Docs
hledger has lots of docs, covering different needs. (If it seems like a lot, see Tips for learning hledger.)
Start here:
- hledger by example - a book introducing hledger gently, one step at a time.
In a hurry ?
- 5 minute quick start - journal format, declarations and reports, on one page.
The complete, authoritative reference:
Other intros:
- A quick example (on the home page)
- hledger manual: Common tasks
- hledger manual: Journal cheatsheet
- Workflows
- Tutorial: Import CSV data
- hledger and Ledger (if you know Ledger)
- hledger and Beancount (if you know Beancount)
You also can read the manuals offline, using commands like
hledger help,
hledger help -l,
hledger help -l print,
hledger help print,
hledger print -h.
And you can see brief command examples by running
hledger --tldr, hledger balance --tldr, etc.
(Or in newer versions: hledger help examples, hledger help examples balance.)
If you install a tldr viewer you’ll get better output.
Or you can view these online:
- hledger, hledger add, hledger accounts, hledger add, hledger aregister, hledger balance, hledger balancesheet, hledger import, hledger incomestatement, hledger print, hledger-ui, hledger-web
Here are some notable blog posts/articles:
- Sumner Evans: Plain Text Accounting is Pretty Cool
- Amitai Burstein: Why We Chose Plain Text Accounting with Hledger
- Teo Si-Yan: Making sense of your finances with hledger reports
- Matt Maguire: Plain Text Accounting with Emacs - part 2 - part 3
Some other useful docs:
Videos
Short videos:
- Coder Kaylee: Hledger in 10 Minutes: The Ultimate CLI Tool (2025, 5m)
- hledger fan: beginner lessons (2019-2021, ~3m)
- The Basics: An hledger Transaction
- hledger Basics: 3 Must-Know Options for the Balance Command
- The Basics: The hledger Register Command
- hledger Basics: Focus on Months
- hledger basics: save keystrokes!
- hledger: looking under the hood
- hledger: untie your data with “nots”
- hledger: fun and profit with incomestatement
- hledger: fast fancy formatting
- hledger: who did you pay?
- hledger: bring order to your expenses
- hledger: commands to help with reconciling
- hledger: shortcuts part 1
- hledger: shortcuts part 2
- hledger: shortcuts part 3
- hledger add
- hledger iadd
- nontproject intros
- You Need to Know Double-Entry Bookkeeping for Personal Finance, part 1 (2026, 8m, in bangla)
- You Need to Learn hledger for Personal Finance: Beginners Guide, part 2 (2026, 20m, in bangla)
- Generate hledger Reports Like a Pro: Beginners Guide, part 3 (2026, 15m, in bangla)
- TORGiren DevOpses: hledger part 1 (2026, 10m, in polish)
Longer talks:
- O Clementino: Faça o Emacs olhar para o dinheiro usando o Embark (2026, 16m, in brazilian portuguese)
- O Clementino: Gerencie suas finanças como um hacker (2026, 23m, in brazilian portuguese)
- Youngbin Han @ FOSS for All
(2025, slides, in korean and english)
Plain Text Accounting with hledger
with short videos of add and web - Glenn Ramsey @ Kiwi Pycon XI (2022, 30m)
Plain text accounting for fun and profit - Simon Michael @ HaskellerZ meetup (2021, 2h)
Inside hledger: an architectural tour and how-to, slides - Conversations in Code, Episode 3: Introduction to Plain Text Accounting (2020, 1h, audio only), discussion
- Intproject Mi: Учет сделок с проводками в текстовом формате (2019, 34m)
- Evolution of hledger (Gource visualization) (2019, 38m)
- Simon Michael @ Brainium meetup (2016, 2h)
Hands-on with hledger - Chris Vollick @ DevHouse Waterloo meetup (2016, 40m)
hledger, an open source accounting tool - FLOSS Weekly episode 375: hledger (2016) - overview (3m), full interview (1h)
See also:
- Youtube: latest “hledger” videos (beware, there’s a ton of AI slop videos - report them if bad)
- PTA: Videos
Cookbook
Additional docs, tips, and notes, grouped by topic. (The same groups are in the sidebar.)
Getting started
Data entry
- Create a journal
- How to record journal entries
- Common journal entries
- Getting prices
- Tutorial: Import CSV data
- examples/ - examples and snippets, old and new
- examples/csv/ - hledger CSV rules library
Reporting
- Report examples
- Rewrite account names
- Rewrite commodity symbols
- Tags tutorial
- Charts and Graphs
- Visualising discussion 2023
- Reporting version control stats
- Making sense of your finances with hledger reports
Checking for errors
Customising
Accounting
- Accounting basics for PTA users
- Accounting: further study
- Borrowing and lending
- Foreign trip expenses
- Tracking and selling inventory
- Invoicing
- Project accounting
- Closing the year
- A tax reporting setup
- Cryptocurrency tax reporting
- PTA: Choosing cash or accrual
- PTA: Eco accounting
- PTA: Non profit accounting
- PTA: Shared finances
- PTA wiki: Inventory
- Youngbin Han: Plain Text Accounting with hledger (slides, for FOSS projects)
Budgeting and forecasting
Multiple currencies
- Currency conversion
- Multicurrency tutorial (2018)
- hledger manual: Cost reporting
- hledger manual: Value reporting
Investing
- Track investments (2020)
- Calculate unrealized gain
- Calculate return on investment
- hledger manual: Cost reporting
- hledger manual: Value reporting
- hledger manual: Lot reporting
- hledger manual: balance features
- hledger-lots
- PTA Cookbook: Investing and trading
- Average cost capital gains with hledger 2023
- Track foreign stock capital gains using hledger 2023
- Full-fledged hledger: Manual lot tracking 2024
Time tracking
Scripts and add-ons
User interfaces
Other software
- Exporting from hledger
- hledger and Beancount
- hledger and dsq/DataStation
- hledger and GnuCash
- hledger and just
- hledger and Ledger
- hledger and Obsidian
- hledger and Paisa
- hledger and Postgres
- hledger and Quicken / Quickbooks
- hledger and SimpleFIN
- hledger and SQLite
- hledger and Ultorg
- hledger and YNAB
Setups and workflows
- Workflows
- SM’s 2019 setup
- SM’s 2023 setup
- SM’s time & task dashboard
- Backups, the 3-2-1 rule
See also…
If you still haven’t found what you’re looking for, try these: