include subaccount amounts.
     --drop=N               in list mode, omit N leading account name parts
     --declared             include non-parent declared accounts (best used
                            with -E)
  -A --average              show a row average column (in multicolumn
                            reports)
  -T --row-total            show a row total column (in multicolumn reports)
     --summary-only         display only row summaries (e.g. row total,
                            average) (in multicolumn reports)
  -N --no-total             omit the final total row
     --no-elide             in tree mode, don't squash boring parent
                            accounts; in list mode, also show parent accounts
                            (usually zero, hidden without -E)
     --full-names           in tree mode, show full account names instead of
                            indented leaf names
     --format=FORMATSTR     use this custom line format (in simple reports)
  -S --sort-amount          sort by amount instead of account code/name
  -% --percent              express values in percentage of each column's
                            total
     --layout=ARG           how to show multi-commodity amounts:
                            'wide[,WIDTH]': all commodities on one line
                            'tall'        : each commodity on a new line
                            'bare'        : bare numbers, symbols in a column
     --base-url=URLPREFIX   in html output, generate hyperlinks to
                            hledger-web, with this prefix. (Usually the base
                            url shown by hledger-web; can also be relative.)
  -O --output-format=FMT    select the output format. Supported formats:
                            txt, html, csv, tsv, json.
  -o --output-file=FILE     write output to FILE. A file extension matching
                            one of the above formats selects that format.

This report shows accounts declared with the Asset, Cash, Liability or Equity type (see account types). Or if no such accounts are declared, it shows top-level accounts named asset, liability or equity (case insensitive, plurals allowed) and their subaccounts.

Example:

$ hledger balancesheetequity
Balance Sheet With Equity 2008-12-31

                    || 2008-12-31 
====================++============
 Assets             ||            
--------------------++------------
 assets:bank:saving ||         $1 
 assets:cash        ||        $-2 
--------------------++------------
                    ||        $-1 
====================++============
 Liabilities        ||            
--------------------++------------
 liabilities:debts  ||        $-1 
--------------------++------------
                    ||        $-1 
====================++============
 Equity             ||            
--------------------++------------
--------------------++------------
                    ||          0 
====================++============
 Net:               ||          0 

This command is a higher-level variant of the balance command, and supports many of that command's features, such as multi-period reports. It is similar to hledger balance -H assets liabilities equity, but with smarter account detection, and liabilities/equity displayed with their sign flipped.

This report is the easiest way to see if the accounting equation (A+L+E = 0) is satisfied (after you have done a close --retain to merge revenues and expenses with equity, and perhaps added --infer-equity to balance your commodity conversions).

This command also supports the output destination and output format options The output formats supported are txt, csv, tsv, html, and json.

cashflow

(cf)

Show a (simple) cashflow statement, with the inflows and outflows affecting "cash" (ie, liquid, easily convertible) assets. Amounts are shown with normal positive sign, as in conventional financial statements.

Flags:
     --sum                  calculation mode: show sum of posting amounts
                            (default)
     --valuechange          calculation mode: show total change of value of
                            period-end historical balances (caused by deposits,
                            withdrawals, market price fluctuations)
     --gain                 calculation mode: show unrealised capital
                            gain/loss (historical balance value minus cost
                            basis)
     --count                calculation mode: show the count of postings
     --change               accumulation mode: accumulate amounts from column
                            start to column end (in multicolumn reports)
                            (default)
     --cumulative           accumulation mode: accumulate amounts from report
                            start (specified by e.g. -b/--begin) to column end
  -H --historical           accumulation mode: accumulate amounts from
                            journal start to column end (includes postings
                            before report start date)
  -l --flat                 list/tree mode: show accounts as a flat list
                            (default). Amounts exclude subaccount amounts,
                            except where the account is depth-clipped.
  -t --tree                 list/tree mode: show accounts as a tree. Amounts
                            include subaccount amounts.
     --drop=N               in list mode, omit N leading account name parts
     --declared             include non-parent declared accounts (best used
                            with -E)
  -A --average              show a row average column (in multicolumn
                            reports)
  -T --row-total            show a row total column (in multicolumn reports)
     --summary-only         display only row summaries (e.g. row total,
                            average) (in multicolumn reports)
  -N --no-total             omit the final total row
     --no-elide             in tree mode, don't squash boring parent
                            accounts; in list mode, also show parent accounts
                            (usually zero, hidden without -E)
     --full-names           in tree mode, show full account names instead of
                            indented leaf names
     --format=FORMATSTR     use this custom line format (in simple reports)
  -S --sort-amount          sort by amount instead of account code/name
  -% --percent              express values in percentage of each column's
                            total
     --layout=ARG           how to show multi-commodity amounts:
                            'wide[,WIDTH]': all commodities on one line
                            'tall'        : each commodity on a new line
                            'bare'        : bare numbers, symbols in a column
     --base-url=URLPREFIX   in html output, generate hyperlinks to
                            hledger-web, with this prefix. (Usually the base
                            url shown by hledger-web; can also be relative.)
  -O --output-format=FMT    select the output format. Supported formats:
                            txt, html, csv, tsv, json.
  -o --output-file=FILE     write output to FILE. A file extension matching
                            one of the above formats selects that format.

This report shows accounts declared with the Cash type (see account types). Or if no such accounts are declared, it shows accounts

• under a top-level account named asset (case insensitive, plural allowed)
• whose name contains some variation of cash, bank, checking or saving.

More precisely: all accounts matching this case insensitive regular expression:

^assets?(:.+)?:(cash|bank|che(ck|que?)(ing)?|savings?|currentcash)(:|$)

and their subaccounts.

An example cashflow report:

$ hledger cashflow
Cashflow Statement 2008

                    || 2008 
====================++======
 Cash flows         ||      
--------------------++------
 assets:bank:saving ||   $1 
 assets:cash        ||  $-2 
--------------------++------
                    ||  $-1 

This command is a higher-level variant of the balance command, and supports many of that command's features, such as multi-period reports. It is similar to hledger balance assets not:fixed not:investment not:receivable, but with smarter account detection.

This command also supports the output destination and output format options The output formats supported are txt, csv, tsv, html, and json.

incomestatement

(is)

Show revenue inflows and expense outflows during the report period. Amounts are shown with normal positive sign, as in conventional financial statements.

Flags:
     --sum                  calculation mode: show sum of posting amounts
                            (default)
     --valuechange          calculation mode: show total change of value of
                            period-end historical balances (caused by deposits,
                            withdrawals, market price fluctuations)
     --gain                 calculation mode: show unrealised capital
                            gain/loss (historical balance value minus cost
                            basis)
     --count                calculation mode: show the count of postings
     --change               accumulation mode: accumulate amounts from column
                            start to column end (in multicolumn reports)
                            (default)
     --cumulative           accumulation mode: accumulate amounts from report
                            start (specified by e.g. -b/--begin) to column end
  -H --historical           accumulation mode: accumulate amounts from
                            journal start to column end (includes postings
                            before report start date)
  -l --flat                 list/tree mode: show accounts as a flat list
                            (default). Amounts exclude subaccount amounts,
                            except where the account is depth-clipped.
  -t --tree                 list/tree mode: show accounts as a tree. Amounts
                            include subaccount amounts.
     --drop=N               in list mode, omit N leading account name parts
     --declared             include non-parent declared accounts (best used
                            with -E)
  -A --average              show a row average column (in multicolumn
                            reports)
  -T --row-total            show a row total column (in multicolumn reports)
     --summary-only         display only row summaries (e.g. row total,
                            average) (in multicolumn reports)
  -N --no-total             omit the final total row
     --no-elide             in tree mode, don't squash boring parent
                            accounts; in list mode, also show parent accounts
                            (usually zero, hidden without -E)
     --full-names           in tree mode, show full account names instead of
                            indented leaf names
     --format=FORMATSTR     use this custom line format (in simple reports)
  -S --sort-amount          sort by amount instead of account code/name
  -% --percent              express values in percentage of each column's
                            total
     --layout=ARG           how to show multi-commodity amounts:
                            'wide[,WIDTH]': all commodities on one line
                            'tall'        : each commodity on a new line
                            'bare'        : bare numbers, symbols in a column
     --base-url=URLPREFIX   in html output, generate hyperlinks to
                            hledger-web, with this prefix. (Usually the base
                            url shown by hledger-web; can also be relative.)
  -O --output-format=FMT    select the output format. Supported formats:
                            txt, html, csv, tsv, json.
  -o --output-file=FILE     write output to FILE. A file extension matching
                            one of the above formats selects that format.

This command displays an income statement, showing revenues and expenses during one or more periods.

It shows accounts declared with the Revenue or Expense type (see account types). Or if no such accounts are declared, it shows top-level accounts named revenue or income or expense (case insensitive, plurals allowed) and their subaccounts.

Example:

$ hledger incomestatement
Income Statement 2008

                   || 2008 
===================++======
 Revenues          ||      
-------------------++------
 income:gifts      ||   $1 
 income:salary     ||   $1 
-------------------++------
                   ||   $2 
===================++======
 Expenses          ||      
-------------------++------
 expenses:food     ||   $1 
 expenses:supplies ||   $1 
-------------------++------
                   ||   $2 
===================++======
 Net:              ||    0 

This command is a higher-level variant of the balance command, and supports many of that command's features, such as multi-period reports. It is similar to hledger balance '(revenues|income)' expenses, but with smarter account detection, and revenues/income displayed with their sign flipped.

This command also supports the output destination and output format options The output formats supported are txt, csv, tsv, html, and json.

Advanced report commands

balance

(bal)

Show accounts with some kind of summed numeric data: balance changes per period, end balances on period end dates, simple capital gains, budget goal performance, etc.

Flags:
     --sum                  calculation mode: show sum of posting amounts
                            (default)
     --valuechange          calculation mode: show total change of value of
                            period-end historical balances (caused by deposits,
                            withdrawals, market price fluctuations)
     --gain                 calculation mode: show capital gain/loss
                            (historical balance value minus cost basis, or
                            transacted cost where there is none)
     --budget[=DESCPAT]     calculation mode: show sum of posting amounts
                            together with budget goals defined by periodic
                            transactions. With a DESCPAT argument (must be
                            separated by = not space),
                            use only periodic transactions with matching
                            description
                            (case insensitive substring match).
     --count                calculation mode: show the count of postings
     --change               accumulation mode: accumulate amounts from column
                            start to column end (in multicolumn reports,
                            default)
     --cumulative           accumulation mode: accumulate amounts from report
                            start (specified by e.g. -b/--begin) to column end
  -H --historical           accumulation mode: accumulate amounts from
                            journal start to column end (includes postings
                            before report start date)
  -l --flat                 list/tree mode: show accounts as a flat list
                            (default). Amounts exclude subaccount amounts,
                            except where the account is depth-clipped.
  -t --tree                 list/tree mode: show accounts as a tree. Amounts
                            include subaccount amounts.
     --drop=N               in list mode, omit N leading account name parts
     --declared             include non-parent declared accounts (best used
                            with -E)
  -A --average              show a row average column (in multicolumn
                            reports)
  -T --row-total            show a row total column (in multicolumn reports)
     --summary-only         display only row summaries (e.g. row total,
                            average) (in multicolumn reports)
  -N --no-total             omit the final total row
     --no-elide             in tree mode, don't squash boring parent
                            accounts; in list mode, also show parent accounts
                            (usually zero, hidden without -E)
     --full-names           in tree mode, show full account names instead of
                            indented leaf names
     --format=FORMATSTR     use this custom line format (in simple reports)
  -S --sort-amount          sort by amount instead of account code/name (in
                            flat mode). With multiple columns, sorts by the row
                            total, or by row average if that is displayed.
  -% --percent              express values in percentage of each column's
                            total
  -r --related              show the other accounts transacted with, instead
     --invert               display all amounts with reversed sign
     --transpose            switch rows and columns (use vertical time axis);
                            repeat to cancel
     --layout=ARG           how to lay out multi-commodity amounts and the
                            overall table:
                            'wide[,W]': commodities on same line, up to W wide
                            'tall'    : commodities on separate lines
                            'bare'    : commodity symbols in a separate column
                            'tidy'    : each data field in its own column
     --base-url=URLPREFIX   in html output, generate links to hledger-web,
                            with this prefix. (Usually the base url shown by
                            hledger-web; can also be relative.)
  -O --output-format=FMT    select the output format. Supported formats:
                            txt, html, csv, tsv, json, fods.
  -o --output-file=FILE     write output to FILE. A file extension matching
                            one of the above formats selects that format.

balance is one of hledger's oldest and most versatile commands, for listing account balances, balance changes, values, value changes and more, during one time period or many. Generally it shows a table, with rows representing accounts, and columns representing periods.

Note there are some variants of the balance command with convenient defaults, which are simpler to use: balancesheet, balancesheetequity, cashflow and incomestatement. When you need more control, then use balance.

balance features

Here's a quick overview of the balance command's features, followed by more detailed descriptions and examples. Many of these work with the other balance-like commands as well (bs, cf, is..).

balance can show..

• accounts as a list (-l) or a tree (-t)
• optionally depth-limited (-[1-9])
• sorted by declaration order and name, or by amount

..and their..

• balance changes (the default)
• or actual and planned balance changes (--budget)
• or value of balance changes (-V)
• or change of balance values (--valuechange)
• or capital gain/loss (--gain)
• or balance changes from sibling postings (--related/-r)
• or postings count (--count)

..in..

• one time period (the whole journal period by default)
• or multiple periods (-D, -W, -M, -Q, -Y, -p INTERVAL)

..either..

• per period (the default)
• or accumulated since report start date (--cumulative)
• or accumulated since account creation (--historical/-H)

..possibly converted to..

• cost (--value=cost[,COMM]/--cost/-B)
• or market value, as of transaction dates (--value=then[,COMM])
• or at period ends (--value=end[,COMM])
• or now (--value=now)
• or at some other date (--value=YYYY-MM-DD)

..with..

• totals (-T), averages (-A), percentages (-%), inverted sign (--invert)
• rows and columns swapped (--transpose)
• another field used as account name (--pivot)
• custom-formatted line items (single-period reports only) (--format)
• commodities displayed on the same line or multiple lines (--layout)

This command supports the output destination and output format options, with output formats txt, csv, tsv, json, html, and fods. In txt output in a colour-supporting terminal, negative amounts are shown in red.

Simple balance report

With no arguments, balance shows a list of all accounts and their change of balance - ie, the sum of posting amounts, both inflows and outflows - during the entire period of the journal. ("Simple" here means just one column of numbers, covering a single period. You can also have multi-period reports, described later.)

For real-world accounts, these numbers will normally be their end balance at the end of the journal period; more on this below.

Accounts are sorted by declaration order if any, and then alphabetically by account name. For instance (using examples/sample.journal):

$ hledger -f examples/sample.journal bal
                  $1  assets:bank:saving
                 $-2  assets:cash
                  $1  expenses:food
                  $1  expenses:supplies
                 $-1  income:gifts
                 $-1  income:salary
                  $1  liabilities:debts
--------------------
                   0  

Accounts with a zero balance (and no non-zero subaccounts, in tree mode - see below) are hidden by default. Use -E/--empty to show them (revealing assets:bank:checking here):

$ hledger -f examples/sample.journal bal  -E
                   0  assets:bank:checking
                  $1  assets:bank:saving
                 $-2  assets:cash
                  $1  expenses:food
                  $1  expenses:supplies
                 $-1  income:gifts
                 $-1  income:salary
                  $1  liabilities:debts
--------------------
                   0  

The total of the amounts displayed is shown as the last line, unless -N/--no-total is used.

Balance report line format

For single-period balance reports displayed in the terminal (only), you can use --format FMT to customise the format and content of each line. Eg:

$ hledger -f examples/sample.journal 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 specifies the formatting applied to each account/balance pair. It may contain any suitable text, with data fields interpolated like so:

%[MIN][.MAX](FIELDNAME)

• MIN pads with spaces to at least this width (optional)

• MAX truncates at this width (optional)

• FIELDNAME must be enclosed in parentheses, and can be one of:

  • depth_spacer - a number of spaces equal to the account's depth, or if MIN is specified, MIN * depth spaces.
  • account - the account's name
  • total - the account's balance/posted total, right justified

Also, FMT can begin with an optional prefix to control how multi-commodity amounts are rendered:

• %_ - render on multiple lines, bottom-aligned (the default)
• %^ - render on multiple lines, top-aligned
• %, - render on one line, comma-separated

There are some quirks. Eg in one-line mode, %(depth_spacer) has no effect, instead %(account) has indentation built in. Experimentation may be needed to get pleasing results.

Some example formats:

• %(total) - the account's total
• %-20.20(account) - the account's name, left justified, padded to 20 characters and clipped at 20 characters
• %,%-50(account) %25(total) - account name padded to 50 characters, total padded to 20 characters, with multiple commodities rendered on one line
• %20(total) %2(depth_spacer)%-(account) - the default format for the single-column balance report. The total field keeps this 20-character width as a minimum, but widens automatically when displayed amounts need more room.

Filtered balance report

You can show fewer accounts, a different time period, totals from cleared transactions only, etc. by using query arguments or options to limit the postings being matched. Eg:

$ hledger -f examples/sample.journal bal --cleared assets date:200806
                 $-2  assets:cash
--------------------
                 $-2  

List or tree mode

By default, or with -l/--flat, accounts are shown as a flat list with their full names visible, as in the examples above.

With -t/--tree, the account hierarchy is shown, with subaccounts' "leaf" names indented below their parent:

$ hledger -f examples/sample.journal balance
                 $-1  assets
                  $1    bank:saving
                 $-2    cash
                  $2  expenses
                  $1    food
                  $1    supplies
                 $-2  income
                 $-1    gifts
                 $-1    salary
                  $1  liabilities:debts
--------------------
                   0

Notes:

• "Boring" accounts are combined with their subaccount for more compact output, unless --no-elide is used. Boring accounts have no balance of their own and just one subaccount (eg assets:bank and liabilities above).

• All balances shown are "inclusive", ie including the balances from all subaccounts. Note this means some repetition in the output, which requires explanation when sharing reports with non-plaintextaccounting-users. A tree mode report's final total is the sum of the top-level balances shown, not of all the balances shown.

• Each group of sibling accounts (ie, under a common parent) is sorted separately.

In list mode, --no-elide shows parent accounts as well, with their exclusive balances. These are zero unless the parent has postings of its own, so -E/--empty is usually also needed to make them visible. Together, these flags guarantee a complete table of all posted-to accounts and their parents, with full names:

$ hledger -f examples/sample.journal balance --no-elide -E
                   0  assets
                   0  assets:bank
                   0  assets:bank:checking
                  $1  assets:bank:saving
                 $-2  assets:cash
                   0  expenses
                  $1  expenses:food
                  $1  expenses:supplies
                   0  income
                 $-1  income:gifts
                 $-1  income:salary
                   0  liabilities
                  $1  liabilities:debts
--------------------
                   0

This can be useful eg when exporting to a spreadsheet which will look up balances by account name.

In tree mode, --full-names writes each account's full name instead of indenting leaf names, while keeping tree mode's inclusive balances. So --tree --no-elide --full-names -E shows the same complete table as above, but with inclusive balances:

$ hledger -f examples/sample.journal balance --tree --no-elide --full-names -E
                 $-1  assets
                  $1  assets:bank
                   0  assets:bank:checking
                  $1  assets:bank:saving
                 $-2  assets:cash
                  $2  expenses
                  $1  expenses:food
                  $1  expenses:supplies
                 $-2  income
                 $-1  income:gifts
                 $-1  income:salary
                  $1  liabilities
                  $1  liabilities:debts
--------------------
                   0

Note that in this variant, parent and subaccount balances overlap, so (as in any tree mode report) the rows sum to more than the final total.

Depth limiting

With a depth:NUM query, or --depth NUM option, or just -NUM (eg: -3) balance reports will show accounts only to the specified depth, hiding the deeper subaccounts. This can be useful for getting an overview without too much detail.

Account balances at the depth limit always include the balances from any deeper subaccounts (even in list mode). Eg, limiting to depth 1:

$ hledger -f examples/sample.journal balance -1
                 $-1  assets
                  $2  expenses
                 $-2  income
                  $1  liabilities
--------------------
                   0  

Dropping top-level accounts

You can also hide one or more top-level account name parts, using --drop NUM. This can be useful for hiding repetitive top-level account names:

$ hledger -f examples/sample.journal bal expenses --drop 1
                  $1  food
                  $1  supplies
--------------------
                  $2  

Showing declared accounts

With --declared, accounts which have been declared with an account directive will be included in the balance report, even if they have no transactions. (Since they will have a zero balance, you will also need -E/--empty to see them.)

More precisely, leaf declared accounts (with no subaccounts) will be included, since those are usually the more useful in reports.

The idea of this is to be able to see a useful "complete" balance report, even when you don't have transactions in all of your declared accounts yet.

Sorting by amount

With -S/--sort-amount, accounts with the largest (most positive) balances are shown first. Eg: hledger bal expenses -MAS shows your biggest averaged monthly expenses first. When more than one commodity is present, they will be sorted by the alphabetically earliest commodity first, and then by subsequent commodities (if an amount is missing a commodity, it is treated as 0).

Revenues and liability balances are typically negative, however, so -S shows these in reverse order. To work around this, you can add --invert to flip the signs. Or you could use one of the higher-level balance reports (bs, is..), which flip the sign automatically (eg: hledger is -MAS).

Percentages

With -%/--percent, balance reports show each account's value expressed as a percentage of the (column) total.

Note it is not useful to calculate percentages if the amounts in a column have mixed signs. In this case, make a separate report for each sign, eg:

$ hledger bal -% amt:`>0`
$ hledger bal -% amt:`<0`

Similarly, if the amounts in a column have mixed commodities, convert them to one commodity with -B, -V, -X or --value, or make a separate report for each commodity:

$ hledger bal -% cur:\\$
$ hledger bal -% cur:€

Multi-period balance report

With a report interval (set by the -D/--daily, -W/--weekly, -M/--monthly, -Q/--quarterly, -Y/--yearly, or -p/--period flag), balance shows a tabular report, with columns representing successive time periods (and a title):

$ hledger -f examples/sample.journal bal --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 

Notes:

• The report's start/end dates will be expanded, if necessary, to fully encompass the displayed subperiods (so that the first and last subperiods have the same duration as the others).
• Leading and trailing periods (columns) containing all zeroes are not shown, unless -E/--empty is used.
• Accounts (rows) containing all zeroes are not shown, unless -E/--empty is used.
• Amounts with many commodities are shown in abbreviated form, unless --no-elide is used.
• Average and/or total columns can be added with the -A/--average and -T/--row-total flags.
• The --transpose flag can be used to exchange rows and columns. Repeating it reverses its effect (an even number of --transpose flags has no effect).
• The --pivot FIELD option causes a different transaction field to be used as "account name". See PIVOTING.
• The --summary-only flag (--summary also works) hides all but the Total and Average columns (those should be enabled with --row-total and -A/--average).

Multi-period reports with many periods can be too wide for easy viewing in the terminal. Here are some ways to handle that:

• Hide the totals row with -N/--no-total
• Filter to a single currency with cur:
• Convert to a single currency with -V [--infer-market-price]
• Use a more compact layout like --layout=bare
• Maximize the terminal window
• Reduce the terminal's font size
• View with a pager like less, eg: hledger bal -D --color=yes | less -RS
• Output as CSV and use a CSV viewer like visidata (hledger bal -D -O csv | vd -f csv), Emacs' csv-mode (M-x csv-mode, C-c C-a), or a spreadsheet (hledger bal -D -o a.csv && open a.csv)
• Output as HTML and view with a browser: hledger bal -D -o a.html && open a.html

Balance change, end balance

It's important to be clear on the meaning of the numbers shown in balance reports. Here is some terminology we use:

A balance change is the net amount added to, or removed from, an account during some period.

An end balance is the amount accumulated in an account as of some date (and some time, but hledger doesn't store that; assume end of day in your timezone). It is the sum of previous balance changes.

We call it a historical end balance if it includes all balance changes since the account was created. For a real world account, this means it will match the "historical record", eg the balances reported in your bank statements or bank web UI. (If they are correct!)

In general, balance changes are what you want to see when reviewing revenues and expenses, and historical end balances are what you want to see when reviewing or reconciling asset, liability and equity accounts.

balance shows balance changes by default. To see accurate historical end balances:

1. Initialise account starting balances with an "opening balances" transaction (a transfer from equity to the account), unless the journal covers the account's full lifetime.

2. Include all of of the account's prior postings in the report, by not specifying a report start date, or by using the -H/--historical flag. (-H causes report start date to be ignored when summing postings.)

Balance report modes

The balance command is quite flexible; here is the full detail on how to control what it reports. If the following seems complicated, don't worry - this is for advanced reporting, and it does take time and experimentation to get familiar with all the report modes.

There are three important option groups:

hledger balance [CALCULATIONMODE] [ACCUMULATIONMODE] [VALUATIONMODE] ...

Calculation mode

The basic calculation to perform for each table cell. It is one of:

• --sum : sum the posting amounts (default)
• --budget : sum the amounts, but also show the budget goal amount (for each account/period)
• --valuechange : show the change in period-end historical balance values (caused by deposits, withdrawals, and/or market price fluctuations)
• --gain : show capital gain/loss for each account: the current valued balance minus the net of postings' transacted costs (acquisition costs minus disposal proceeds). For accounts where nothing has been sold this equals the unrealised gain; once disposals exist the figure also includes realised gain on the disposed units, so it is best read as "total gain since inception". To track realised gain separately, use lot notation (see Lot reporting).
• --count : show the count of postings

Accumulation mode

How amounts should accumulate across a report's subperiods/columns. Another way to say it: which time period's postings should contribute to each cell's calculation. It is one of:

• --change : calculate with postings from column start to column end, ie "just this column". Typically used to see revenues/expenses. (default for balance, cashflow, incomestatement)

• --cumulative : calculate with postings from report start to column end, ie "previous columns plus this column". Typically used to show changes accumulated since the report's start date. Not often used.

• --historical/-H : calculate with postings from journal start to column end, ie "all postings from before report start date until this column's end". Typically used to see historical end balances of assets/liabilities/equity. (default for balancesheet, balancesheetequity)

Valuation mode

Which kind of value or cost conversion should be applied, if any, before displaying the report. See Cost reporting and Value reporting for more about conversions.

A valuation (or cost) mode can be selected with the --value option:

• no conversion : don't convert to cost or value (default)
• --value=cost[,COMM] : convert amounts to cost (then optionally to some other commodity)
• --value=then[,COMM] : convert amounts to market value on transaction dates
• --value=end[,COMM] : convert amounts to market value on period end date(s)
  (default with --valuechange, --gain)
• --value=now[,COMM] : convert amounts to market value on today's date
• --value=YYYY-MM-DD[,COMM] : convert amounts to market value on another date

or with the legacy -B/-V/-X options, which are equivalent and easier to type:

• -B/--cost : like --value=cost
• -V/--market : like --value=end
• -X COMM/--exchange COMM : like --value=end,COMM

Note that --value can also convert to cost, as a convenience; but actually --cost and --value are independent options, and could be used together.

Combining balance report modes

Most combinations of these modes produce reasonable reports. The following restrictions are applied:

• --valuechange implies --value=end
• --valuechange makes --change the default when used with the balancesheet/balancesheetequity commands
• --cumulative or --historical disables --row-total/-T

For reference, here is what the combinations of accumulation and valuation show:

Budget report

The balance --budget report is like a regular balance report, but with two main differences:

• Budget goals and performance percentages are also shown, in brackets
• Accounts which don't have budget goals are hidden by default.

This is useful for comparing planned and actual income, expenses, time usage, etc.

Periodic transaction rules are used to define budget goals. For example, here's a periodic rule defining monthly goals for bus travel and food expenses:

;; Budget
~ monthly
  (expenses:bus)              $30
  (expenses:food)            $400

After recording some actual expenses,

;; Two months worth of expenses
2017-11-01
  income                   $-1950
  expenses:bus                $35
  expenses:food:groceries    $310
  expenses:food:dining        $42
  expenses:movies             $38
  assets:bank:checking

2017-12-01
  income                   $-2100
  expenses:bus                $53
  expenses:food:groceries    $380
  expenses:food:dining        $32
  expenses:gifts             $100
  assets:bank:checking

we can see a budget report like this:

$ hledger bal -M --budget
Budget performance in 2017-11-01..2017-12-31:

               ||                  Nov                   Dec 
===============++============================================
 <unbudgeted>  || $-425                 $-565                
 expenses      ||  $425 [ 99% of $430]   $565 [131% of $430] 
 expenses:bus  ||   $35 [117% of  $30]    $53 [177% of  $30] 
 expenses:food ||  $352 [ 88% of $400]   $412 [103% of $400] 
---------------++--------------------------------------------
               ||     0 [  0% of $430]      0 [  0% of $430] 

This is "goal-based budgeting"; you define goals for accounts and periods, often recurring, and hledger shows performance relative to the goals. This contrasts with "envelope budgeting", which is more detailed and strict - useful when cash is tight, but also quite a bit more work. https://plaintextaccounting.org/Budgeting has more on this topic.

Using the budget report

Historically this report has been confusing and fragile. hledger's version should be relatively robust and intuitive, but you may still find surprises. Here are more notes to help with learning and troubleshooting.

• In the above example, expenses:bus and expenses:food are shown because they have budget goals during the report period.

• Their parent expenses is also shown, with budget goals aggregated from the children.

• The subaccounts expenses:food:groceries and expenses:food:dining are not shown since they have no budget goal of their own, but they contribute to expenses:food's actual amount.

• Unbudgeted accounts expenses:movies and expenses:gifts are also not shown, but they contribute to expenses's actual amount.

• The other unbudgeted accounts income and assets:bank:checking are grouped as <unbudgeted>.

• --depth or depth: can be used to limit report depth in the usual way (but will not reveal unbudgeted subaccounts).

• Amounts are always inclusive of subaccounts (even in -l/--list mode).

• Numbers displayed in a --budget report will not always agree with the totals, because of hidden unbudgeted accounts; this is normal. -E/--empty can be used to reveal the hidden accounts.

• In the periodic rules used for setting budget goals, unbalanced postings are convenient.

• You can filter budget reports with the usual queries, eg to focus on particular accounts. It's common to restrict them to just expenses. (The <unbudgeted> account is occasionally hard to exclude; this is because of date surprises, discussed below.)

• Only the account, account type, depth, date and commodity parts of the query are applied to the budget goals; the other parts (status:/-U/-P/-C, code:, desc:, payee:, note:, tag:, real:, amt:) select actual transactions and postings only. So eg --budget --cleared compares your cleared spending against the full budget goals.

• When you have multiple currencies, you may want to convert them to one (-X COMM --infer-market-prices) and/or show just one at a time (cur:COMM). If you do need to show multiple currencies at once, --layout bare can be helpful.

• You can "roll over" amounts (actual and budgeted) to the next period with --cumulative.

See also: https://hledger.org/budgeting.html.

Budget date surprises

With small data, or when starting out, some of the generated budget goal transaction dates might fall outside the report periods. Eg with the following journal and report, the first period appears to have no expenses:food budget. (Also the <unbudgeted> account should be excluded by the expenses query, but isn't.):

~ monthly in 2020
  (expenses:food)  $500

2020-01-15
  expenses:food    $400
  assets:checking

$ hledger bal --budget expenses
Budget performance in 2020-01-15:

               ||         2020-01-15 
===============++====================
 <unbudgeted>  || $400               
 expenses:food ||    0 [ 0% of $500] 
---------------++--------------------
               || $400 [80% of $500] 

In this case, the budget goal transactions are generated on first days of of month (this can be seen with hledger print --forecast tag:generated expenses). Whereas the report period defaults to just the 15th day of january (this can be seen from the report table's column headings).

To fix this kind of thing, be more explicit about the report period (and/or the periodic rules' dates). In this case, adding -b 2020 does the trick.

Selecting budget goals

By default, the budget report uses all available periodic transaction rules to generate goals. This includes rules with a different report interval from your report. Eg if you have daily, weekly and monthly periodic rules, all of these will contribute to the goals in a monthly budget report.

You can select a subset of periodic rules by providing an argument to the --budget flag. --budget=DESCPAT will match all periodic rules whose description contains DESCPAT, a case-insensitive substring (not a regular expression or query). This means you can give your periodic rules descriptions (remember that two spaces are needed between period expression and description), and then select from multiple budgets defined in your journal.

Budgeting vs forecasting

--forecast and --budget both use the periodic transaction rules in the journal to generate temporary transactions for reporting purposes. However they are separate features - though you can use both at the same time if you want. Here are some differences between them:

Balance report layout

The --layout option affects how balance and the other balance-like commands show multi-commodity amounts and commodity symbols. It can improve readability, for humans and/or machines (other software). It has four possible values:

• --layout=wide[,WIDTH]: commodities are shown on a single line, optionally elided to WIDTH
• --layout=tall: each commodity is shown on a separate line
• --layout=bare: commodity symbols are in their own column, amounts are bare numbers
• --layout=barewide: commodities are shown on a single line, all in separate columns, amounts are bare numbers
• --layout=tidy: data is normalised to easily-consumed "tidy" form, with one row per data value. (This one is currently supported only by the balance command.)

Here are the --layout modes supported by each output format Only CSV output supports all of them:

Choice of layouts for budget reports is more restricted:

Examples:

Wide layout

With many commodities, reports can be very wide:

$ hledger -f examples/bcexample.journal bal assets:us:etrade -3 -T -Y --layout=wide
Balance changes in 2012-01-01..2014-12-31:

                  ||                                          2012                                                     2013                                             2014                                                      Total 
==================++====================================================================================================================================================================================================================
 Assets:US:ETrade || 10.00 ITOT, 337.18 USD, 12.00 VEA, 106.00 VHT  70.00 GLD, 18.00 ITOT, -98.12 USD, 10.00 VEA, 18.00 VHT  -11.00 ITOT, 4881.44 USD, 14.00 VEA, 170.00 VHT  70.00 GLD, 17.00 ITOT, 5120.50 USD, 36.00 VEA, 294.00 VHT 
------------------++--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
                  || 10.00 ITOT, 337.18 USD, 12.00 VEA, 106.00 VHT  70.00 GLD, 18.00 ITOT, -98.12 USD, 10.00 VEA, 18.00 VHT  -11.00 ITOT, 4881.44 USD, 14.00 VEA, 170.00 VHT  70.00 GLD, 17.00 ITOT, 5120.50 USD, 36.00 VEA, 294.00 VHT 

A width limit reduces the width, but some commodities will be hidden:

$ hledger -f examples/bcexample.journal bal assets:us:etrade -3 -T -Y --layout=wide,32
Balance changes in 2012-01-01..2014-12-31:

                  ||                             2012                             2013                   2014                            Total 
==================++===========================================================================================================================
 Assets:US:ETrade || 10.00 ITOT, 337.18 USD, 2 more..  70.00 GLD, 18.00 ITOT, 3 more..  -11.00 ITOT, 3 more..  70.00 GLD, 17.00 ITOT, 3 more.. 
------------------++---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
                  || 10.00 ITOT, 337.18 USD, 2 more..  70.00 GLD, 18.00 ITOT, 3 more..  -11.00 ITOT, 3 more..  70.00 GLD, 17.00 ITOT, 3 more.. 

Tall layout

Each commodity gets a new line (may be different in each column), and account names are repeated:

$ hledger -f examples/bcexample.journal bal assets:us:etrade -3 -T -Y --layout=tall
Balance changes in 2012-01-01..2014-12-31:

                  ||       2012        2013         2014        Total 
==================++==================================================
 Assets:US:ETrade || 10.00 ITOT   70.00 GLD  -11.00 ITOT    70.00 GLD 
 Assets:US:ETrade || 337.18 USD  18.00 ITOT  4881.44 USD   17.00 ITOT 
 Assets:US:ETrade ||  12.00 VEA  -98.12 USD    14.00 VEA  5120.50 USD 
 Assets:US:ETrade || 106.00 VHT   10.00 VEA   170.00 VHT    36.00 VEA 
 Assets:US:ETrade ||              18.00 VHT                294.00 VHT 
------------------++--------------------------------------------------
                  || 10.00 ITOT   70.00 GLD  -11.00 ITOT    70.00 GLD 
                  || 337.18 USD  18.00 ITOT  4881.44 USD   17.00 ITOT 
                  ||  12.00 VEA  -98.12 USD    14.00 VEA  5120.50 USD 
                  || 106.00 VHT   10.00 VEA   170.00 VHT    36.00 VEA 
                  ||              18.00 VHT                294.00 VHT 

Bare layout

Commodity symbols are kept in one column, each commodity has its own row, amounts are bare numbers, account names are repeated:

$ hledger -f examples/bcexample.journal bal assets:us:etrade -3 -T -Y --layout=bare
Balance changes in 2012-01-01..2014-12-31:

                  || Commodity    2012    2013     2014    Total 
==================++=============================================
 Assets:US:ETrade || GLD             0   70.00        0    70.00 
 Assets:US:ETrade || ITOT        10.00   18.00   -11.00    17.00 
 Assets:US:ETrade || USD        337.18  -98.12  4881.44  5120.50 
 Assets:US:ETrade || VEA         12.00   10.00    14.00    36.00 
 Assets:US:ETrade || VHT        106.00   18.00   170.00   294.00 
------------------++---------------------------------------------
                  || GLD             0   70.00        0    70.00 
                  || ITOT        10.00   18.00   -11.00    17.00 
                  || USD        337.18  -98.12  4881.44  5120.50 
                  || VEA         12.00   10.00    14.00    36.00 
                  || VHT        106.00   18.00   170.00   294.00 

Bare layout also affects CSV output, which is useful for producing data that is easier to consume, eg for making charts:

$ hledger -f examples/bcexample.journal bal assets:us:etrade -3 -O csv --layout=bare
"account","commodity","balance"
"Assets:US:ETrade","GLD","70.00"
"Assets:US:ETrade","ITOT","17.00"
"Assets:US:ETrade","USD","5120.50"
"Assets:US:ETrade","VEA","36.00"
"Assets:US:ETrade","VHT","294.00"
"Total:","GLD","70.00"
"Total:","ITOT","17.00"
"Total:","USD","5120.50"
"Total:","VEA","36.00"
"Total:","VHT","294.00"

Bare layout will sometimes display an extra row for the no-symbol commodity, because of zero amounts (hledger treats zeroes as commodity-less, usually). This can break hledger-bar confusingly (workaround: add a cur: query to exclude the no-symbol row).

Barewide layout

Commodity symbols are spread in the table headers, each commodity has its own column, all column groups share the same set of commodities even if in one commodity column all values are zero. For consistency you may think of layout bare as baretall.

$ hledger -f examples/bcexample.journal bal assets:us:etrade -3 -T -Y --layout=barewide
Balance changes in 2012-01-01..2014-12-31:

                  || 2012 (GLD)  2012 (ITOT)  2012 (USD)  2012 (VEA)  2012 (VHT)  2013 (GLD)  2013 (ITOT)  2013 (USD)  2013 (VEA)  2013 (VHT)  2014 (GLD)  2014 (ITOT)  2014 (USD)  2014 (VEA)  2014 (VHT)    Total (GLD)    Total (ITOT)    Total (USD)    Total (VEA)    Total (VHT) 
==================++===================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================
 Assets:US:ETrade ||          0        10.00      337.18       12.00      106.00       70.00        18.00      -98.12       10.00       18.00           0       -11.00     4881.44       14.00      170.00          70.00           17.00        5120.50          36.00         294.00 
------------------++-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
                  ||          0        10.00      337.18       12.00      106.00       70.00        18.00      -98.12       10.00       18.00           0       -11.00     4881.44       14.00      170.00          70.00           17.00        5120.50          36.00         294.00 

Barewide layout is very useful for FODS and CSV output, since you can easily use LibreOffice's VLOOKUP function for accessing numbers in a table with mixed commodities.

Tidy layout

This produces normalised "tidy data" (see https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/tidyr/vignettes/tidy-data.html) where every variable has its own column and each row represents a single data point. This is the easiest kind of data for other software to consume:

$ hledger -f examples/bcexample.journal bal assets:us:etrade -3 -Y -O csv --layout=tidy
"account","period","start_date","end_date","commodity","value"
"Assets:US:ETrade","2012","2012-01-01","2012-12-31","GLD","0"
"Assets:US:ETrade","2012","2012-01-01","2012-12-31","ITOT","10.00"
"Assets:US:ETrade","2012","2012-01-01","2012-12-31","USD","337.18"
"Assets:US:ETrade","2012","2012-01-01","2012-12-31","VEA","12.00"
"Assets:US:ETrade","2012","2012-01-01","2012-12-31","VHT","106.00"
"Assets:US:ETrade","2013","2013-01-01","2013-12-31","GLD","70.00"
"Assets:US:ETrade","2013","2013-01-01","2013-12-31","ITOT","18.00"
"Assets:US:ETrade","2013","2013-01-01","2013-12-31","USD","-98.12"
"Assets:US:ETrade","2013","2013-01-01","2013-12-31","VEA","10.00"
"Assets:US:ETrade","2013","2013-01-01","2013-12-31","VHT","18.00"
"Assets:US:ETrade","2014","2014-01-01","2014-12-31","GLD","0"
"Assets:US:ETrade","2014","2014-01-01","2014-12-31","ITOT","-11.00"
"Assets:US:ETrade","2014","2014-01-01","2014-12-31","USD","4881.44"
"Assets:US:ETrade","2014","2014-01-01","2014-12-31","VEA","14.00"
"Assets:US:ETrade","2014","2014-01-01","2014-12-31","VHT","170.00"

Balance report output

As noted in Output format, if you choose HTML output (by using -O html or -o somefile.html), you can create a hledger.css file in the same directory to customise the report's appearance.

The HTML and FODS output formats can generate hyperlinks to a hledger-web register view for each account and period. E.g. if your hledger-web server is reachable at http://localhost:5000 then you might run the balance command with the extra option --base-url=http://localhost:5000. You can also produce relative links, like --base-url="some/path" or --base-url="".)

Some useful balance reports

Some frequently used balance options/reports are:

• bal -M revenues expenses
  Show revenues/expenses in each month. Also available as the incomestatement command.

• bal -M -H assets liabilities
  Show historical asset/liability balances at each month end. Also available as the balancesheet command.

• bal -M -H assets liabilities equity
  Show historical asset/liability/equity balances at each month end. Also available as the balancesheetequity command.

• bal -M assets not:receivable
  Show changes to liquid assets in each month. Also available as the cashflow command.

Also:

• bal -M expenses -2 -SA
  Show monthly expenses summarised to depth 2 and sorted by average amount.

• bal -M --budget expenses
  Show monthly expenses and budget goals.

• bal -M --valuechange investments
  Show monthly change in market value of investment assets.

• bal investments --valuechange -D date:lastweek amt:'>1000' -STA [--invert]
  Show top gainers [or losers] last week

holdings

Show a report of investment holdings.

Flags:
  -l --flat                 list/tree mode: show accounts as a flat list
                            (default). Amounts exclude subaccount amounts,
                            except where the account is depth-clipped.
  -t --tree                 list/tree mode: show accounts as a tree. Amounts
                            include subaccount amounts.
     --no-elide             in tree mode, don't squash boring parent
                            accounts; in list mode, also show parent accounts
                            (usually zero, hidden without -E)
     --full-names           in tree mode, show full account names instead of
                            indented leaf names
     --drop=N               in list mode, omit N leading account name parts
  -S --sort-amount          sort by value (or cost) instead of account name,
                            largest first
  -N --no-total             omit the final total row
     --round=TYPE           how much rounding or padding should be done when
                            displaying amounts ?
                            none - show original decimal digits
                            soft - just add or remove decimal zeros
                                   to match precision
                            hard - round amounts to precision (default)
                            all  - also round cost amounts to precision
  -O --output-format=FMT    select the output format. Supported formats:
                            txt, csv, tsv, html, fods, json.
  -o --output-file=FILE     write output to FILE. A file extension matching
                            one of the above formats selects that format.

This command shows your lot-tracked assets (see Lot reporting), and their performance, as of the report end date. An example:

$ hledger holdings -e 2023-04-02
Holdings on 2023-04-01

                           ||       Date   Age    Units  Avg cost     Price      Cost        Value  Weight        UGain   UGain%     RGain     XIRR 
===========================++=======================================================================================================================
 assets:investments:stocks || 2022-04-07  359d  10 INFY    2.00 ₹  100.00 ₹   20.00 ₹   1,000.00 ₹    6.4%     980.00 ₹  4900.0%            5252.4% 
 assets:investments:stocks ||                   73 LTTS    4.79 ₹  200.00 ₹  350.00 ₹  14,600.00 ₹   93.6%  14,250.00 ₹  4071.4%  140.00 ₹  4290.2% 
---------------------------++-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
                           ||                                                370.00 ₹  15,600.00 ₹  100.0%  15,230.00 ₹  4116.2%  140.00 ₹  4342.1% 

With --lots, the individual lots are shown:

$ hledger holdings --lots -e 2023-04-02
Holdings on 2023-04-01

                                                         ||       Date   Age    Units  Unit cost     Price      Cost        Value  Weight        UGain   UGain%     RGain     XIRR 
=========================================================++========================================================================================================================
 assets:investments:stocks:{2022-04-06, "0002", 10.00 ₹} || 2022-04-06  360d  13 LTTS    10.00 ₹  200.00 ₹  130.00 ₹   2,600.00 ₹   16.7%   2,470.00 ₹  1900.0%  140.00 ₹  3876.1% 
 assets:investments:stocks:{2022-04-07, 2.00 ₹}          || 2022-04-07  359d  10 INFY     2.00 ₹  100.00 ₹   20.00 ₹   1,000.00 ₹    6.4%     980.00 ₹  4900.0%            5252.4% 
 assets:investments:stocks:{2022-05-06, "0002", 11.00 ₹} || 2022-05-06  330d  20 LTTS    11.00 ₹  200.00 ₹  220.00 ₹   4,000.00 ₹   25.6%   3,780.00 ₹  1718.2%            5032.7% 
 assets:investments:stocks:{2022-06-06, "0002", 0.00 ₹}  || 2022-06-06  299d  40 LTTS          0  200.00 ₹         0   8,000.00 ₹   51.3%   8,000.00 ₹                             
---------------------------------------------------------++------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                                         ||                                                 370.00 ₹  15,600.00 ₹  100.0%  15,230.00 ₹  4116.2%  140.00 ₹  4342.1% 

The columns show:

• each holding's acquisition date (or earlier basis date) and age
• the number of units held
• the unit cost basis (or average cost; for accounts using the AVERAGE method, this is the pool's running average on the report date),
• the unit market price on the report date
• the total cost
• the total market value
• the percentage of the portfolio's total value (Weight)
• the unrealised gain and gain percent (UGain, UGain%)
• the realised gain from disposals so far (RGain)
• and the annualised rate of return, as of the report end date (XIRR, calculated from the holding's dated cashflows and current value, like roi's IRR; it includes realised gains).

Fully disposed commodities and accounts are not shown, unless you add -E/--empty. (But the RGain and XIRR in the totals row always includes them.)

To see a commodity's performance, a market price should be declared for it (as of the report end date). Market prices come from P directives or (with --infer-market-prices) from transacted prices, as usual. Each lot is valued in its cost commodity. In a multi-currency portfolio, aggregated values may contain multiple currencies; use -X COMM for a single-currency view.

With -V, -X COMM or --value (Valuation), holdings are valued in the default or given valuation commodity instead, and the cost columns are also converted to it (at the valuation date, so percent gain is unaffected). Cashflows are not converted, however, so the XIRR column is left blank for holdings whose cashflows are in a different commodity. --value=then is not supported, and -B/--cost has no effect.

Amounts are displayed with their commodity's display precision. --round can select another rounding strategy. The percent columns (Weight, UGain%, XIRR) are shown with the display style configured for the % commodity (eg by -c '0.00 %').

Query arguments and report flags like -t/--tree, --depth, -S/--sort-amount, --title etc. work as usual.

With -O html, an HTML table is produced instead. With -O fods, a spreadsheet document readable by LibreOffice etc. is produced. With -O csv or -O tsv, machine-readable output is produced: one record per displayed row, with full account names, age in days, bare units and gain percent numbers, and no totals record. With -O json, a JSON array of holding objects is produced.

roi

Show the money-weighted (IRR) and time-weighted (TWR) rate of return on your investments.

Flags:
     --cashflow                 show all amounts that were used to compute
                                returns
     --investment=QUERY         query to select your investment transactions
     --profit-loss=QUERY --pnl  query to select profit-and-loss or
                                appreciation/valuation transactions (optional)

At a minimum, you need to supply a query (which could be just an account name) to select your investment(s) with --inv.

An optional second query to identify your profit and loss transactions could be given with --pnl. If your investment's value changes are captured solely through price directives (rather than manual P&L journal entries), or if you do not need TWR, you can simply omit --pnl, and no transactions will be classed as profit and loss in this case.

This command will compute and display the internal rate of return (IRR, also known as money-weighted rate of return) and time-weighted rate of return (TWR) for your investments for the time period requested. IRR is always annualized due to the way it is computed, but TWR is reported both as a rate over the chosen reporting period and as an annual rate.

Price directives will be taken into account if you supply appropriate --cost or --value flags (see VALUATION).

Note, in some cases this report can fail, for these reasons:

• Error (NotBracketed): No solution for Internal Rate of Return (IRR). Possible causes: IRR is huge (>1000000%), balance of investment becomes negative at some point in time.
• Error (SearchFailed): Failed to find solution for Internal Rate of Return (IRR). Either search does not converge to a solution, or converges too slowly.
• Error (NotBracketed): Cannot compute window IRR. Possible cause: investment balance becomes negative within that window.
• Error (SearchFailed): Window IRR search did not converge.

Examples:

• Using roi to compute total return of investment in stocks: https://github.com/hledgerorg/hledger/blob/main/examples/investing/roi-unrealised.ledger

• Cookbook > Return on Investment: https://hledger.org/roi.html

Spaces and special characters in --inv and --pnl

Note that --inv and --pnl's argument is a query, and queries could have several space-separated terms (see QUERIES).

To indicate that all search terms form single command-line argument, you will need to put them in quotes (see Special characters):

$ hledger roi --inv 'term1 term2 term3 ...'

If any query terms contain spaces themselves, you will need an extra level of nested quoting, eg:

$ hledger roi --inv="'Assets:Test 1' cur:USD" --pnl="'Equity:Unrealized Profit and Loss'"

Semantics of --inv and --pnl

Query supplied to --inv has to match all transactions that are related to your investment. Transactions not matching --inv will be ignored.

In these transactions, ROI will consider postings that match --inv to be "investment postings" and other postings (not matching --inv) will be sorted into two categories: "cash flow" and "profit and loss", as ROI needs to know which part of the investment value is your contributions and which is due to the return on investment.

• "Cash flow" is depositing or withdrawing money, buying or selling assets, or otherwise converting between your investment commodity and any other commodity. Example:

  2019-01-01 Investing in Snake Oil
    assets:cash          -$100
    investment:snake oil
  
  2020-01-01 Selling my Snake Oil
    assets:cash           $10
    investment:snake oil  = 0
  

• "Profit and loss" is change in the value of your investment:

  2019-06-01 Snake Oil falls in value
    investment:snake oil  = $57
    equity:unrealized profit or loss
  

All non-investment postings are assumed to be "cash flow", unless they match --pnl query. Changes in value of your investment due to "profit and loss" postings will be considered as part of your investment return.

Example: if you use --inv snake --pnl equity:unrealized, then postings in the example below would be classifed as:

2019-01-01 Snake Oil #1
  assets:cash          -$100   ; cash flow posting
  investment:snake oil         ; investment posting

2019-03-01 Snake Oil #2
  equity:unrealized pnl  -$100 ; profit and loss posting
  snake oil                    ; investment posting

2019-07-01 Snake Oil #3
  equity:unrealized pnl        ; profit and loss posting
  cash          -$100          ; cash flow posting
  snake oil     $50            ; investment posting

Using roi with lots

If your journal records lots, each disposal transaction has a realised gain posting, by default to revenues:gain. Make sure --pnl matches that account, eg --pnl revenues:gain, so realised gains are counted as profit rather than as cash flows out of the investment.

IRR and TWR explained

"ROI" stands for "return on investment". Traditionally this was computed as a difference between current value of investment and its initial value, expressed in percentage of the initial value.

However, this approach is only practical in simple cases, where the investment receives no in-flows or out-flows of money and the rate of growth is fixed over time. For more complex scenarios you need different ways to compute rate of return, and this command implements two of them: IRR and TWR.

Internal rate of return (IRR), also called money-weighted rate of return, answers the question: what single constant annual interest rate, applied to your actual sequence of deposits and withdrawals, would produce exactly the ending balance you have?

IRR is inherently personal. If you deposited a large sum right before a bad period, your IRR is dragged down - not because the investment was poorly managed, but because your timing was bad. Conversely, investing heavily just before a rally makes your IRR look great. This is what makes IRR "money-weighted": periods when more of your money is at stake contribute more to the result.

In technical terms, IRR uses the same approach as computation of net present value, and tries to find a discount rate that makes the net present value of all the cash flows of your investment add up to zero. The implementation in hledger produces results that match the =XIRR formula in Excel.

Time-weighted rate of return (TWR) strips out the effect of your deposit and withdrawal timing, measuring the investment's own performance rather than your experience of it.

hledger computes TWR using the BAI (Bank Administration Institute) Linked IRR method. The reporting period is divided into windows at each date where the portfolio has a known, externally-established valuation - these are dates of price directives or of manual balance updates recorded via --pnl transactions. Within each window, if no cash flows occurred, the return is simply the ratio of ending to starting value. If cash flows occurred within a window, the window's return is found by solving for the rate that reconciles the starting value, the ending value, and the timing of those flows. All window returns are then multiplied together (geometrically chained) to give the TWR for the full period.

The accuracy of TWR depends on how many valuation dates you have recorded. More valuation dates mean finer windows and more precise results.

In short: TWR tells you how good the investment was; IRR tells you how good your experience of the investment was.

When each matters

Use IRR when you want to know your actual personal return - what you earned on your money, accounting for when you chose to move it. It is the right measure when evaluating your own deposit and withdrawal timing decisions.

Use TWR when you want to evaluate the investment vehicle itself, independent of your deposit timing. It is the right measure when comparing two funds or strategies, or when asking whether you would have been better off elsewhere. TWR is the standard that professional investment managers use to report fund performance, precisely because it removes the distortion caused by investor cash flows.

References:

• Explanation of rate of return
• Explanation of IRR
• Explanation of TWR
• IRR vs TWR
• Examples of computing IRR and TWR and discussion of the limitations of both metrics

Chart commands

activity

Show an ascii barchart of posting counts per interval.

Flags:
no command-specific flags

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 **

Data generation commands

close

(equity)

Print several kinds of "closing" and/or "opening" transactions, useful eg when migrating balances to a new journal file, retaining earnings into equity, consolidating balances, or viewing lot costs. Like print, it prints valid journal entries. You can copy these into your journal file(s) when you are happy with how they look.

Flags:
     --clopen[=TAGVAL]      show closing and opening balances transactions,
                            for AL accounts by default
     --close[=TAGVAL]       show just a closing balances transaction
     --open[=TAGVAL]        show just an opening balances transaction
     --assert[=TAGVAL]      show a balance assertions transaction
     --assign[=TAGVAL]      show a balance assignments transaction
     --retain[=TAGVAL]      show a retain earnings transaction, for RX
                            accounts by default
  -x --explicit             show all amounts explicitly
     --show-costs           show amounts with different costs separately
     --interleaved          show source and destination postings together
     --assertion-type=TYPE  =, ==, =* or ==*
     --close-desc=DESC      set closing transaction's description
     --close-acct=ACCT      set closing transaction's destination account
     --open-desc=DESC       set opening transaction's description
     --open-acct=ACCT       set opening transaction's source account
     --round=TYPE           how much rounding or padding should be done when
                            displaying amounts ?
                            none - show original decimal digits,
                                   as in journal (default)
                            soft - just add or remove decimal zeros
                                   to match precision
                            hard - round posting amounts to precision
                                   (can unbalance transactions)
                            all  - also round cost amounts to precision
                                   (can unbalance transactions)
     --layout=hledger1|COL  how should posting amounts be aligned ?
                            hledger1 - right-align amounts, as in hledger 1
                            COL      - align decimal marks at column COL
                            (default: 53)

close has six modes, selected by choosing one of the mode flags: --clopen, --close (default), --open, --assert, --assign, or --retain. They are all doing the same kind of operation, but with different defaults for different situations.

The journal entries generated by close will have a clopen: tag, which is helpful when you want to exclude them from reports. If the main journal file name contains a number, the tag's value will be that base file name with the number incremented. Eg if the journal file is 2025.journal, the tag will be clopen:2026. Or you can set the tag value by providing an argument to the mode flag. Eg --close=foo or --clopen=2025-main.

close --clopen

This is useful if migrating balances to a new journal file at the start of a new year. It prints a "closing balances" transaction that zeroes out account balances (Asset and Liability accounts, by default), and an opposite "opening balances" transaction that restores them again. Typically, you would run

hledger close --clopen -e NEWYEAR >> $LEDGER_FILE

and then move the opening transaction from the old file to the new file (and probably also update your LEDGER_FILE environment variable).

