hledger is...

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

More about Features.

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

Quick start

This plain text accounting stuff is both useful and more fun than it sounds - care to give it a try ? See Get Started, or the following short guide:

1. Install hledger

Install hledger on your computer. The Install page shows how to get an up-to-date version quickly.

2. Record transactions

hledger reads transactions from a journal file. By default this is ~/.hledger.journal or C:\Users\USER\.hledger.journal. You can change this by configuring $LEDGER_FILE.

This file uses journal format, containing transaction entries like this (the black text):

A transaction entry begins with a date and description, followed by an indented list of accounts and amounts. Note the 2 or more spaces required between each account name and amount. A positive amount means "added to this account", a negative amount means "removed from this account" (AKA debit and credit). The amounts in a transaction must add up to zero. If you leave one amount blank, it will be calculated automatically.

Here's an example journal, with comments. Transactions are ordered by date, and the first one sets starting balances.

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

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

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

Save this as your journal file, using a text editor. Or, you could run hledger add or hledger web and record these transactions interactively. (No need to enter the comments.)

3. Add declarations (optional)

Account types

In accounting there are five standard account types: assets, liabilities, equity, revenues (or income), and expenses. hledger also uses a couple of subtypes: cash, conversion.

It's recommended to declare the types of your top level accounts, to help reports show the right accounts. hledger can infer types from english account names, but you may be using another language, and anyway it's good practice to make this explicit. So add account directives at the top of your journal file, something like these:

; Top level account types. Subaccounts will inherit these.
account assets                   ; type:A
account assets:bank              ; type:C
account assets:cash              ; type:C
account liabilities              ; type:L
account equity                   ; type:E
account equity:conversion        ; type:V
account revenues                 ; type:R
account expenses                 ; type:X

Translations: ar da de en es fr ja ko no pt se zh

Account and commodity names

If you want more error checking, you can declare all allowed account names (not just top level accounts), and all allowed commodities/currencies, and then use strict mode, which disallows any others:

; All accounts.
account assets                   ; type:A
account assets:bank              ; type:C
account assets:bank:checking
account assets:bank:savings
account assets:cash              ; type:C
account liabilities              ; type:L
account liabilities:credit card
account equity                   ; type:E
account equity:conversion        ; type:V
account equity:opening/closing
account income                   ; type:R
account income:salary
account income:gifts
account expenses                 ; type:X
account expenses:rent
account expenses:food
account expenses:gifts

; Currencies, and their numeric display style.
commodity $1000.00

$ hledger check --strict
$ hledger -s CMD ...

Declaring accounts also sets their preferred display order (instead of sorting alphabetically).

4. Run reports

Now you can see reports, such as...

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

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

A balance sheet, showing what you own and owe:

$ hledger bs
Balance Sheet 2023-02-15

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

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

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

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

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

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

Next steps

Congratulations, you can now use hledger to track your daily finances! But see Get Started for more detailed help and tutorials.

If you are new to bookkeeping, accounting, or plain text accounting: these are valuable skills, and they do take some time to master. With practice, more doc reading, and support/discussion, you will gradually

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

Other user interfaces

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

Time tracking

hledger can also read time logs, in timeclock format:

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

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

or in timedot format:

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

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

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

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

CSV import

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

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

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

if WHOLE FOODS
 account2 expenses:food

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

More: Tutorial: Import CSV data

More examples...

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

Site tips

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

News

Share your hledger/PTA user notes, dev news, achievements or experiences in the hledger matrix chat, every Friday morning or any time, tagged with TWIH:.

See also: Release notes, Recent discussion.

This Week In Hledger 2024-08-09

sm Offline for a while, not much to show in last three weeks. Improved bad regexp error message; bin/ updates; timeclock, cookbook, mobile doc updates. Writing a new course or book on time tracking.

Quotes

it is very satisfying to get a report of my last 10 years swiftly over the weekend. Thanks for the software :) -- droidoneone

This Week In Hledger 2024-07-19

sm

• bs,cf,is: show interval in report title
• check recentassertions: improve message
• cli parsing, config file: fixes, new example config
• ui menu screen: consistent control/display of narrowed period
• web: guess a more robust base url when --base-url is not used
• web: require a http[s] scheme in --base-url
• docs: Date adjustments, FAQ: How to tidy a journal
• daily support

Misc Michael Rees posted a PR implementing flexible register sorting (#2211). Adolf Szabo released placc, a free PTA app built with nim, not yet open source.

Quotes I just moved my whole financial life over to hledger and oh my goodness I’m so much happier (I dumped both QuickBooks and Quicken, which I’d been using previously).

This Week In Hledger 2024-07-12

sm Command line parsing testing & fixes; hledger-ui menu screen keys; example shell scripts updates; doc updates (add, config files, hledger-ui).

Quotes

• It's hugely valuable to have all of your financial data in one, human-readable place. Not only to you, but to whomever might be executing your will ;)

• I have it running on my laptop at all times (a window in my tmux config displays various reports on my accounts like current balance, uncleared balance, uncleared transactions, etc.). I find it helps me to be mindful of my money if it's only a couple keypresses away.

This Week In Hledger 2024-07-05

sm Testing/refinement of CLI, config file support; Tiller csv rules example; explain shebang commands better in hledger-script-example.

Quotes

+1 for plain text accounting. I'm using hledger to track my finances. I do use the web UI to submit information but I edit the plain text store extensively.

Now I use hledger, which has been fantastic. I back up the file to a shared drive that's sync'ed to my phone, so every time I get a message from the bank or pay with cash, I can immediately note it down (this would have been much less workable before I found the "cone" app) and track my spending across dozens of accounts.

This Week In Hledger 2024-06-28

sm Worked on CLI and config file support.

Quotes

• Every time I think hledger is missing something I always find either the exact feature I was looking for or two things that coupled together accomplish what I need it to do. --vm

• It just keeps getting better --glguy

This Week In Hledger 2024-06-21

sm Updated the hledger-register-max script, fixed a problem with just ghci* scripts, refactored the main procedure and command line processing, worked on config file support.

Misc recent discussions: https://hledger.org/support.html

Quotes

• I liked that hledger had a few reports that ledger didn't have, like real balance sheets and income statements. Both integrate well with emacs, but their journal files differ in slightly incompatible ways, so they're not drop-in replacements. Both are very fast.

• My primary consumption method is hledger-ui, a nice curses-based UI. It's got a watch mode so will update in real-time as you make edits to the source database, which is nice.

https://hledger.org/news.html#this-week-in-hledger-2024-06-21

This Week In Hledger 2024-06-14

sm

I fixed an old bug with account type declarations in multiple files, and an incompatibility of --tldr with tealdeer. I automated the updating of option docs in manuals, and worked on code cleanups, refactoring, and removing tech debt. And I worked on various improvements:

• tabular balance reports now show an outer table border and inter-column borders with --pretty, and they have better layout and headings in text and html output.
• better/clearer command line processing
• a config file system for next release

Doc updates: box-drawing characters, --pretty, --tldr.

Misc The docker image for hledger 1.34 is out. And for recent discussions see: https://hledger.org/support.html

Quotes

• I switched away from Quickbooks, years ago, to plain text accounting. Couldn't be happier. I can do everything better using hledger/ledger, git, vim and make.

• I've switched all my accounting over to hledger (a Haskell-based and slightly more feature-filled version of the original) and I'm SUPER happy with it so far.

https://hledger.org/news.html#this-week-in-hledger-2024-06-14

This Week In Hledger 2024-06-07

sm Released hledger 1.34, fixed some CI issues. Improved docs:

• cli, ui, web: synopsis, options cleanup/consistency
• command flags are now included in manuals (and Shake cmddocs updates them)
• diff, prices: improve help layout
• environment: correction, NO_COLOR does not override --color=yes
• Generating data: rewrite
• ghrelnotes: fix mac, linux install commands
• ghrelnotes: link to the Build from source doc
• secondary dates: officially deprecate secondary dates and --date2
• web JSON API, cli JSON output: link to OpenAPI spec

Misc recent discussions: https://hledger.org/support.html

Quotes

• Ledger and Hledger are some of my favourite tools.

• Thank you for creating such an awesome tool. I absolutely love hledger. I've been using it for more than a year, and I've become more responsible with my finances as a result. Before I started using hledger, I knew nothing about accounting. In fact, I was oblivious of my personal finances. Now, I've not only started keeping track of my finances, but I've also started investing and keeping a budget. --aaditmshah

https://hledger.org/news.html#this-week-in-hledger-2024-06-07

This Week In Hledger 2024-05-31

sm

• integrate tldr pages as --tldr
• make help -m, --man jump to TOPIC properly
• --color now also accepts y or n, like --pretty
• CLI commands list and options cleanups
• make checkembeddedfiles more robust
• tools: just twih date fixes
• release prep

Doc updates:

• Unicode characters: mention UTF-8 on windows
• update/simplify general options list
• sync command descriptions with tldr docs
• tldr contributing docs
• website: properly redirect old /FAQ path; tagline tweak
• PTA website: add first sponsor logo; mention hledger-sankey

Misc: for recent discussions, see https://hledger.org/support.html

Quotes

• I've switched all my accounting over to hledger (a Haskell-based and slightly more feature-filled version of the original) and I'm SUPER happy with it so far.

• A little daily-ish data-entry-and-reconciling ritual, with a pleasant tool setup, can be quite satisfying! I actually look forward to it. (That right there is part of my PTA success story. I used to suffer a lot of stress around all things finance.)

This Week In Hledger 2024-05-24

sm Actually this fortnight, since I missed a post. Last week I finished getting hledger back into stackage nightly, fixed build errors with GHC 8.10, and updated github workflows. This week I worked on release automation, flattened and simplified page tables-of-contents on hledger.org, updated/added more hledger docs in the tldr project, and fixed breakage in the hledger-install.sh script on non-windows platforms.

Misc

• hledger-Excel exports from excel to journal format.
• For recent discussions, see https://hledger.org/support.html.

Quotes

After coming from hledger, I did try firefly, but, stuck with hledger due to how amazingly powerful it is with nothing but a text input.

Switched to beancount ... I really didn’t lose any of my reporting flows that I had with (h)ledger... I just made scripts that convert the beancount journal on the fly, run whatever I was used to with hledger, and then delete the temporary file.

This Week In Hledger 2024-05-10

sm

• imp: -I can now be overridden by -s or check
• imp: commands list updates
• doc updates: commands list, report start & end date, smart dates, balance command
• site updates: install, FAQ reorg

Misc

• Docker image for 1.33.1 is available
• For recent discussions, see https://hledger.org/support

Quotes

I use hledger for my solo-company. It is really great, and very easy to understand what is going on. Highly recommend. --koeng

Just start with hledger-ui and like the article said: mess it up a bunch and keep fixing it or starting over. Pick one particular "zone" of finances (eg: monthly bills) and track only that part of it for a while. You'll figure it out! --ramses0

This Week In Hledger 2024-05-03

sm

• fix: show trailing decimal mark on cost amounts too, when needed
• imp: Revert problematic process-1.6.19.0 bound, it seems not strictly needed #2149
• Released hledger 1.33.1
• dev script updates
• fix: journal: parse include directives with trailing whitespace
• imp: support ghc-debug for analysing memory/profile info
• imp: cli: commands list reorg, cleanups
• imp: check: check ordereddates before balance assertions, when both are enabled
• imp: web: provide a basic openapi specification of the current HTTP-JSON API
• doc updates: github release windows install instructions, check command, Contributor Quick Start, Developer FAQ, misc site tweaks
• examples: custom paypal csv rules

Misc

• https://kairosdotapp.github.io/kairos invoice generator, timedot compatible

You can see recent discussions via the links at https://hledger.org/support.html.

Quotes

It's been a while since I've been in this room, but I've been using hledger all the while. It continues to be incredible. --daveakre

This Week In Hledger 2024-04-26

sm

• imp: run checks in a well-defined order, and tweak that order
• imp!: check ordereddates: drop --date2 support; check primary dates only
• fix: balcmds: show digit groups marks in html output again [#2196]
• imp: web: support base64 >=1.0
• tools: retire the main Makefile
• tools: relnotes.hs: generate/update release notes from changelogs
• tools: md-issue-refs.el: manage issue links in markdown
• examples: vanguard, fidelity csv rules updates
• doc updates: import, csv amount decimal places, charts, dev docs, install page.

You can see recent discussions via the links at https://hledger.org/support.html.

Quotes

Trust me, if you need to run some complicated analysis, (h)ledger has your back and you can find how to do it in the docs. --lvass

Thank you for this remarkably beautiful and useful tool. --yse

This Week In Hledger 2024-04-19

sm Worked on release process, github workflows, platform build issues, mac arm release binaries, CLI commands list, a hledger add ANSI bug, misc doc updates, and released hledger 1.33.

Misc

You can see recent discussions at: https://matrix.hledger.org https://list.hledger.org https://forum.plaintextaccounting.org/latest https://www.reddit.com/r/plaintextaccounting/new https://fosstodon.org/search #hledger

Quotes

Been using ledger and hledger for about four years, love them dearly. I find ledger + Emacs ledger-mode the most convenient for daily use. Hledger has a somewhat nicer way of formatting reports on the CLI, making it useful for creating ad-hoc reports and digging into your data. --compns8-ng

I've been using hledger ... [it] has more features like balance sheet, income statement generation with a plain text file for the last 3 years and it's been working out great. --rwbt

This Week In Hledger 2024-04-12

sm Investigated/refactored/discussed a problem with boolean query expressions; disallowed date: in OR expressions #2178. Required process >=1.6.19.0 for HSEC-2024-0003. Updated docs: balance assertions, balancesheetequity.

plaintextaccounting.org updates: FAQ, Borrowing and lending, Investing and trading, Shared expenses, project ledger.

Misc

• Hacker News: Double-entry bookkeeping as a directed graph

You can see recent discussions at: https://matrix.hledger.org, https://list.hledger.org, https://forum.plaintextaccounting.org/latest, https://www.reddit.com/r/plaintextaccounting/new, https://fosstodon.org/search -> #hledger. Feel free to share interesting links (they don't have to be new) at the PTA forum.

Quotes

There are few things better than doing my taxes every year and being able to confirm every number on every form with simple #hledger queries (which lets me double check both my records and the forms themselves). --Michael Rees

I combine hledger csv output with Jupyter to generate the specific reports and charts I need. I.e business specific versus combined for taxes. --abhiyerra

This Week In Hledger 2024-04-05

sm Doc updates (#2189, #2191, Cookbook#investing, A tax reporting setup). Added Brian Victor's hledger-txnsbycat.hs to the Scripts page.

On plaintextaccounting.org I started a project finance/donations page and public ledger; moved blog links off the front page in favour of the PTA forum; added a new video in Tamil language; updated Investing and trading, FAQ.

Misc

Dmitry Astapov fixed the roi command's handling of --value (#2190).

Ellane W raised thoughtful questions about when to use PTA vs simpler tools like paper.

lil5 announced a Go language client API for hledger-web.

You can see the recent discussion at eg https://matrix.hledger.org, https://list.hledger.org, https://forum.plaintextaccounting.org/latest, https://www.reddit.com/r/plaintextaccounting/new, https://fosstodon.org/search -> #hledger. Feel free to share interesting links (they don't have to be new) at the PTA forum.

Quotes

Having hledger have all my accounts, personal and business and being able to filter out appropriate reports has been great for seeing things like is the business a money pit or am I actually growing wealth over time. --abhiyerra

I use hledger and I love it. It has a learning curve (especially if you're new to double entry accounting) but it's rewarding.

This Week In Hledger 2024-03-29

sm Doc rewrites, error message improvements.

Misc

• More discussion of hledger-interest, a call for improvements, and a pull request by Dmitry Astapov.
• Some discussion of exporting to Excel/spreadsheets.
• How much attention to bookkeeping is just right ? blog post

Feel free to share your experience reports or interesting links (they don't have to be new) on the PTA forum.

Quotes

• The initial setup of the books is pretty time consuming especially if you have a lot of accounts. I recommend starting your most important accounts and adding as you go along. --abhiyerra

This Week In Hledger 2024-03-22

sm

I tried getting hledger-sankey (generates Sankey diagrams of cash flows) working on my real world ledger, and contributed a patch.

Misc

Ilya Konovalov made multi-section balance reports always show a section total even when empty, fixing their CSV output. [#2186]

You can see recent discussions at:

https://matrix.hledger.org https://list.hledger.org https://forum.plaintextaccounting.org/latest https://www.reddit.com/r/plaintextaccounting/new https://fosstodon.org/search #hledger

Feel free to share interesting blog posts (they don't have to be new) at the PTA forum.

Quotes

A key advantage of hledger, and why I migrated from ledger, is that hledger internally orders transactions chronologically, whereas ledger inexplicably orders them in the order they appear in the file, irrespective of the date attached to them.--chromatin

hledger can validate date order, that seems to eliminate copy-paste-fail-to-update-date for me. --yencabulator

The reason I have hledger installed is for check ordereddates. --lvass

This Week In Hledger 2024-03-15

sm No hledger dev work this week. The new PTA forum continues to work well.

Misc docker-finance, a new cryptocurrency-supporting workflow system using hledger-flow, and the older workflows Full-fledged hledger, hledger-flow and rtrledger, have been added at https://plaintextaccounting.org/#workflows.

To save time, I won't summarise discussions this week; you can see them at:

https://matrix.hledger.org https://list.hledger.org https://forum.plaintextaccounting.org/latest https://www.reddit.com/r/plaintextaccounting/new https://fosstodon.org/search #hledger

Feel free to share interesting blog posts (they don't have to be new) at the PTA forum.

Quotes

• Way less painful than QuickBooks if you're also a programmer or adjacent. --dmoy

• My favorite part of the (extensive) Haskell API is Hledger.Cli.Script. It re-exports all the most commonly used functions and data types, meaning you're just one import away from everything you need to get started.--wbadart

This Week In Hledger 2024-03-08

sm I fixed some doc issues on hledger.org: code blocks can now be scrolled normally, and are cheerily color-coded instead of drab grey. The 1.33 release is still pending. Another gnarly release blocker remains to fix, and I was burned out on those. Instead, got deeply involved in setting up a new site for PTA discussions, https://forum.plaintextaccounting.org.

Robert Nielsen On the hledger fan website, I look at a planning mistake that's easy to make in hledger or any planning. See it at https://hledgerfan.com/dont-make-this-planning-mistake-with-hledger.

Misc Jonathan Dowland fixed match group references in csv rules [#2158].

Matrix chat Haskell software for Canadian tax prep, aregister print order, reporting prices effective on a date, filtering by balance size, migration issues, mint.com closure, discourse for PTA discussions, combining CSV records, CSV conversion issues, CSV rule if tables, bookkeeping success stories, downloading prices for a date range..

Mail list

• ANN: forum.plaintextaccounting.org
• CSV rules: if tables, do you use them ? want them ?

Reddit

• [hledger] Auto posting that excludes previously matched postings
• Question: Hledger csv first account names in csv files?
• Discourse for Plain Text Accounting discussions ?

Mastodon

• online content platforms lock-in
• PTA forum

Quotes

• Journal's greenyellow really makes it pop and I think it will make us rich! --sm

• I started setting up hledger this year and I’m with you for a small business it is absolutely great. --abhiyerra

• In summary for me: hledger has better csv importing system and ledger has support for lots. I use both. --faustlast

This Week In Hledger 2024-03-01

sm A lot of work this week: bugfixing, updating for GHC 9.8, and improving docs. We weren't ready to release 1.33 on March 1st, but it's near.

• web: show zero amounts with their commodity symbol [#2140]
• fix expr:'s OR-ing of open-ended dates [#2177]
• made stats output more private by default, added memory stats
• in unbalanced transaction error messages, show small imbalances more precisely
• fixed all ghc 9.8 partial head/tail warnings
• resolved remaining ghc 9.8-related issues in our dependencies
• updated all stack configs, switched to nightly/ghc 9.8 for dev builds
• added support for other unicode space characters in numbers
• added --round option to close, like print's
• fixed potential display of ambiguous balance assertion/assignment amounts [#2176]
• refactored the budget report and fixed wrong omitting of parent accounts [#2071]
• made budget report's CSV/TSV output show zero instead of empty cells
• worked on a bugs dashboard
• doc: fix description of commodity directive's scope [#2135]
• doc: explain hledger's transaction balancing
• doc: discuss debits, credits, and sign
• doc: hledger manual cleanups, fixes, flow improvement
• doc: FAQ: update why was hledger created
• doc: hledger and ledger: update performance notes
• plaintextaccounting.org: link https://lemmy.world/c/plaintextaccounting, a reddit alternative

Robert Nielsen On the hledger fan website, I take a look at needs, strategies, and spending. Also taxes and revisiting lowercasing. https://hledgerfan.com/needs-strategies-and-spending

Misc

Matrix chat wikipedia page, CSV rules, "Personal accounting in Ledger" book, unicode spaces in numbers, rvgp, loan bookkeeping, Open Collective, hledger manual size, file naming, emacs, visual studio code, aggregate shares bookkeeping..

Mail list

• Forex Accounts Receivable, timing difference between invoice and payment
• Unexpected behavior using 'expr:'

Reddit

• Examples on hledger's web page manual are cut off
• rvgp: an open-source PTA tool, that brings a proper build chain, to your accounting. Automates your Reconciliation, Validation and financial Graphing, in ruby.
• [Beancount] CLI tool to import Wise multi-currency transactions
• How to install Ledger CLI for Windows?
• [beancount] Stock Purchase Plan Qualifying Disposition
• Design patterns or idioms?
• hledger register query only on Tuesdays

Mastodon hledger manual size, switching from gnucash, more on the reddit IPO..

Hacker News

• Ledger

Quotes

Quite happy with my switch from GnuCash to hledger: already automated importing the (broken) CSV my bank provides, and getting an overview of average monthly expenses is a one-liner. --rigrig

The other nice part of hledger is the web UI (hledger-web), which is handy for checking out your transactions. --peterhajas

This Week In Hledger 2024-02-23

sm Miscellaneous updates:

• use a symbolic link's target's directory for relative include paths
• interpret glob patterns in $LEDGER_FILE
• implicitly declare the date/date2/type tags
• add close --assertion-type option
• tweak close --assert's default description
• stack:9.8: can now build all packages
• doc: add Text encoding section
• doc: clarify description/payee/note
• doc: improve the tags doc
• doc: clarify combining csv matchers
• plaintextaccounting.org: Choosing accounts tips

Robert Nielsen Inspired by a recent podcast, I look at the theme of getting the most good from limited resources. Oh, and I don't forget to mention hledger. 🙂 https://hledgerfan.com/creating-a-positive-impact

Misc Jonathan Dowland added a dark theme to hledger-ui.

Mail list

• Forex Accounts Receivable, timing difference between invoice and payment
• Balancing "equity:conversion" split across postings.

Reddit

• How do you all handle grouping your transactions? (business)
• hledger: csv rule to match amount higher or equal to 200
• hledger periodic transaction every month except two
• Mass edit journal entries based on a filter

Mastodon Fund accounting, PTA sign convention, unspaced account names, reddit monetisation..

Matrix chat Tools for investment tracking, description/payee/note semantics, tag checking, arithmetic amount expressions, Money Manager EX, CSV conversion situations, categorising tools, utf-8 encoding, timedot budgets, tax preparation, if tables, payee cleanup..

Quotes

• Thank you for writing hledger (and -ui and -web), it's wonderful work. --Michael Iles

• Use physical order to create mental order.

This Week In Hledger 2024-02-16

sm Not much time for hledger hacking this week; support and doc tweaks, and an updated example CSV rules file for Daedalus (Cardano wallet software).

Robert Nielsen On this week's hledgerfan post, I show how the "include" statement solved a problem for running an hledger command over several data files: https://hledgerfan.com/include-was-the-key

Misc

Matrix chat Accounts vs tags, --serve-api and -X, balance assertion order, hledger.org tls cert, a visualisation of hledger compile times, stateful CSV conversion, chatGPT..

Mail list

• Balancing "equity:conversion" split across postings.
• How to set the opening balance in a foreign currency account?

Reddit

• Treasury Direct t-bills
• Can hledger import use account mappings from previous transactions?
• Is it possible to sort sub-accounts in hledger reports?
• Multicurrency cash journal
• Necessity of importing history
• Open Source Software Supply Chain

Mastodon

• A :hledger: icon is now available on fosstodon.org thanks to @nobodyinperson and @mike.

Quotes

I just discovered hledger about a month ago after being fed up with YNAB's costs and issues. I love hledger. It's amazing. Thank you for all your hard work! --megagram

Work smoothly and steadily. Don't rush.

This Week In Hledger 2024-02-08

sm I worked on refactoring and debugging the budget report for https://github.com/simonmichael/hledger/issues/2071. Also, tweaked close tags, docs, and added to the PTA FAQ: https://plaintextaccounting.org/FAQ#where-are-debits-and-credits-why-are-some-balances-negative. I shared this time report that I like:

# what happened (this week by default ?) Show simplified time categories, largest first, grouping some similar subaccounts together.
@twhat *ARGS:
    hledger -f "$TIMELOG" bal -b thisweek -e tomorrow -WATS -2 --alias '/.*:(res|adm|it)\b/=_:\1' "$@"

Robert Nielsen In this week's post, I share my R program for generating random ledger/hledger transactions. Useful if you want to have some dummy transactions for showing how some feature of hledger works without having to use real data. https://hledgerfan.com/the-code-to-generate-random-hledger-transactions

Matrix chat CSV conversion, bookkeeping situations, mixing balances and changes in a report, include vs -f, tracking saving goals, amazon prime fees, paisa..

Mail list Foreign currency accounting, adding custom tags with close, multiple postings vs multiple transactions..

Reddit

• Need help with tracking a goal
• Exporting Paisa interactive visualizations
• [hledger] How do I get a specific tag column in register report
• Do you guys enter every transaction manually
• Thoughts on Beancount and PTA
• Is it possible to track mileage/mpg with ledger?
• Can I use ledger for time tracking and conversion from hours to USD?

Mastodon ..crickets..

Misc

Zegnat fixed line breaks in error messages displayed in hledger-web, making them much clearer: https://github.com/simonmichael/hledger/pull/2163

reesmichael1 made ssv: and tsv: work as file path prefixes, like csv:: https://github.com/simonmichael/hledger/pull/2165

jmtd made a dark theme for hledger-ui, testers welcome: https://github.com/simonmichael/hledger/pull/2167

brplot is a fast plotting tool for command line or wasm: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39319191

Quotes

If you know how to get your transactions downloaded from your bank and don't ever want to leave the command line, hledger is great for you -- I've been using hledger since 2019 and love every minute of it.

This Week In Hledger 2024-02-02

sm I cleaned up issue labels, updated the ISSUES page, refined the user pain score, worked on an issues dashboard prototype, tweaked the tags on close's new --assert/--retain modes, and shipped hledger 1.32.3.

Robert Nielsen Working program to generate fake hledger transactions

Matrix chat topics CSV rules, --pivot, queries, -f and glob patterns, QA and bug stats, close, 1.32.3 release, forecasting, rewriting account names, decimal correctness, VAT, mixing changes and balances in a report, tracking subscribers

Mail list 1.32.3 release, foreign currency accounting

Reddit

• Technical Debt
• Is this possible with hledger: tracking ACB of RSUs in foreign currency and deemed dispositions when transferring to registered investment accounts?
• Correct way to track divorce / partner withdrawal in PTA
• Hledger amount comparison

Quotes

• SM: too.. many.. bugs..

• Aankhen: I’m not encountering hledger bugs. It’s just one of the most solid things I’ve ever used.

This Week In Hledger 2024-01-26

sm: Heavy work on

• 2151 close design/docs/features
• 2150 a balance assertions regression
• 2153 a performance regression that has been with us since 1.29

And benchmarking generally. You can read some interesting new performance findings and help to verify or correct them at https://github.com/simonmichael/hledger/issues/2153.

Robert Nielsen Creating phony hledger transactions

Matrix chat topics: All the usual support topics (csv rules! reporting! journal entries!) and packaging - close - files layout - equity - Haskell learning resources - performance

Mail list: Breaking changes in hledger's Haskell API and JSON API/output, coming in 1.33.

Reddit: Nothing hledgerish this week, but check out:

• Gainstrack - a more accessible plaintextaccounting for personal networth tracking.

Mastodon: Crickets.

Quotes

• hledger has a decent front-end web UI, it runs as a local server on your machine by default. The filter and searching on this view is quite good, and visualization is decent.

• With version control and deterministic reports, you can be late, slow, make mistakes, but still keep moving incrementally towards accuracy and clarity.

This Week In Hledger 2024-01-19

sm I updated issue tracker labels and ISSUES and REGRESSIONS pages. On plaintextaccounting.org, I added tables of contents on all pages, tightened bullet lists, ran a link checker and fixed broken links, consolidated to a single more prominent PTA FAQ, and wrote a new "How to organise files" answer.

Robert Nielsen After much procrastination, I finally do the actual changes I had planned for my hledger data. Sed was the tool of choice, and you can read about it at https://hledgerfan.com/first-step-in-closing-out-2023.

Matrix chat docs, csv rules, reports, nix, flycheck-hledger error regions, lot tracking, paycheck entries, annextimelog, tags, paypal, invoicing entries, matrix clients, balance assertions, pivoting, file organisation, receivables, account types

Mastodon 4-year regressions stats

Reddit

• Tracking an asset like stocks and their growth
• Protecting financial data with PTA
• hledger-flow year specific rules file
• hledger: import from source with different decimal marks
• Any scripts/documented methods for importing nYNAB (web) data into PTA?

Misc hamess has annotated the new features in version 1.32's manuals.

Quotes

Whoa this is amazing. And really easy!

I love hledger and have a few scripts to convert downloaded CSVs from various institutions into the appropriate format and dedupe any overlap if necessary. Once a month I download a bunch of statements, run a script and have all of the data available to me.

This Week In Hledger 2024-01-12

sm: This week I worked mostly on support and thinking/writing about improvements to close and the new file/periodic files workflow. I introduced some new terminology to distinguish starting/ending files vs opening/closing accounts, which are unrelated events. I added new --assert and --assign modes to close and clarified a problem with using balance assignments for starting balances. I reviewed status and proposed some changes at Better UX around starting and ending files ? #2151 - please take a look and give your thoughts if you're interested in this.

Over on https://plaintextaccounting.org I checked and fixed the remaining broken links; and surveyed and linked all the hledger and PTA videos visible on youtube (they're fun, check them out).

nobodyinperson: TWIH: I published annextimelog v0.10.1 and it's now in a state I would cautiously call useable for something practical as one can now record, delete and also edit logged time periods. It's a cli git-annex based time tracker focusing on conflict-free syncing between devices and flexible tagging. It has timeclock output so can be piped into hledger, e.g.

atl ls -a project=hledger -O timeclock | hledger -f timeclock:- bal -D

https://pypi.org/project/annextimelog

Robert Nielsen: Getting ledger-mode to work again!

Matrix chat topics: CSV rules , Downloading, workflows , MCC codes , PTA videos , PTA site link checking , nix , just , cost basis , emacs & VS code , annextimelog , reporting , SM's time and tasks dashboard

Mail list:

• how far in advance should I put anticipated expenses in liabilities:accountspayable ?
• Better UX around starting and ending files ?
• a single, cumulative journal, or annual journal files ?

Reddit:

• [hledger] Year Closing
• How to handle currency exchange via different accounts?
• Regexp in rules file

Mastodon:

• Shared expenses bookkeeping
• just
• flycheck-hledger
• importing from your forecast

Open Source Collective, our fiscal host for project funds on Open Collective, may reduce transaction fees: between 15th January and 15th April, you'll see a platform tip request on every new contribution on projects hosted by Open Source Collective. If the trial is a success Open Source Collective will lower our fee on contributions through opencollective.com, making donations more cost-effective for our Collectives.

Quotes

• each time I get the TWIH ping I get reminded to use hledger again :D But it only shows me how bad I am at managing my money 🙈😬😅

• hledger is so awesome. I just had to do my entire accounting for the last 1½yrs (because I'm a lazy slob) and thanks to hledger's rule files, it took just one evening.

This Week In Hledger 2024-01-05

sm: I released hledger 1.32.2, which fixes bugs and adds hledger-ui on Windows.

In master I worked on

• fix check tags to ignore modified, _modified tags automatically #2148
• fix add,import,web: really avoid filenames ending with . on Windows #1056
• improve GHC 9.8 support
• add --assert and --assign modes to close, eg to help try alternate file migration workflows.

In docs:

• RELEASING: process updates; changelogs are now updated only in release branch
• REGRESSIONS: split the bounty between finder and fixer
• sponsors: improve Open Collective tiers, fee info, avatar display
• add: clarify that add does not add a default commodity symbol #815
• auto postings: clarify
• examples, examples/invoicing: expand READMEs, clarify status

Forgot to mention last week:

• Did some cleanup on https://plaintextaccounting.org, structure and links should be a little clearer.
• Spotted a new PTA app: https://github.com/zhang-accounting/zhang

Robert Nielsen: TWIH: Because I use Emacs, better Emacs = better hledger. See how Emacs guru Prot helped me: https://hledgerfan.com/better-emacs-better-hledger/

Misc

• https://hub.darcs.net/thielema/nedit/browse/hledger.nedit A configuration for minimal syntax highlighting of HLedger journals in NEdit and XNEdit

• https://blog.emacsen.net/profit-first-plain-text-accounting.html

• https://blog.emacsen.net/profit-first-constraints-plain-text-accounting.html

• https://www.reddit.com/r/plaintextaccounting/comments/18vvvbk/data_is_wider_than_the_terminal/

• https://www.reddit.com/r/plaintextaccounting/comments/18x0t0m/how_to_map_goals_with_investments/

• https://www.reddit.com/r/plaintextaccounting/comments/18x5izp/accessing_both_sides_of_an_entry_in_an_automated/

• https://www.reddit.com/r/plaintextaccounting/comments/18zgwjo/hledgerui_for_windows_where/

• https://www.reddit.com/r/plaintextaccounting/comments/18zxlbn/hledger_year_closing/

• Etymological observations on some accounting terms

Quotes

• Plain-text accounting is great. I choose hledger for the accounts of a small side business that doesn't warrant hiring an accountant.

• I love hledger and have a few scripts to convert downloaded CSVs from various institutions into the appropriate format and dedupe any overlap if necessary. Once a month I download a bunch of statements, run a script and have all of the data available to me.

This Week In Hledger 2023-12-29

sm: Fixed a tricky csv rule parsing regression #2134 and a debug logging bug.

Improved the project Justfile, improved docs. I also improved and "described" my time and task tracking dashboard; see https://hledger.org/time-and-task-dashboard.html. (Please accept Mr. Goldberg's excellent diagram until I have time to make my own.)

And the usual support and online chatter.

Robert Nielsen: How -U helped me after making an error after mistakenly entering the wrong transactions: https://hledgerfan.com/fixing-my-mistake-after-accidentally-adding-pending-transactions

Misc: Lots of reddit posts this week, including some hledger-related ones:

• Is there any plain text accounting software which uses standard debits and credits?
• Is it possible to exclude certain accounts from a report?
• Finding an accountant
• Modelling
• Hledger rules file: Multiple postings for Revolut fees
• Help migrating my personal budget system

And also some lively discussion on the mail list, including this proposal to simplify file opening and closing balances.

Quotes: The main thing that made me switch to hledger was the ease of autogenerating transactions into a plain-text format. ... GNUCash made recurring transactions easy but made it a lot harder to generate split transactions according to fixed splits that I regularly engage with my friends/family in. With hledger I have a system of taking CSVs, classifying transactions using a stack of Python scripts and using them to generate hledger importable files. I go by hand and annotate transactions that my scripts couldn't classify/split, and then I import it into my main hledger file. I store all my inputs and intermediate imports in a git repository along with my main ledger file for auditability and to look at annotations. The ease of automation just can't be beat with PTA but it's definitely harder to use if you don't have a preference for TUI work. Ease of writing importers was a huge driving factor when I switched to hledger from GNUCash.

This Week In Hledger 2023-12-22

sm: This week I worked more on consolidating project scripts, porting make rules to just. Also participated in timeclock discussions, did some research and brainstormed next steps.

nobodyinperson: I published annextimelog v0.3.1, a git-annex based time tracker (alpha quality, bare minimum functionality), which can export its data to hledger-readable timeclock.

https://pypi.org/project/annextimelog

Robert Nielsen: On the hledger fan website I look at using desc as a timesaver, and why this matters: https://hledgerfan.com/a-better-description

Misc: ShrykeWindgrace's PR upgrading hledger-ui to the new brick and vty libs has landed; hledger-ui now runs natively on Microsoft Windows.

Quotes of the week: I’ve been using hledger for a few years. ... Every service lets you download historical data as CSV, which can be imported by hledger and turned into journal files and then into visual reports. ... It’s a bespoke setup and super nerdy and is a bit of a pain, but it’s literally the only solution that works for us.

This Week In Hledger 2023-12-15

Share your hledger/PTA user notes, dev news, achievements or experiences in the hledger matrix chat, every Friday morning (or any time, tagged with "TWIH").

sm: Bugfixing

• Issue triage, ISSUES > Prioritising doc, dashboard, new issue template updates
• hledger-web: fix --base-url, drop --file-url, better startup messages, improve tests, code cleanups, manual cleanups, code docs.

Robert Nielsen: Discussion of the holiday season and hledger on the hledger fan website: https://hledgerfan.com/the-holiday-season-and-hledger

Misc: budget-cli - budget-focussed, CSV-centric, typescript PTA app with a good write-up

Quotes of the week: I switched, blissfully, away from Quicken/Quickbook/Xero/all that heavy crap to very simple and elegant textfile-based accounting (ledger/hledger) and it's been the best and most flexible accounting experience I've ever had. I finally feel completely in control of my companies' books.

This Week In Hledger 2023-12-08

Share your hledger/PTA user notes, dev news, achievements or experiences in the hledger matrix chat, every Friday morning (or any time, tagged with "TWIH").

sm: Fixed a number of issues with 1.32 and released 1.32.1.

Rewrote the hledger manual's "Budget report" section, and moved some content to the website's Budgeting page.

Tried converting the bake bash scripts to just scripts.

Refactoring, issues, support.

Robert Nielsen: On the hledger fan website, this I discuss one of the most useful ledger mode commands for Emacs. Also, a book recommendation for graphic design that you need to know about: https://hledgerfan.com/upgrading-to-hledger-1-32-a-book-on-graphic-design-and-ledger-mode-clean-buffer

Quotes of the week: I’ve been researching the history of double entry bookkeeping alongside learning the basics of accounting (which is how all this started) and I think hledger and the whole universe of plain text accounting software is super cool. Just a lovely evolution of the method. Thanks for making it so welcoming and accessible

This Week In Hledger 2023-12-01

Share your hledger/PTA user notes, dev news, achievements or experiences in the hledger matrix chat, every Friday morning (or any time, tagged with "TWIH").

sm:

Dev:

Added easy tagged time logging to timedot format, using letters instead of dots.

Ops:

Update the stars.hledger.org redirect (we have reached the top 30 Haskell projects by github stars 🌟 🎉).

Docs:

Use cli class instead of shell for all command-line examples in hledger docs.

hledger: Amount formatting, parseability

Ledger: interoperating tips updates, more about commodity directives and balance assertions.

Videos: reorder hledger fan videos.

REGRESSIONS: cleanups, discuss real names.

Other:

Prepared change notes and released hledger 1.32 with the last quarter's changes.

I did a big cleanup on plaintextaccounting.org, which has absorbed the wiki and now supports Obsidian-style wiki links and clickable headings.

Robert Nielsen: Two things in this week's hledger fan blog. First, for beginners, some notes on reducing errors when reconciling accounts. Second, for the more advanced, a recommendation for an Awk programming book. See the details at https://hledgerfan.com/fewer-errors-in-reconciling/.

Quotes of the week:

It's the basis of my entire personal finance system.

once again, I was deeply impressed by how useful hledger is, and how thoughtful it is.

This Week In Hledger 2023-11-24

Share your hledger/PTA user notes, dev news, achievements or experiences in the hledger matrix chat, every Friday morning (or any time, tagged with "TWIH").

sm:

Dev:

Fixes:

• Non-print-like reports no longer add trailing decimal marks (a regression in 1.31). Clarified the policy on number formatting adjustments made in certain reports/output formats. (#2115)
• tag: queries now work when reading CSV files. (#2114)
• -o/--outputfile with a .json or .sql extension now properly selects those formats.

Improvements/features:

• The print command has a new beancount output format for exporting to Beancount.
• Timedot format supports a new letters syntax for easier tagged time logging. (#2116)
• Journal format now accepts lot costs with spaces after {, improving Ledger compatibility.

Docs:

hledger: added "Amount formatting, parseability", updated "Decimal marks, digit group marks", "commodity directive", "CSV > if table", "Timedot".

Ledger: added more notes on commodity directives, from chat.

Checking for errors: added tips on enforcing account lifetimes, from reddit, and on minimising diffs in reports, from mail list.

Cookbook: added "Reporting version control stats".

Over at https://plaintextaccounting.org/#articles-blog-posts I started adding blog links for 2021-2023, including 10 33 hledger-related posts from Robert Nielsen, Jonathan Dowland, Arsen Arsenović, and Zoran Zaric.

Misc:

Updated project finance scripts, regenerated the project ledger with consistent precisions in assertions, updated it with the last few months of data from Open Collective.

Robert Nielsen: On the theme of the recent Thanksgiving Day, here are three ways you can use hledger to be thankful: https://hledgerfan.com/using-hledger-for-thanksgiving/.

Quotes of the week: Have been taking care of my (new) records for almost two years now and this data is really valuable for me. Gives me very nice overview over everything and confidence that everything is alright and so on. Just looking at some graphs can make you feel really good - in terms of "I know whats happening", not necessarily in "all is well", depending on those actual numbers! 😆 --someone using Beancount

This Week In Hledger 2023-11-17

Every Friday morning (or any time, tagged with "TWIH"): share your hledger/plain text accounting user notes, dev news, achievements or experiences in the hledger matrix chat.

sm:

Dev

A new hledger user pointed out in chat out that -s/--strict mode didn't work with the import command. This exposed a bug (#2113) and led to some reworking of the API in Hledger.Read. Until now, when reading multiple files, -s/--strict checks were performed for each individual file, causing spurious failures, with import and other commands. Now strict checks are done only once, for the overall journal. Also, the import command now only updates .latest files at the end of a successful run (after successfully passing strict checks and after updating the journal file).

Post-"Precisiongeddon" followup: updating hledger-ui and hledger-web to show amounts with correct display precision.

Ops

Fixed a problem with cloudflare authentication that was preventing automatic TLS certificate renewal on hledger.org.

Clarified and documented my cloudflare tokens, and moved them to env vars so the latest caddy config could be committed.

Fixed the hledger.org webhook that was not updating the site on git push.

Enabled https for "code.hledger.org" and "site.hledger.org" short urls.

Fixed some caddy warnings, formatted the config file, added some caddy/webhook management scripts to the site makefile.

Docs

Spent some time drafting alternate hledger manual structures and thinking about adding a user guide.

Misc

Time breakdown this week: 52% enhancement, 35% cleanup, 13% support.

Robert Nielsen: On the hledger fan website, I discuss using the aregister and print commands to get narrow and wider views of your data: https://hledgerfan.com/zooming-out-and-in

Quotes of the week:

Great software btw, I appreciate your work! Been poking around with PTA and hledger since I was laid off, and it's been incredible for managing/extending my runway 😁 I was a Mint/Personal Capital power user before, but this takes it to the next level. Got a new job and I've already forecasted out the whole next year, very handy and something I could never do before"

I spent some time trying to set up hledger so that I’d actually use it. With multiple accounts it really got tedious but I loved the actual double entry accounting and level of detail. My wife was blown away by the year end summary I made with it. You can see early how much went to taxes, fica etc etc.

I'm really happy how my hledger edit addon helps me quickly reconcile transactions. After CSV-importing from all different sources (phone notes, bank websites, etc.), I pile up the ridiculous amount of invoices and receipts next to me, grab one after the other and execute hledger edit amt:35.11 or hledger edit Checking desc:ALDI for example to find and edit the transaction in my $EDITOR, no matter where that txn was located originally. The other way round (going through the journal, then finding the physical invoice/receipt) turned out to be much slower.

I learned one thing: if %FIELDNAME REGEX matches against FIELDNAME in the CSV. I didn't know that! I always match against the whole line and am annoyed if the order of columns makes this weird

This Week In Hledger 2023-11-10

It's time for This Week In Hledger! Every Friday morning (or any time, tagged with "TWIH"), share your hledger/PTA user notes, dev news, achievements or experiences in the hledger matrix chat.

sm:

Dev

This week I completed the months-long yak shave that became Precisiongeddon, and it has landed in master; see https://github.com/simonmichael/hledger/pull/2111 for details. Heads up: this can change default precisions shown especially by cost and value reports - all for the better hopefully, but any pre-release testing is welcome. There's a linux binary at https://github.com/simonmichael/hledger/actions/runs/6804488282.

CI (continuous integration) workflows on github have been optimised a bit:

• Scheduled weekly builds have been disabled, as they were propagating to forks and running wastefully there in some cases.
• Some repeated rebuilding of the hledger-lib and hledger packages that seems unnecessary has been stopped.
• hledger-ui no longer builds its modules twice.
• Haddock testing has been moved to the release workflows to save time.

Fixed:

• amounts in value reports can sometimes be shown unstyled / with zero decimal digits, https://github.com/simonmichael/hledger/issues/2105
• auto postings break redundant equity/cost detection and transaction balancing, https://github.com/simonmichael/hledger/issues/2110

My time log for the week shows 69% enhancement, 27% cleanup, 5% support.

Docs

As part of Precisiongeddon, I started expanding hledger's "code docs", in the Hledger module's haddock. I spent time learning how to navigate Haddock and producing a fast-feedback authoring workflow (make haddock-watch). And documented a bunch of "jargon" terms, and how we handle precision and display styles.

The "Regular expressions" manual section has been rewritten and now has examples: https://hledger.org/dev/hledger.html#regular-expressions.

Unmentioned last week: I added a News page on hledger.org as a stable home for This Week In Hledger and other news updates.

Misc

Some notable commits:

• feat: cli: Add tsv output (#869) (Peter Sagerson)
• feat: import: interpolate regex matches in field templates (#2009) (Jonathan Dowland)

There's new interest and design discussion for referencing the matched account name in auto postings, and I have added to lukasbestle's $20 bounty to make it $100: https://github.com/simonmichael/hledger/issues/1975

Robert Nielsen: For more advanced hledger aficionados, here is a diagram showing just about every possible part of an hledger transaction: https://hledgerfan.com/almost-everything-you-wanted-to-know-about-hledger-transactions.

Quotes of the week:

Overall very happy with hledger so far btw!

And thanks for the amazing tool. Migrating to hledger has been one of the most satisfying bits of digital homesteading I’ve done.

This Week In Hledger 2023-11-03

sm:

Dev

• tests: add outshine headings for folding/readability (in Emacs), readme updates, include .test files in TAGS, clean up ledger-compat tests
• tools: bake dbgstrs - print a bunch of hledger debug messages for review
• tools: ghci :rmain - like :main, but reloads first, useful eg when changing --debug level
• WIP: imp: prices: fixes, clarify/improve semantics
• WIP: precisiongeddon: precision/rounding cleanups/fixes/tests/docs, too intricate to describe

Continuing heavy work on consistent and optimal precision handling, and all the related yaks which keep showing up.

Seen

• https://www.chvp.be/blog/nanoledger/ nice blog post introducing nanoledger android app

Robert Nielsen: Beginner's corner: What are the parts of a basic hledger transaction? Two resources for learners: https://hledgerfan.com/beginners-corner-a-basic-hledger-transaction

This Week In Hledger 2023-10-27

sm:

Dev

• demo: avoid a bug in asciinema 2.3.0, and improve the error message when asciinema fails (#2094)
• web: fix broken "File format help" link in the edit form (#2103)
• web: access control UX cleanups: replace --capabilities and --capabilities-header with --allow, and validate it before starting the app (#834)
• web: refactor permission checking
• web: sandstorm web app cleanups; rename/reorder roles & permissions
• WIP: testing and improving amount style and precision handling in cost/value reports

Ops

• Set up a self-hosted Sandstorm server and learned how to configure it.
• Set up a public hledger-web instance in it: sandbox.hledger.org. Unlike https://demo.hledger.org, and until the spammers find it, sandbox is fully writable - use it as a pastebin for examples, eg.

Docs

• Contemplating: merging cookbook and examples/*; something more custom to replace mdbook

Examples

• hledger-report1: a custom compound report script, haskell and bash versions

Misc

• exploring latest Paisa, and how to use it with existing setups

Seen

• https://www.reddit.com/r/plaintextaccounting/comments/17g0026/average_cost_capital_gains_with_hledger very clear tutorial posts on (one way of) tracking investments

• The primary reason Ledger was created was because it maintains the double-entry accounting equation for you: all accounts must balance. GUI tools never did this aggressively enough, all of them having some kind of feature like "check accounts" that would end up finding unaccountable pennies here or there. --John Wiegley, https://www.reddit.com/r/plaintextaccounting/comments/17fg4oi/why_plain_text_accounting_over_tools_like_excel/

chvp: A new Android app, NanoLedger, was added to F-droid to facilitate adding transactions on the fly. Payees, notes and accounts can all be autocompleted. Give it a try at https://f-droid.org/en/packages/be.chvp.nanoledger/

Robert Nielsen: Why I created the hledger fan YouTube channel: https://hledgerfan.com/why-i-created-the-hledger-fan-youtube-channel

This Week In Hledger 2023-10-20

G'day @room. It's time for This Week In Hledger ! Every Friday morning, if you have any user or dev news or experiences you'd like to share, post them in the hledger matrix chat (https://matrix.to/#/#hledger:matrix.org) as a message prefixed by "TWIH:". Markdown formatting and edits are welcome. On Saturday I'll publish on the hledger mail list and on mastodon.

sm: Changes merged this week include:

Dev

• print: add --round option for more control of precisions (#2085)
• balance-assigned amounts affect commodity styles again (#2091, regression in 1.30)
• timedot: parse unitful quantities more accurately (#2096)
• Jacob Weisz has updated the hledger-web app on Sandstorm (The amazing https://sandstorm.io cloud app platform that lets you set up free private hledger-web instances with a few clicks, check it out!)

Ops

• renamed main CI workflow and branch to "ci"
• updated and committed hledger.org's caddy config and short urls (redirects)
• there's now an easy short url for trying out the hledger-web app on Sandstorm: https://sandstorm.hledger.org.

Docs

• moved regression bounty info to https://hledger.org/REGRESSIONS.html
• hledger manual > Journal > Commodity display style: rewritten
• hledger manual > aregister, hledger-ui manual > Register screen: note how separately-dated postings get combined

Examples

• justfile: forecast-import: show but don't consume future-dated forecast transactions

Robert Nielsen: https://hledgerfan.com/a-not-so-capital-idea-for-saving-time/ describes a timesaving tip for command line users. Specifically, when typing one of your account names, hledger "forgives" you if you don't match the capitalization of an account name.

This Week In Hledger 2023-10-13

[hey there @room - I'd like to get a regular This Week In Hledger started, along the lines of This Week in Matrix (TWIM) ... Having a regular news heartbeat like this, even a small one, will help build our community and momentum.]

Welcome to This Week In Hledger ! Every Friday morning, if you have any user or dev news or experiences you'd like to share, post them in the hledger matrix chat room as a message prefixed by "TWIH:". Markdown formatting welcome, edits welcome. On Saturday I'll publish on the hledger mail list and on mastodon. (Inspired by This Week In Matrix).

sm:

Merged

• feat: balance: Add only-summary flag (#1012) #2086 (Stephen Morgan)
• feat: CSV rule negation #2088 (bobobo1618)
• imp: web: include account declaration info in accounts JSON #2097 (S. Zeid)

WIP

• more control of display precision with print
• more consistent precision handling in general
• displaying zeros with consistent commodity symbol, precision etc. when possible
• bug wrangling

Docs

• How to record journal entries
• hledgermatic , a simple up-to-date workflow
• Cleanups: Common workflows, Simon's old setup

danielchappell:

What I like about the data format

• Double Entry accounting in human readable files, the journal files.
• Balance assignments (to check in on my cash-wallet occasionally)
• Virtual transactions (to track funds)

What I like about HLedger specifically

• static analysis cf. https://hledger.org/hledgermatic.html

What I need to do my homework on

• The limitations of balance assertions in HLedger
• study haskell

What makes me cry about HLedger

• A lack of amount expressions - github issue #183, https://hledger.org/ledger.html?highlight=expression#amount-expressions

Frequently Asked Questions

If you have additions or suggestions, just click the "edit this page" link at the bottom, or let us know in the chat.

• ACCOUNTING
  • What's accounting ?
  • Why might I want to do accounting ?
  • What's double-entry accounting ?
  • What's plain text accounting ?
• THE HLEDGER PROJECT
  • What's hledger ?
  • Why was hledger created ?
  • What is the hledger project's current mission and plans ?
• HLEDGER AND PLAIN TEXT ACCOUNTING
  • We use another system, we don't need this ?
  • How do you collaborate with accountants and the non-PTA world ?
  • Must I enter data in a text editor ??
  • What is a good set of account names to start with ?
  • What can hledger do for me ?
  • How could that help me ?
  • Isn't manual data entry a pain ?
  • Isn't importing from banks a pain ?
  • Isn't plain text ugly and hard to use ?
  • Isn't this too weird for my family, business partners, tax accountant to use ?
  • Why are my revenue (income), liability, and equity balances negative ?
• HLEDGER AND OTHER SOFTWARE
  • How does hledger relate to Ledger ?
  • What is/was ledger4 ?
  • How is hledger different from / interoperable with... ?
  • How could I import/migrate from...
  • How could I export/migrate to...
• GETTING STARTED
  • There are so many docs, where do I even.. ?
  • Where can I find non-english docs ?
  • How do I set the default file to something other than ~/.hledger.journal ?
  • How should I organise files ?
  • What account names should I use ?
• JOURNALS
  • How can I tidy a journal file ?
  • Why does this entry give a "no amount" error even though I wrote an amount ?
  • Why does this journal fail strict account checking even though I declared all accounts ?
  • Why do some directives not affect other files ? Why can't I include account aliases from a sub file ?
  • Can I use arithmetic expressions in journal entries ?
  • How could I record call/put stock options ?
• CSV
  • Where can I find hledger CSV rules for my financial institutions ?
  • How do I make new hledger CSV rules ?
  • When importing CSV from two bank accounts, and there's a transfer between them, how do I avoid duplicate entries ?
  • Can I do arithmetic calculations in CSV rules ?
  • Where can I find more help with CSV conversion ?
• REPORTING
  • Why am I seeing some amounts without an account name in reports ?
  • How do I control the number of decimal places displayed ?
  • How do I display a decimal mark different from the one in the input file ?
  • How do I report by financial year, not calendar year ?
  • How can I report (or generate transactions) on every Nth ... of ..., etc. ?
  • How can I report (or generate transactions) on the last day of each month ?
  • How do I show just deposits, or just withdrawals, in an account ?
  • How do I show the full entries for an account's deposits/withdrawals ?
  • How do I show transactions between one account and another account ?
  • How do I show a register or balance report between one account and another ?
  • What are some gotchas with piping hledger print into another hledger command ?
• CUSTOMISING
  • How can I save and reuse common options/arguments ?
  • Is there a config file ?
  • How can I automatically use a journal file in the current directory ?
• SCRIPTING
  • How do I install more hledger scripts and add-on commands ?
  • How do I make new hledger scripts ?
  • What's a good way to manage hledger scripts ?
• HLEDGER-UI
  • With hledger-ui in iTerm2 on mac, why does Shift-Up/Shift-Down move the selection instead of adjusting the report period ?

ACCOUNTING

What's accounting ?

Accounting means keeping track of the flow and whereabouts of things you value, such as money or time, and using this information for insight, planning and decision-making. Here's hledger's Accounting concepts page and Accounting links.

Why might I want to do accounting ?

For clarity, control, planning, accountability, compliance, tax reporting, tax audits. It clarifies activity, priorities, obligations, opportunities.

What's double-entry accounting ?

Double-entry bookkeeping is the traditional method for keeping accounting records reliably. For every movement of value (a transaction), both the source and destination are recorded. These are labelled "Credit" and "Debit", to minimise working with negative numbers. Simple arithmetic invariants help prevent errors.

What's plain text accounting ?

You can read more about Plain Text Accounting (PTA) at https://plaintextaccounting.org. In short, it is a way of doing Double Entry Bookkeeping (DEB) and accounting on a computer, using simple text files and small flexible tools, rather than databases and big applications. Minus and plus signs are usually used instead of Credit and Debit notation, making it easier to learn than traditional DEB. The text files are human-readable and easy to convert or to manage with version-control tools.

THE HLEDGER PROJECT

What's hledger ?

One of the best tools for doing Plain Text Accounting. It's free and you can read all about it at the https://hledger.org home page.

Why was hledger created ?

I needed to make working on finances (and financial tools) more fun for myself. Ledger was incomplete and stalled, using/supporting/community-building around it was frustrating, and I wanted to work with Haskell not C++. My goals included:

• Provide a more usable, robust, documented, cross-platform-installable version of Ledger.
• Provide a more maintainable and hackable version of Ledger for developers.
• Provide a useful library and toolbox for finance-minded Haskell programmers.
• Explore the suitability of Haskell for such applications.
• Attempt to build a successful, solvent, self-supporting project in a thriving ecosystem of financial software projects.

See also: hledger and Ledger: History.

What is the hledger project's current mission and plans ?

1. Help make plain text accounting more usable and useful for all.
2. Bring relief to people experiencing financial and financial technology stress, by providing dependable, empowering accounting tools, learning materials, and community.
3. Help people and communities in all countries increase their financial mastery and freedom.
4. Help grow a shared global culture of accountability and sustainability.
5. Starting with this project and ourselves.

Here is the ROADMAP.

HLEDGER AND PLAIN TEXT ACCOUNTING

We use another system, we don't need this ?

Every tool has strengths and weaknesses. hledger is lightweight, flexible and relatively easy to glue into other systems; it might be worth exploring as a complementary tool.

How do you collaborate with accountants and the non-PTA world ?

Depending on their needs, you send them a few standard reports (balance sheet, income statement, itemized account registers or a full transaction journal)

• as plain text (optionally spruced up with your own templates)
• or as HTML
• or as PDF
• or as CSV they can import into Excel and elsewhere

Must I enter data in a text editor ??

No. A good text editor can be a very efficient way to work on your data, but there are other ways:

• use a terminal-based data entry tool like hledger add or hledger-iadd
• use a web-based data entry tool like hledger-web
• use a phone-based data entry app like MoLe
• import CSV data, avoiding manual data entry.

What is a good set of account names to start with ?

The chart of accounts (list or tree of account names) will vary according to your language and your accounting situation, and will usually evolve as your needs change. Currently hledger does not have any built-in default chart of accounts. You can start small: name just the accounts you need, as you need them. Or, copy a chart of accounts that seems suitable, from other accounting software or from the web. Some examples can be found at https://plaintextaccounting.org/Choosing-accounts.

What can hledger do for me ?

hledger can provide clarity and insight into your personal or business finances, time logs, or other dated quantitative data, with relatively little effort on your part. You need only provide a list of transactions, as a plain text file in a simple human-readable format. (Or a CSV file plus some conversion rules.) From this hledger can generate a variety of useful reports and interactive views. See Features.

How could that help me ?

• More clarity, transparency and accountability, for yourself or others
• Know what you owe, or who owes you
• Know where the money went; steer your spending
• Know how you spent your time; easy client invoicing
• More foresight and ability to plan; avoid overdrafts, late fees, cashflow crunches
• Know all the numbers you need for tax reporting; know how much to save for estimated taxes
• Less stress, fear or overwhelm
• More satisfaction, empowerment, and prosperity!

Isn't manual data entry a pain ?

• Not if you spend a few minutes every day.
• Not if the benefits are worth it to you.
• Not if you use a comfortable editor and copy/paste a lot.
• Not if you use tools to help (editor modes, hledger add, hledger-iadd, hledger-web..)
• Not if you use rules to generate your recurring transactions.

Isn't importing from banks a pain ?

Not once you have set up a manual or automated routine for it. The possibilities for automation vary by bank and country, but the following semi-manual workflow is almost always possible and quick:

1. Manually download recent CSVs from your bank's website
2. hledger import ACCT1.csv ACCT2.csv ...
3. review/clean up the new entries in your journal.

Isn't plain text ugly and hard to use ?

No way, it's great, honest. We love it. You'll love it. It's fast. It's cheap. It's non-distracting. It keeps you focussed on the content. It's copy-pasteable. It's accessible to screen readers. It's resizable. You can pick the font and colours. You do not need "Plaintext Reader, Trial Version" to read it. you do not need "Plaintext Studio Pro" to write it. You can use your favorite editor and skills you already have. You can search in it! You can version control it. It works well over remote/slow connections. It's future-proof. It will be just as usable in 15 or 50 years. You can still read it even without the right software or (if you print it) a working computer. "Accounting data is valuable; we want to know that it will be accessible for ever - even without software. We want to know when it changes, and revision-control it. We want to search and manipulate it efficiently. So, we store it as human-readable plain text."

Isn't this too weird for my family, business partners, tax accountant to use ?

Maybe. You can ask them to enter data via hledger-web, or import from their mobile expenses app or a shared spreadsheet. You can show them the hledger-web UI, or HTML reports, or give them CSV to open in a spreadsheet.

Why are my revenue (income), liability, and equity balances negative ?

It's normal; it's because hledger and most other plain text accounting tools use negative and positive numbers instead of credit and debit terminology. Certain hledger reports (balancesheet, incomestatement, cashflow) and flags (--invert) can show them as positive when needed. See Accounting > Debits and credits.

HLEDGER AND OTHER SOFTWARE

How does hledger relate to Ledger ?

hledger (begun 2006) is inspired by, and a friendly coopetitor of, John Wiegley's Ledger (begun 2003). It is an attempt to rewrite Ledger in a more expressive programming language and take it to the next level in usability and practicality. See hledger and Ledger.

What is/was ledger4 ?

hledger has its own parser for a file format close to Ledger's. In 2012 John Wiegley prototyped a more exact conversion of Ledger 3's parser to Haskell, calling it ledger4. For a while I integrated this as an alternate file format within hledger, hoping to improve our ability to read original Ledger files, but the parser needed lots more work to become useful, so later I removed it again.

How is hledger different from / interoperable with... ?

See Cookbook > Other software for notes on Ledger, Beancount, GnuCash, Quickbooks, etc. Also:

• PTA apps, showing project stats
• Syntax Quick Reference for the Ledger-Likes, showing several file formats
• PTA app comparisons, though mostly very out of date

How could I import/migrate from...

• Look for a relevant page at Cookbook > Other software
• Otherwise, try to export CSV representing transactions - one record per transaction - and then use hledger's CSV reader. Also look for pre-existing CSV rules you can use.
• Or, make a custom script or workflow to convert the old data to hledger's simple journal format.

How could I export/migrate to...

• Look for a relevant page at Cookbook > Other software
• See also Exporting from hledger.

GETTING STARTED

There are so many docs, where do I even.. ?

You're right. You can skip them: just run hledger for help.

When you'd like a bit more guidance, use the Get Started page, and/or the chat room.

If you want the most complete reference, use the hledger manual. If you read this and nothing else, you'll be a hledger expert. But it is rather large; so maybe read the table of contents, the first sections, and just skim the rest so you know where to find out more.

You can jump to topics in the manual with a url like hledger.org/hledger#time-periods. (This makes a good web browser keyword; eg in your browser, define hm TOPIC as a shortcut for https://hledger.org/hledger#TOPIC.) The website also has a search feature. To read a local copy of the manual, see hledger help -h.

Where can I find non-english docs ?

Unfortunately, I know of very few non-english docs for hledger. There must be some I don't know about, please contribute any good links.

Could you help translate some docs ? Please get in touch.

Otherwise, you could try Google Translate or similar.

There are couple of non-english videos at PTA: Videos and hledger: Videos.

How do I set the default file to something other than ~/.hledger.journal ?

See hledger manual: Setting LEDGER_FILE.

How should I organise files ?

See PTA FAQ: How should I organise files ?.

What account names should I use ?

See PTA FAQ: How should I choose account names ?.

JOURNALS

How can I tidy a journal file ?

Method 1: use Emacs's ledger-mode. This is the least destructive way, but it requires Emacs and ledger-mode. Select the whole journal, or a region, or move the cursor to a specific transaction, and press M-q.

Method 2: use hledger's print command. You might need to work around some current limitations:

• Only transactions are printed, not directives or inter-transaction comments. Workaround: group directives at the start of the file, and copy them to the new output, and don't use inter-transaction comments.

• Transactions will be printed in date order. Workaround if you don't want to sort them all by date: tidy just a subset of transactions at a time (using -I if needed). Eg in Emacs: select region, C-u M-S-| hledger -If- print.

• If you have include directives, the included files' transactions will also be printed. Workaround: tidy one file at a time, temporarily commenting out include directives.

• Amounts will be right-aligned, within each transaction but not across all transactions. Workaround if you want whole-file alignment and more alignment options, like aligning on decimal mark: use ledger-mode.

The print method has some inconveniences, but also extra power, eg to select a subset of transactions with a query, or to transform the data with --explicit, --infer-costs, --alias, --commodity-style, --pivot, etc.

Some examples:

cp $LEDGER_FILE $LEDGER_FILE.bak
hledger print > $LEDGER_FILE.new && mv $LEDGER_FILE.new $LEDGER_FILE

Using the sponge helper for updating a file in place:

hledger print | sponge $LEDGER_FILE

Preserving directives and inter-transaction comments (though not their positions):

(grep -E '^([#;]|[[:alpha:]])' $LEDGER_FILE; hledger print) > $LEDGER_FILE.new

Note, any time you do mass edits to valuable data, it's wise to keep a backup and check your changes. Eg by comparing reports before and after, by running your usual hledger checks, or by using a version control system.

Why does this entry give a "no amount" error even though I wrote an amount ?

2019-01-01
  a $1
  b

Because there's only a single space between a and 1, so this is parsed as an account named "a 1", with no amount. There must be at least two spaces between account name and amount.

Why does this journal fail strict account checking even though I declared all accounts ?

account assets:bank:checking ; my bank account
account equity               ; equity

2023-01-01
    equity
    assets:bank:checking   $1000

Because there's only a single space between assets:bank:checking and the ; comment, so the comment is parsed as part of the account name. (hledger accounts shows this.) There must be at least two spaces between an account name and anything that follows it.

Why do some directives not affect other files ? Why can't I include account aliases from a sub file ?

Directives vary in their scope, ie which journal entries and which input files they affect. The differences are partly due to historical accident, and partly by design, so that reordering files, or adding another file, does not change their meaning. See journal format > Directives and multiple files. Related discussion: #217, #510, #1007.

Can I use arithmetic expressions in journal entries ?

Eg, Ledger-style amount expressions ? Generally no, hledger doesn't allow this. (If you want it, you could revive PR #934.)

In some cases, you can emulate it with auto postings, which can multiple amounts by a constant. Eg to (effectively) divide all food expenses by 2, you could add this rule, and enable it with --auto:

## Add a posting subtracting half from every food expense (good enough for expense reports)
= revenues
    (expenses:food)  *-.5

Related: 50% of the balance?

How could I record call/put stock options ?

Here's a suggestion from the beancount mail list (reddit).

CSV

Where can I find hledger CSV rules for my financial institutions ?

Look for a suitable rules file in the examples/csv/ directory on github. Or you can get the hledger source and look in examples/csv/.

If your financial institution is not there yet, please use these for inspiration, ask in the chat for help, and perhaps send a pull request contributing your new rules.

How do I make new hledger CSV rules ?

See the Importing CSV tutorial and the hledger manual > CSV format. (After checking for a pre-existing rules file in examples/csv/ in the hledger repo.) If possible, add your new rules file to that directory and send a pull request.

When importing CSV from two bank accounts, and there's a transfer between them, how do I avoid duplicate entries ?

You can have one of the rules files skip that transaction. Eg if you have checking and savings CSVs, in savings.csv.rules you might have a rule like

## already imported from checking
if TRANSFER FROM .*CHECKING
 skip

Other options: you could remove one of the entries manually. Or you could import both entries, but have them transfer to and from an imaginary third account (but this creates extra noise in your journal and reports).

Can I do arithmetic calculations in CSV rules ?

Eg, dividing the amount by 2 ? No; currently the best thing is to preprocess the CSV, adding the calculated values as a new field, before converting it with hledger.

Where can I find more help with CSV conversion ?

Study the whole CSV section in the manual carefully. Working with CSV has useful tips, eg for setting amounts. And of course, make use of the chat.

REPORTING

Why am I seeing some amounts without an account name in reports ?

When an account has a multi-commodity balance, hledger's default balance, print, and register reports, like Ledger's, will show the balance on multiple lines, with each commodity on its own line, but with the account name appearing only once (either top- or bottom-aligned, depending on report). For a clearer report, try balancesheet, incomestatement or cashflow, and/or --layout=bare, or restrict the report to a single currency with cur:SYMBOL.

Another reason you might see amounts without an account name: dropping too many account name parts with --drop.

How do I control the number of decimal places displayed ?

To set that temporarily, use the -c/--commodity-style option (one for each commodity, as needed). Eg, this shows dollars with two decimal places, ADA with six, and EUR with none:

hledger -c '$1000.00' -c '1000.000000 ADA' -c 'EUR 1000.' bal

To make it permanent, use commodity directives.

How do I display a decimal mark different from the one in the input file ?

Use -c/--commodity-style options (one for each commodity) to override the display style(s). Eg hledger bal -c '$1,00' displays dollar amounts with comma decimal marks, even if they use period decimal marks in the journal.

How do I report by financial year, not calendar year ?

Just specify the desired start date, eg hledger is -Y -b 2020/4/15 or hledger is -p 'yearly from 2020/4/15'. (With hledger <1.29, you can approximate this with -p 'every 12 months from 2020/4. or -p 'every 365 days from 2020/4/15'.)

How can I report (or generate transactions) on every Nth ... of ..., etc. ?

Use a period expression with one of the more complex report intervals.

How can I report (or generate transactions) on the last day of each month ?

Use "every 31st day". Eg:

hledger balancesheet -p 'every 31st day'

How do I show just deposits, or just withdrawals, in an account ?

Use amt: to match on amount sign. Usually you'll want to add an account query as well:

hledger register cash 'amt:>0'   # cash inflows
hledger register cash 'amt:<0'   # cash outflows

If you use aregister, it's like this (because of aregister's special first argument):

hledger aregister cash cash 'amt:<0'

How do I show the full entries for an account's deposits/withdrawals ?

Expanding the above reports to show the full transactions is difficult, because print is a transaction-based report, whose query matches if any postings are matched.

For now the best approach is to run hledger print -x ACCT and filter the output yourself, keeping only transactions where ACCT and a negative (or positive) amount appear on the same line. This requires a tool such as awk, and a regular expression that's good enough for your data. It's difficult to do this 100% reliably, avoiding false matches in descriptions, comments, subaccount names, balance assertions, commodity symbols. But here's an example that will work for most of us:

Show transactions where a cash account was increased:

hledger print -x cash | awk '/:cash.*?  [^-=]*[0-9]/' RS="\n\n" ORS="\n\n"

or decreased:

hledger print -x cash | awk '/:cash.*?  [^=]*-/' RS="\n\n" ORS="\n\n"

You can also do this kind of filtering with C-c C-f in Emacs ledger-mode, which is easier.

New: with a hledger dev build, you can now do

hledger print any:'cash amt:>0'

How do I show transactions between one account and another account ?

To show one transaction per line:

Use aregister ACCT1, with the other account as the query:

hledger aregister checking expenses:tax

To filter by direction, add 'amt:>0' or 'amt:<0':

hledger aregister checking expenses:tax 'amt:>0'

To see transactions in full:

Use print with an expr: query (requires hledger >=1.30):

hledger print expr:'checking AND expenses:tax'

Or with hledger <1.30, you can emulate that with not:not::

hledger print checking not:not:expenses:tax

How do I show a register or balance report between one account and another ?

The above won't work with the register or balance commands because these report on individual account postings, not whole transactions. Instead, run a print report to select transactions to use in a second report, like so:

hledger print checking | hledger -f- -I register expenses:tax

hledger print checking | hledger -f- -I balance expenses:tax

hledger print liabilities:mastercard | hledger -f- -I incomestatement

Complex multi-account transactions could muddle these reports a little; if that's a problem you might need to exclude those transactions or split them up.

What are some gotchas with piping hledger print into another hledger command ?

hledger print reproduces transactions, but it discards directives. The output will normally be a valid journal, but it can have a different meaning or even be unparseable due to:

1. Loss of decimal-mark directives, which could disrupt number parsing.
2. Loss of commodity directives declaring display precisions, which could disrupt transaction balancing.
3. Loss of account directives declaring accounts' types, which could alter reports.
4. Balance assertions which break because you have excluded transactions they depend on.

Workarounds:

• Whenever you use -f - to read hledger print output, also add -I to ignore balance assertions. And write these flags separately (-If- does not work). So:

  $ hledger print ... | hledger -f- -I ...
  

• Also recreate any required directives in the input stream. This is often not needed, but it depends on your data. If needed:

  • Keep those directives in their own file if possible (if directive scope rules allow it), which you can use as another input:

    $ hledger print ... | hledger -f- -I -f2023accounts.journal ...
    

  • Or find another way to pass the required directives along. Eg:

    $ { hledger print ...; grep '^[acd]' $LEDGER_FILE; } | hledger -I f- ...
    $ { hledger print ...; grep '^[acd]' `hledger files` --no-filename; } | hledger -f- -I ...
    

CUSTOMISING

How can I save and reuse common options/arguments ?

Save them in a text file, with one option or argument per line, then include @FILE in your hledger command line. See argument files. This is superseded by...

Is there a config file ?

So far, no, we have resisted this. In short, because config files add complexity and variance;

Yes! In current hledger master. Testers needed.

Here's how to build hledger master (or if you're on x64 linux, you can use the binary from a recent CI run), Notes welcome in hledger chat or at #1013.

How can I automatically use a journal file in the current directory ?

Perhaps you have journals in multiple project directories. If you use a standard filename, such as default.journal, you can run hledger with the -f default.journal option or set LEDGER_FILE to default.journal, perhaps in a script.

You can also use file glob patterns, like *.journal, in -f or LEDGER_FILE.

For more flexibility, you could use direnv to customise LEDGER_FILE per directory.

hledger will not search parent directories for a journal file, though there's probably a tool that will.

Related: #2194

With the new config file support, you could add -f FILE to a hledger.conf file in or above this directory.

SCRIPTING

How do I install more hledger scripts and add-on commands ?

git clone the hledger repo, and add the bin/ directory to your shell's PATH. See Scripts and add-ons.

How do I make new hledger scripts ?

Install the example Scripts and add-ons and find a suitable one to copy and modify. Also see Scripting. If your new script can be useful to others, consider contributing it with a pull request.

What's a good way to manage hledger scripts ?

Once you start defining handy scripts, they tend to proliferate and become hard to remember.

One solution is to gather scripts into a Makefile, and run them with make SCRIPT. This is very traditional and very common, but it has downsides. Listing scripts, handling arguments, portability, and dealing with make's special syntax are all a hassle.

As someone who has used make for a few decades, I urge, nay beg, you to install and use just instead. It is much better for this job and complements hledger and PTA very well. See the example Justfile and hledger and just.

HLEDGER-UI

With hledger-ui in iTerm2 on mac, why does Shift-Up/Shift-Down move the selection instead of adjusting the report period ?

iTerm2 by default doesn't recognise SHIFT-UP/SHIFT-DOWN keys correctly. (If this has changed in recent releases, please let us know.) Here's one way to fix it: iTerm2 > CMD-i > Keys > Key Mappings > Presets -> select "xterm Defaults" (not "Terminal.app Compatibility").

Videos, Talks

hledger-related videos:

• Simon Michael @ HaskellerZ meetup (2021, 2h)
  "Inside hledger: an architectural tour and how-to" (hledger intro and code dive)
  slides

• hledger fan @ youtube has some short beginner lessons (2019-2021). In date order:

  • 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

• Glenn Ramsey @ Kiwi Pycon XI (2022, 30m)
  Plain text accounting for fun and profit

• Intproject Mi: Учет сделок с проводками в текстовом формате (2019, 34m)

• Simon Michael @ Brainium meetup (2016, 2h)
  Hands-on with hledger

• hledger add (2016, 30s)
  in The Surprising Ease of Plain Text Accounting

• Chris Vollick @ DevHouse Waterloo meetup (2016, 40m)
  hledger, an open source accounting tool

• FLOSS Weekly episode 375: hledger (2016) - overview (3m), full interview (1h)

• Evolution of hledger (2015, 15m) (missing)
  Gource visualization of hledger development activity up to 2015

Audio only:

• Conversations in Code, Episode 3: Introduction to Plain Text Accounting [podcast]

See also:

• All "hledger" results on Youtube

• Videos on plaintextaccounting.org

Install

The current hledger release is 1.42.1. Here are the release notes.

There are three main ways to install hledger on your computer:

• Release binaries are provided by hledger's maintainer and are always up to date.
• Packaged binaries are provided by system packagers and are sometimes less up to date.
• Or you can build your own binaries, which takes more time and resources.

After installing, there are some final things to check. Your feedback helps make this process smoother.

Release binaries

Official release binaries for Linux, Mac, Windows. Download manually, or more conveniently with eget:

eget simonmichael/hledger --all

RSS feed for new releases

Packaged binaries

Homebrew (Linux, Mac, WSL)

brew install hledger

Docker (Linux, Mac, Windows)

docker pull dastapov/hledger
more..