Why might you do this ? If your reports are fast, you may not need it. But at some point you will probably want to partition your data by time, for performance or data integrity or regulatory reasons. A new file or set of files per year is common. Then, having each file/fileset "bookended" with opening and closing balance transactions will allow you to freely pick and choose which files to read - just the current year, any past year, any sequence of years, or all of them - while showing correct account balances in each case. The earliest opening balances transaction sets correct starting balances, and any later closing/opening pairs will harmlessly cancel each other out.

The balances will be transferred to and from equity:opening/closing balances by default. You can override this by using --close-acct and/or --open-acct.

You can select a different set of accounts to close/open by providing an account query. Eg to add Equity accounts, provide arguments like assets liabilities equity or type:ALE. When migrating to a new file, you'll usually want to bring along the AL or ALE accounts, but not the RX accounts (Revenue, Expense).

Assertions will be added indicating and checking the new balances of the closed/opened accounts.

close --close

This prints just the closing balances transaction of --clopen. It is the default if you don't specify a mode.

More customisation options are described below. Among other things, you can use close --close to generate a transaction moving the balances from any set of accounts, to a different account. (If you need to move just a portion of the balance, see hledger-move.)

close --open

This prints just the opening balances transaction of --clopen. (It is similar to Ledger's equity command.)

close --assert

This prints a transaction that asserts the account balances as they are on the end date (and adds an assert: tag). It could be useful as documention and to guard against changes.

close --assign

This prints a transaction that assigns the account balances as they are on the end date (and adds an "assign:" tag). Unlike balance assertions, assignments will post changes to balances as needed to reach the specified amounts.

This is another way to set starting balances when migrating to a new file, and it will set them correctly even in the presence of earlier files which do not have a closing balances transaction. However, it can hide errors, and disturb the accounting equation, so --clopen is usually recommended.

close --retain

This is like --close, but it closes Revenue and Expense account balances by default. They will be transferred to equity:retained earnings, or another account specified with --close-acct.

Revenues and expenses correspond to changes in equity. They are categorised separately for reporting purposes, but traditionally at the end of each accounting period, businesses consolidate them into equity, This is called "retaining earnings", or "closing the books".

In personal accounting, there's not much reason to do this, and most people don't. (One reason to do it is to help the balancesheetequity report show a zero total, demonstrating that the accounting equation (A-L=E) is satisfied.)

close customisation

In all modes, the following things can be overridden:

• the accounts to be closed/opened, with account query arguments
• the closing/opening dates, with -e OPENDATE
• the balancing account, with --close-acct=ACCT and/or --open-acct=ACCT
• the transaction descriptions, with --close-desc=DESC and --open-desc=DESC
• the transactions' clopen tag value, with a TAGVAL argument for the mode flag (see above).

By default, the closing date is yesterday, or the journal's end date, whichever is later; and the opening date is always one day after the closing date. You can change these by specifying a report end date; the closing date will be the last day of the report period. Eg -e 2024 means "close on 2023-12-31, open on 2024-01-01".

With --x/--explicit, the balancing amount will be shown explicitly, and if it involves multiple commodities, a separate posting will be generated for each of them (similar to print -x).

With --interleaved, each individual transfer is shown with source and destination postings next to each other (perhaps useful for troubleshooting).

With --show-costs, balances' costs are also shown, with different costs kept separate. This may generate very large journal entries, if you have many currency conversions or investment transactions. close --show-costs is currently the best way to view investment lots with hledger. (To move or dispose of lots, see the more capable hledger-move script.) With --lots, lot subaccount balances are always shown without costs, even under --show-costs: their cost information is carried by the lot name itself, and transacted costs on lot postings would prevent the output from being read back.

close and balance assertions

close adds balance assertions verifying that the accounts have been reset to zero in a closing transaction or restored to their previous balances in an opening transaction. These provide useful error checking, but you can ignore them temporarily with -I, or remove them if you prefer.

With --lots, balance assertions are not generated for the lot subaccount postings in closing transactions (assertions on lot postings get confusing, because they apply to the parent account).

Single-commodity, subaccount-exclusive balance assertions (=) are generated by default. This can be changed with --assertion-type='==*' (eg).

When running close you should probably avoid using -C, -R, status: (filtering by status or realness) or --auto (generating postings), since the generated balance assertions would then require these.

Transactions with multiple dates (eg posting dates) spanning the file boundary also can disrupt the balance assertions:

2023-12-30 a purchase made in december, cleared in january
    expenses:food          5
    assets:bank:checking  -5  ; date: 2023-01-02

To solve this you can transfer the money to and from a temporary account, splitting the multi-day transaction into two single-day transactions:

; in 2022.journal:
2022-12-30 a purchase made in december, cleared in january
    expenses:food          5
    equity:pending        -5

; in 2023.journal:
2023-01-02 last year's transaction cleared
    equity:pending         5 = 0
    assets:bank:checking  -5

close examples

Retain earnings

Record 2022's revenues/expenses as retained earnings on 2022-12-31, appending the generated transaction to the journal:

$ hledger close --retain -f 2022.journal -p 2022 >> 2022.journal

After this, to see 2022's revenues and expenses you must exclude the retain earnings transaction:

$ hledger -f 2022.journal is not:desc:'retain earnings'

Migrate balances to a new file

Close assets/liabilities on 2022-12-31 and re-open them on 2023-01-01:

$ hledger close --clopen -f 2022.journal -p 2022
# copy/paste the closing transaction to the end of 2022.journal
# copy/paste the opening transaction to the start of 2023.journal

After this, to see 2022's end-of-year balances you must exclude the closing balances transaction:

$ hledger -f 2022.journal bs not:desc:'closing balances'

For more flexibility, it helps to tag closing and opening transactions with eg clopen:NEWYEAR, then you can ensure correct balances by excluding all opening/closing transactions except the first, like so:

$ hledger bs -Y -f 2021.j -f 2022.j -f 2023.j expr:'tag:clopen=2021 or not tag:clopen'
$ hledger bs -Y -f 2021.j -f 2022.j           expr:'tag:clopen=2021 or not tag:clopen'
$ hledger bs -Y -f 2022.j -f 2023.j           expr:'tag:clopen=2022 or not tag:clopen'
$ hledger bs -Y -f 2021.j                     expr:'tag:clopen=2021 or not tag:clopen'
$ hledger bs -Y -f 2022.j                     expr:'tag:clopen=2022 or not tag:clopen'
$ hledger bs -Y -f 2023.j                     # unclosed file, no query needed

More detailed close examples

See examples/multi-year.

get

Fetch new transactions and market prices for the journal, by running getdata and getprices helper scripts. New prices are merged into prices files automatically; new transaction data is just saved, for later conversion & import by import.

Flags:
     --transactions         fetch transactions only
     --prices               fetch prices only
     --dry-run              just print the commands that would be run

By default, this command fetches both transactions and prices.

Phase 1: transactions data

1. Creates a data/ directory next to the main journal file, if it does not exist.
2. If the data/getdata helper script exists, runs it in the data directory, so it can save downloaded files (CSV/TSV/JSON/OFX/etc.) there.

Phase 2: prices

1. Creates a prices/ directory next to the main journal file, if it does not exist.
2. If the prices/getprices helper script exists, hledger first guesses the journal's base currency (the commodity most used as the target in P price directives; or if there are no P directives, the commodity most used in postings; or if there are no postings, "USD"). Then for each other commodity in the journal, it fetches daily market prices in the base currency, from that commodity's earliest transaction until today, by running getprices BASECUR COMM START END. Each commodity's prices are merged into prices/<COMM>.prices, preserving existing prices.

Commands being run, and files being updated, are logged to stderr. With --dry-run, you can preview the commands without running them.

Merging new prices

Complete historical price data can be hard to get, so the prices phase is careful to preserve older prices. If prices files already exist, the newly fetched prices will be merged as follows:

• Prices files will be updated only if they contain nothing but P directives (or blank lines).
• New prices for dates already seen are discarded. (So if you want to replace old prices, you must delete them before running get.)
• If no new prices remain to be added, the prices file is left as-is.
• Otherwise, the old prices plus the new prices are saved to the file, ordered by: date, from commodity, to commodity. Each price keeps the number format it was written with.

get's helper scripts

Data downloading varies for everyone, and needs to be easily customisable, so it is done via helper scripts:

getdata

If you want get to download transaction data for you, make your own getdata shell script (or executable program), and install it in the data directory next to your main journal file.

It should download zero or more transaction data files into its current directory. These are typically bank/brokerage CSV/TSV/SSV files, but could be anything that your hledger rules files can read.

getprices

If you want get to download historical market prices (useful for currency conversions, and value or gains reports), install a getprices script in the prices directory next to your main journal file.

You can get one from the hledger repo's bin directory, and customise it if needed. This script uses pricehist, so you will need to install that python tool also (eg with uv tool install pricehist). Some price providers limit the commodity pairs, history, or number of requests available for free; you can get better data by paying them and setting up their API keys as environment variables.

Or, you can make your own getprices script. It should accept 3-4 arguments:

• ISO code for the base currency
• ISO code for the commodity to be priced
• ISO start date
• optional ISO end date (default: today)

rewrite

Print all transactions, adding auto postings to some of them. For now the only rewrite available is adding new postings, like print --auto.

Flags:
     --add-posting='ACCT  AMTEXPR'  add a posting to ACCT, which may be
                                    parenthesised. AMTEXPR is either a literal
                                    amount, or *N which means the transaction's
                                    first matched amount multiplied by N (a
                                    decimal number). Two spaces separate ACCT
                                    and AMTEXPR.
     --diff                         generate diff suitable as an input for
                                    patch tool
     --verbose-tags                 add tags indicating generated/modified
                                    data
     --layout=hledger1|COL          how should posting amounts be aligned ?
                                    hledger1 - right-align amounts, as in
                                    hledger 1
                                    COL      - align decimal marks at column
                                    COL (default: 53)

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 transaction'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 includes a commodity name, the new posting amount will be in the new commodity; otherwise, it will be in the matched posting amount's commodity.

Re-write rules in a file

During the run this tool will execute so called "Automated Transactions" 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 transactions 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 postings.

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
@@ -28,13 +28,15 @@
 ; declare commodities:
 ; commodity $
 
-2008/01/01 income
-    assets:bank:checking  $1
+2008-01-01 income
+    assets:bank:checking                          $1
     income:salary
+    (liabilities:tax)                             $0
 
-2008/06/01 gift
-    assets:bank:checking  $1
+2008-06-01 gift
+    assets:bank:checking                          $1
     income:gifts
+    (liabilities:tax)                             $0
 
 2008/06/02 save
     assets:bank:saving  $1

If you'll pass this through patch tool you'll get transactions containing 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.

Changed transactions are re-rendered in print's standard format, so the diff shows any reformatting as well as the postings you added: amounts are realigned, and dates are written with - separators. Transactions you didn't change are left exactly as they are. --layout selects the amount alignment, so choosing one which matches your journal will keep the diff small. Here is the example above again, with --layout=26 to match this journal's own alignment:

@@ -28,13 +28,15 @@
 ; declare commodities:
 ; commodity $
 
-2008/01/01 income
+2008-01-01 income
     assets:bank:checking  $1
     income:salary
+    (liabilities:tax)     $0
 
-2008/06/01 gift
+2008-06-01 gift
     assets:bank:checking  $1
     income:gifts
+    (liabilities:tax)     $0
 
 2008/06/02 save
     assets:bank:saving  $1

Only transactions which exist as journal entries in a file can be patched this way. Transactions read from other data formats, such as CSV or timeclock, and transactions generated by a periodic transaction rule, have no journal entry of their own; these are left out of the diff, and reported on stderr. To rewrite those, convert them to journal entries first, eg with hledger print or hledger import.

Be careful. Whole transaction being re-formatted in a style of output from hledger print.

See also:

https://github.com/hledgerorg/hledger/issues/99

rewrite vs. print --auto

This command predates print --auto, and currently does much the same thing, but with these differences:

• with multiple files, rewrite lets rules in any file affect all other files. print --auto uses standard directive scoping; rules affect only child files.

• rewrite's query limits which transactions can be rewritten; all are printed. print --auto's query limits which transactions are printed.

• rewrite applies rules specified on command line or in the journal. print --auto applies rules specified in the journal.

Maintenance commands

check

Check for various kinds of errors in your data.

Flags:
no command-specific flags

hledger provides a number of built-in correctness checks to help validate your data and prevent errors. Some are run automatically, some when you enable --strict mode; or you can run any of them on demand by providing them as arguments to the check command. check produces no output and a zero exit code if all is well. Eg:

hledger check                      # run default checks
hledger check -s                   # run default and strict checks
hledger check ordereddates payees  # run default checks and two others

If you are an Emacs user, you can also configure flycheck-hledger to run these checks, providing instant feedback as you edit the journal.

Here are the checks currently available. They are generally checked in the order they are shown here, and only the first failure will be reported.

Default checks

These important checks are performed by default, by almost all hledger commands:

• parseable - data files are in a supported format, with no syntax errors and no invalid include directives. This ensures that all files exist and are readable.

• autobalanced - all transactions are balanced, after automatically inferring missing amounts and conversion rates and then converting amounts to cost. This ensures that each transaction's journal entry is well formed.

• assertions - all balance assertions in the journal are passing. Balance assertions are a strong defense against errors, catching many problems. This check is on by default, but if it gets in your way, you can disable it temporarily with -I or --ignore-assertions, or as a default by adding that flag to your config file. If you put it in your config file, you can override that with -s/--strict or hledger check lots. When a journal has both kinds of problem, lot errors are reported before assertion failures.

• lots - all lot entries are valid. Checks lot posting classifications, lot movements, and that any user-written realised gain amount on a disposal matches the calculated gain. This check can be disabled by -I or --ignore-lots. If you put it in your config file, you can override that with -s/--strict or hledger check lots.

Strict checks

When the -s/--strict flag is used (AKA strict mode), all commands will perform the following additional checks. These provide extra error-catching power to help you keep your data clean and correct:

• balanced - like autobalanced, but implicit conversions between commodities are not allowed; all conversion transactions must use cost notation or equity postings. This prevents wrong conversions caused by typos.

• commodities - all commodity symbols used must be declared. This guards against mistyping or omitting commodity symbols.

• accounts - all account names used must be declared. This prevents the use of mis-spelled or outdated account names. (Except lot subaccounts, like :{2026-01-15, $50}, which are automatically exempt; only their base account needs to be declared.)

Also, strict mode ensures that the assertions and lots checks run (overriding their ignore flags).

Other checks

These are not wanted by everyone, but can be run using the check command:

• tags - all tags used must be declared. This prevents mis-spelled tag names. Note hledger fairly often finds unintended tags in comments.

• payees - all payees used in transactions must be declared. This will force you to declare any new payee name before using it. Most people will probably find this a bit too strict.

• ordereddates - within each file, transactions must be ordered by date. This is a simple and effective error catcher. It's not included in strict mode, but you can add it by running hledger check -s ordereddates. If enabled, this check is performed before balance assertions.

• recentassertions - all accounts with balance assertions must have one that's within the 7 days before their latest posting. This will encourage adding balance assertions for your active asset/liability accounts, which in turn should encourage you to reconcile regularly with those real world balances - another strong defense against errors. (hledger close --assert >>$LEDGER_FILE is a convenient way to add new balance assertions. Later these become quite redundant, and you might choose to remove them to reduce clutter.)

• uniqueleafnames - no two accounts may have the same last account name part (eg the checking in assets:bank:checking). This ensures each account can be matched by a unique short name, easier to remember and to type.

• basis - all lot acquisitions set a per-unit basis equal to the per-unit transacted cost. This guards against typos in cost basis amounts causing wrong capital gain calculation at disposal time. It also enforces hledger's preferred style of "basis cost = transacted cost, with any real difference (as in gifts, NSO, RSU, etc) funded by a separate posting", rather than expressing the difference as a {B} @ T mismatch.

Custom checks

You can build your own custom checks with add-on command scripts. See also Cookbook > Scripting. Here are some examples from hledger/bin/:

• hledger-check-tagfiles - all tag values containing / exist as file paths

• hledger-check-fancyassertions - more complex balance assertions are passing

diff

Compare 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.

Flags:
no command-specific flags

More precisely: for each posting affecting this account in either file, this command looks for a corresponding posting in the other file which posts the same amount to the same account (ignoring date, description, etc).

Since it compares postings, not transactions, this also works when multiple bank transactions have been combined into a single journal entry.

This command 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:

setup

Check the status of the hledger installation.

Flags:
no command-specific flags

setup tests your hledger installation and prints a list of results, sometimes with helpful hints. This is a good first command to run after installing hledger. Also after upgrading, or when something's not working, or just when you want a reminder of where things are.

It makes one network request to detect the latest hledger release version. It's ok if this fails or times out. It will use ANSI color by default, unless disabled by NO_COLOR or --color=n. It does not use a pager or a config file.

It expects that the hledger version you are running is installed in your PATH. If not, it will stop until you have done that (to keep things simple).

Example:

$ hledger setup
Checking your setup (and contacting hledger.org to find out the current release):
hledger
  is running on                                 macos 27.0 on aarch64
  is built with a supported compiler/RTS   yes  ghc 9.14.1, using threaded RTS
  is a native binary for this machine ?    yes  aarch64
  is a released version ?                  yes  hledger 1.52.4, mac-aarch64
  is up to date ? checking latest...       yes  latest is 1.52.4, 1.52.4 is installed
  is installed in PATH (this version) ?    yes  /Users/user/.local/bin/hledger
  has a system text encoding configured ?  yes  UTF-8, data files must use this encoding
  has a user config file ?                 yes  /Users/user/.hledger.conf
  has a local config file ?                 no  
  the config file is readable ?            yes  
terminal
  the TERM variable is defined ?           yes  xterm-256color
  the terminal supports ANSI color ?       yes  
  ...
journal
  the LEDGER_FILE variable is defined ?    yes  /Users/user/finance/main.journal
  a default journal file is readable ?     yes  /Users/user/finance/main.journal
  ...

test

Run built-in unit tests.

Flags:
no command-specific flags

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.

You can use this as a sanity-check of the hledger executable installed on your system. A failure is unlikely, since these and other much larger test suites run frequently during hledger development - but if you see one, please report it as a bug!

Any arguments before a -- argument will be passed to the tasty test runner as test-selecting -p patterns, and any arguments after -- will be passed to tasty unchanged.

Examples:

$ hledger test               # run all unit tests
$ hledger test balance       # run tests with "balance" in their name
$ hledger test -- -h         # show tasty's options

PART 3: DATA FORMATS

Journal

hledger's usual data source is a plain text file containing journal entries in hledger journal format. If you're looking for a quick reference, jump ahead to the journal cheatsheet.

This file represents an accounting General Journal. The .journal file extension is most often used, though not strictly 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 compatible with most of Ledger's journal format, but not all of it. The differences and interoperation tips are described at hledger and Ledger. With some care, and by avoiding incompatible features, you can keep your hledger journal readable by Ledger and vice versa. This can useful eg for comparing the behaviour of one app against the other.

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 add-ons 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 Editors at hledger.org for the full list.

A hledger journal file can contain three kinds of thing: comment lines, transactions, and/or directives (including periodic transaction rules and auto posting rules). Understanding the journal file format will also give you a good understanding of hledger's data model. Here's a quick cheatsheet/overview, followed by detailed descriptions of each part.

Journal cheatsheet

# Here is the main syntax of hledger's journal format
# (omitting extra Ledger compatibility syntax).

###############################################################################

# 1. These are comment lines, for notes or temporarily disabling things.
; They begin with # or ;

comment
Or, lines can be enclosed within "comment" / "end comment".
This is a block of 
commented lines.
end comment

# Some journal entries can have semicolon comments at end of line  ; like this
# Some of them require 2 or more spaces before the semicolon.

###############################################################################

# 2. Directives customise processing or output in some way.
# You don't need any directives to get started.
# But they can add more error checking, or change how things are displayed.
# They begin with a word, letter, or symbol. 
# They are most often placed at the top, before transactions.

account assets             ; Declare valid account names and display order.
account assets:savings     ; A subaccount. This one represents a bank account.
account assets:checking    ; Another. Note, 2+ spaces after the account name.
account assets:receivable  ; Accounting type is inferred from english names,
account passifs            ; or declared with a "type" tag, type:L
account expenses           ; type:X
                           ; A follow-on comment line, indented.
account expenses:rent      ; Expense and revenue categories are also accounts.
                           ; Subaccounts inherit their parent's type.

commodity $0.00         ; Declare valid commodities and their display styles.
commodity 1.000,00 EUR

decimal-mark .          ; The decimal mark used in this file (if ambiguous).

payee Whole Foods       ; Declare a valid payee name.

tag trip                ; Declare a valid tag name.

P 2024-03-01 AAPL $179  ; Declare a market price for AAPL in $ on this date.

include other.journal   ; Include another journal file here.

# Declare a recurring "periodic transaction", for budget/forecast reports
~ monthly  set budget goals  ; <- Note, 2+ spaces before the description.
    (expenses:rent)      $1000
    (expenses:food)       $500

# Declare an auto posting rule, to modify existing transactions in reports
= revenues:consulting
    liabilities:tax:2024:us          *0.25  ; Add a tax liability & expense
    expenses:tax:2024:us            *-0.25  ; for 25% of the revenue.

###############################################################################

# 3. Transactions are what it's all about.
# They are dated events, usually movements of money between 2 or more accounts.
# They begin with a numeric date.
# Here is their basic shape:
#
# DATE DESCRIPTION    ; The transaction's date and optional description.
#   ACCOUNT1  AMOUNT  ; A posting of an amount to/from this account, indented.
#   ACCOUNT2  AMOUNT  ; A second posting, balancing the first.
#   ...               ; More if needed. Amounts must sum to zero.
#                     ; Note, 2+ spaces between account names and amounts.

2024-01-01 opening balances         ; At the start, declare pre-existing balances this way.
    assets:savings          $10000  ; Account names can be anything. lower case is easy to type.
    assets:checking          $1000  ; assets, liabilities, equity, revenues, expenses are common.
    liabilities:credit card  $-500  ; liabilities, equity, revenues balances are usually negative.
    equity:start                    ; One amount can be left blank. $-10500 is inferred here.
                                    ; Some of these accounts we didn't declare above,
                                    ; so -s/--strict would complain.

2024-01-03 ! (12345) pay rent
    ; Additional transaction comment lines, indented.
    ; There can be a ! or * after the date meaning "pending" or "cleared".
    ; There can be a parenthesised (code) after the date/status.
                                    ; Amounts' sign shows direction of flow.
    assets:checking          $-500  ; Minus means removed from this account (credit).
    expenses:rent             $500  ; Plus means added to this account (debit).

; Keeping transactions in date order is optional (but helps error checking).

2024-01-02 Gringott's Bank | withdrawal  ; Description can be PAYEE | NOTE
    assets:bank:gold       -10 gold
    assets:pouch            10 gold

2024-01-02 shopping
    expenses:clothing        1 gold
    expenses:wands           5 gold
    assets:pouch            -6 gold

2024-01-02 receive gift
    revenues:gifts          -3 "Chocolate Frogs"  ; Complex commodity symbols
    assets:pouch             3 "Chocolate Frogs"  ; must be in double quotes.

2024-01-15 buy some shares, in two lots                 ; Cost can be noted.
    assets:investments:2024-01-15     2.0 AAAA @ $1.50  ; @  means per-unit cost
    assets:investments:2024-01-15-02  3.0 AAAA @@ $4    ; @@ means total cost
                      ; ^ Per-lot subaccounts are sometimes useful.
    assets:checking                 $-7

2024-01-15 assert some account balances on this date
    ; Balances can be asserted in any transaction, with =, for extra error checking.
    ; Assertion txns like this one can be made with hledger close --assert --show-costs
    ;
    assets:savings                    $0                   = $10000
    assets:checking                   $0                   =   $493
    assets:bank:gold                   0 gold              =    -10 gold
    assets:pouch                       0 gold              =      4 gold
    assets:pouch                       0 "Chocolate Frogs" =      3 "Chocolate Frogs"
    assets:investments:2024-01-15      0.0 AAAA            =      2.0 AAAA @  $1.50
    assets:investments:2024-01-15-02   0.0 AAAA            =      3.0 AAAA @@ $4
    liabilities:credit card           $0                   =  $-500

2024-02-01 note some event, or a transaction not yet fully entered, on this date
    ; Postings are not required.

# Consistent YYYY-MM-DD date format is recommended,
# but you can use . or / and omit leading zeros if you prefer.
2024.01.01
2024/1/1

Comments

Lines in the journal will be ignored if they begin with a hash (#) or a semicolon (;). (See also Other syntax.) hledger will also ignore regions beginning with a comment line, and ending with an end comment line or file end. Here's a suggestion for choosing between them:

• # for top-level notes
• ; for commenting out things temporarily
• comment for quickly commenting large regions (remember it's there, or you might get confused)

Eg:

# a comment line
; another commentline
comment
A multi-line comment block,
continuing until "end comment" directive
or the end of the current file.
end comment

Some hledger entries can have same-line comments attached to them, from ; (semicolon) to end of line. See Transaction comments, Posting comments, and Account comments below.

Comment lines immediately preceding a transaction (with no blank line in between) are attached to that transaction, and are shown before it, as written, in print output.

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 simple date in column 0. This can be followed by any of the following optional fields, separated by spaces:

• a status character (empty, !, or *)
• a code (any short number or text, enclosed in parentheses)
• a description (any remaining text until end of line or a semicolon)
• a comment (any remaining text following a semicolon until end of line, and any following indented lines beginning with a semicolon)
• 0 or more indented posting lines, describing what was transferred and the accounts involved (indented comment lines are also allowed, but not blank lines or non-indented lines).

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 current transaction, the default year set with a Y directive, or the current date when the command is run. Some examples: 2010-01-31, 2010/01/31, 2010.1.31, 1/31.

(On the command line and in the UIs, you can also use the more flexible smart dates.)

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. (There's also a Ledger-compatible syntax, ; [DATE], which can be convenient.)

This is probably the best way to control posting dates precisely. Eg in this example the expense should appear in May reports, 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.
The date: tag must have a valid simple date value if it is present, eg a date: tag with no value is not allowed.

Status

Transactions (or individual postings within a transaction) can have a status mark, which is a single character before the transaction description (or posting account name), separated from it by a space, indicating one of three statuses:

When reporting, you can filter by status with the -U/--unmarked, -P/--pending, and -C/--cleared flags (and you can combine these, eg -UP to match all except cleared things). Or you can use the status:, status:!, and status:* queries, or the U, P, C keys in hledger-ui.

(Note: in Ledger the "unmarked" state is called "uncleared"; in hledger we renamed it to "unmarked" for semantic clarity.)

Status marks are optional, but can be helpful eg for reconciling with real-world accounts. Some editor modes provide highlighting and shortcuts 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:

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 uncashed checks), and no flags to see the most up-to-date state of your finances.

Code

After the status mark, but before the description, you can optionally write a transaction "code", such as a check number or transaction id, enclosed in parentheses.

This has a few limitations: The code must not contain a closing parenthesis (or it will be truncated). Codes tend to disrupt alignment of the register report, making it harder to scan visually. And you can't store more than one value there per transaction. For these reasons you might want to avoid the code field and use tags instead.

Description

After the date, status mark and/or code fields, the rest of the line (or until a comment is begun with ;) is the transaction's description. Here you can describe the transaction (called the "narration" in traditional bookkeeping), or you can record a payee/payer name, or you can leave it empty.

Transaction descriptions show up in print output and in register reports, and can be listed with the descriptions command.

You can query by description with desc:DESCREGEX, or pivot on description with --pivot desc.

Payee and note

Sometimes people want a dedicated payee/payer field that can be queried and checked more strictly. If you want that, you can write a | (pipe) character in the description. This divides it into a "payee" field on the left, and a "note" field on the right. (Either can be empty.)

You can query these with payee:PAYEEREGEX and note:NOTEREGEX, list their values with the payees and notes commands, or pivot on payee or note.

Note: in transactions with no | character, description, payee, and note all have the same value. Once a | is added, they become distinct.

If you want more strict error checking, you can declare the valid payee names with payee directives, and then enforce these with hledger check payees. (Note: because of the above, for this you'll need to ensure every transaction description contains a | and therefore a checkable payee name, even if it's empty.)

Transaction comments

Text following ;, after a transaction description, and/or on indented lines immediately below it, form comments for that transaction. They are reproduced by print but otherwise ignored, except they may contain tags, which are not ignored.

2012-01-01 something  ; a transaction comment
    ; a second line of transaction comment
    expenses   1
    assets

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:

• (optional) a status character (empty, !, or *), followed by a space
• (required) an account name (any text, optionally including single spaces. If anything follows the account name on the same line, the account name must be ended by two or more spaces.)
• (optional) an amount
• (optional) a same-line posting comment, beginning with a semicolon (;).

If the amount is positive, it is being added to the account; if negative, it is being removed from the account.

The posting amounts in a transaction must sum up to zero, indicating that the inflows and outflows are equal. We call this a balanced transaction. (You can read more about the details of transaction balancing below.)

If no amount is written, it will be calculated automatically from the other postings in the transaction, so as to balance the transaction. In other words, in any transaction you can leave one posting amountless to save typing.

Debits and credits

The traditional accounting concepts of debit and credit of course exist in hledger, but we represent them with numeric sign. Positive and negative posting amounts represent debits and credits respectively.

You don't need to remember that, but if you would like to - eg for helping newcomers or for talking with your accountant - here's a handy mnemonic:

debit / plus / left / short words
credit / minus / right / longer words

Account names

Accounts are the main way of categorising things in hledger. As in Double Entry Bookkeeping, they can represent real world accounts (such as a bank account), or more abstract categories such as "money spent on food" or "money borrowed from Frank".

Account names are flexible. They may be capitalised or not; they may contain letters, numbers, punctuation, symbols, or single spaces; they may be in any language.

Typically we use the five traditional accounting categories as the starting point for account names. In english they are:

assets, liabilities, equity, revenues, expenses

These will be discussed more in Account types below. In hledger docs you may see them referred to as A, L, E, R, X for short.

Two space delimiter

Note that hledger's account names, like Ledger's, may contain single spaces. Because of this, they must be separated from anything following them on the same line by two or more spaces. (Two or more tabs also work; but spaces are preferred. A single tab is not a separator, unlike in Ledger.)

This lets us use expressive account names, while still keeping the syntax light. Here are some examples:

  assets:accounts receivable ; bad, only one space before the comment
  assets:accounts receivable  ; good

  assets:accounts receivable $10    ; bad, one space before the amount
  assets:accounts receivable  $10   ; good

  assets:accounts receivable = $1000   ; bad, one space before the balance assignment
  assets:accounts receivable  = $1000  ; good

The two-space delimiter is also required in periodic transaction rules, between period expression and description:

~ every 5th day YouTube Premium     ; bad, one space before the description
~ every 5th day  YouTube Premium    ; good

When you are starting out, you can expect this delimiter will trip you up once or twice. (If it happens too much, you can check account names strictly to prevent it.)

Account hierarchy

For more precise reporting, we usually divide accounts into more detailed subaccounts, subsubaccounts, and so on, by writing a full colon between account name parts. For example, instead of writing assets and expenses, we might write assets:bank:checking and expenses:food. From these names hledger will infer this hierarchy of five accounts:

assets
assets:bank
assets:bank:checking
expenses
expenses:food

Or as an outline:

assets
 bank
  checking
expenses
 food

hledger reports can summarise the account tree to any depth, so you can make your subcategories as detailed as you like. But don't go overboard, especially when getting started; simpler categories can be less work.

Other account name features

Enclosing the account name in parentheses or brackets, like (expenses:food), enables a non-standard bookkeeping feature: virtual postings.

Account names can be rewritten and restructured, temporarily or permanently, by account aliases.

Amounts

After the account name, there is usually an amount. (Remember: between 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 "quantity"):

1

..and usually a currency symbol or commodity name (more on this below), to the left or right of the quantity, with or without a separating space:

$1
4000 AAPL
3 "green apples"

Amounts can be preceded by a minus sign (or a plus sign, though plus is the default), The sign can be written before or after a left-side commodity symbol:

-$1
$-1

One or more spaces between the sign and the number are acceptable when parsing (but they won't be displayed in output):

+ $1
$-      1

Scientific E notation is allowed:

1E-6
EUR 1E3

Decimal marks

A decimal mark can be written as a period or a comma:

1.23
1,23

Both of these are common in international number formats, so hledger is not biased towards one or the other. Because hledger also supports digit group marks (eg thousands separators), this means that a number like 1,000 or 1.000 containing just one period or comma is ambiguous. In such cases, hledger by default assumes it is a decimal mark, and will parse both of those as 1.

To help hledger parse such ambiguous numbers accurately, if you use digit group marks, we recommend declaring the decimal mark explicitly. You can declare it per commodity with commodity directives, or per file with a decimal-mark directive at the top of each journal file (described below).

hledger also accepts numbers like 10. with no digits after the decimal mark (and will sometimes display numbers that way to disambiguate them - see Trailing decimal marks).

Digit group marks

In the integer part of the amount quantity (left of the decimal mark), groups of digits can optionally be separated by a digit group mark - a comma or period (whichever is not used as decimal mark), an underscore, an apostrophe, or a space (several Unicode space variants, like no-break space, are also accepted). So these are all valid amounts in a journal file:

     $1,000,000.00
  EUR 2.000.000,00
INR 9,99,99,999.00
  CHF 1'000'000.00
      1_000_000.00
      1 000 000.00   ; <- ordinary space
      1 000 000.00   ; <- no-break space

Commodity

Amounts in hledger have both a "quantity", which is a signed decimal number, and a "commodity", which is a currency symbol, stock ticker, or any word or phrase describing something you are tracking.

If the commodity name contains non-letters (spaces, numbers, or punctuation), you must always write it inside double quotes ("green apples", "ABC123").

If you write just a bare number, that too will have a commodity, with name ""; we call that the "no-symbol commodity".

Actually, hledger combines these single-commodity amounts into more powerful multi-commodity amounts, which are what it works with most of the time. A multi-commodity amount could be, eg: 1 USD, 2 EUR, 3.456 TSLA. In practice, you will only see multi-commodity amounts in hledger's output; you can't write them directly in the journal file.

By default, the format of amounts in the journal influences how hledger displays them in output. This is explained in Commodity display style below.

Costs

When one commodity is exchanged for another - a currency conversion, or a purchase or sale of stock - you can record the transacted price or conversion rate by writing @ UNITCOST or @@ TOTALCOST after a posting amount. (hledger docs generically call this a "cost", whether buying or selling, though "cost" is an overloaded word. "Transacted cost" or "transacted price" is more precise.) Eg:

2026-01-01 buy euros
  assets:dollars     $-123
  assets:euros        €100 @ $1.23    ; unit cost (exchange rate)

or:

2026-01-01 buy euros
  assets:dollars     $-123
  assets:euros        €100 @@ $123    ; total cost

The cost should normally be a positive amount. Negative costs are supported, but can be confusing, as discussed at --infer-market-prices: market prices from transactions.

Costs participate in transaction balancing: amounts are converted to their cost before checking if the transaction is balanced. So you could also write the above less redundantly, like so:

2026-01-01 buy euros
  assets:dollars                      ; $-123 is inferred
  assets:euros        €100 @ $1.23

or:

2026-01-01 buy euros
  assets:dollars                      ; $-123 is inferred
  assets:euros        €100 @@ $123

or even:

2026-01-01 buy euros
  assets:euros        €100            ;  @@ $123 is inferred
  assets:dollars     $-123

This last form works for transactions involving exactly two commodities, with neither cost notation nor equity postings. If one of the postings is recognised as a lot posting, the cost will be attached to that one. Otherwise the cost will be attached to the first (top) posting - so it can be important to put the right one first. Here we had to switch the order of postings, to get the same meaning as above.

This form is the easiest to make undetected errors with; so it is rejected by hledger check balanced, and by strict mode.

Reports can show amounts converted to their cost when you add the -B/--cost flag.

Costs can also be recorded in a more traditional double entry way, with equity postings; or with both notations at once. See Cost reporting for a comparison of these styles, and how hledger can convert between them.

Cost basis

This section briefly describes the {} cost basis syntax, used to record the nominal cost of an investment being acquired, or to select lots being transferred or disposed. This is described in more detail later in Lot reporting. If you're not tracking investment lots and capital gains, you can skip this.

hledger's cost basis annotations look like Beancount's: comma-separated parts enclosed in curly braces, after an amount. All parts are optional, but when present they must be in this order:

1. a date, in YYYY-MM-DD format
2. a text label, enclosed in double quotes
3. a cost, as a single-commodity hledger amount.

Here are some valid hledger cost basis annotations:

{2026-01-15, "12:05", $50}
{2026-01-15, $50}
{1.000.000,33 EUR}
{$50}
{}

This means: selling 10 AAPL, originally purchased at $50 each, for $60 each:

-10 AAPL {$50} @ $60

Note the preferred order is to write {} before @, as shown.

hledger can also read Ledger's cost basis syntax. Here, the parts are written separately, in any order, with different enclosing characters:

10 AAPL {$50} [2026-01-15] (12:05)

If a Ledger-style label annotation contains double quotes, they will be stripped (("foo") is read as label foo).

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 protect you from, eg, inadvertently disrupting reconciled balances while cleaning up old entries. You can disable them temporarily with the -I or --ignore-assertions flag, which can be useful for troubleshooting or for reading Ledger files. (Note: this flag currently does not disable balance assignments, described below).

Assertions and ordering

hledger calculates and checks an account's balance assertions in date order (and when there are multiple assertions on the same day, in parse order). Note this is different from Ledger, which checks assertions always in parse order, ignoring dates.

This means in hledger you can freely reorder transactions, postings, or files, and balance assertions will usually keep working. The exception is when you reorder multiple postings on the same day, to the same account, which have balance assertions; those will likely need updating.

Assertions and multiple files

If an account has transactions appearing in multiple files, balance assertions can still work - but only if those files are part of a hierarchy made by include directives.

If the same files are specified with two -f options on the command line, the assertions in the second will not see the balances from the first.

To work around this, arrange your files in a hierarchy with include. Or, you could concatenate the files temporarily, and process them like one big file.

This is for stable, predictable reports: the file hierarchy is part of your data, while the order of command line arguments is not, and reordering your arguments should not change whether your assertions pass.

Assertions and costs

Balance assertions ignore costs, and should normally be written without one:

2019/1/1
  (a)     $1 @ €1 = $1

We do allow costs to be written in balance assertion amounts, however, and print shows them, but 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 costs), and because balance assignments do use costs (see below).

Assertions and commodities

The balance assertions described so far are "single commodity balance assertions": they assert and check the balance in one commodity, ignoring any others that may be present. This is how balance assertions work in Ledger also.

If an account contains multiple commodities, you can assert their balances by writing multiple postings with balance assertions, one for each commodity:

2013/1/1
  usd   $-1
  eur   €-1
  both

2013/1/2
  both    0 = $1
  both    0 = €1

In hledger you can make a stronger "sole commodity balance assertion" by writing two equals signs (== EXPECTEDBALANCE). This also asserts that there are no other commodities in the account besides the asserted one (or at least, that their current balance is zero):

2013/1/1
  usd   $-1  == $-1  ; these sole commodity assertions succeed
  eur   €-1  == €-1
  both      ;==  $1  ; this one would fail because 'both' contains $ and €

It's less easy to make a "sole commodities balance assertion" (note the plural) - ie, asserting that an account contains two or more specified commodities and no others. It can be done by

1. isolating each commodity in a subaccount, and asserting those
2. and also asserting there are no commodities in the parent account itself:

2013/1/1
  usd       $-1
  eur       €-1
  both        0 == 0   ; nothing up my sleeve
  both:usd   $1 == $1  ; a dollar here
  both:eur   €1 == €1  ; a euro there

Assertions and subaccounts

All of the balance assertions above (both = and ==) are "subaccount-exclusive balance assertions"; they ignore any balances that exist in deeper subaccounts.

In hledger you can make "subaccount-inclusive balance assertions" by adding a star after the equals (=* or ==*):

2019/1/1
  equity:start
  assets:checking  $10
  assets:savings   $10
  assets            $0 ==* $20  ; assets + subaccounts contains $20 and nothing else

Assertions and lot subaccounts

Lot subaccounts (a special kind of subaccount for tracking lots, discussed in "Lot reporting" below) have only limited support for balance assertions: the assertions will be checked correctly only if all postings to that lot mention the subaccount name explicitly.

Since it's common practice to leave lot subaccounts implicit, generally you should avoid writing balance assertions on individual lots. (close --lots also follows this rule.) If you forget, the balance assertion failure message will remind you. If you really need a balance assertion, you can usually write it on the parent account instead.

(The restriction is because transaction balancing amounts, balance assignments, and balance assertions must be calculated and checked before lot movements are known.) See also Lot postings and balance assertions.

Assertions and status

Balance assertions always consider postings of all statuses (unmarked, pending, or cleared); they are not affected by the -U/--unmarked / -P/--pending / -C/--cleared flags or the status: query.

Assertions and virtual postings

Balance assertions always consider both real and virtual postings; they are not affected by the --real/-R flag or real: query.

Assertions and auto postings

Balance assertions are affected by the --auto flag, which generates auto postings, which can alter account balances. Because auto postings are optional in hledger, accounts affected by them effectively have two balances. But balance assertions can only test one or the other of these. So to avoid making fragile assertions, either:

• assert the balance calculated with --auto, and always use --auto with that file
• or assert the balance calculated without --auto, and never use --auto with that file
• or avoid balance assertions on accounts affected by auto postings (or avoid auto postings entirely).

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 assertions. Balance assertion failure messages show exact amounts.

Assertions and hledger add

The add command also accepts balance assertions (and assignments), and re-checks all of the journal's assertions as you enter amounts; see add and balance assertions.

Posting comments

Text following ;, at the end of a posting line, and/or on indented lines immediately below it, form comments for that posting. They are reproduced by print but otherwise ignored, except they may contain tags, which are not ignored.

2012-01-01
    expenses   1  ; a comment for posting 1
    assets
    ; a comment for posting 2
    ; a second comment line for posting 2

Transaction balancing

How exactly does hledger decide when a transaction is balanced ? Especially when it involves costs, which often are not exact, because of repeating decimals, or imperfect data from financial institutions ? In each commodity, hledger sums the transaction's posting amounts, after converting any with costs; then it checks if that sum is zero, when rounded to a suitable number of decimal digits - which we call the balancing precision.

Since version 1.50, hledger infers balancing precision in each transaction from the amounts in that transaction's journal entry (like Ledger). Ie, when checking the balance of commodity A, it uses the highest decimal precision seen for A in the journal entry (excluding cost amounts). This makes transaction balancing robust; any imbalances must be visibly accounted for in the journal entry, display precision can be freely increased with -c, and compatibility with Ledger and Beancount journals is good.

Note that hledger versions before 1.50 worked differently: they allowed display precision to override the balancing precision. This masked small imbalances and caused fragility (see issue #2402). As a result, some journal entries (or CSV rules) that worked with hledger <1.50, are now rejected with an "unbalanced transaction" error. If you hit this problem, it's easy to fix:

• You can restore the old behaviour, by adding --txn-balancing=old to the command or to your ~/.hledger.conf file. This lets you keep using old journals unchanged, though without the above benefits.

• Or you can fix the problem entries (recommended). There are three ways, use whichever seems best:

  1. make cost amounts more precise (add more/better decimal digits)
  2. or make non-cost amounts less precise (remove unnecessary decimal digits that are raising the precision)
  3. or add a posting to absorb the imbalance (eg "expenses:rounding". Remember that one posting may omit the amount; that's convenient here.)

Tags

Tags are a way to add extra labels or data fields to transactions, postings, or accounts, which you can match with a tag: query in reports. (See queries below.)

Tags are a single word or hyphenated word, immediately followed by a full colon, written within a comment. (Yes, storing data in comments is slightly weird.) Here's a transaction with a tag:

2025-01-01 groceries        ; some-tag:
    assets:checking
    expenses:food       $1

A tag can have a value: a single line of text written after the colon (tag values can't contain newlines):

2025-01-01 groceries        ; tag1: this is tag1's value

Multiple tags can be separated by comma (so tag values can't contain commas):

2025-01-01 groceries        ; tag1:value 1, tag2:value 2, comment text

A tag can have multiple values:

2025-01-01 groceries        ; tag1:value 1, tag1:value 2

You can write each tag on its own line if you prefer (but they still can't contain commas):

2025-01-01 groceries
    ; tag1: value 1
    ; tag2: value 2

Tags can be attached to individual postings, rather than the overall transaction:

2025-01-01 rent
    assets:checking
    expenses:rent       $1000  ; postingtag:

Tags can be attached to accounts, in their account directive:

account assets:checking    ; acct-number: 123-45-6789

Tag propagation

In addition to what they are attached to, tags also affect related data in a few ways, allowing more powerful queries:

1. Accounts -> postings. Postings inherit tags from their account.
2. Transactions -> postings. Postings inherit tags from their transaction.
3. Postings -> transactions. Transactions also acquire the tags of their postings.

So when you use a tag: query to match whole transactions, individual postings, or accounts, it's good to understand how tags behave. Here's an example showing all three kinds of propagation:

account assets:checking
account expenses:food           ; atag:

2025-01-01 groceries            ; ttag:
    assets:checking             ; p1tag:
    expenses:food           $1  ; p2tag:

Displaying tags

You can use the tags command to list tag names or values.

The print command also shows tags.

You can use --pivot to display tag values in other reports, in various ways (eg appended to account names, like pseudo subaccounts).

When to use tags ?

Tags provide more dimensions of categorisation, complementing accounts and transaction descriptions. When to use each of these is somewhat a matter of taste. Accounts have the most built-in support, and regex queries on descriptions are also quite powerful. So you may not need tags at all. But if you want to track multiple cross-cutting categories, they can be a good fit. For example, you could tag trip-related transactions with trip: YEAR:PLACE, without disturbing your usual account categories.

Tag names

What is allowed in a tag name ? Any sequence of non-whitespace non-newline characters. Eg 😀: is a valid tag.

For extra error checking, you can declare valid tag names with the tag directive, and then enforce these with the check command. But note that tags are detected quite loosely at present, sometimes where you didn't intend them. Eg a comment like ; see https://foo.com adds a https tag.

There are several tag names which have special significance to hledger. They are explained elsewhere, but here's a quick reference:

 type                   -- declares an account's type
 date                   -- overrides a posting's date
 date2                  -- overrides a posting's secondary date
 assert                 -- appears on txns generated by close --assert
 retain                 -- appears on txns generated by close --retain
 start                  -- appears on txns generated by close --migrate/--close/--open/--assign
 t                      -- appears on postings generated from timedot letters

 generated-transaction  -- appears on txns generated by a periodic rule
 modified-transaction   -- appears on txns which have had auto postings added
 generated-posting      -- appears on generated postings
 cost-posting           -- appears on postings which have (or could have) a cost,
                           and which have equivalent conversion postings in the transaction
 conversion-posting     -- appears on postings which are to a V/Conversion account
                           and which have an equivalent cost posting in the transaction
 ptype                  -- appears on lot postings, with their type (acquire, dispose, etc.)
 feesplit-posting       -- appears on fee parts split off a lot transfer posting
 lotsplit-posting       -- appears on extra parts of a posting split across several lots
 lot-parent-assertion   -- appears on postings carrying a balance assertion moved
                           from a posting that was split across several lots

The second group above (generated-transaction, etc.) are normally hidden, with a _ prefix added. This means print doesn't show them by default; but you can still use them in queries. You can add the --verbose-tags flag to make them visible in print output, which can be useful for troubleshooting.

Tag values

What is allowed in a tag value ? Any sequence of non-comma non-newline characters, with surrounding whitespace removed.

Note a tag can have multiple values, if the tag is repeated. Eg ; foo:a, foo:b.

Directives

You can add directives to a journal file, to add error checking, improve parsing, et cetera. hledger's directives are broadly similar to Ledger's, though with differences. Directives begin with a keyword, not a date. Some of them can have indented subdirectives.

Some directives affect only the subsequent entries, and any included subfiles, until the end of the current file. This makes reports stable and deterministic, regardless of the order of -f options or the positions of include directives. This is sometimes inconvenient, but there are usually workarounds. Eg, to have alias directives affect all of your files, put them at the start of the main file, before any includes.

account directive

account directives can be used to declare accounts (ie, the places that amounts are transferred from and to). Though not required, these declarations can provide several benefits:

• They can document your intended chart of accounts, providing a reference.
• They can store additional account information as comments, or as tags which can be used to filter or pivot reports.
• They can restrict which accounts may be posted to by transactions, eg in strict mode, which helps prevent errors.
• They influence account display order in reports, allowing non-alphabetic sorting (eg Revenues to appear above Expenses).
• They can help hledger know your accounts' types (asset, liability, equity, revenue, expense), enabling reports like balancesheet and incomestatement.
• They help with account name completion (in hledger add, hledger-web, hledger-iadd, ledger-mode, etc.)

They are written as the word account followed by a hledger-style account name. Eg:

account assets:bank:checking

Any indented subdirectives are ignored.

Account comments

Text following two or more spaces and ; at the end of an account directive line, and/or following ; on indented lines immediately below it, form comments for that account.

Same-line account comments require two+ spaces before ; because that character can appear in account names.

account assets:bank:checking    ; same-line comment, at least 2 spaces before the semicolon
  ; next-line comment
  ; some tags - type:A, acctnum:12345

Account tags

An account directive's comment may contain tags. These will be inherited by all postings using that account, except where the posting already has a value for that tag. (A posting tag overrides an account tag.) Note, these tags will be queryable but won't be shown in print output, even with --verbose-tags.

Account error checking

By default, accounts need not be declared; they come into existence when a posting references them. This is convenient, but it means hledger can't warn you when you mis-spell an account name in the journal. Usually you'll find that error later, as an extra account in balance reports, or an incorrect balance when reconciling.

In strict mode, enabled with the -s/--strict flag, or when you run hledger check accounts, hledger will report an error if any transaction uses an account name that has not been declared by an account directive. Some notes:

• The declaration is case-sensitive; transactions must use the correct account name capitalisation.
• The account directive's scope is "whole file and below" (see directives). This means it affects all of the current file, and any files it includes, but not parent or sibling files. The position of account directives within the file does not matter, though it's usual to put them at the top.
• Accounts can only be declared in journal files, but will affect included files of all types.
• It's currently not possible to declare "all possible subaccounts" with a wildcard; every account posted to must be declared.
• As an exception: lot subaccounts (a final account name component like :{2026-01-15, $50}) are always ignored by check accounts, and need not be declared.
• If you use the --infer-equity flag, you will also need declarations for the account names it generates.

Account display order

Account directives also cause hledger to display accounts in a particular order, not just alphabetically. Eg, here is a conventional ordering for the top-level accounts:

account assets
account liabilities
account equity
account revenues
account expenses

Now hledger displays them in that order:

$ hledger accounts
assets
liabilities
equity
revenues
expenses

If there are undeclared accounts, those will be displayed last, in alphabetical order.

Sorting is done within each group of sibling accounts, at each level of the account tree. Eg, a declaration like account parent:child influences child's position among its siblings.

Note, it does not affect parent's position; for that, you need an account parent declaration.

Sibling accounts are always displayed together; hledger won't display x:y in between a:b and a:c.

An account directive both declares an account as a valid posting target, and declares its display order; you can't easily do one without the other.

Account types

hledger knows that in accounting there are three main account types:

and two more representing changes in these:

hledger also uses a few subtypes:

As a convenience, hledger will detect these types automatically from english account names. But it's better to declare them explicitly by adding a type: tag in the account directives. The tag's value can be any of the types or one-letter abbreviations above.

Here is a typical set of account type declarations. Subaccounts will inherit their parent's type, or can override it:

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

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

account equity:conversion       ; type: V
account equity:unrealised-gain  ; type: U

account revenues:gain           ; type: G

This enables the easy balancesheet, balancesheetequity, cashflow and incomestatement reports, and querying by type:.

Tips:

• You can list accounts and their types, for troubleshooting:

  $ hledger accounts --types [ACCTPAT] [type:TYPECODES] [-DEPTH] [--locations]
  

• It's a good idea to declare at least one account for each account type. Having some types declared and some inferred can disrupt certain reports.

• The rules for inferring types from account names are as follows (using Regular expressions).
  If they don't work for you, just ignore them and declare your types with type: tags.

  If account's name contains this case insensitive regular expression | its type is
  --------------------------------------------------------------------|-------------
  ^assets?(:.+)?:(cash|bank|che(ck|que?)(ing)?|savings?|current)(:|$) | Cash
  ^assets?(:|$)                                                       | Asset
  ^(debts?|liabilit(y|ies))(:|$)                                      | Liability
  ^equity:(trad(e|ing)|conversion)s?(:|$)                             | Conversion
  ^equity:unreali[sz]ed([- ](capital[- ])?gains?)?(:|$)               | UnrealisedGain
  ^equity(:|$)                                                        | Equity
  ^(income|revenue)s?:(capital[- ]?)?(gains?|loss(es)?)(:|$)          | Gain
  ^(income|revenue)s?(:|$)                                            | Revenue
  ^expenses?(:|$)                                                     | Expense
  

• As mentioned above, subaccounts will inherit a type from their parent account. To be precise, an account's type is decided by the first of these that exists:

  1. A type: declaration for this account.
  2. A type: declaration in the parent accounts above it, preferring the nearest.
  3. An account type inferred from this account's name.
  4. An account type inferred from a parent account's name, preferring the nearest parent.
  5. Otherwise, it will have no type.

• Account aliases can disrupt account types.

alias directive

You can define account alias rules which rewrite your account names, or parts of them, before generating reports. This can be useful for:

• expanding shorthand account names to their full form, allowing easier data entry and a less verbose journal
• adapting old journals to your current chart of accounts
• experimenting with new account organisations, like a new hierarchy
• combining two accounts into one, eg to see their sum or difference on one line
• 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.

Account aliases are very powerful. They are generally easy to use correctly, but you can also generate invalid account names with them; more on this below.

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 (but note: not sibling or parent 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 replace any occurrence of the old account name with the new one. Subaccounts 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 wrapping the pattern in forward slashes. (This is the only place where hledger requires forward slashes around a regular expression.)

Eg:

alias /REGEX/ = REPLACEMENT

or:

$ hledger --alias '/REGEX/=REPLACEMENT' ...

Any part of an account name matched by REGEX will be replaced by REPLACEMENT. REGEX is case-insensitive as usual.

If you need to match a forward slash, escape it with a backslash, eg /\/=:.

If REGEX contains parenthesised match groups, these can be referenced by the usual backslash and number in REPLACEMENT:

alias /^(.+):bank:([^:]+):(.*)/ = \1:\2 \3
; rewrites "assets:bank:wells fargo:checking" to  "assets:wells fargo checking"

REPLACEMENT continues to the end of line (or on command line, to end of option argument), so it can contain trailing whitespace.

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:

• the nearest alias declaration before/above the entry is applied first
• the next alias before/above that will be applied next, and so on
• aliases defined after/below the entry do not affect it.

This gives nearby aliases precedence over distant ones, and helps provide semantic stability - aliases will keep working the same way independent 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.

Aliases and multiple files

As explained at Directives, alias directives do not affect parent or sibling files. Eg in this command,

hledger -f a.aliases -f b.journal

account aliases defined in a.aliases will not affect b.journal. Including the aliases doesn't work either:

include a.aliases

2023-01-01  ; not affected by a.aliases
  foo  1
  bar

This means that account aliases should usually be declared at the start of your top-most file, like this:

alias foo=Foo
alias bar=Bar

2023-01-01  ; affected by aliases above
  foo  1
  bar

include c.journal  ; also affected

end aliases directive

You can clear (forget) all currently defined aliases (seen in the journal so far, or defined on the command line) with this directive:

end aliases

Aliases can generate bad account names

Be aware that account aliases can produce malformed account names, which could cause confusing reports or invalid print output. For example, you could erase all account names:

2021-01-01
  a:aa     1
  b

$ hledger print --alias '/.*/='
2021-01-01
                   1

The above print output is not a valid journal. Or you could insert an illegal double space, causing print output that would give a different journal when reparsed:

2021-01-01
  old    1
  other

$ hledger print --alias old="new  USD" | hledger -f- print
2021-01-01
    new             USD 1
    other

Aliases and account types

If an account with a type declaration (see Declaring accounts > Account types) is renamed by an alias, normally the account type remains in effect.

However, renaming in a way that reshapes the account tree (eg renaming parent accounts but not their children, or vice versa) could prevent child accounts from inheriting the account type of their parents.

Secondly, if an account's type is being inferred from its name, renaming it by an alias could prevent or alter that.