Windows

scoop install hledger
winget install hledger
Installs to C:\Users\Simon\AppData\Local\Microsoft\WinGet\Links\hledger.exe. On ARM machines this runs via emulation (slower than normal). hledger-ui and hledger-web aren't available via winget yet.

choco install hledger -y

Linux

doas apk add hledger hledger-ui hledger-web

pacman -Sy hledger hledger-ui hledger-web

sudo apt install hledger hledger-ui hledger-web



more..

sudo dnf install hledger





more..

sudo eselect repository enable haskell && sudo emerge hledger hledger-ui hledger-web

hledger-linux-arm32v7.zip
hledger-aarch64-manjaro.gz hledger-armhf32-debian.gz (unaudited)

sudo apt install hledger hledger-ui hledger-web





more..

xbps-install -S hledger hledger-ui hledger-web

BSD

pkg install hs-hledger hs-hledger-ui hs-hledger-web
pkg_add hledger

Nix (Linux, Mac)

nix-shell -p hledger hledger-ui hledger-web
Issues: #1030, #1033, #2089, Troubleshooting

Sandstorm (Web)

HLedger Web sandstorm app

Build from source

Build requirements

Building hledger requires the GHC compiler and either the stack or cabal build tool. These are usually easy to install (see below). But they will require quite a bit of memory and disk space - up to 4G of RAM and 2G of your hard drive to build the hledger tools. See also the build tips below.

Build on Unix/Linux/Mac

On unix systems (most machines, except Windows), you will need a UTF-8-aware locale configured. Also you may need to install additional C libraries to avoid errors like "cannot find -ltinfo" when building hledger. Eg,

• on Debian or Ubuntu: sudo apt install libgmp-dev libtinfo-dev zlib1g-dev
• on Fedora or RHEL: sudo dnf install gmp-devel ncurses-devel zlib-devel

Here are some ways to build hledger on unix:

Build with hledger-install

hledger-install.sh is an automated install script that requires only bash. This is a good choice if you are not used to building Haskell software (and if you are using a unix-based system, not Windows). hledger-install.sh downloads Haskell build tools if needed, then builds the current release of the hledger tools, plus a number of add-on tools, and installs them in ~/.local/bin. (Or ~/.cabal/bin, if you had cabal and not stack installed.)

curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/simonmichael/hledger/master/hledger-install/hledger-install.sh
less hledger-install.sh   # <- good practice: inspect scripts before running
bash hledger-install.sh

Build with stack

stack is a reliable Haskell build tool. You can install it

• with your system package manager
• or from its website
• or with ghcup (this is ideal if you plan to do more Haskelling).

Once stack is installed, run:

stack update
stack install hledger-1.42.1 hledger-ui-1.42.1 hledger-web-1.42.1 \
  --resolver=nightly-2025-04-01 --verbosity=error

stack will install a compatible version of the GHC compiler if needed, perhaps using ~2G of disk space (under ~/.ghcup if it is configured to use ghcup, otherwise under ~/.stack). Then it will build the hledger tools and install them in ~/.local/bin.

Build with cabal

cabal is the other popular Haskell build tool. You can install it with your system package manager. You will also need to install a version of GHC that can build current hledger; usually any version newer than 8.10.7 will do. Or, you can install both of these with ghcup.

Then run:

cabal update
cabal install hledger-1.42.1 hledger-ui-1.42.1 hledger-web-1.42.1

This will build the hledger tools and install them in ~/.cabal/bin.

Build in a source checkout

If you'd like to build the latest hledger source code, download that first with git:

git clone https://github.com/simonmichael/hledger
cd hledger
git checkout 1.42.1   # optional: switch to release tag

Now you can build and install this source with:

stack update
stack install

or:

cabal update
cabal install all:exes

or:

cd docker
./build.sh   # or build-dev.sh to keep build artifacts

Build on Windows

These notes are for WIndows 11. Some things may apply to older Windows versions as well.

stack
On Windows, stack is the easiest way to get a haskell toolchain. (Though if you are on a Windows ARM machine, note that currently stack will install x86_64 versions of the tools, and build x86_64 hledger binaries, and all of these will run via emulation, ie slowly.)

One way to install stack is to open a Windows CMD or powershell window and run this:

winget install commercialhaskell.stack

Another way is to use ghcup. In this case usually ghcup takes the responsibility of installing haskell tools, making it easier to see and manage installed tool versions. ghcup isn't yet easy to install on ARM machines, however.

Windows updates
For stack and probably other haskell tools, you need to apply all windows updates to get the latest TLS certificates, so that network requests will work.

Build and install
Then you can use stack to build the current hledger release. It will also install GHC and other build tools if needed.

stack update
stack install hledger-1.42.1 hledger-ui-1.42.1 hledger-web-1.42.1 --resolver=nightly-2025-04-01 --verbosity=error

Or if you fetched the latest hledger source code with git as shown above, in the source directory you could build the latest by running

stack update
stack install

On Windows, building may die repeatedly with a "... permission denied (Access is denied.)" error; we don't know why. Each time, you have to run it again to continue (up arrow, enter).

When building is complete, stack installs executables at eg C:\Users\USER\AppData\Roaming\local\bin\hledger.exe.

Build on Android

Here's how to build hledger on Android with Termux, if your phone has plenty of memory.

Build tips

• Building the hledger tools and possibly all their dependencies could take anywhere from a minute to an hour.
• On machines with less than 4G of RAM, the build may use swap space and take much longer (overnight), or die part-way through. In such low memory situations, try adding -j1 to the stack/cabal install command, and retry a few times, or ask for more tips.
• You could build just the hledger CLI to use less time and space, by omitting hledger-ui and hledger-web.
• It's ok to kill a build and rerun the command later; you won't lose progress.
• You can add --dry-run to stack/cabal/nix install commands to see how much building remains.
• If you have previously installed the hledger tools, they will usually be overwritten by the new version. If you have them installed in multiple places in your PATH, you may see a warning, reminding you to remove or rename the old executables.

Here are some known build issues and workarounds on various platforms (possibly obsolete):

• mac m1: building with ghc 9+ requires extra include dir
• windows: cross-environment non-ascii display issues
• arch: haskell build advice from Arch wiki
• openbsd 6: exec: permission denied
• openbsd: stack install tips
• nix: nix install on linux can fail with "cloning builder process: Operation not permitted"
• nix: on Linux, nix-installed hledger won't handle non-ascii data

Check your installation

After installing, run the hledger tools and verify that their versions are what you just installed (and not older versions from a previous install). Eg:

$ hledger --version; hledger-ui --version; hledger-web --version
hledger 1.42.1-gdaafa059a-20250312, mac-aarch64
hledger-ui 1.42.1-gdaafa059a-20250312, mac-aarch64
hledger-web 1.42.1-gdaafa059a-20250312, mac-aarch64

You can run the built-in unit tests if you'd like:

$ hledger test
...
All 234 tests passed (0.04s)

or the more thorough functional tests, if you are set up for working with the hledger source code:

$ just functest
...
 Total   1133 ...
functest PASSED

PATH

If the hledger tools won't run at the command line or you don't see the expected --version output, check that the newly installed executables are first in your shell's PATH. After building/installing, you may have seen a message about where the executables were installed. Eg:

• If you installed with stack, it's $HOME/.local/bin (on Windows, %APPDATA%\local\bin)
• If you installed with cabal, it's $HOME/.cabal/bin (on Windows, %APPDATA%\cabal\bin)
• If you installed with nix, it could be $HOME/.nix-profile/bin

Make sure that this bin directory is included in your shell's PATH setting, and preferably near the start of the list, to preempt any old hledger binaries you might have lying around. How to configure this depends on your platform and shell. Eg if you are using bash, this will show $PATH:

echo $PATH

and this will add the stack and cabal install dirs to it permanently:

echo "export PATH=~/.local/bin:~/.cabal/bin:$PATH" >> ~/.profile
source ~/.profile

Here's how to set environment variables on Windows.

Text encoding

In general, all of your hledger data should use the text encoding that is configured in your system locale. If your system's and data's text encodings don't match, then any non-ascii characters will tend to display as mojibake (garbled text), or cause program-ending error messages (like "invalid byte sequence" or "mkTextEncoding: invalid argument"). (If you are building hledger from source, this affects the Haskell build tools as well.) Related: #73

Almost all hledger docs and example data use UTF-8 text encoding, though that's not required.

On most unix systems

The LANG environment variable should be set to a suitable locale. Eg if your data is UTF-8 encoded, check that your LANG variable mentions UTF-8, and if not, change it. Eg:

$ echo $LANG
C
$ export LANG=C.UTF-8    # or en_US.UTF-8, fr_FR.utf8, etc.
$ echo $LANG
C.UTF-8

On some systems the exact punctuation and capitalisation is important. And in some cases the locale may need to be installed with your system package manager first. See also: hledger: Troubleshooting.

On Nix or GUIX

The procedures are different.

On Microsoft Windows

You should (probably?) check the "Use Unicode UTF-8 for worldwide language support" checkbox in Region Settings. It may be hard to find; here's where it is in Windows 11:

Shell completions

If you use the bash or zsh shells, you can optionally set up context-sensitive autocompletion for hledger command lines. Here's an old demo. To contribute completions for other shells, see hledger/shell-completion/README.

bash

1. Ensure that bash-completion is installed and enabled:

   On a Mac, using homebrew:

   • brew remove -f bash-completion
   • brew install bash-completion@2
   • Add the suggested line to your ~/.bash_profile, if it's not already there
   • source ~/.bash_profile (or open a new bash shell)

   On GNU/Linux:

   • apt install bash-completion
   • source ~/.bash_profile (or open a new bash shell)

2. Install hledger with your system package manager (brew install hledger, apt install hledger or similar).

   Now completions may be working.

   If not, eg because your system's hledger package does not yet include the bash completions, or if they are not up to date, or if you have installed hledger by other means, then install the latest hledger bash completions yourself, under your XDG_DATA_HOME directory. Eg:

   curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/simonmichael/hledger/1.42-branch/hledger/shell-completion/hledger-completion.bash \
     -o ~/.local/share/bash-completion/completions/hledger --create-dirs
   

Here's what the bash completions should complete when you press TAB once or twice in a command line:

Before the command argument:

• the "hledger", "hledger-ui" and "hledger-web" executable names
• general flags and flag values
• hledger's command argument. Eg hledger <TAB><TAB> should list all hledger commands, and hledger b<TAB><TAB> should list the ones starting with b.

After the command argument:

• command-specific flags and flag values
• account names
• query prefixes, like payee: or status:
• valid query values after these query prefixes: acct:, code:, cur:, desc:, note:, payee:, real:, status:, tag:. Eg hledger reg acct:<TAB><TAB> should list your top-level account names.
• amount comparison operators after amt:.

When a completion includes special characters, backslashes will be inserted automatically; this does not work right in all cases.

zsh

1. Ensure that zsh-completions is installed and enabled.
2. ? discussion

Next steps

Nicely done! Now see Get started, or come to the #hledger chat where we'll gladly share tips or receive your feedback.

Release notes

Major releases and user-visible changes, collected from the changelogs ( hledger, hledger-ui, hledger-web ). Changes in hledger-install.sh are shown here.

2025-03-12 hledger-1.42.1

hledger 1.42.1

Fixes

• Fix a regression in the parsing of single ampersands (&) in csv rules. (Thomas Miedema, #2352)

• The run and repl commands no longer cache data wrongly when using the --forecast option. (Dmitry Astapov, #2345)

• The run and repl commands no longer miss a caching opportunity when using --forecast with a period argument. (Stephen Morgan)

• run, repl: doc fixes (Pranesh Prakash, Simon Michael)

hledger-ui 1.42.1

• Allow vty 6.4.

hledger-web 1.42.1

project changes 1.42.1

Infrastructure/Misc

• Tools updates

• Fix cabalfilestest: test all cabal files before any hackage upload.

credits 1.42.1

Simon Michael (@simonmichael), Dmitry Astapov (@adept), Pranesh Prakash (@the-solipsist), Stephen Morgan (@Xitian9), Thomas Miedema (@thomie).

2025-03-07 hledger-1.42

hledger 1.42

run & repl commands, non-UTF8 CSV, same-line if matchers, more pivot targets, fixes.

Fixes

• hledger's default options for the less pager no longer include --use-color, which caused older less versions (eg 551) to break. #2335

• In balance --budget reports, costs no longer prevent display of percentages. #2327

• In the balance command's HTML output, -H/--historical now suppresses the total heading.

• print --help now shows the correct default for --round. #2318

• close --infer-costs no longer implies the -x/--explicit flag. #1826

• add: Account names provided on the command line are no longer ignored. #2305

• bs/bse/cf/is no longer show the unsupported --budget option in their help. #2302

• The print command now ignores --depth entirely. Previously, a depth limit caused it to show only transactions referencing accounts as deep or deeper than that.

• Week periods beginning in the previous year are now shown correctly. Eg the week beginning 2024-12-30 (which is week 1 of 2025 because the thursday falls in 2025) was previously shown as 2024-W01, and is now shown as 2025-W01. #2304

Features

• run and repl are new commands which run multiple commands without re-parsing data files, so they run faster. run runs a sequence of commands from files or command line arguments, and repl provides an interactive prompt with readline-style history. (Dmitry Astapov, Simon Michael, #2323, #2328)

• commands is a new explicit command for showing the commands list; it's useful in the REPL. With --builtin, it shows only the builtin commands.