If you are using account aliases and the type: query is not matching accounts as you expect, try troubleshooting with the accounts command, eg something like:

$ hledger accounts --types -1 --alias assets=bassetts

comment directive

A line containing just comment causes all following lines to be ignored, until an end comment directive or file end.

end comment directive

A line containing just end comment ends the effect of a preceding comment directive.

commodity directive

commodity directives declare commodity symbols (for error checking) and their preferred display style (digit group marks, decimal digits, and symbol position). Eg:

commodity $1,000.00
commodity 1000,00 EUR
commodity ₹ 1,00,00,000.00
commodity 1000.   ; the no-symbol commodity

The sample amount must include a decimal mark (even if there are no decimal digits after it). This tells the parser which decimal mark (period or comma) is used for this commodity in the journal file, which can be useful in case of ambiguous digit group marks. This effect lasts until the end of the current file tree (from a single -f or LEDGER_FILE), and it can be overridden by by a decimal-mark directive.

Commodity directive syntax

In more detail. A commodity directive is normally the word commodity followed by a sample amount (only its format is significant), and optionally a comment. Eg:

commodity $1000.00
commodity 1.000,00 EUR
commodity 1 000 000.0000   ; the no-symbol commodity

A commodity directive's sample amount must always include a decimal mark (period or comma). If you don't want to show any decimal digits, write the decimal mark at the end:

commodity 1000. AAAA       ; show AAAA with no decimals

Commodity symbols containing spaces, numbers, or punctuation must be enclosed in double quotes, as usual:

commodity 1.0000 "AAAA 2023"

Commodity directives normally include a sample amount, but can declare only a symbol (ie, just function 1 above):

commodity $
commodity INR
commodity "AAAA 2023"
commodity ""               ; the no-symbol commodity

Commodity directives may also be written with an indented format subdirective, as in Ledger. The symbol is repeated and must be the same in both places. Other subdirectives are ignored:

; 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
  other subdirective  ; ignored

Commodity tags

A commodity directive's comment may contain tags. These will be inherited by all postings using that commodity in their main amount, except where the posting already has a value for that tag. (A posting tag or an account tag overrides a commodity tag.) Note, these tags will be queryable but won't be shown in print output, even with --verbose-tags.

Commodity aliases

An alias: tag on a commodity directive declares one or more aliases (alternate symbols) for the commodity. Here USD has three aliases:

commodity USD 1.00    ; alias: $ US$ "us dollars"

A 1:1 market price is inferred between each these (it can be seen with the prices command); so -X reports can freely convert between them. This is useful eg if your journal and your downloaded market price data use different symbols for a commodity.

Multiple aliases can be separated by whitespace. Symbols containing spaces should be enclosed in double or single quotes:

commodity USD1.00
    ; alias: $ US$ "US DOLLAR"

Aliased symbols are also accepted by hledger check commodities, so you don't need a separate commodity directive for each alias.

If the same alias is declared on two different commodities, hledger reports an error.

Commodity error checking

In strict mode (-s/--strict) (or when you run hledger check commodities), hledger will report an error if an undeclared commodity symbol is used. (With one exception: zero amounts are always allowed to have no commodity symbol.) It works like account error checking (described above).

decimal-mark directive

You can use a decimal-mark directive to declare unambiguously which character (period or comma) represents a decimal mark, for all subsequent amounts until the end of the current file. This helps when parsing ambiguous numbers (like 1.000 or 1,000 where you mean one thousand, not one). It also makes hledger check that numbers use that decimal mark and no other, which catches some typos and misparsed numbers. With decimal-mark ,, a number like 1,000.00 is reported as an error; and with decimal-mark ., a number like 1.2.34 is reported as an error, instead of being read as 1234.

Eg, at the top of each journal file:

decimal-mark .

or

decimal-mark ,

This directive only affects parsing, and it takes precedence over commodity directives. So you can declare preferred decimal marks for display, which may be different from the decimal mark(s) used in the data files. (The amounts in commodity and D directives are allowed to use a different decimal mark.)

Without a decimal-mark directive, a commodity directive's decimal mark is used to interpret that commodity's ambiguous numbers, but it is not enforced: numbers like 1.2.34 or 1.000,00 (when the format is 1,000.00) are accepted. So if you want these checks, use decimal-mark.

include directive

You can pull in the content of additional files by writing an include directive, like this:

include SOMEFILE

This has the same effect as if SOMEFILE's content was inlined at this point. (With any include directives in SOMEFILE processed similarly, recursively.)

Only journal files can include other files. They can include journal, timeclock, timedot, CSV/SSV/TSV, or CSV rules files.

When a CSV file is included, its rules file is FILE.rules alongside it, as usual; the --rules option is not used here. To use a different rules file, or a data file located elsewhere (eg in your downloads directory), include a rules file which has a source rule instead. Transactions generated from included CSV data are treated like inlined journal entries: they are placed at this point, any account aliases in effect are applied to them, and their balance assertions are checked along with the rest of the journal (unlike when reading a CSV file directly, where balance assertions are ignored). Other directives which affect journal parsing (like Y, D, decimal-mark, apply account) do not affect CSV data. Note that if you include a CSV file in your main journal, you should not also import it, or its transactions would be duplicated.

If the file path begins with a tilde, that means your home directory: include ~/main.journal.

If it begins with a slash, it is an absolute path: include /home/user/main.journal. Otherwise it is relative to the including file's folder: include ../finances/main.journal.

Also, the path may have a file type prefix to force a specific file format, overriding the file extension(s) (as described in Data formats): include timedot:notes/2023.md.

The path may contain glob patterns to match multiple files. hledger's globs are similar to zsh's: ? to match any character; [a-z] to match any character in a range; * to match zero or more characters that aren't a path separator (like /); ** to match zero or more subdirectories and/or zero or more characters at the start of a file name; etc. For convenience, include always excludes the current file. So, you can do

• include *.journal to include all other journal files in the current directory (excluding dot files)
• include **.journal to include all other journal files in this directory and below (excluding dot files and top-level dot directories)
• include timelogs/2???.timedot to include all timedot files named like a year number.

Note * and ** usually won't match dot files or dot directories, with one exception: ** does search non-top-level dot directories. If this causes problems, make your glob pattern more specific (eg **.journal instead of **).

If you are using many, or deeply nested, include files, and have an error that's hard to pinpoint: a good troubleshooting command is hledger files --debug=6 (or 7).

P directive

The P directive declares a market price, which is a conversion rate between two commodities on a certain date. This allows value reports to convert amounts of one commodity to their value in another, on or after that date. These prices are often obtained from a stock exchange, cryptocurrency exchange, or the foreign exchange market.

The format is:

P DATE COMMODITY1SYMBOL COMMODITY2AMOUNT

DATE is a simple date, COMMODITY1SYMBOL is the symbol of the commodity being priced, and COMMODITY2AMOUNT is the amount (symbol and quantity) of commodity 2 that one unit of commodity 1 is worth on this date. Examples:

# one euro was worth $1.35 from 2009-01-01 onward:
P 2009-01-01 € $1.35

# and $1.40 from 2010-01-01 onward:
P 2010-01-01 € $1.40

The -V, -X and --value flags use these market prices to show amount values in another commodity. See Value reporting.

payee directive

payee PAYEE NAME

This directive can be used to declare a limited set of payees which may appear in transaction descriptions. The "payees" check will report an error if any transaction refers to a payee that has not been declared. (This is quite a strict check, and not often used.)

Eg:

payee Whole Foods    ; a comment

To declare the empty payee name, use "".

payee ""

Payees do not support tags. Any indented subdirectives are ignored.

tag directive

tag TAGNAME

This directive can be used to declare a limited set of tag names allowed in tags. TAGNAME should be a valid tag name (no spaces). Eg:

tag  item-id

Any indented subdirectives are ignored.

The "tags" check will report an error if any undeclared tag name is used. It is quite easy to accidentally create a tag through normal use of colons in comments; if you want to prevent this, you can declare and check your tags.

Periodic transactions

The ~ directive declares a "periodic rule" which generates temporary extra transactions, usually recurring at some interval, when hledger is run with the --forecast flag. These "forecast transactions" are useful for forecasting future activity. They exist only at report time, when --forecast is used; they are not saved in the journal file.

Periodic rules also have a second use: with the --budget flag they set budget goals for budgeting.

Periodic rules can be a little tricky, so before you use them, read this whole section, or at least the following tips:

1. Two spaces accidentally added or omitted in the rule will cause you trouble - see 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-forecasted 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 with report intervals can be tricky; note how they make start/end date adjustments.

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.):

# every first of month
~ monthly
    expenses:rent          $2000
    assets:bank:checking

# every 15th of month in 2023's second quarter:
~ monthly from 2023-04-15 to 2023-06-16
    expenses:utilities          $400
    assets:bank:checking

The period expression is the same syntax used for specifying multi-period reports, just interpreted differently; there, it specifies report periods; here it specifies recurrence dates (the periods' start dates).

Periodic rules and relative dates

Partial or relative dates (like 12/31, 25, tomorrow, last week, next quarter) are usually not recommended in periodic rules, since the results will change as time passes. If used, they will be interpreted relative to, in order of preference:

1. the first day of the default year specified by a recent Y directive
2. or the date specified with --today
3. or the date on which you are running the report.

They will not be affected at all by report period or forecast period dates.

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 accidentally alter their meaning, as in this example:

; 2 or more spaces needed here, so the period is not understood as "every 2 months in 2023"
;               ||
;               vv
~ every 2 months  in 2023, we will review
    assets:bank:checking   $1500
    income:acme inc

So,

• Do write two spaces between your period expression and your transaction description, if any.
• Don't accidentally write two spaces in the middle of your period expression.

Auto postings

The = directive declares an "auto posting rule", which adds extra postings to existing transactions. (Remember, postings are the account name & amount lines below a transaction's date & description.)

In the journal, an auto posting rule looks quite like a transaction, but instead of date and description it has = (mnemonic: "match") and a query, like this:

= QUERY
    ACCOUNT    AMOUNT
    ...

Queries are just like command line queries; an account name substring is most common. Query terms containing spaces should be enclosed in single or double quotes.

Each = rule works like this: when hledger is run with the --auto flag, wherever the QUERY matches a posting in the journal, the rule's postings are added to that transaction, immediately below the matched posting. Note these generated postings are temporary, existing only for the duration of the report, and only when --auto is used; they are not saved in the journal file by hledger.

The postings can contain the special string %account which will be expanded to the account name of the matched account.

Generated postings' amounts can depend on the matched posting's amount. So auto postings can be useful for, eg, adding tax postings with a standard percentage. AMOUNT can be:

• a number with no commodity symbol, like 2. The matched posting's commodity symbol will be added to this.

• a normal amount with a commodity symbol, like $2. This will be used as-is.

• an asterisk followed by a number, like *2. This will multiply the matched posting's amount (and total price, if any) by the number.

• an asterisk followed by an amount with commodity symbol, like *$2. This multiplies and also replaces the commodity symbol with this new one.

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

Note that depending fully on generated data such as this has some drawbacks - it's less portable, less future-proof, less auditable by others, and less robust (eg your balance assertions will depend on whether you use or don't use --auto). An alternative is to use auto postings in "one time" fashion - use them to help build a complex journal entry, view it with hledger print --auto, and then copy that output into the journal file to make it permanent.

Auto postings and multiple files

An auto posting rule can affect any transaction in the current file, or in any parent file or child file. Note, currently it will not affect sibling files (when multiple -f/--file are used - see #1212).

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 assertions

Currently, auto postings are added:

• after missing amounts are inferred, and transactions are checked for balancedness,
• but before balance assertions are checked.

Note this means that journal entries must be balanced both before and after auto postings are added.

This also means that you cannot have more than one auto-posting with a missing amount applied to a given transaction, as it will be unable to infer amounts.

Auto posting tags

Automated postings will have some extra tags:

• generated-posting:= QUERY - shows this was generated by an auto posting rule, and the query
• _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 auto posting rules will have these tags added:

• modified: - this transaction was modified
• _modified: - a hidden tag not appearing in the comment; this transaction was modified "just now".

Auto postings on forecast transactions only

Tip: you can can make auto postings that will apply to forecast transactions but not recorded transactions, by adding tag:_generated-transaction to their QUERY. This can be useful when generating new journal entries to be saved in the journal.

Other syntax

hledger journal format supports quite a few other features, mainly to make interoperating with or converting from Ledger easier. Note some of the features below are powerful and can be useful in special cases, but in general, features in this section are considered less important or even not recommended for most users. Downsides are mentioned to help you decide if you want to use them.

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 assignment).

Downsides: using balance assignments makes your journal less explicit; to know the exact amount posted, you have to run hledger or do the calculations yourself, instead of just reading it. Also balance assignments' forcing of balances can hide errors. These things make your financial data less portable, less future-proof, and less trustworthy in an audit.

Balance assignments and costs

A cost in a balance assignment will cause the calculated amount to have that cost attached:

2019/1/1
  (a)             = $1 @ €2

$ hledger print --explicit
2019-01-01
    (a)         $1 @ €2 = $1 @ €2

Balance assignments and multiple files

Balance assignments handle multiple files like balance assertions. They see balance from other files previously included from the current file, but not from previous sibling or parent files.

Bracketed posting dates

For setting posting dates and secondary posting dates, Ledger's bracketed date syntax is also supported: [DATE], [DATE=DATE2] or [=DATE2] in posting comments. 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.

Downsides: another syntax to learn, redundant with hledger's date:/date2: tags, and confusingly similar to Ledger's lot date syntax.

D directive

D AMOUNT

This directive sets a default commodity, to be used for any subsequent commodityless amounts (ie, plain numbers) seen while parsing the journal. This effect lasts until the next D directive, or the end of the current file.

For compatibility/historical reasons, D also acts like a commodity directive (setting the commodity's decimal mark for parsing and display style for output). So its argument is not just a commodity symbol, but a full amount demonstrating the style. The amount must include a decimal mark (either period or comma). 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

Interactions with other directives:

For setting a commodity's display style, a commodity directive has highest priority, then a D directive.

For detecting a commodity's decimal mark during parsing, decimal-mark has highest priority, then commodity, then D.

For checking commodity symbols with the check command, a commodity directive is required (hledger check commodities ignores D directives).

Downsides: omitting commodity symbols makes your financial data less explicit, less portable, and less trustworthy in an audit. It is usually an unsustainable shortcut; sooner or later you will want to track multiple commodities. D is overloaded with functions redundant with commodity and decimal-mark. And it works differently from Ledger's D.

apply account directive

This directive sets a default parent account, which will be prepended to all accounts in following entries, until an end apply account directive or end of current file. Eg:

apply account home

2010/1/1
    food    $10
    cash

end apply account

is equivalent to:

2010/01/01
    home:food           $10
    home:cash          $-10

account directives are also affected, and so is any included content.

Account names entered via hledger add or hledger-web are not affected.

Account aliases, if any, are applied after the parent account is prepended.

Downsides: this can make your financial data less explicit, less portable, and less trustworthy in an audit.

Y directive

Y YEAR

or (deprecated backward-compatible forms):

year YEAR apply year YEAR

The space is optional. This sets a default year to be used for subsequent dates which don't specify a year. Eg:

Y2009  ; set default year to 2009

12/15  ; equivalent to 2009/12/15
  expenses  1
  assets

year 2010  ; 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

Downsides: omitting the year (from primary transaction dates, at least) makes your financial data less explicit, less portable, and less trustworthy in an audit. Such dates can get separated from their corresponding Y directive, eg when evaluating a region of the journal in your editor. A missing Y directive makes reports dependent on today's date.

Secondary dates

A secondary date is written after the primary date, following an equals sign: DATE1=DATE2. If the year is omitted, the primary date's year is assumed. When running reports, the primary (left side) date is used by default, but with the --date2 flag (--aux-date or--effective also work, for Ledger users), the secondary (right side) date will be used instead.

The meaning of secondary dates is up to you. Eg it could be "primary is the bank's clearing date, secondary is the date the transaction was initiated, if different".

In practice, this feature usually adds confusion:

• You have to remember the primary and secondary dates' meaning, and follow that consistently.
• It splits your bookkeeping into two modes, and you have to remember which mode is appropriate for a given report.
• Usually your balance assertions will work with only one of these modes.
• It makes your financial data more complicated, less portable, and less clear in an audit.
• It interacts with every feature, creating an ongoing cost for implementors.
• It distracts new users and supporters.
• Posting dates are simpler and work better.

So secondary dates are officially deprecated in hledger, remaining only as a Ledger compatibility aid; we recommend using posting dates instead.

Star comments

Lines beginning with * (star/asterisk) are also comment lines, for Ledger compatibility. Emacs users can use these as foldable org headings. (But it's usually better to use ledger-mode, and add outshine minor mode for org-like folding.)

Valuation expressions

Ledger allows a valuation function or value to be written in double parentheses after an amount. hledger ignores these.

Virtual postings

A posting with parentheses around the account name, like (some:account) 10, is called an unbalanced virtual posting. These postings do not participate in transaction balancing. (And if you write them without an amount, a zero amount is always inferred.) These can occasionally be convenient for special circumstances, but they violate double entry bookkeeping and make your data less portable across applications, so many people avoid using them at all.

A posting with brackets around the account name ([some:account]) is called a balanced virtual posting. The balanced virtual postings in a transaction must add up to zero, just like ordinary postings, but separately from them. These are not part of double entry bookkeeping either, but they are at least balanced. An example:

2022-01-01 buy food with cash, update budget envelope subaccounts, & something else
  assets:cash                    $-10  ; <- these balance each other
  expenses:food                    $7  ; <-
  expenses:food                    $3  ; <-
  [assets:checking:budget:food]  $-10  ;   <- and these balance each other
  [assets:checking:available]     $10  ;   <-
  (something:else)                 $5  ;     <- this is not required to balance

Ordinary postings, whose account names are neither parenthesised nor bracketed, are called real postings. You can exclude virtual postings from reports with the -R/--real flag or a real:1 query.

Other Ledger directives

These other Ledger directives are currently accepted but ignored. This allows hledger to read more Ledger files, but be aware that hledger's reports may differ from Ledger's if you use these.

apply fixed COMM AMT
apply tag   TAG
assert      EXPR
bucket / A  ACCT
capture     ACCT REGEX
check       EXPR
define      VAR=EXPR
end apply fixed
end apply tag
end apply year
end tag
eval / expr EXPR
python
  PYTHONCODE
tag         NAME
value       EXPR
--command-line-flags

See also https://hledger.org/ledger.html for a detailed hledger/Ledger syntax comparison.

Ledger virtual costs

In Ledger, (@) UNITCOST and (@@) TOTALCOST are virtual costs, which do not generate market prices. In hledger, these are equivalent to @ and @@.

Ledger cost basis

In Ledger, these annotations after an amount help specify or select a lot's cost basis: {LOTUNITCOST} or {{LOTTOTALCOST}}, [LOTDATE], and/or (LOTNOTE). hledger will read these, as an alternative to its own cost basis syntax.

We also read Ledger's fixed price syntax, {=LOTUNITCOST} or {{=LOTTOTALCOST}}, treating it as equivalent to {LOTUNITCOST} or {{LOTTOTALCOST}}.

CSV

hledger can read transactions from CSV (comma-separated values) files. More precisely, it can read DSV (delimiter-separated values), from a file or standard input. Comma-separated, semicolon-separated and tab-separated are the most common variants, and hledger will recognise these three automatically based on a .csv, .ssv or .tsv file name extension or a csv:, ssv: or tsv: file path prefix.

(To learn about producing CSV or TSV output, see Output format.)

Each CSV file must be described by a corresponding rules file. This contains rules describing the CSV data (header line, fields layout, date format etc.), how to construct hledger transactions from it, and how to categorise transactions based on description or other attributes.

By default, hledger expects this rules file to be named like the CSV file, with an extra .rules extension added, in the same directory. Eg when asked to read foo/FILE.csv, hledger looks for foo/FILE.csv.rules. You can specify a different rules file with the --rules option (for CSV files specified on the command line; not for ones included by a journal file).

At minimum, the rules file must identify the date and amount fields, and often it also specifies the date format and how many header lines there are. Here's a simple CSV file and a rules file for it:

Date, Description, Id, Amount
12/11/2019, Foo, 123, 10.23

# basic.csv.rules
skip         1
fields       date, description, , amount
date-format  %d/%m/%Y

$ hledger print -f basic.csv
2019-11-12 Foo
    expenses:unknown           10.23
    income:unknown            -10.23

There's an introductory Tutorial: Import CSV data on hledger.org, and more CSV rules examples below, and a larger collection at https://github.com/hledgerorg/hledger/tree/main/examples/csv.

CSV rules cheatsheet

The following kinds of rule can appear in the rules file, in any order. (Blank lines and lines beginning with # or ; are ignored.)

Working with CSV tips can be found below, including How CSV rules are evaluated.

source

If you tell hledger to read a csv file with -f foo.csv, it will look for rules in foo.csv.rules. Or, you can tell it to read the rules file, with -f foo.csv.rules, and it will look for data in foo.csv. These are mostly equivalent, but the second method provides some extra features. For one, the data file can be missing, without causing an error; it is just considered empty.

For more flexibility, add a source rule, which lets you specify a different data file:

source ./Checking1.csv

If the file does not exist, it is just considered empty, without raising an error.

The file path is resolved this way:

• Absolute paths and ~-prefixed paths are used as-is.
• A path beginning with ./ or ../ (source ./Checking1.csv) is anchored relative to the rules file's directory (as in hledger 1).
• Any other relative path (source bank/Checking1.csv), or a bare file name (source Checking1.csv), is searched for first in a data/ directory next to the main journal file (also used by the archive rule and the get command), then in your ~/Downloads folder.

You can use a glob pattern, to avoid specifying the file name exactly:

source Checking1*.csv

This has another benefit: if the pattern matches multiple files, hledger will read the newest (most recently modified) one. This avoids problems if you have downloaded a file multiple times without cleaning up.

All this enables a convenient workflow where can you just download CSV files, then run hledger import rules/*.

See also "Working with CSV > Reading files specified by rule".

Data cleaning / data generating commands

After source's file pattern, you can write | (pipe) and a data cleaning command (or command pipeline) (since hledger 1.50). If hledger's CSV rules aren't enough, you can pre-process the downloaded data here with a shell command or script, to make it more suitable for conversion. The command will be executed by your default shell, in the directory of the rules file, will receive the data file's content as standard input, and should output zero or more lines of character-separated-values, suitable for conversion by the CSV rules.

Examples:

source ./paypal.json | paypalcsv
source data/simplefin.json | simplefincsv - 'chase.*card'
source OfxDownload*.csv | grep -vE '^(([^,]*,){6}[^,]*|)$' | sort -t, -n +2
source History_for_Account_Z20144832*.csv   # | grep -E '^([^,]*,){12}[^,]*$' | sed -E -e 's/^ //' -e 's/\.([0-9]),/.\10,/g' -e 's/,([0-9]+),/,\1.00,/g'

Or, after source you can write | and a data generating command (with no file pattern before the |). This command receives no input, and should output zero or more lines of character-separated values, suitable for conversion by the CSV rules.

Examples:

source | paypaljson | paypalcsv
source | paypalcsv data/paypal.json 
source | simplefinjson >data/simplefin.json && simplefincsv data/simplefin.json 'chase.*card'
source | simplefincsv data/simplefin.json 'unify.*checking'

(paypal* and simplefin* scripts are in bin/)

Whenever hledger runs one of these commands, it will echo the command on stderr. If the command produces error output, but exits successfully, hledger will show the error output as a warning. If a data cleaning command fails, hledger will fail and show the error output in the error message. If a data generating command fails, hledger will show the error as a warning and continue, treating this as if no data was found.

archive

With archive added to a rules file, the import command will archive each successfully processed data file or data command output in an archive/ subdirectory of the data/ directory next to the main journal file. The archive file name will be based on the rules file and the data file's modification date and extension (or for a data-generating command, the current date and the ".csv" extension). The original data file, once archived, will be removed.

Also, in this mode import will prefer the oldest file matched by the source rule's glob pattern, not the newest. (So if there are multiple downloads, they will be imported and archived oldest first.)

Archiving is optional, but it can be useful for troubleshooting your CSV rules, regenerating entries with improved rules, checking for variations in your bank's CSV, etc.

encoding

encoding ENCODING

hledger normally expects non-ascii text to be using the system locale's text encoding. If you need to read CSV files which have some other encoding, you can do it by adding encoding ENCODING to your CSV rules. Eg: encoding iso-8859-1.

The supported encodings are: ascii, utf-8, utf-16, utf-32, iso-8859-1 to iso-8859-11 and iso-8859-13 to iso-8859-16, cp1250 to cp1258, koi8-r, koi8-u, gb18030, macintosh, jis-x-0201, jis-x-0208, iso-2022-jp, shift-jis, cp437, cp737, cp775, cp850, cp852, cp855, cp857, cp860 to cp866, cp869, cp874, and cp932.

separator

You can use the separator rule to read other kinds of character-separated data. The argument is any single separator character, or the words tab or space (case insensitive). Eg, for comma-separated values (CSV):

separator ,

or for semicolon-separated values (SSV):

separator ;

or for tab-separated values (TSV):

separator TAB

If the input file has a .csv, .ssv or .tsv file extension (or a csv:, ssv:, tsv: prefix), the appropriate separator will be inferred automatically, and you won't need this rule.

skip

skip N

The word skip followed by a number (or no number, meaning 1) tells hledger to ignore this many non-empty lines at the start of the input data. You'll need this whenever your CSV data contains header lines. Note, empty and blank lines are skipped automatically, so you don't need to count those.

skip has a second meaning: it can be used inside if blocks (described below), to skip one or more records whenever the condition is true. Records skipped in this way are ignored, except they are still required to be valid CSV.

date-format

date-format DATEFMT

This is a helper for the date (and date2) fields. If your CSV dates are not formatted like YYYY-MM-DD, YYYY/MM/DD or YYYY.MM.DD, you'll need to add a date-format rule describing them with a strptime-style date parsing pattern - see https://hackage.haskell.org/package/time/docs/Data-Time-Format.html#v:formatTime. The pattern must parse the CSV date value completely. Some examples:

# MM/DD/YY
date-format %m/%d/%y

# D/M/YYYY
# The - makes leading zeros optional.
date-format %-d/%-m/%Y

# YYYY-Mmm-DD
date-format %Y-%h-%d

# M/D/YYYY HH:MM AM some other junk
# Note the time and junk must be fully parsed, though only the date is used.
date-format %-m/%-d/%Y %l:%M %p some other junk

Note currently there is no locale awareness for things like %b, and setting LC_TIME won't help.

timezone

timezone TIMEZONE

When CSV contains date-times that are implicitly in some time zone other than yours, but containing no explicit time zone information, you can use this rule to declare the CSV's native time zone, which helps prevent off-by-one dates.

When the CSV date-times do contain time zone information, you don't need this rule; instead, use %Z in date-format (or %z, %EZ, %Ez; see the formatTime link above).

In either of these cases, hledger will do a time-zone-aware conversion, localising the CSV date-times to your current system time zone. If you prefer to localise to some other time zone, eg for reproducibility, you can (on unix at least) set the output timezone with the TZ environment variable, eg:

$ TZ=-1000 hledger print -f foo.csv  # or TZ=-1000 hledger import foo.csv

timezone currently does not understand timezone names, except "UTC", "GMT", "EST", "EDT", "CST", "CDT", "MST", "MDT", "PST", or "PDT". For others, use numeric format: +HHMM or -HHMM.

newest-first

hledger tries to ensure that the generated transactions will be ordered chronologically, including same-day transactions. Usually it can auto-detect how the CSV records are ordered. But if it encounters CSV where all records are on the same date, it assumes that the records are oldest first. If in fact the CSV's records are normally newest first, like:

2022-10-01, txn 3...
2022-10-01, txn 2...
2022-10-01, txn 1...

you can add the newest-first rule to help hledger generate the transactions in correct order.

# same-day CSV records are newest first
newest-first

intra-day-reversed

If CSV records within a single day are ordered opposite to the overall record order, you can add the intra-day-reversed rule to improve the order of journal entries. Eg, here the overall record order is newest first, but same-day records are oldest first:

2022-10-02, txn 3...
2022-10-02, txn 4...
2022-10-01, txn 1...
2022-10-01, txn 2...

# transactions within each day are reversed with respect to the overall date order
intra-day-reversed

decimal-mark

decimal-mark .

or:

decimal-mark ,

hledger automatically accepts either period or comma as a decimal mark when parsing numbers (cf Amounts). However if any numbers in the CSV contain digit group marks, such as thousand-separating commas, you should declare the decimal mark explicitly with this rule, to avoid misparsed numbers. Like the decimal-mark directive, this also makes hledger report numbers using a different decimal mark, or repeating the declared one (like 1.2.34), as errors. This applies to amounts from the CSV fields and to amounts written in the rules.

CSV fields vs hledger fields

The main task of CSV rules is to convert CSV fields to hledger fields. It's important to know which is which, when you are creating rules:

1. CSV fields
   • are the parts of the records (lines) in your CSV data
   • are referenced by their position or assigned name, with a % prefix (eg %1 or %date)
   • are read-only.
2. hledger fields
   • are the parts of a hledger journal entry (see hledger field names) (eg date, description, account1, amount1)
   • are written to by rules to construct a journal entry
   • are write-only.

CSV rules can't read what has been written to a hledger field, or make new fields. In other words, you can't use "variables" in a rules file. (But you could add new CSV fields to the data before running rules, with a preprocessing script.)

It's ok for a CSV field and a hledger field to have the same name; this causes the CSV field's value to be copied to the hledger field. hledger knows which kind of field is meant from the context; also, CSV fields are usually written with a % prefix. Some examples:

# set the journal entry's date to the value of CSV field 1
date %1

# name the CSV fields, and use the first as the entry's date
fields date, bankamt

# test the value of the CSV date field
if %date 2026
 ...

fields list

fields FIELDNAME1, FIELDNAME2, ...

A fields list (the word fields followed by comma-separated field names) is optional, but convenient. It does two things:

1. It names the CSV field in each column. This can be convenient if you are referencing them in other rules, so you can say %SomeField instead of remembering %13.

2. Whenever you use one of the special hledger field names (described below), it assigns the CSV value in this position to that hledger field. This is the quickest way to populate hledger's fields and build a transaction.

Here's an example that says "use the 1st, 2nd and 4th fields as the transaction's date, description and amount; name the last two fields for later reference; and ignore the others":

fields date, description, , amount, , , somefield, anotherfield

In a fields list, the separator is always comma; it is unrelated to the CSV file's separator. Also:

• There must be least two items in the list (at least one comma).
• Field names may not contain spaces. Spaces before/after field names are optional.
• Field names may contain _ (underscore) or - (hyphen).
• Fields you don't care about can be given a dummy name or an empty name.

If the CSV contains column headings, it's convenient to use these for your field names, suitably modified (eg lower-cased with spaces replaced by underscores).

Sometimes you may want to alter a CSV field name to avoid assigning to a hledger field with the same name. Eg you could call the CSV's "balance" field balance_ to avoid directly setting hledger's balance field (and generating a balance assertion).

Field assignment

HLEDGERFIELD FIELDVALUE

Field assignments are the more flexible way to assign CSV values to hledger fields. They can be used instead of or in addition to a fields list (see above).

To assign a value to a hledger field, write the field name (any of the standard hledger field/pseudo-field names, defined below), a space, followed by a text value on the same line. This text value may interpolate CSV fields, referenced either by their 1-based position in the CSV record (%N) or by the name they were given in the fields list (%CSVFIELD), and regular expression match groups (\N). You can also write %(CSVFIELD) to delimit the field name from adjacent text (eg %(field)suffix). When CSV records have been combined by a merge rule, a _ROWNUM suffix (eg %amt_2, %4_2) references the later rows' fields.

Some examples:

# set the amount to the 4th CSV field, with " USD" appended
amount %4 USD

# combine three fields to make a comment, containing note: and date: tags
comment note: %somefield - %anotherfield, date: %1

# use parenthesised form when the field name would run into adjacent text
account1 assets:%(type)checking

Tips:

• Interpolation strips outer whitespace (so a CSV value like " 1 " becomes 1 when interpolated) (#1051).
• Interpolations always refer to a CSV field - you can't interpolate a hledger field. (See Referencing other fields below).

hledger field names

Here are all the hledger fields you can assign to. They correspond to parts of a journal entry, or in some cases they are pseudo-fields which have a special effect.

date field

Assigning to date sets the transaction date. This is required.

date2 field

date2 sets the transaction's secondary date, if any.

status field

status sets the transaction's status, if any.

code field

code sets the transaction's code, if any.

Journal format can't represent a right parenthesis in a code (when reparsed, it would end the code early). So any right parentheses here will be replaced with ], with a warning.

description field

description sets the transaction's description, if any.

Journal format can't represent a semicolon in a description (when reparsed, it would start a comment, truncating the description). So any semicolons here will be replaced with ., (a semicolon on its side), and a warning is printed.

comment field

comment sets the transaction's comment, if any.

commentN, where N is a number, sets the Nth posting's comment.

You can assign multi-line comments by writing literal \n in the code. A comment starting with \n will begin on a new line.

Comments can contain tags, as usual.

Posting comments can also contain a posting date. A secondary date, or a year-less date, will be ignored.

account field

Assigning to accountN, where N is 1 to 99, sets the account name of the Nth posting, and causes that posting to be generated.

Most often there are two postings, so you'll want to set account1 and account2. Typically account1 is associated with the CSV file, and is set once with a top-level assignment, while account2 is set based on each transaction's description, in conditional rules.

If a posting's account name is left unset but its amount is set, the account name will be set to expenses:unknown or income:unknown (depending on the amount's sign).

amount field

There are several ways to set posting amounts from CSV, useful in different situations.

1. amount is the oldest and simplest. Assigning to this sets the amount of the first and second postings. In the second posting, the amount will be negated; also, if it has a cost attached, it will be converted to cost.

2. amount-in and amount-out work exactly like the above, but should be used when the CSV has two amount fields (such as "Debit" and "Credit", or "Inflow" and "Outflow"). Whichever field has a non-zero value will be used as the amount of the first and second postings. Here are some tips to avoid confusion:

   • It's not "amount-in for posting 1 and amount-out for posting 2", it is "extract a single amount from the amount-in or amount-out field, and use that for posting 1 and (negated) for posting 2".
   • Don't use both amount and amount-in/amount-out in the same rules file; choose based on whether the amount is in a single CSV field or spread across two fields.
   • In each record, at most one of the two CSV fields should contain a non-zero amount; the other field must contain a zero or nothing.
   • hledger assumes both CSV fields contain unsigned numbers, and it automatically negates the amount-out values.
   • If the data doesn't fit these requirements, you'll probably need an if rule (see below).

3. amountN (where N is a number from 1 to 99) sets the amount of only a single posting: the Nth posting in the transaction. You'll usually need at least two such assignments to make a balanced transaction. You can also generate more than two postings, to represent more complex transactions. The posting numbers don't have to be consecutive; with if rules, higher posting numbers can be useful to ensure a certain order of postings.

4. amountN-in and amountN-out work exactly like the above, but should be used when the CSV has two amount fields. This is analogous to amount-in and amount-out, and those tips also apply here.

5. Remember that a fields list can also do assignments. So in a fields list if you name a CSV field "amount", that counts as assigning to amount. (If you don't want that, call it something else in the fields list, like "amount_".)

6. The above don't handle every situation; if you need more flexibility, use an if rule to set amounts conditionally. See "Working with CSV > Setting amounts" below for more on this and on amount-setting generally.

currency field

currency sets a currency symbol, to be prepended to all postings' amounts. You can use this if the CSV amounts do not have a currency symbol, eg if it is in a separate column.

currencyN prepends a currency symbol to just the Nth posting's amount.

balance field

balanceN sets a balance assertion amount (or if the posting amount is left empty, a balance assignment) on posting N.

balance is a compatibility spelling for hledger <1.17; it is equivalent to balance1.

You can adjust the type of assertion/assignment with the balance-type rule (see below).

See the Working with CSV tips below for more about setting amounts and currency.

if

Rules can be applied conditionally, depending on patterns in the CSV data. This is how you can categorise transactions, selecting an appropriate account based on their description (eg).

An "if block" is the word if, followed by one or more "matcher" expressions starting on the same line or the next line, followed by one or more indented rules. Eg,

if MATCHER
 RULE

or

if
MATCHER
MATCHER
MATCHER
 RULE
 RULE

Comment lines can appear anywhere within an if block, and blank lines can also appear among the indented rules; these do not end the block. (One exception: a matcher on the same line as if can begin with a comment character (eg if #groceries matches records containing "#groceries"); but on the lines below if, such a line would be read as a comment. There, escape the comment character with a backslash, eg \#groceries.)

If any of the matchers succeeds, all of the indented rules will be applied. The rules are usually field assignments, but the following special rules may also be used within an if block:

• skip - skips the matched CSV record (generating no transaction from it)
• end - skips the rest of the current CSV file.
• merge - combines the matched CSV record and the next record(s) into one record (described below).

Some examples:

# if the record contains "groceries", set account2 to "expenses:groceries"
if groceries
 account2 expenses:groceries

# if the record contains any of these phrases, set account2 and a transaction comment as shown
if
monthly service fee
atm transaction fee
banking thru software
 account2 expenses:business:banking
 comment  XXX deductible ? check it

# if an empty record is seen (assuming five fields), ignore the rest of the CSV file
if ,,,,
 end

Matchers

There are two kinds of matcher:

1. A whole record matcher is simplest: it is just a word, single-line text fragment, or other regular expression, which hledger will try to match case-insensitively anywhere within the CSV record.
   Eg: whole foods.

2. A field matcher has a percent-prefixed CSV field number or name before the pattern.
   Eg: %3 whole foods or %description whole foods.
   hledger will try to match the pattern just within the named CSV field. (In records combined by a merge rule, a _ROWNUM suffix selects a later row's field, eg %description_2.)

When using these, there's two things to be aware of:

1. Whole record matchers don't see the exact original record; they see a reconstruction of it, in which values are comma-separated, and quotes enclosing values and whitespace outside those quotes are removed.
   Eg when reading an SSV record like: 2023-01-01 ; "Acme, Inc. " ; 1,000
   the whole record matcher sees instead: 2023-01-01,Acme, Inc. ,1,000

2. Field matchers expect either a CSV field number, or a CSV field name declared with fields. Anything else will cause it to match against the empty string, and probably fail silently (this makes it easier to reuse common rules with different CSV files). Don't use a hledger field name here (see CSV fields vs hledger fields).

You can also prefix a matcher with ! to negate it. Eg ! whole foods, ! %3 whole foods, !%description whole foods will match if "whole foods" is NOT present.

The pattern is, as usual in hledger, a POSIX extended regular expression that also supports GNU word boundaries (\b, \B, \<, \>) and nothing else. For more details and tips, see Regular expressions in CSV rules below.

Multiple matchers

When an if block has multiple matchers, each on its own line,

• By default they are OR'd (any of them can match).
• Matcher lines beginning with & (or &&) are AND'ed with the matcher above (all in the AND'ed group must match).
• Matcher lines beginning with & ! (or && !) are first negated and then AND'ed with the matcher above.

You can also combine multiple matchers on the same line separated by && (AND) or && ! (AND NOT). Eg %description amazon && %date 2025-01-01 will match only when the description field contains "amazon" and the date field contains "2025-01-01".

Match groups

Matchers can define match groups: parenthesised portions of the regular expression which are available for reference in field assignments. Groups are enclosed in regular parentheses (( and )) and can be nested. Each group is available in field assignments using the token \N, where N is an index into the match groups for this conditional block (e.g. \1, \2, etc.).

Example: Warp credit card payment postings to the beginning of the billing period (Month start), to match how they are presented in statements, using posting dates:

if %date (....-..)-..
  comment2 date:\1-01

Another example: Read the expense account from the CSV field, but throw away a prefix:

if %account1 liabilities:family:(expenses:.*)
    account1 \1

if table

"if tables" are another way of writing if rules, in a more compact format.

• The first line begins with if, immediately followed by a delimiter character, then one or more hledger field names.
• The following lines begin with a matcher expression, then values to assign to each of those hledger fields.
• Comment lines, beginning with ; or # (indented or not), are also allowed.
• A blank line (or the end of the file) ends the table.

Eg:

if|HLEDGERFIELD1|HLEDGERFIELD2|...
MATCHERA|VALUE1|VALUE2|...
MATCHERB && MATCHERC|VALUE1|VALUE2|...
MATCHERD|VALUE1|VALUE2|...
<empty line>

An if table is applied as follows:

• try each of the matchers in turn
• when a matcher matches the CSV record, assign all of the values on that line to the corresponding hledger fields
• if multiple matchers succeed, later lines override earlier ones.

So the above is equivalent to:

if MATCHERA
  HLEDGERFIELD1 VALUE1
  HLEDGERFIELD2 VALUE2
  ...

if MATCHERB && MATCHERC
  HLEDGERFIELD1 VALUE1
  HLEDGERFIELD2 VALUE2
  ...

if MATCHERD
  HLEDGERFIELD1 VALUE1
  HLEDGERFIELD2 VALUE2
  ...

The character after if is used as the if table's field delimiter. It must not appear in the field names, values, or matchers (you cannot escape it with a backslash). | is conventional, but you can use a different character if it's more convenient. Just remember this delimiter has nothing to do with the one used in the CSV file. Each line must contain the same number of delimiters.

Here's an example. Note you can add whitespace in the matcher lines for readability (but not in the if line, currently):

if|account2|comment
%amount [0-9]{4,}  |                    | TODO: large amount, check it
atm withdrawal fee | expenses:banking   |
cafe               | expenses:dining    |
Plumbing LLC       | expenses:home      |

merge

if MATCHER
 merge N

Some banks and brokers export a single transaction as multiple CSV records - eg a currency conversion or stock trade, with each side of the trade on its own row. The merge rule combines such related records, so that they can generate a single journal transaction.

When a record matches an if block containing merge N (the word merge followed by a number, or no number, meaning 1), the next N records are joined onto the matched record, forming a group of rows. Conversion then proceeds as usual, with the whole group generating one transaction.

Fields of the later rows are referenced by adding a _ROWNUM suffix (row number 2 or greater) to the usual field name or number: %amt_2 or %4_2 is row 2's amt/fourth field. Unsuffixed references (%amt, %4) always mean the first row, so the same fields list describes every row. A reference to a row that isn't there (eg in an unmerged record) just has an empty value. And if you have declared a field name that looks like NAME_ROWNUM, it keeps its declared meaning; the suffix interpretation is only a fallback.

For example, to convert this two-row currency conversion:

2026-09-01,PAYMENT,coffee,-3.50,USD
2026-09-02,CONVERT,converted USD to EUR,-100.00,USD
2026-09-02,CONVERT,converted USD to EUR,90.00,EUR

fields date, type, desc, amt, cur
description %desc
account1 assets:bank:%cur
amount1  %amt %cur

# a conversion's second row holds the amount received; make it posting 2
if %type CONVERT
 merge
 account2 assets:bank:%cur_2
 amount2  %amt_2 %cur_2

if %type PAYMENT
 account2 expenses:unknown

$ hledger print -f conversion.csv
2026-09-01 coffee
    assets:bank:USD          -3.50 USD
    expenses:unknown

2026-09-02 converted USD to EUR
    assets:bank:USD        -100.00 USD
    assets:bank:EUR          90.00 EUR

Things to note:

• merge can also be used as a top-level rule (unconditionally), useful for files where every transaction is exactly N+1 rows.
• skip and end rules are applied before row merging - skipped records don't count toward a merge group.
• The rows of a group must be consecutive in the file (ignoring skipped records), and the merging record must be the first of them.
• Matchers which (if successful) will trigger a merge rule, can only usefully reference the first row's fields - the other row fields will be empty at this stage.
• But once a merge rule has been evaluated, later if blocks can see the whole group; eg a whole-record matcher will see all of its rows combined as one, and field matchers can use %FIELD_ROWNUM references.
• If fewer than N records remain in the file, just those are merged.

balance-type

Balance assertions generated by assigning to balanceN are of the simple = type by default, which is a single-commodity, subaccount-excluding assertion. You may find the subaccount-including variants more useful, eg if you have created some virtual subaccounts of checking to help with budgeting. You can select a different type of assertion with the balance-type rule:

# balance assertions will consider all commodities and all subaccounts
balance-type ==*

Here are the balance assertion types for quick reference:

=    single commodity, exclude subaccounts
=*   single commodity, include subaccounts
==   multi commodity,  exclude subaccounts
==*  multi commodity,  include subaccounts

include

include RULESFILE

This includes the contents of another CSV rules file at this point. RULESFILE is an absolute file path or a path relative to the current file's directory. This can be useful for sharing common rules between several rules files, eg:

# someaccount.csv.rules

## someaccount-specific rules
fields   date,description,amount
account1 assets:someaccount
account2 expenses:misc

## common rules
include categorisation.rules

Since included rules are effectively inlined, and since for most rules the last declaration wins, you can override an included file's rules by writing rules after the include line.

Working with CSV

Some tips:

Rapid feedback

It's a good idea to get rapid feedback while creating/troubleshooting CSV rules. Here's a good way, using entr from eradman.com/entrproject:

$ ls foo.csv* | entr bash -c 'echo ----; hledger -f foo.csv print desc:SOMEDESC'

A desc: query (eg) is used to select just one, or a few, transactions of interest. "bash -c" is used to run multiple commands, so we can echo a separator each time the command re-runs, making it easier to read the output.

Valid CSV

Note that hledger will only accept valid CSV conforming to RFC 4180, and equivalent SSV and TSV formats (like RFC 4180 but with semicolon or tab as separators). This means, eg:

• Values may be enclosed in double quotes, or not. Enclosing in single quotes is not allowed. (Eg 'A','B' is rejected.)
• When values are enclosed in double quotes, spaces outside the quotes are not allowed. (Eg "A", "B" is rejected.)
• When values are not enclosed in quotes, they may not contain double quotes. (Eg A"A, B is rejected.)

If your CSV/SSV/TSV is not valid in this sense, you'll need to transform it before reading with hledger. Try using sed, or a more permissive CSV parser like python's csv lib.

File Extension

To help hledger choose the CSV file reader and show the right error messages (and choose the right field separator character by default), it's best if CSV/SSV/TSV files are named with a .csv, .ssv or .tsv filename extension. (More about this at Data formats.)

When reading files with the "wrong" extension, you can ensure the CSV reader (and the default field separator) by prefixing the file path with csv:, ssv: or tsv:: Eg:

$ hledger -f ssv:foo.dat print

You can also override the default field separator with a separator rule if needed.

Reading CSV from standard input

You'll need the file format prefix when reading CSV from stdin also, since hledger assumes journal format by default. Eg:

$ cat foo.dat | hledger -f ssv:- print

Reading multiple CSV files

If you use multiple -f options to read multiple CSV files at once, hledger will look for a correspondingly-named rules file for each CSV file. But if you specify a rules file with --rules, that rules file will be used for all the CSV files.

Alternatively, a journal file can include CSV files (or rules files). In this case each CSV file always uses its correspondingly-named rules file; --rules has no effect.

Reading files specified by rule

Instead of specifying a CSV file in the command line, you can specify a rules file, as in hledger -f foo.csv.rules CMD. By default this will read data from foo.csv in the same directory, but you can add a source rule to specify a different data file, perhaps located in your web browser's download directory. (A rules file can also be included by a journal file.)

This feature helps remove some of the busywork of managing CSV downloads. Most of your financial institutions's default CSV filenames are different and can be recognised by a glob pattern. So you can put a rule like source Checking1*.csv in foo-checking.csv.rules, and then periodically follow a workflow like:

1. Download CSV from Foo's website, using your browser's defaults
2. Run hledger import foo-checking.csv.rules to import any new transactions

After import, you can: discard the CSV, or leave it where it is for a while, or move it into your archives, as you prefer. If you do nothing, next time your browser will save something like Checking1-2.csv, and hledger will use that because of the * wild card and because it is the most recent.

Valid transactions

After reading a CSV file, hledger post-processes and validates the generated journal entries as it would for a journal file - balancing them, applying balance assignments, and canonicalising amount styles. Any errors at this stage will be reported in the usual way, displaying the problem entry.

There is one exception: balance assertions, if you have generated them, will not be checked, since normally these will work only when the CSV data is part of the main journal. If you do need to check balance assertions generated from CSV right away, pipe into another hledger:

$ hledger -f file.csv print | hledger -f- print

Deduplicating, importing

When you download a CSV file periodically, eg to get your latest bank transactions, the new file may overlap with the old one, containing some of the same records.

The import command will (a) detect the new transactions, and (b) append just those transactions to your main journal. It is idempotent, so you don't have to remember how many times you ran it or with which version of the CSV. (It keeps state in a hidden .latest.FILE.csv file.) This is the easiest way to import CSV data. Eg:

# download the latest CSV files, then run this command.
# Note, no -f flags needed here.
$ hledger import *.csv [--dry]

This method works for most CSV files. (Where records have a stable chronological order, and new records appear only at the new end.)

A number of other tools and workflows, hledger-specific and otherwise, exist for converting, deduplicating, classifying and managing CSV data. See:

• https://hledger.org/doc.html#setups-and-workflows
• https://plaintextaccounting.org -> data import/conversion

Regular expressions in CSV rules

Regular expressions in if conditions (AKA matchers) are POSIX extended regular expressions, that also support GNU word boundaries (\b, \B, \<, \>), and nothing else. (For more detail, see Regular expressions.)

Here are some examples that might be useful in CSV rules:

• Is field "foo" truly empty ? if %foo ^$
• Is it empty or containing only whitespace ? if %foo ^ *$
• Is it non-empty ? if %foo .
• Does it contain non-whitespace ? if %foo [^ ]

Testing the value of numeric fields is a little harder. You can't use hledger queries like amt:0 or amt:>10 in CSV rules. But you can often achieve the same thing with a regular expression.

Note the content and layout of number fields in CSV varies, and can change over time (eg if you switch data providers). So numeric regexps are always somewhat specific to your particular CSV data; and it's a good idea to make them defensive and robust if you can.

Here are some examples:

• Does foo contain a non-zero number ? if %foo [1-9]
• Is it negative ? if %foo -
• Is it non-negative ? if ! %foo -
• Is it >= 10 ? if %foo [1-9][0-9]+\. (assuming a decimal period and no leading zeros)
• Is it >= 10 and < 20 ? if %foo \b1[0-9]\.

Setting amounts

Continuing from amount field above, here are more tips for amount-setting:

1. If the amount is in a single CSV field:\

   a. If its sign indicates direction of flow:
   Assign it to amountN, to set the Nth posting's amount. N is usually 1 or 2 but can go up to 99.

   b. If another field indicates direction of flow:
   Use one or more conditional rules to set the appropriate amount sign. Eg:

   # assume a withdrawal unless Type contains "deposit":
   amount1  -%Amount
   if %Type deposit
     amount1  %Amount
   

2. If the amount is in two CSV fields (such as Debit and Credit, or In and Out):\

   a. If both fields are unsigned:
   Assign one field to amountN-in and the other to amountN-out. hledger will automatically negate the "out" field, and will use whichever field value is non-zero as posting N's amount.

   b. If either field is signed:
   You will probably need to override hledger's sign for one or the other field, as in the following example:

   # Negate the -out value, but only if it is not empty:
   fields date, description, amount1-in, amount1-out
   if %amount1-out [1-9]
    amount1-out -%amount1-out
   

   c. If both fields can contain a non-zero value (or both can be empty):
   The -in/-out rules normally choose the value which is non-zero/non-empty. Some value pairs can be ambiguous, such as 1 and none. For such cases, use conditional rules to help select the amount. Eg, to handle the above you could select the value containing non-zero digits:

   fields date, description, in, out
   if %in [1-9]
    amount1 %in
   if %out [1-9]
    amount1 %out
   

3. If you want posting 2's amount converted to cost:
   Use the unnumbered amount (or amount-in and amount-out) syntax.

4. If the CSV has only balance amounts, not transaction amounts:
   Assign to balanceN, to set a balance assignment on the Nth posting, causing the posting's amount to be calculated automatically. balance with no number is equivalent to balance1. In this situation hledger is more likely to guess the wrong default account name, so you may need to set that explicitly.

Amount signs

There is some special handling making it easier to parse and to reverse amount signs. (This only works for whole amounts, not for cost amounts such as COST in amount1 AMT @ COST):

• If an amount value begins with a plus sign:
  that will be removed: +AMT becomes AMT

• If an amount value is parenthesised:
  it will be de-parenthesised and sign-flipped: (AMT) becomes -AMT

• If an amount value has two minus signs (or two sets of parentheses, or a minus sign and parentheses):
  they cancel out and will be removed: --AMT or -(AMT) becomes AMT

• If an amount value contains just a sign (or just a set of parentheses):
  that is removed, making it an empty value. "+" or "-" or "()" becomes "".

It's not possible (without preprocessing the CSV) to set an amount to its absolute value, ie discard its sign.

Setting currency/commodity

If the currency/commodity symbol is included in the CSV's amount field(s):

2023-01-01,foo,$123.00

you don't have to do anything special for the commodity symbol, it will be assigned as part of the amount. Eg:

fields date,description,amount

2023-01-01 foo
    expenses:unknown         $123.00
    income:unknown          $-123.00

If the currency is provided as a separate CSV field:

2023-01-01,foo,USD,123.00

You can assign that to the currency pseudo-field, which has the special effect of prepending itself to every amount in the transaction (on the left, with no separating space):

fields date,description,currency,amount

2023-01-01 foo
    expenses:unknown       USD123.00
    income:unknown        USD-123.00

Or, you can use a field assignment to construct the amount yourself, with more control. Eg to put the symbol on the right, and separated by a space:

fields date,description,cur,amt
amount %amt %cur

2023-01-01 foo
    expenses:unknown        123.00 USD
    income:unknown         -123.00 USD

Note we used a temporary field name (cur) that is not currency - that would trigger the prepending effect, which we don't want here.

Amount decimal places

When you are reading CSV data, eg with a command like hledger -f foo.csv print, hledger will infer each commodity's decimal precision (and other commodity display styles) from the amounts - much as when reading a journal file without commodity directives (see the link).

Note, the commodity styles are not inferred from the numbers in the original CSV data; rather, they are inferred from the amounts generated by the CSV rules.

When you are importing CSV data with the import command, eg hledger import foo.csv, there's another step: import tries to make the new entries conform to the journal's existing styles. So for each commodity - let's say it's EUR - import will choose:

1. the style declared for EUR by a commodity directive in the journal
2. otherwise, the style inferred from EUR amounts in the journal
3. otherwise, the style inferred from EUR amounts generated by the CSV rules.

TLDR: if import is not generating the precisions or styles you want, add a commodity directive to specify them.

Referencing other fields

In field assignments, you can interpolate only CSV fields, not hledger fields. In the example below, there's both a CSV field and a hledger field named amount1, but %amount1 always means the CSV field, not the hledger field:

# Name the third CSV field "amount1"
fields date,description,amount1

# Set hledger's amount1 to the CSV amount1 field followed by USD
amount1 %amount1 USD

# Set comment to the CSV amount1 (not the amount1 assigned above)
comment %amount1

Here, since there's no CSV amount1 field, %amount1 will produce a literal "amount1":

fields date,description,csvamount
amount1 %csvamount USD
# Can't interpolate amount1 here
comment %amount1

When there are multiple field assignments to the same hledger field, only the last one takes effect. Here, comment's value will be B, or C if "something" is matched, but never A:

comment A
comment B
if something
 comment C

How CSV rules are evaluated

Here's how to think of CSV rules being evaluated. If you get a confusing error while reading a CSV file, it may help to try to understand which of these steps is failing:

1. Any included rules files are inlined, from top to bottom, depth first (scanning each included file for further includes, recursively, before proceeding).

2. Top level rules (date-format, fields, newest-first, skip etc) are read, top to bottom. "Top level rules" means non-conditional rules. If a rule occurs more than once, the last one wins; except for the skip rule, where the first one wins. A rule written after an include would override the same rule in the included file.

3. The CSV file is read as text. Any non-ascii characters will be decoded using the text encoding specified by the encoding rule, otherwise the system locale's text encoding.

4. Any top-level skip or end rule is applied. skip [N] immediately skips the current or next N CSV records; end immediately skips all remaining CSV records (not normally used at top level).

5. Now any remaining CSV records are processed. For each CSV record, in file order:

   • Is there a conditional skip/end rule that applies for this record ? Search the if blocks, from top to bottom, for a succeeding one containing a skip or end rule. If found, skip the specified number of CSV records, then continue at 5.
     Otherwise...

   • Is there a merge rule that applies for this record (top level or conditional) ? If so, join the next N CSV records onto this record, making one combined record.

   • Do some basic validation on this CSV record (eg, check that it has at least two fields).

   • For each hledger field (date, description, account1, etc.):

     1. Get the field's assigned value, first searching top level assignments, made directly or by the fields rule, then assignments made inside succeeding if blocks. If there are more than one, the last one wins.

     2. Compute the field's actual value (as text), by interpolating any %CSVFIELD references within the assigned value; or by choosing a default value if there was no assignment.

   • Generate a hledger transaction from the hledger field values, parsing them if needed (eg from text to an amount).

This is all done by the CSV reader, one of several readers hledger can use to read transactions from an input file. When all input files have been read successfully, their transactions are passed to whichever hledger command the user specified.

Well factored rules

Some things than can help reduce duplication and complexity in rules files:

• Extracting common rules usable with multiple CSV files into a common.rules, and adding include common.rules to each CSV's rules file.

• Splitting if blocks into smaller if blocks, extracting the frequently used parts.

CSV rules examples

For real-world rules files for many banks, brokers, exchanges and apps, see the hledger CSV rules library in the hledger repo. These aren't necessarily maintained, and may need adapting, but they are a good source of ideas and examples.

Timeclock

hledger can read time logs in the timeclock time logging format of timeclock.el. As with Ledger, hledger's timeclock format is a subset/variant of timeclock.el's.

hledger's timeclock format was updated in hledger 1.43 and 1.50. If your old time logs are rejected, you should adapt them to modern hledger; for now, you can restore the pre-1.43 behaviour with the --old-timeclock flag.

Here is the timeclock format (in hledger 1.50+):

# Comment lines like these, and blank lines, are ignored:
# comment line
; comment line
* comment line

# Lines beginning with b, h, or capital O are also ignored, for compatibility:
b SIMPLEDATE HH:MM[:SS][+-ZZZZ][ TEXT]
h SIMPLEDATE HH:MM[:SS][+-ZZZZ][ TEXT]
O SIMPLEDATE HH:MM[:SS][+-ZZZZ][ TEXT]

# Lines beginning with i or o are are clock-in / clock-out entries:
i SIMPLEDATE HH:MM[:SS][+-ZZZZ] ACCOUNT[  DESCRIPTION][;COMMENT]]
o SIMPLEDATE HH:MM[:SS][+-ZZZZ][ ACCOUNT][;COMMENT]

The date is a hledger simple date (YYYY-MM-DD or similar). The time parts must use two digits. The seconds are optional. A + or - four-digit time zone is accepted for compatibility, but currently ignored; times are always interpreted as a local time.

In clock-in entries (i), the account name is required. A transaction description, separated from the account name by 2+ spaces, is optional. A transaction comment, beginning with ;, is also optional. (Indented following comment lines are also allowed, as in journal format.)

Clock-out entries (o) have no description, but can have a comment if you wish. A clock-in and clock-out pair form a "transaction" posting some number of hours to an account - also known as a session. Eg:

i 2015/03/30 09:00:00 session1
o 2015/03/30 10:00:00

$ hledger -f a.timeclock print
2015-03-30 * 09:00-10:00
    (session1)           1.00h

Clock-ins and clock-outs are matched by their account/session name. If a clock-out does not specify a name, the most recent unclosed clock-in is closed. You can have multiple sessions active simultaneously. Entries are processed in the order they are parsed. Sessions spanning more than one day are automatically split at day boundaries.

Eg, the following time log:

i 2015/03/30 09:00:00 some account  optional description after 2 spaces ; optional comment, tags:
o 2015/03/30 09:20:00
i 2015/03/31 22:21:45 another:account
o 2015/04/01 02:00:34
i 2015/04/02 12:00:00 another:account  ; this demonstrates multiple sessions being clocked in
i 2015/04/02 13:00:00 some account
o 2015/04/02 14:00:00
o 2015/04/02 15:00:00 another:account

generates these transactions:

$ hledger -f t.timeclock print
2015-03-30 * optional description after 2 spaces   ; optional comment, tags:
    (some account)           0.33h

2015-03-31 * 22:21-23:59
    (another:account)           1.64h

2015-04-01 * 00:00-02:00
    (another:account)           2.01h

2015-04-02 * 12:00-15:00  ; this demonstrates multiple sessions being clocked in
    (another:account)           3.00h

2015-04-02 * 13:00-14:00
    (some account)           1.00h

Here is a sample.timeclock to download and some queries to try:

$ hledger -f sample.timeclock balance                               # current time balances
$ hledger -f sample.timeclock register -p 2009/3                    # sessions in march 2009
$ hledger -f sample.timeclock register -p weekly --depth 1 --empty  # time summary by week

To generate time logs, ie to clock in and clock out, you could:

• use these shell aliases at the command line:

  alias ti='echo i `date "+%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S"` $* >>$TIMELOG'
  alias to='echo o `date "+%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S"` >>$TIMELOG'
  

• or Emacs's built-in timeclock.el, or the extended timeclock-x.el, and perhaps the extras in ledgerutils.el

• or use the old ti and to scripts in the ledger 2.x repository. These rely on a "timeclock" executable which I think is just the ledger 2 executable renamed.

Timedot

timedot format is hledger's human-friendly time logging format. Compared to timeclock format, it is more convenient for quick, approximate, and retroactive time logging, and more human-readable (you can see at a glance where time was spent). A quick example:

2023-05-01
hom:errands          .... ....  ; two hours; the space is ignored
fos:hledger:timedot  ..         ; half an hour
per:admin:finance               ; no time spent yet

hledger reads this as a transaction on this day with three (unbalanced) postings, where each dot represents 0.25 (of an hour, we usually assume).

$ hledger -f a.timedot print   # .timedot file extension (or timedot: prefix) is required
2023-05-01 *
    (hom:errands)                                  2.00  ; two hours; the space is ignored
    (fos:hledger:timedot)                          0.50  ; half an hour
    (per:admin:finance)                            0.00  ; no time spent yet

A timedot file specifies a series of transactions, usually one per day. (Unlike in a journal file, these "transactions" don't need to balance; time logs use "single entry accounting".)

Each transaction begins with a date line: a line whose first word looks like a simple date, ie three groups of digits separated by -, /, or . (if these cannot be parsed as a valid date, an error is raised). After the date, on the same line, there can optionally be a transaction description, and after ;, a transaction comment (possibly containing tags).

After the date line are zero or more posting lines. A timedot posting line begins with a hledger-style account name, optionally indented. After the account name there are two or more spaces and then a timedot amount. (Or nothing, which is equivalent to a zero amount.)

Timedot amounts can be written in several ways:

• One or more dots (.)
  Each dot represents a quarter hour. (There's no commodity symbol, but usually we assume hours.) Spaces can optionally be used for aligning or grouping dots, eg .... .... .. is easy to read as 2.5 hours.

• A bare number (integer or decimal)
  This can be more precise or more convenient, eg for large durations.

• A number followed by a time unit (s, m, h, d, w, mo, or y)
  representing seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months or years, which will be converted to hours using these ratios: 60s = 1m, 60m = 1h, 24h = 1d, 7d = 1w, 30d = 1mo, 365d = 1y. This allows use of more convenient time units.

• One or more timedot letters
  These work like dots, except they also generate a posting tag t: (short for "type") with the letter as its value, and a separate posting for each of the letter values. This adds a second dimension of categorisation - in addition to account name, you'll have the t tag's value, which can be shown in reports with --pivot t, --pivot acct:t, etc.

Posting lines can end with a hledger-style posting comment (text after ;), optionally containing tags.

Lines beginning with # or ; are comment lines, and ignored. Blank lines are also ignored.

There is some additional support for users of Emacs org mode:

• Before the first date line, lines beginning with * are also treated as comments, and ignored. This allows top-level org headings in a timedot file.

• From the first date line onward, org heading prefixes (one or more *'s followed by a space) are ignored, with the rest of the line being parsed normally. This allows timedot date or posting lines to also be org headings.

Timedot files don't support directives like journal files. So a common pattern is to have a main journal file that contains any needed directives, and then includes the timedot file (include time.timedot).

Timedot examples

Numbers:

2016/2/3
inc:client1   4
fos:hledger   3h
biz:research  60m

Dots:

# on this day, 6h was spent on client work, 1.5h on haskell FOSS work, etc.
2016/2/1
inc:client1   .... .... .... .... .... ....
fos:haskell   .... ..
biz:research  .

2016/2/2
inc:client1   .... ....
biz:research  .

$ hledger -f a.timedot print date:2016/2/2
2016-02-02 *
    (inc:client1)                                  2.00
    (biz:research)                                 0.25

$ hledger -f a.timedot bal --daily
Balance changes in 2016-02-01..2016-02-02:

              || 2016-02-01  2016-02-02 
==============++========================
 biz:research ||       0.25        0.25 
 fos:haskell  ||       1.50           0 
 inc:client1  ||       6.00        2.00 
--------------++------------------------
              ||       7.75        2.25 

Letters:

# Activity types:
#  c cleanup/catchup/repair
#  e enhancement
#  s support
#  l learning/research

2023-11-01
work:adm  ccecces

$ hledger -f a.timedot print
2023-11-01 *
    (work:adm)                                     1.00  ; t:c
    (work:adm)                                     0.50  ; t:e
    (work:adm)                                     0.25  ; t:s

$ hledger -f a.timedot bal
                1.75  work:adm
--------------------
                1.75  

$ hledger -f a.timedot bal --pivot t
                1.00  c
                0.50  e
                0.25  s
--------------------
                1.75  

Org:

* 2023 Work Diary
** Q1
*** 2023-02-28
**** DONE
yoga  ....
**** BEGUN
hom:chores
 cleaning  ...
 water plants
  outdoor - one full watering can
  indoor - light watering
**** TODO
adm:planning:trip
*** LATER

Using . as account name separator:

2016/2/4
fos.hledger.timedot  4h
fos.ledger           ..

$ hledger -f a.timedot --alias '/\./=:' bal -t
                4.50  fos
                4.00    hledger:timedot
                0.50    ledger
--------------------
                4.50  

PART 4: REPORTING CONCEPTS

Time periods

Report start & end date

Most hledger reports will by default show the full time period represented by the journal. The report start date will be the earliest transaction or posting date, and the report end date will be the latest transaction, posting, or market price date.

Often you will want to see a shorter period, such as the current month. You can specify a start and/or end date with the -b/--begin, -e/--end, or -p/--period options, or a date: query argument, described below. All of these accept the smart date syntax, also described below.

End dates are exclusive; specify the day after the last day you want to see in the report.

When dates are specified by multiple options, the last (right-most) option wins. And when date: queries and date options are combined, the report period will be their intersection.

Examples:

-b 2016/3/17

beginning on St. Patrick’s day 2016

-e 12/1

ending at the start of December 1st in the current year

-p 'this month'

during the current month

-p thismonth

same as above, spaces are optional

-b 2023

beginning on the first day of 2023

date:2023.. or date:2023-

same as above

-b 2024 -e 2025 -p '2000 to 2030' date:2020-01 date:2020 :
during January 2020 (the smallest common period, with the -p overriding -b and -e)

Smart dates

In hledger's user interfaces (though not in the journal file), you can optionally use "smart date" syntax. Smart dates can be written with english words, can be relative, and can have parts omitted. Missing parts are inferred as 1, when needed. Smart dates can be interpreted as dates or periods depending on the context.

Examples:

2004-01-01, 2004/10/1, 2004.9.1, 20240504, 2024Q1 :
Exact dates. The year must have at least four digits, the month must be 1-12, the day must be 1-31, the separator can be - or / or . or nothing. The q can be upper or lower case and the quarter number must be 1-4.

2004-10

start of month

2004q3

start of third quarter of 2004

q3

start of third quarter of current year

2004

start of year

10/1 or oct or october

October 1st in current year

21

21st day in current month

yesterday, today, tomorrow

-1, 0, 1 days from today

last/this/next day/week/month/quarter/year

-1, 0, 1 periods from the current period

last/this/next tuesday

the previous occurrence of the named day, or the next occurrence after today

last/this/next february

the previous occurrence of 1st of the named month, or the next occurrence after the current month

in n days/weeks/months/quarters/years

n periods from the current period

n days/weeks/months/quarters/years ahead

n periods from the current period

n days/weeks/months/quarters/years ago

-n periods from the current period

20181201

8 digit YYYYMMDD with valid year month and day

201812

6 digit YYYYMM with valid year and month

Dates with no separators are allowed but might give surprising results if mistyped:

• 20181301 (YYYYMMDD with an invalid month) is parsed as an eight-digit year
• 20181232 (YYYYMMDD with an invalid day) gives a parse error
• 201801012 (a valid YYYYMMDD followed by additional digits) gives a parse error

The meaning of relative dates depends on today's date. If you need to test or reproduce old reports, you can use the --today option to override that. (Except for periodic transaction rules, which are not affected by --today.)

Report intervals

A report interval can be specified so that reports like register, balance or activity become multi-period, showing each subperiod as a separate row or column.

The following standard intervals can be enabled with command-line flags:

• -D/--daily
• -W/--weekly
• -M/--monthly
• -Q/--quarterly
• -Y/--yearly

More complex intervals can be specified using -p/--period, described below.

Date adjustments

Start date adjustment

If you let hledger infer a report's start date, it will adjust the date to the previous natural boundary of the report interval, for convenient periodic reports. (If you don't want that, specify a start date.)

For example, if the journal's first transaction is on january 10th,

• hledger register (no report interval) will start the report on january 10th.
• hledger register --monthly will start the report on the previous month boundary, january 1st.
• hledger register --monthly --begin 1/5 will start the report on january 5th [1].

The start date of transactions generated by periodic transaction rules is chosen separately; see Forecast period, in detail.

End date adjustment

A report's end date is always adjusted to include a whole number of intervals, so that the last subperiod has the same length as the others.

For example, if the journal's last transaction is on february 20th,

• hledger register will end the report on february 20th.
• hledger register --monthly will end the report at the end of february.
• hledger register --monthly --end 2/14 also will end the report at the end of february (overriding the requested end date).
• hledger register --monthly --begin 1/5 --end 2/14 will end the report on march 4th.

Period expressions

The -p/--period option specifies a period expression, which is a compact way of expressing a start date, end date, and/or report interval.

Here's a period expression with a start and end date (specifying the first quarter of 2009):

Several keywords like "from" and "to" are supported for readability; these are optional. "to" can also be written as ".." or "-". (Except that a lone day number, directly after a "-" with no spaces, is not accepted; eg 2026-13 is more likely a mistyped date than "2026 to the 13th of this month", so it's an error. To mean the latter, write 2026..13.) The spaces are also optional, as long as you don't run two dates together. So the following are equivalent to the above:

Dates are smart dates, so if the current year is 2009, these are also equivalent to the above:

If you specify only one date, the missing start or end date will be the earliest or latest transaction date in the journal:

You can also specify a period by writing a single partial or full date:

or by using the "Q" quarter-year syntax (case insensitive):

Period expressions with a report interval

A period expression can also begin with a report interval, separated from the start/end dates (if any) by a space or the word in:

More complex report intervals

Some more complex intervals can be specified within period expressions, such as:

• biweekly (every two weeks)
• fortnightly
• bimonthly (every two months)
• every day|week|month|quarter|year
• every N days|weeks|months|quarters|years

Weekly on a custom day:

• every Nth day of week (th, nd, rd, or st are all accepted after the number)
• every WEEKDAYNAME (full or three-letter english weekday name, case insensitive)

Monthly on a custom day:

• every Nth day [of month] (31st day will be adjusted to each month's last day)
• every Nth WEEKDAYNAME [of month]

Yearly on a custom month and day:

• every MM/DD [of year] (month number and day of month number)
• every MONTHNAME DDth [of year] (full or three-letter english month name, case insensitive, and day of month number)
• every DDth MONTHNAME [of year] (equivalent to the above)

Examples:

Show historical balances at end of the 15th day of each month (N is an end date, exclusive as always):

$ hledger balance -H -p "every 16th day"

Group postings from the start of wednesday to end of the following tuesday (N is both (inclusive) start date and (exclusive) end date):

$ hledger register checking -p "every 3rd day of week"

Multiple weekday intervals

This special form is also supported:

• every WEEKDAYNAME,WEEKDAYNAME,... (full or three-letter english weekday names, case insensitive)

Also, weekday and weekendday are shorthand for mon,tue,wed,thu,fri and sat,sun.

This is mainly intended for use with --forecast, to generate periodic transactions on arbitrary days of the week. It may be less useful with -p, since it divides each week into subperiods of unequal length, which is unusual. (Related: #1632)

Examples:

Queries

Many hledger commands accept query arguments, which restrict their scope and let you report on a precise subset of your data. Here's a quick overview of hledger's queries:

• By default, a query argument is treated as a case-insensitive substring pattern for matching account names. Eg:

  dining groceries
car:fuel\

• Patterns containing spaces or other special characters must be enclosed in single or double quotes:

  'personal care'\

• Patterns are actually regular expressions, so you can add regexp metacharacters for more precision (or you may need to backslash-escape certain characters; see "Regular expressions" above):

  '^expenses\b'
'food$'
'fuel|repair'
'accounts (payable|receivable)'\

• To match something other than the account name, you can add a query type prefix, such as:

  date:202312-
status:
desc:amazon
cur:USD
cur:\\$
amt:'>0'
acct:groceries (but acct: is the default, so we usually don't bother writing it)\

• To match in any field, or by date, use the find: query type, or :: for short:

  ::amazon
::2024
::amazon ::2024 (both must match)\

• To negate a query, add a not: prefix:

  not:status:'*'
not:desc:'opening|closing'
not:cur:USD\

• Multiple query terms can be combined, as space-separated queries Eg: hledger print date:2022 desc:amazon desc:amzn (show transactions dated in 2022 whose description contains "amazon" or "amzn").\

• Or more flexibly as boolean queries. Eg: hledger print expr:'date:2022 and (desc:amazon or desc:amzn) and not date:202210'\

All hledger commands use the same query language, but different commands may interpret the query in different ways. Here's the gist of it (see PART 2: COMMANDS above for the commands):

• Transaction-oriented commands (print, aregister, close, import, descriptions..) try to match transactions (including the transaction's postings).

• Posting-oriented commands (register, balance, balancesheet, incomestatement, accounts..) try to match postings. Postings inherit their transaction's attributes for querying purposes, so transaction fields like date or description can still be referenced in a posting query.

• A few commands match in more specific ways. (Eg aregister, which has a special first argument.)

Query types

Here are the query types available:

acct: query

acct:REGEX, or just REGEX
Match account names containing this case insensitive regular expression.
This is the default query type, so we usually don't bother writing the "acct:" prefix.

amt: query

amt:N, amt:'<N', amt:'<=N', amt:'>N', amt:'>=N'
Match postings with a single-commodity amount equal to, less than, or greater than N. (Postings with multi-commodity amounts are not tested and will always match.) amt: needs quotes to hide the less than/greater than sign from the command line shell.

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.

Keep in mind that amt: matches posting amounts, not account balances.

code: query

code:REGEX
Match by transaction code (eg check number).

cur: query

cur:FULLREGEX
Match postings or transactions including any amounts whose currency/commodity symbol is fully matched by REGEX. (Contrary to hledger's usual infix matching. To do infix matching, write .*REGEX.*.)

To match special characters which are regex-significant, escape them with \. And at the command line, characters which are shell-significant need one more level of escaping - eg to match the dollar sign, write cur:\\$ or cur:'\$'.

When commodity aliases have been declared, via an alias: tag on a commodity directive), cur: will match the canonical commodity or any of its aliases. So if commodity $1000.00 ; alias: USD U is declared, the queries cur:\\$, cur:USD, cur:U and cur:U.+ will all match amounts like $1 or 1 USD or 1 U.\

sym: query

sym:FULLREGEX
This is like cur:, but matches a specific commodity symbol, ignoring alias-group relationships. So in the example above, sym:USD would match 1 USD but not $1 or 1 U.\

desc: query

desc:REGEX
Match transaction descriptions.

date: query

date:PERIODEXPR
Match dates (or with the --date2 flag, secondary dates) within the specified period. PERIODEXPR is a period expression. Examples:
date:2016, date:thismonth, date:2/1-2/15, date:2021-07-27..nextquarter.

PERIODEXPR may include a report interval (since 1.52). On the command line, this is equivalent to specifying a report interval with a command line option. In other contexts (hledger-ui, hledger-web), the report interval may be ignored.

date2: query

date2:PERIODEXPR
If you use secondary dates: this matches secondary dates within the specified period. It is not affected by the --date2 flag. A report interval in PERIODEXPR will be ignored.

depth: query

depth:[REGEXP=]N
Match (or display, depending on command) accounts at or above this depth, optionally only for accounts matching a provided regular expression. See Depth for detailed rules.

find: query

find:REGEX, or ::REGEX
Match if any visible text field contains this case insensitive regular expression: the account name, the amount (as it would be displayed), the comment, and the transaction's description, code and comment. In other words, the text you would see in print output. Tags are searched as part of the comment text, so hidden tags and tags inherited from account declarations are not matched (use tag: for those). Or, if REGEX is also a valid period expression, match if the date is within that period. So ::amazon finds "amazon" anywhere, and ::2024 finds "2024" in any field or a date in 2024. Unlike date:, this does not set the report period.

Multiple find: terms must all match, like the words of a search. Eg ::amazon ::2024 shows things matching both. (In a transaction-oriented command like print, the terms may be matched by different postings.) To match alternatives, use a regular expression: ::'amazon|amzn'.

note: query

note:REGEX
Match transaction notes (the part of the description right of |, or the whole description if there's no |).

payee: query

payee:REGEX
Match transaction payee/payer names (the part of the description left of |, or the whole description if there's no |).

real: query

real:, real:0
Match real or virtual postings respectively.

status: query

status:, status:!, status:*
Match unmarked, pending, or cleared transactions respectively.

type: query

type:TYPECODES
Match by account type (see Declaring accounts > Account types). TYPECODES is one or more of the single-letter account type codes ALERXCVG, case insensitive. Note type:A, type:E, and type:R will also match their respective subtypes C (Cash), V (Conversion), and G (Gain). Certain kinds of account alias can disrupt account types, see Rewriting accounts > Aliases and account types.

tag: query

tag:NAMEREGEX[=VALREGEX]
Match by tag name, and optionally also by tag value. Note:

• Both regular expressions do infix matching. If you need a complete match, use ^ and $.
  Eg: tag:'^fullname$', tag:'^fullname$=^fullvalue$
• To match values, ignoring names, do tag:.=VALREGEX
• Accounts also inherit the tags of their parent accounts.
• Postings also inherit the tags of their account and their transaction .
• Transactions also acquire the tags of their postings.

Negative queries

not: query

not:QUERY
You can prepend not: to a query to negate the match.
Eg: not:equity, not:desc:apple
(Also, a trick: not:not:... can sometimes solve query problems conveniently.)

Space-separated queries

When given multiple space-separated query terms, most commands select things which match:

• any of the description terms AND
• any of the account terms AND
• any of the status terms AND
• all the other terms.

The print command is a little different, showing transactions which:

• match any of the description terms AND
• have any postings matching any of the positive account terms AND
• have no postings matching any of the negative account terms AND
• match all the other terms.

Boolean queries

For more complex needs, you can combine query terms with NOT, AND, OR operators (case insensitive) and parentheses, writing the whole expression in quotes with one of three prefixes: expr:, any: or all:. Eg, to show transactions involving both cash and expense accounts:

hledger print expr:'cash AND expenses'

The prefix and the quotes are required. Two more things to know:

• date: queries may not be used inside an OR expression (it could produce a report with disjoint or unclear report periods).
• Space-separated terms can also appear inside a boolean query, combining as described in space-separated queries; but it's probably clearer to avoid mixing the two styles.

expr: query

expr:'QUERYEXPR'
The general purpose boolean query. It can match transactions, postings, accounts, etc. depending on context. Eg, expr:'date:lastmonth AND NOT (food OR rent)' matches things dated in the last month, without food or rent in the account name.

With transaction-oriented commands like print, posting-oriented terms like acct: and amt: match a transaction if they match any of its postings. So, hledger print expr:'cash AND amt:>0' shows transactions which have at least one cash posting and at least one positive-amount posting (these are not necessarily the same posting).

any: query

any:'QUERYEXPR'
Matches a transaction, if at least one of its postings is matched by QUERYEXPR. So, hledger print any:'cash AND amt:>0' shows transactions which have at least one posting that both involves a cash account and has a positive amount.

Unlike expr:, any: always considers whole transactions. So, hledger balance expenses any:cash shows expenses from transactions involving cash, and hledger balance expenses not:any:cash shows expenses from transactions not involving cash.

A query containing only any: (or all:) terms selects entire transactions, so its balance report will be zero-balanced, showing where the money in those transactions came from and went to. For the same reason, such a query combined with register's --related flag shows nothing: every posting is matched, so there are no unmatched related postings left to show.

all: query

all:'QUERYEXPR'
Matches a transaction, if it has at least one posting and all of its postings are matched by QUERYEXPR. So, hledger print all:'cash OR checking' shows transactions touching only cash and/or checking accounts.

Like any:, all: always considers whole transactions. So, hledger register all:'cash OR checking' shows the postings of transactions touching only cash and/or checking accounts - eg, transfers between those two. By contrast, hledger register expr:'cash OR checking' tests each posting on its own, so it could also show, say, the cash posting of a grocery purchase.

Queries and command options

Some queries can also be expressed as command-line options: depth:2 is equivalent to --depth 2, date:2023 is equivalent to -p 2023, etc. When you mix command options and query arguments, generally the resulting query is their intersection.

Queries and account aliases

When account names are rewritten with --alias or alias, acct: will match either the old or the new account name.

Queries and valuation

When amounts are converted to other commodities in cost or value reports, cur: and amt: match the old commodity symbol and the old amount quantity, not the new ones.

Depth

With the --depth NUM option (short form, usually preferred: -NUM), reports will show accounts only to the specified depth, hiding deeper subaccounts. Use this when you want a summary with less detail. This flag has the same effect as a depth: query argument. So all of these are equivalent: depth:2, --depth=2, -2.

You can also provide custom depths for specific accounts, by providing a REGEX=NUM argument instead of just NUM. For example, --depth assets=2 (or depth:assets=2) will collapse accounts matching the regular expression "assets" to depth 2. So assets:bank:savings would be collapsed to assets:bank, but liabilities:bank:credit card would not be affected.

If REGEX contains spaces or other special characters, enclose it in quotes in the usual way. Eg: --depth 'credit card=2'

Combining depth options

If a command line contains multiple general depth options, the last one wins. (Useful for overriding a depth specified by scripts.)

Or a command may contain a combination of general and custom depth options. In this case, the most specifically (deepest) matching option wins. Some examples:

• --depth assets=3 --depth expenses=2 --depth 1 would collapse accounts containing "assets" to depth 3, accounts containing "expenses" to depth 2, and all other accounts to depth 1.

• --depth assets=1 --depth savings=2 would collapse assets:bank:savings to depth 2 (not depth 1; because "savings" matches a deeper part of the account name than "assets").

Note currently, to override a custom depth option --depth REGEX=NUM with a later option, the later option must use the same REGEX.

Pivoting

Normally, hledger groups amounts and displays their totals by account (name). With --pivot PIVOTEXPR, some other field's (or multiple fields') value is used as a synthetic account name, causing different grouping and display. PIVOTEXPR can be

• any of these standard transaction or posting fields (their value is substituted): status, code, desc/description, payee, note, acct/account, comm/cur, amt, cost
• or a tag name
• or any combination of these, colon-separated.

Some special cases:

• Colons appearing in PIVOTEXPR or in a pivoted tag value will generate account hierarchy.
• When pivoting a posting that has multiple values for a tag, the tag's first value will be used as the pivoted value.
• When a posting has multiple commodities, the pivoted value of "comm"/"cur" will be "". Also when an unrecognised tag name or field is provided, its pivoted value will be "". (If this causes confusing output, consider excluding those postings from the report.)

Examples:

2016/02/16 Yearly Dues Payment
    assets:bank account                 2 EUR
    income:dues                        -2 EUR  ; member: John Doe, kind: Lifetime

Normal balance report showing account names:

$ hledger balance
               2 EUR  assets:bank account
              -2 EUR  income:dues
--------------------
                   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):

$ 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

Hierarchical reports can be generated with multiple pivot values:

$ hledger balance Income:Dues --pivot kind:member
              -2 EUR  Lifetime:John Doe
--------------------
              -2 EUR

Report titles

Some reports (aregister, balance (multi-period), balancesheet, balancesheetequity, cashflow, holdings, incomestatement) are displayed with a title by default, and others are not. For most reports you can set a title with --title='Some Text', or suppress the title with --title=. Titles are shown in text and HTML output (and in some commands' CSV/TSV output). In HTML output the title is an <h3 class="report-title"> element, which you can style with a hledger.css file.

Compound reports, like those just mentioned, also have subreport headings, like Assets and Liabilities in the balance sheet. You can customise these with --subreport-titles=HEADING1|HEADING2.., or suppress them with --subreport-titles=.

In both --title and --subreport-titles, you can use \n to generate a newline.

In multi-period reports each period has a heading describing its date range or end date. When date ranges correspond to natural period boundaries, they are described compactly by default (month names are in english, currently). Eg: 2026, Q1, Jan, W02. You can disable these compact descriptions by using --period-titles=dates; then periods will always be described as STARTDATE..ENDDATE.

Amount formatting

Commodity display style

For the amounts in each commodity, hledger chooses a consistent display style (symbol placement, decimal mark and digit group marks, number of decimal digits) to use in most reports. This is inferred as follows:

First, if there's a D directive declaring a default commodity, that commodity symbol and amount format is applied to all no-symbol amounts in the journal.

Then each commodity's display style is determined from its commodity directive. We recommend always declaring commodities with commodity directives, since they help ensure consistent display styles and precisions, and bring other benefits such as error checking for commodity symbols. Here's an example:

# Set display styles (and decimal marks, for parsing, if there is no decimal-mark directive)
# for the $, EUR, INR and no-symbol commodities:
commodity $1,000.00
commodity EUR 1.000,00
commodity INR 9,99,99,999.00
commodity 1 000 000.9455

But for convenience, if a commodity directive is not present, hledger infers a commodity's display styles from its amounts as they are written in the journal (excluding cost amounts and amounts in periodic transaction rules or auto posting rules). It uses

• the symbol placement and decimal mark of the first amount seen
• the digit group marks of the first amount with digit group marks
• and the maximum number of decimal digits seen across all amounts.

And as fallback if no applicable amounts are found, it would use a default style, like $1000.00 (symbol on the left with no space, period as decimal mark, and two decimal digits).

Finally, commodity styles can be overridden by the -c/--commodity-style command line option, described next.

Commodity style override

The -c/--commodity-style option overrides a commodity's declared or inferred display style, for the current command. Its argument is a sample amount, as in the commodity directive. Eg, to show dollar amounts with period digit group marks, comma decimal mark, and one decimal digit:

$ hledger print -c '$1.000,0'

Some things to note:

• The option can be repeated, to set the display style of several commodities.
• Omitting the commodity symbol sets the style of just the no-symbol commodity, not of all commodities.
• For cost amounts, and amounts displayed by the print command, it affects only the symbol placement and digit group/decimal marks; those amounts are always displayed with all of their decimal digits.
• In some cases hledger will adjust number formatting to improve parseability, eg by adding trailing decimal marks when needed.

Rounding

Amounts are stored internally as decimal numbers with up to 255 decimal places. They are displayed with their original journal precisions by print and print-like reports, and rounded to their display precision (the number of decimal digits specified by the commodity display style) by other reports. When rounding, hledger uses banker's rounding (it rounds to the nearest even digit). So eg 0.5 displayed with zero decimal digits appears as "0".

Trailing decimal marks

If you're wondering why your print report sometimes shows trailing decimal marks, with no decimal digits; it does this when showing amounts that have digit group marks but no decimal digits, to disambiguate them and allow them to be re-parsed reliably (see Decimal marks). Eg:

commodity $1,000.00

2023-01-02
    (a)      $1000

$ hledger print
2023-01-02
    (a)        $1,000.

You can avoid this by disabling digit group marks, eg temporarily with -c/--commodity:

$ hledger print -c '$1000.00'
2023-01-02
    (a)          $1000

or by forcing print to show some decimal digits, with --round:

$ hledger print -c '$1,000.00' --round=soft
2023-01-02
    (a)      $1,000.00

Amount parseability

More generally, hledger output falls into three rough categories, which format amounts a little bit differently to suit different consumers:

1. "hledger-readable output" - should be readable by hledger (and by humans)

• This is produced by reports that show full journal entries: print, import, close, rewrite etc.
• It shows amounts with their original journal precisions, which may not be consistent from one amount to the next.
• It adds a trailing decimal mark when needed to avoid showing ambiguous amounts.
• It can be parsed reliably (by hledger and ledger2beancount at least, but perhaps not by Ledger..)

2. "human-readable output" - usually for humans

• This is produced by all other reports.
• It shows amounts with standard display precisions, which will be consistent within each commodity.
• It shows ambiguous amounts unmodified.
• It can be parsed reliably in the context of a known report (when you know decimals are consistently not being shown, you can assume a single mark is a digit group mark).

3. "machine-readable output" - usually for other software

• This is produced by all reports when an output format like csv, tsv, json, or sql is selected.
• It shows amounts as 1 or 2 do, but without digit group marks.
• It can be parsed reliably (if needed, the decimal mark can be changed with -c/--commodity-style).

Cost reporting

In some transactions - for example a currency conversion, or a purchase or sale of stock - one commodity is exchanged for another. In these transactions there is a conversion rate, also called the cost (when buying) or selling price (when selling). (In hledger docs we just say "cost" generically for convenience.) With the -B/--cost flag, hledger can show amounts "at cost", converted to the cost's commodity.

Recording costs

We'll explore several ways of recording transactions involving costs. These are also compared at Currency conversion > Four ways to record a conversion, compared.

Costs can be recorded explicitly in the journal, using the @ UNITCOST or @@ TOTALCOST notation described in Journal > Costs:

Variant 1

2022-01-01
  assets:dollars    $-135
  assets:euros       €100 @ $1.35   ; $1.35 per euro (unit cost)

Variant 2

2022-01-01
  assets:dollars    $-135
  assets:euros       €100 @@ $135   ; $135 total cost

Typically, writing the unit cost (variant 1) is preferable; it can be more effort, requiring more attention to decimal digits; but it reveals the per-unit cost basis, and makes stock sales easier.

Costs can also be left implicit, and hledger will infer the cost that is consistent with a balanced transaction:

Variant 3

2022-01-01
  assets:dollars    $-135
  assets:euros       €100

Here, hledger will attach a @@ €100 cost to the first amount (you can see it with hledger print -x). This form looks convenient, but there are downsides:

• It sacrifices some error checking. For example, if you accidentally wrote €10 instead of €100, hledger would not be able to detect the mistake.

• It is sensitive to the order of postings - if they were reversed, a different entry would be inferred and reports would be different.

• The per-unit cost basis is not easy to read.

So generally this kind of entry is not recommended. You can make sure you have none of these by using -s (strict mode), or by running hledger check balanced.

Reporting at cost

Now when you add the -B/--cost flag to reports ("B" is from Ledger's -B/--basis/--cost flag), any amounts which have been annotated with costs will be converted to their cost's commodity (in the report output). Ie they will be displayed "at cost" or "at sale price".

For lot postings, which carry a cost basis, -B converts to the cost basis instead: a disposal shows what the disposed units cost, not what they sold for, consistent with how such entries balance, so eg a lot account's cost balance is the cost of the units still held (and zero once they are all sold), and bse -B balances. To see transacted amounts (proceeds) instead, use --value=transacted.

Some things to note:

• Costs are attached to specific posting amounts in specific transactions, and once recorded they do not change. This contrasts with market prices, which are ambient and fluctuating.

• Conversion to cost is performed before conversion to market value (described below).

Equity conversion postings

There is a problem with the entries above - they are not conventional Double Entry Bookkeeping (DEB) notation, and because of the "magical" transformation of one commodity into another, they cause an imbalance in the Accounting Equation. This shows up as a non-zero grand total in balance reports like hledger bse.

Most hledger users use cost notation and don't use equity postings; for them this imbalance doesn't matter in practice and can safely be ignored. But if you'd like to learn more, keep reading.

Conventional DEB uses an extra pair of equity postings to balance the transaction. Of course you can do this in hledger as well:

Variant 4

2022-01-01
    assets:dollars      $-135
    assets:euros         €100
    equity:conversion    $135
    equity:conversion   €-100

Now the transaction is perfectly balanced according to standard DEB, and hledger bse's total will not be disrupted. It also translates easily to any other double entry accounting system.

And, hledger can still infer the cost for cost reporting, but it's not done by default - you must add the --infer-costs flag like so:

$ hledger print --infer-costs
2022-01-01 one hundred euros purchased at $1.35 each
    assets:dollars       $-135 @@ €100
    assets:euros                  €100
    equity:conversion             $135
    equity:conversion            €-100

$ hledger bal --infer-costs -B
               €-100  assets:dollars                                                                                                                                              
                €100  assets:euros                                                                                                                                                
--------------------                                                                                                                                                              
                   0                                                                                                                                                              

Here are some downsides of this kind of entry:

• The per-unit cost basis is not easy to read.

• Instead of -B you must remember to type -B --infer-costs.

• --infer-costs works only where hledger can identify the two equity:conversion postings and match them up with the two non-equity postings. So writing the journal entry in a particular format becomes more important. More on this below.

Inferring equity conversion postings

Can we go in the other direction ? Yes, if you have transactions written with the @/@@ cost notation, hledger can infer the missing equity postings, if you add the --infer-equity flag. Eg:

2022-01-01
  assets:dollars  -$135
  assets:euros     €100 @ $1.35

$ hledger print --infer-equity
2022-01-01
    assets:dollars                    $-135
    assets:euros               €100 @ $1.35
    equity:conversion:$-€:€           €-100
    equity:conversion:$-€:$         $135.00

The equity account names will be "equity:conversion:A-B:A" and "equity:conversion:A-B:B" where A is the alphabetically first commodity symbol. You can customise the "equity:conversion" part by declaring an account with the V/Conversion account type.

Note you will need to add account declarations for these to your journal, if you use check accounts or check --strict. (And unlike normal postings, generated equity postings do not inherit tags from account declarations.)

Combining costs and equity conversion postings

Finally, you can use both the @/@@ cost notation and equity postings at the same time. This in theory gives the best of all worlds - preserving the accounting equation, revealing the per-unit cost basis, and providing more flexibility in how you write the entry:

Variant 5

2022-01-01 one hundred euros purchased at $1.35 each
    assets:dollars      $-135
    equity:conversion    $135
    equity:conversion   €-100
    assets:euros         €100 @ $1.35

All the other variants above can (usually) be rewritten to this final form with:

$ hledger print -x --infer-costs --infer-equity

Or you can enable both flags always, eg in your config file, and your reports will have the advantages of both.

Downsides:

• The precise format of the journal entry becomes more important. If hledger can't detect and match up the cost and equity postings, it will give a transaction balancing error.

• The add command does not yet accept this kind of entry (#2056).

• This is the most verbose form.

Requirements for detecting equity conversion postings

--infer-costs has certain requirements (unlike --infer-equity, which always works). It will infer costs only in transactions with:

• Two non-equity postings, in different commodities. If one of them is lotful, the cost will be added to that one; otherwise it will be added to the first (top) one.

• Two postings to equity conversion accounts, next to one another, which balance the two non-equity postings. This balancing is checked to the same precision (number of decimal places) used in the conversion posting's amount. Equity conversion accounts are:

  • any accounts declared with account type V/Conversion, or their subaccounts
  • otherwise, accounts named equity:conversion, equity:trade, or equity:trading, or their subaccounts.

And multiple such four-posting groups can coexist within a single transaction. When --infer-costs fails, it does not infer a cost in that transaction, and does not raise an error (ie, it infers costs where it can).

Reading variant 5 journal entries, combining cost notation and equity postings, has all the same requirements. When reading such an entry fails, hledger raises an "unbalanced transaction" error.

Value reporting

hledger can also show amounts "at market value", converted to some other commodity using the market price or conversion rate on a certain date.

This is controlled by the --value=TYPE[,COMMODITY] option. We also provide simpler -V and -X COMMODITY aliases for this, which are often sufficient. The market prices are declared with a special P directive, and/or they can be inferred from the costs recorded in transactions, by using the --infer-market-prices flag.

-X: Value in specified commodity

The -X COMM (or --exchange=COMM) option converts amounts to their market value in the specified commodity, using the market prices in effect on the valuation date(s), if any. (More on these in a minute.)

Use this when you want to (eg) show everything in your base currency as far as possible. (Commodities for which no conversion rate can be found, will not be converted.)

COMM should be the commodity symbol exactly as written in the journal's amounts or market prices (eg $, not USD, if the journal uses $); ISO currency codes are not matched to symbols. If no conversion price to COMM can be found, a warning is printed, suggesting an equivalent journal commodity if one exists. Remember to quote special shell characters, if needed. Some examples:

• -X€
• -X$ (nothing after $, no quoting needed)
• -X CNY (the space after -X is optional)
• -X 'red apples'
• -X 'r&r'

-V: Value in default commodity(s)

The -V/--market flag is a variant of -X where you don't have to specify COMM. Instead it tries to guess a default valuation commodity for each original commodity, based on the market prices in effect on the valuation date(s).

-V can often be a convenient shortcut for -X MYCURRENCY, but not always; depending on your data it could guess multiple valuation commodities. Usually you want to convert to a single commodity, so it's better to use -X, unless you're sure -V is doing what you want.

Valuation date

Market prices can change from day to day. hledger will use the prices on a particular valuation date (or on more than one date). By default hledger uses "end" dates for valuation. More specifically:

• For single period reports (including normal print and register reports):
  • If an explicit report end date is specified, that is used.
  • Otherwise the latest transaction date or non-future P directive date is used.
• For multiperiod reports, each period is valued on its last day.

This can be customised with the --value option described below, which can select either "then", "end", "now", or "custom" dates.

Finding market price

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 directive, or (with the --infer-market-prices flag) inferred from costs.

2. A reverse market price: the inverse of a declared or inferred market price from B to A.

3. A forward chain of market prices: a synthetic price formed by combining the shortest chain of "forward" (only 1 above) market prices, leading from A to B.

4. Any chain of market prices: a chain of any market prices, including both forward and reverse prices (1 and 2 above), leading from A to B.

There is a limit to the length of these price chains; if hledger reaches that length without finding a complete chain or exhausting all possibilities, it will give up (with a "gave up" message visible in --debug=2 output). That limit is currently 1000.

Amounts for which no suitable market price can be found, are not converted.

--infer-market-prices: market prices from transactions

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 costs as additional market prices (as Ledger does) ? Adding the --infer-market-prices flag to -V, -X or --value enables this.

So for example, hledger bs -V --infer-market-prices will get market prices both from P directives and from transactions. If both occur on the same day, the P directive takes precedence.

There is a downside: value reports can sometimes be affected in confusing/undesired ways by your journal entries. If this happens to you, read all of this Value reporting section carefully, and try adding --debug or --debug=2 to troubleshoot.

--infer-market-prices can infer market prices from:

• multicommodity transactions with explicit prices (@/@@)

• multicommodity transactions with implicit prices (no @, two commodities, unbalanced). (With these, the order of postings matters. hledger print -x can be useful for troubleshooting.)

• multicommodity transactions with equity postings, if cost is inferred with --infer-costs.

There is a limitation (bug) currently: when a valuation commodity is not specified, prices inferred with --infer-market-prices do not help select a default valuation commodity, as P prices would. So conversion might not happen because no valuation commodity was detected (--debug=2 will show this). To be safe, specify the valuation commmodity, eg:

• -X EUR --infer-market-prices, not -V --infer-market-prices
• --value=then,EUR --infer-market-prices, not --value=then --infer-market-prices

Signed costs and market prices can be confusing. For reference, here is the current behaviour. (If you think it should work differently, see #1870.)

2022-01-01 Positive Unit prices
    a        A 1
    b        B -1 @ A 1

2022-01-01 Positive Total prices
    a        A 1
    b        B -1 @@ A 1


2022-01-02 Negative unit prices
    a        A 1
    b        B 1 @ A -1

2022-01-02 Negative total prices
    a        A 1
    b        B 1 @@ A -1


2022-01-03 Double Negative unit prices
    a        A -1
    b        B -1 @ A -1

2022-01-03 Double Negative total prices
    a        A -1
    b        B -1 @@ A -1

All of the transactions above are considered balanced (and on each day, the two transactions are considered equivalent). Here are the market prices inferred for B:

$ hledger -f- --infer-market-prices prices
P 2022-01-01 B A 1
P 2022-01-01 B A 1.0
P 2022-01-02 B A -1
P 2022-01-02 B A -1.0
P 2022-01-03 B A -1
P 2022-01-03 B A -1.0

Valuation commodity

When you specify a valuation commodity (-X COMM or --value TYPE,COMM):
hledger will convert all amounts to COMM, wherever it can find a suitable 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-market-prices flag is used: the price commodity from the latest transaction-inferred price for A on or before valuation date.

This means:

• If you have P directives, they determine which commodities -V will convert, and to what.

• If you have no P directives, and use the --infer-market-prices flag, costs determine it.

Amounts for which no valuation commodity can be found are not converted.

--value: Flexible valuation

-V and -X are special cases of the more general --value option:

 --value=TYPE[,COMM]  TYPE is then, end, now, YYYY-MM-DD, cost or transacted.
                      COMM is an optional commodity symbol.
                      Shows amounts converted to:
                      - 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
                      - cost basis, or else transacted cost (like -B)
                      - transacted cost only

The TYPE part selects cost or value and valuation date:

--value=then

Convert amounts to their value in the default valuation commodity, using market prices on each posting's date.

--value=end

Convert amounts to their value in the default valuation commodity, 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 commodity using current market prices (as of when report is generated).

--value=YYYY-MM-DD

Convert amounts to their value in the default valuation commodity using market prices on this date.

--value=cost

Convert amounts to their cost basis where they have one (lot postings), otherwise to their transacted cost. Same as -B/--cost; see Reporting at cost.

--value=transacted

Convert amounts to their transacted cost or sale amount (@/@@), ignoring any cost basis. This is -B's behaviour for non-lot postings, and shows proceeds rather than cost for lot disposals.

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.

Valuation examples

Here are some quick examples of -V:

; one euro is worth this many dollars from nov 1
P 2016/11/01 € $1.10

; purchase some euros on nov 3
2016/11/3
    assets:euros        €100
    assets:checking

; the euro is worth fewer dollars by dec 21
P 2016/12/21 € $1.03

How many euros do I have ?

$ hledger -f t.j bal -N euros
                €100  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

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 --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, the latest transaction date or price date is used as valuation date (2000-04-01):

$ hledger -f- print --value=end
2000-01-01
    (a)             3 B

2000-02-01
    (a)             3 B

2000-03-01
    (a)             3 B

The value today is the same (the 2000-04-01 price is still in effect):

$ 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

Interaction of valuation and queries

When matching postings based on queries in the presence of valuation, the following happens:

1. The query is separated into two parts:
   1. the currency (cur:) or amount (amt:).
   2. all other parts.
2. The postings are matched to the currency and amount queries based on pre-valued amounts.
3. Valuation is applied to the postings.
4. The postings are matched to the other parts of the query based on post-valued amounts.

Related: #1625

Effect of valuation on reports

Here is a reference for how valuation is supposed to affect each part of hledger's reports. It may be useful when troubleshooting. Related: #329, #1083.

First, a quick 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 subperiods).

--cumulative is omitted to save space, it works like -H but with a zero starting balance.

Lot reporting

When you buy (acquire) some amount of an investment commodity (a lot), it can be important (depending on your local tax rules) to keep track of its original cost and acquisition date (cost basis), so that when you sell (dispose) it, you can calculate capital gains (or losses), and document how you satisfied the rules about disposal order, short term vs long term gains, and so on.

For many kinds of investment, each individual lot has its own cost basis, which must be tracked even if the lot is reduced, split up, or transferred. Also lots may need to be moved and disposed of in a prescribed order. All this can be very hard to keep track of by hand, so usually it is done by an investment broker, cryptocurrency exchange, or specialised tax software. Now, you can also do it yourself with hledger.

Automated lot tracking and capital gains reporting is the biggest new feature of hledger 2. Lot tracking was first shipped in Ledger, then improved in Beancount; hledger 2 evolves PTA lot tracking further, making it more powerful and ergonomic. You can record lot details explicitly, or let hledger infer them. hledger checks lot entries; tracks, infers and validates lot movements; and calculates capital gains when lots are sold.

Note hledger 2's lot processing happens only for entries that use lot notation, or where lots are inferred. If you have hledger 1 journal files that you want to migrate, or use with both hledger 1 and hledger 2, see hledger 1 and hledger 2.

For a more technical version of what's in this manual, see SPEC-lots.

First lots example

hledger's lot tracking does not require much extra work. Here is a small example, using just the familiar @ syntax, and new lots tag. (Several ways to write lot entries below shows the other notations.):

commodity AAPL  ; lots:

2026-01-15 buy
    assets:cash     -$500
    assets:stocks      10 AAPL @ $50

2026-02-01 sell some
    assets:stocks      -5 AAPL @ $70
    assets:cash      $350

Lot tracking is activated for AAPL by the lots tag, so hledger will

• keep track of each lot that's acquired (and optionally show them in reports)
• dispose of lots in the right order (FIFO by default)
• calculate the resulting capital gain, and add the gain posting if missing
• check for many kinds of error (such as selling more than you have).

print shows the inferred cost basis annotations and gain posting (so its output can be re-read even without the commodity directive, if the default cost basis method is used):

$ hledger print
2026-01-15 buy
    assets:cash                                $-500
    assets:stocks                                 10 AAPL {$50} @ $50

2026-02-01 sell some
    assets:stocks                                 -5 AAPL {2026-01-15, $50} @ $70
    assets:cash                                 $350
    revenues:gain                              $-100

print's -a flag (short for --all) shows maximum detail, including the lots as subaccounts and tags showing how the entry was analysed:

$ hledger print -a
2026-01-15 buy
    assets:cash                                $-500
    assets:stocks:{2026-01-15, $50}               10 AAPL {$50} @ $50  ; ptype: acquire

2026-02-01 sell some
    assets:stocks:{2026-01-15, $50}               -5 AAPL {2026-01-15, $50} @ $70  ; ptype: dispose
    assets:cash                                 $350
    revenues:gain                              $-100  ; ptype: gain, generated-posting:

If anything looks wrong, see Troubleshooting lots below.

Once you have lot entries, holdings will show an overview of your investments - units held, per-unit and total cost and value, realised and unrealised gain, and XIRR (extended internal rate of return). To see all of these, add at least one market price declaration, eg:

P 2026-03-31 AAPL $72

Then:

$ hledger holdings -e 2026-04-01
Holdings on 2026-03-31

               ||       Date  Age   Units  Avg cost  Price  Cost  Value  Weight  UGain  UGain%  RGain     XIRR
===============++==============================================================================================
 assets:stocks || 2026-01-15  75d  5 AAPL       $50    $72  $250   $360  100.0%   $110   44.0%   $100  1865.3% 
---------------++----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
               ||                                           $250   $360  100.0%   $110   44.0%   $100  1865.3% 

You can add --lots to see the individual lots (this works with all reports):

$ hledger holdings -e 2026-04-01 --lots
Holdings on 2026-03-31

                                 ||       Date  Age   Units  Unit cost  Price  Cost  Value  Weight  UGain  UGain%  RGain     XIRR 
=================================++===============================================================================================
 assets:stocks:{2026-01-15, $50} || 2026-01-15  75d  5 AAPL        $50    $72  $250   $360  100.0%   $110   44.0%   $100  1865.3% 
---------------------------------++-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                 ||                  5 AAPL        $50         $250   $360  100.0%   $110   44.0%   $100  1865.3% 

Writing lot entries

Lot tracking can be enabled in two ways:

• Per posting: write explicit cost basis annotations like in Ledger or Beancount, or explicit lot subaccount names. These postings will be tracked lotfully.

• Per commodity: declare the commodity lotful with a lots tag. All of its postings are tracked lotfully, and the annotations are inferred for you. This is convenient, and recommended.

A posting with any of these is called a lot posting.

Cost basis annotations

Each acquisition of an investment creates a lot, with a cost basis. In hledger, a lot's cost basis has 2-3 parts:

1. The nominal acquisition date (required). Usually this is the date you acquired the lot.
2. A short text label (optional). This can be used to distinguish lots acquired on the same date.
3. The nominal acquisition cost (required). Usually this is what you paid for it.

In the journal, we can write cost basis annotations, enclosed in {} after an amount (the syntax is described in Cost basis), above. These often mention only part of the cost basis, typically just the cost ({$50}), or nothing at all ({}); hledger infers the rest.

On an acquisition, the annotation records the new lot's cost basis. On a disposal or transfer, it is instead a lot selector, choosing which existing lot(s) to take from: a full or partial cost basis, like {2026-01-15, $50} or {2026-01-15}, identifies one specific lot, while {} (or no annotation) lets hledger choose, using the cost basis method.

Lotful commodities

A more convenient way to record lot transactions, is to declare commodities as lotful, by adding a lots tag in their declaration. Eg:

commodity AAPL          ; lots:

This tells hledger that postings involving these commodities always involve lots, so it will infer cost basis annotations automatically, and you won't need to write them in the journal.

The lots tag can also have a value, selecting the disposal order (see Cost basis methods); and on account declarations it disables or customises lot tracking per account, as described in Disabling lot tracking below.

Lot subaccounts

Internally, hledger tracks each lot in a subaccount, named like the cost basis. You don't need to write these subaccounts in the journal; hledger infers them automatically. They are hidden from reports by default, since there can be many lots. To show them, add the --lots flag to any report (the holdings command is designed for viewing them).

If you do write a lot subaccount in the journal, it is equivalent to writing a cost basis annotation on the amount:

2026-01-15 buy
    assets:stocks:{2026-01-15, $50}    10 AAPL
    assets:cash

$ hledger print 
2026-01-15 buy
    assets:stocks    10 AAPL {2026-01-15, $50}
    assets:cash

A final account name part enclosed in { and } is reserved for lot subaccounts, and it must be a valid lot subaccount name (unless using -I or --ignore-lots). Lot subaccount names must be complete, including all cost basis parts - date, label if any, and cost.

When strictly checking account names, lot subaccounts are ignored - you only need to declare the base account (eg assets:stocks), not the lot subaccounts.

Several ways to write lot entries

Here are two acquisitions and a disposal, written in several ways. First, with explicit lot subaccounts:

2026-01-15 buy low
    assets:stocks:{2026-01-15, $50}      10 AAPL
    assets:cash                       -$500

2026-02-01 buy high
    assets:stocks:{2026-02-01, $60}      10 AAPL
    assets:cash                       -$600

2026-03-01 sell some
    assets:stocks:{2026-01-15, $50}      -5 AAPL @ $70
    assets:cash                        $350

Second, with cost basis annotations (here the {} selector means: use the default method, FIFO; and the @ costs could be omitted, since hledger can infer them from the cash postings):

2026-01-15 buy low
    assets:stocks      10 AAPL {$50}
    assets:cash     -$500

2026-02-01 buy high
    assets:stocks      10 AAPL {$60}
    assets:cash     -$600

2026-03-01 sell some
    assets:stocks      -5 AAPL {} @ $70
    assets:cash      $350

Third, with a lots tag on the commodity, lots are inferred from the transacted costs:

commodity AAPL  ; lots:

2026-01-15 buy low
    assets:stocks      10 AAPL @ $50
    assets:cash     -$500

2026-02-01 buy high
    assets:stocks      10 AAPL @ $60
    assets:cash     -$600

2026-03-01 sell some
    assets:stocks      -5 AAPL @ $70
    assets:cash      $350

All three notations produce the same lots and the same $100 gain; Lot reports below shows them.

Disabling lot tracking

If you want a commodity tracked lotfully in only some accounts, use annotations rather than the lots tag. Or if it should be tracked everywhere except certain accounts (eg tax-sheltered accounts where cost basis doesn't matter), use the lots tag, and add a lots: NONE tag to those accounts' declarations to disable lot tracking there:

account assets:ira      ; lots: NONE

Postings in such accounts are not lot-tracked and get no lot subaccounts or gain postings, unless they have explicit lot annotations, which always enable tracking. Moving a lotful commodity from a tracked account into such an account is a disposal; moving it out again needs a cost basis or price on the receiving posting.

Sometimes you may want to disable lots/gains processing entirely, to silence lot-related errors when you are working with incomplete journals (eg, when piping hledger print into another hledger command, or when fixing a complex journal's problems one at a time). For this, use the --ignore-lots flag, or just -I. This skips lot tracking, capital gains calculation, and all lot error checking, while still doing enough lot inference that lot entries balance as usual.

Lot movements

hledger understands three kinds of lot movement: acquire, transfer, and dispose. Other real-world lot events can usually be modelled using combinations of these (see Other lot events below).

Acquire

A positive lot posting in an asset account creates a new lot.

2026-01-01 buy shares
    assets:cash     -$500
    assets:broker      10 ETSY {$50}

The cost basis can be specified explicitly with {} on the amount, inferred from the lot subaccount name, or inferred from the transacted cost. For lotful commodities, even a bare positive posting (no {} or @) can be detected as an acquire, with cost inferred from the transaction's other postings.

Acquire postings may carry a per-unit ({}) or total ({{}}) cost basis annotation, and a per-unit (@) or total (@@) transacted cost. See Cost basis vs transacted cost below for the recommended style.