• hledger can now read CSV/SSV/TSV data in encodings other than UTF8, using the new encoding CSV rule. (Joschua Kesper, #2319)

• if matchers in CSV rules can now be combined on the same line, separated by && (AND) or && ! (AND NOT). This makes if tables more expressive. Examples:

  if %description amazon && %date 2025-02-22
      account2 expenses:books
  
  if,account2
  %description amazon && %date 2025-02-22, expenses:books
  

  The next-line & operator also may now be written as &&, for consistency. (Thomas Miedema, #2333)

Improvements

• Terminal width is now detected more robustly, using the POSIX API. This means that register commands will more reliably use the proper terminal width, eg when $TERM or $COLUMNS do not have a correct value, and on Windows. hledger no longer uses $COLUMNS. (gesh, #2332, #2340)

• Error messages (first line) in the terminal are now shown in red (and bold), and warning messages are shown in yellow, when ANSI codes are supported and permitted.

• --pivot can now also pivot on amount quantity (amt), amount cost (cost), and/or commodity symbol (comm or cur).

• The close command's --migrate flag has been renamed to --clopen. The start: tag has been renamed to clopen:, and its default value now excludes the new file's extension. And close --assign's tag has been renamed to assign:.

• The print command now supports the --invert flag. #2314

• The roi command is now faster: it no longer checks every day with P directive, and the "one period per report interval" case has been optimised. (Dmitry Astapov)

• Two more file extensions are now recognised as possible hledger addon commands: .osh and .ysh.

Docs

• aregister: Drop an inconsistent newline from options help.
• balance: improve --layout option help.
• close: doc rewrites
• shell completions: mention zsh; cleanups
• cost/lot notations: clarify
• cost, value reporting: edits
• Directive effects: fix account types link #126
• commodity styles: fix typo [hledger_site#123]
• commodity directive: clarify
• close: mention the balance assertions
• pager: mention --pager=no
• Aliases and account types: better troubleshooting command
• Beancount output: mention limitations: P and balance assignments
• Balance report output: drop outdated note about --tree and HTML #1846

Scripts/addons

• hledger-balance-as-budget properly applies commodity styles now. (Dmitry Astapov)

• hledger-git now runs pass-through git commands in the right repo.

• hledger-git now checks for a git repo more robustly. (Lars Kellogg-Stedman)

• hledger-jj is another easy CLI for keeping hledger files in version control, using newer tech (jujutsu and oil shell's ysh).

• hledger-script-example.hs has had some cleanup.

hledger-ui 1.42

Fixes

• Startup arguments provided at the CLI are no longer passed to add when pressing the a key. #2313

Improvements

• Allow vty 6.3.
• Allow brick 2.8.

hledger-web 1.42

Fixes

• Fix a test suite build issue: build it with -threaded.

project changes 1.42

Docs

• new/updated: ACHIEVEMENTS, CREDITS, FINANCE, MOCKUPS, REGRESSIONS, RELEASING, Scripts
• examples/csv: pooltool-rewards.csv.rule cleanup
• examples: some sample hledger run scripts
• examples: test files for CSV encoding #2319

Infrastructure/Misc

• Unix bindists in github releases now include the man pages and info manuals. #2309

• Unix bindists in github releases are now normal .tar.gz files, without the extra zip compression. [#2299]

• Release notes and install instructions in github releases are now collapsed by default again. This makes the sequence of dates and releases clearer. Github automatically expands the assets of the latest release, so those will be visible by default. For a full text search of all release notes, use the https://hledger.org/relnotes.html page.

• hledger-install: if installing third party packages fails, it now tries again with bounds relaxed. This makes hledger-iadd and hledger-interest more likely to install successfully, even if their bounds have not yet been updated for a new hledger release.

• just functest now fails if there are warnings. (It does not force recompilation of already compiled modules, but even so this should help catch more warnings before pushing them to CI.)

• new/changed recipes/tools: bench*.sh, changelogs-catchup, changelogs-finalise, changelogs-reset, devtag, ghrelnotes, ghrelnotes-publish, log-headtail, log-push, log-save, modulediag, modulediags, modulediags-view, packagediags, packagediags-view, releasediag, relnotes relprep -> relbranch, reltags, reltags-push, showrelnotes, site-manuals-snapshot, site-watch, time, tldr-diff

• gitignore cleanups.

credits 1.42

Simon Michael (@simonmichael), Dmitry Astapov (@adept), gesh (@hseg), Thomas Miedema (@thomie), Joschua Kesper (@jokesper), Lars Kellogg-Stedman (@larks).

2024-12-09 hledger-1.41

Valuation fix, improved HTML and FODS output, multiple depths, terminal pagination, robust export to Beancount, ...

hledger 1.41

Breaking changes

• Accounts named "equity:conversion", "equity:trading", or "equity:trade(s)", which are detected as type V/Conversion, will now revert to type E/Equity instead if any other account has been declared as type V/Conversion.

• When built with ghc 9.10.1, hledger shows two extra newlines after any error message.

Fixes

• A somewhat severe, though hopefully rare, valuation bug has been fixed. In certain circumstances, values could be calculated inaccurately, because of display-rounding occurring inappropriately during calculations. #2254

  Specifically: when there was no direct P price for the target commodity, so that hledger had to convert via a chain of prices, and if all of those price amounts had too few decimal places, then the result could be inaccurate. An example:

  P 2000-01-01 A   10.5 B
  P 2000-01-01 B  100.5 C
  
  2000-01-01
      (a)    100 A
  
  $ hledger-1.40 print -X C
  2000-01-01
      (a)        105520 C   ; wrong
  
  $ hledger-1.41 print -X C
  2000-01-01
      (a)        105525 C   ; right
  

• bs/bse/cf/is's HTML output no longer includes excess heading cells, and bs/bse's HTML output no longer shows an inappropriate Total heading with -T. (balancesheet does not support -T.) (Henning Thielemann)

• Balance commands' HTML, CSV and FODS output now show tree mode properly indented (using no-break spaces). (Henning Thielemann)

• In the HTML output of bs/bse/cf/is reports, Net amounts in the Net row are now formatted like the others. (Bas van Dijk)

• In bs/bse/cf/is HTML output, some unnecessary TH cells have been fixed. #2225 (Henning Thielemann)

• The print command now ignores a depth limit entirely. Previously, a depth limit caused it to show only transactions referencing accounts as deep or deeper than that.

• In the roi command, a division by zero error (when all assets were sold) has been fixed. #2281 (Dmitry Astapov)

• In a multi-line comment generated by CSV rules, tags on all lines now work (ie, can be matched). Posting dates in comments generated from CSV also now work. #2241

• hledger's bash shell completions are now up to date with the latest CLI. #986

• When showing output with a pager, if $PAGER is set to something not found in PATH, we now ignore it instead of raising an error.

• hledger --color=yes | less -R now shows bold headings as you'd expect.

Features

• The print, register and aregister commands now support HTML and FODS output, and the bs/bse/cf/is commands now support FODS output. This means all of the "STANDARD REPORTS" commands, and the balance command, now support text, HTML, CSV, TSV, or FODS output. (Henning Thielemann)

• When generating HTML output with the register or balance commands, the --base-url option will add hyperlinks to hledger-web, allowing you to view the detailed transactions if you have hledger-web running. (Henning Thielemann)

• Reports can now specify different display depths for certain accounts, rather than showing all accounts with the same depth limit. Multiple --depth=ACCTREGEX=DEPTH options (or depth:ACCTREGEX=DEPTH arguments can be used. For example, this will clip all accounts matching "assets" to depth 3, all accounts matching "expenses" to depth 2, and all other accounts to depth 1: --depth assets=3 --depth expenses=2 --depth 1 (Stephen Morgan, #2292)

• In unix-like environments, hledger now uses a pager ($PAGER, less, or more) for all large terminal output, not just for help. You can override this with the new --pager option. The pager is expected to handle hledger's ANSI colour output (unless you disable that). If less is used, it will be configured automatically, or you can override this by setting options in a HLEDGER_LESS environment variable.

• The print command's beancount output is now much more Beancount-compatible #2295. Other than using --alias to provide the top-level account names Beancount requires, you should rarely have to do anything special to produce a journal that bean-check accepts. hledger will automatically adjust problematic names, encode unsupported characters, and so on. See hledger: Beancount output for the full details.

  This supersedes the ledger2beancount tool, and makes using Beancount tools, especially Fava, practical for hledger users. In many cases this should just work:

  hledger [ALIASES] print -o tmp.beancount; fava tmp.beancount
  

Improvements

• if blocks in CSV rules now allow & ! (AND NOT) on the same line.

• When reading .latest files, whitespace is now ignored, and any date parse failure is reported with the file and line number.

• In journal format, P directives now require a space after the first symbol, preventing surprises like P 2024-10-31 a0 1 parsed as P 2024-10-31 a 01. #2280

• aregister has a new --heading=YN option, for disabling the report heading. (Henning Thielemann)

• aregister now supports the --invert and --cumulative flags, like the register command. (Henning Thielemann)

• The balance commands' HTML and FODS output now shows table borders consistently. (Henning Thielemann)

• In the balance commands' HTML output, row headings now span multiple rows when appropriate, rather than being repeated. (Henning Thielemann)

• Balance commands now support --transpose when generating HTML output. (Henning Thielemann)

• The balance command's --layout=tidy now affects HTML and FODS output at least to some extent (not just CSV output). And it always disables the totals row. (Henning Thielemann)

• The balance command's FODS output now picks a report title based on the report mode: "Balance Report", "Multi-period Balance Report", or "Budget Report". (Henning Thielemann)

• balance and aregister's HTML output will now use a hledger.css file if present, like bs/bse/cf/is.

• bs/bse/cf/is now support the --count (postings count) report type, like balance.

• The balance commands' options help has had some cleanup.

• The error messages from check accounts and check recentassertions are now clearer.

• The check commodities command now also checks commodities used in P directives. #2280

• The commodities command now also list commodities mentioned in P directives. #2280

• All of hledger's internal hidden (but searchable) tags can now be made visible by print --verbose-tags, which is useful for troubleshooting --infer-equity, --infer-costs, and the detection of redundant costs and conversion postings. Also,

  • Some hidden tags have been renamed for clarity: _modified is now _modified-transaction, _cost-matched is now _cost-posting, _conversion-matched is now _conversion-posting.
  • The generated-posting: tag added by --infer-equity is now valueless.
  • The modified-transaction: tag added by --auto now appears on its own line.

• Using the -NUM shortcut (for --depth NUM) in a config file now works.

• Setting the --color option in a config file now works (except it does not affect --debug output, currently).

• The --color option's suggested values are now yes/y, no/n, or auto/a. always and never are no longer documented, though still supported.

• More compact and informative --debug=2 output during valuation. Market prices are now shown using one line each, the known prices are listed, and the status of --infer-market-prices is shown. #2287

• More informative --debug=7 output from CSV rules.

• The hledger packages have a new debug build flag. Builds made with ghc 9.10+ and this flag will show some kind of stack trace if the program exits with an error. (These will improve in future ghc versions.)

• Disabled the unused ghcdebug build flag and ghc-debug support, for now.

• Allow megaparsec 9.7.

• ghc 9.10 / base 4.20 are now supported.

Docs

• Windows: added tips for setting LEDGER_FILE (Amadeusz Wieczorek, hledger_site#119)
• csv: if blocks: explain matchers and field names better #2289
• import: rewrite; rename "date skipping" to "overlap detection"
• import: added tips for first import
• assertions: mention their behaviour with posting status
• journal: rewrite the Tags section
• pager: note that help -p TOPIC uses less; link to less FAQ
• query types: updates, add headings, mention tag:'s infix matching
• Regular expressions: note possible RTL/bidi limitation (?)
• Special characters: rewrite, more precision, mention some Windows differences
• Output formats: expand, document beancount and FODS output
• Text output: expand/consolidate terminal topics
• FODS output: describe the advantages over CSV (Henning Thielemann)
• Debug output: note that the --debug option doesn't work in config files.
• bal: improve --layout doc
• bal: also mention hledger.css and text encoding in balance doc
• html: note safari text encoding issue
• timedot: mention the common journal+timedot file setup #2238
• Install, manual: new shell completions doc. #986
• Config files: rewrite #2231
• examples/csv: an example of YNAB 4 data, and RTL text, with a workaround
• examples: hledger2beancount.conf

Scripts/addons

• bin/*: remove obsolete _FLAGS markers from --help
• examples/csv/csv-hledger-1.py: a python-based CSV converter script

API

• Hledger.Utils.IO's ansi color helpers now respect the --color option.
• Hledger.Utils.IO.rgb' now takes Float arguments instead of Word8.
• Hledger.Cli.Commands.Balance: export budgetReportAs* functions, for use in scripts. (Dmitry Astapov)

hledger-ui 1.41

Breaking changes

• When built with ghc 9.10.1, error messages are displayed with two extra trailing newlines.

Fixes

• V (value) and C (cost) toggle keys once again reset each other as they should (broken since 1.21). (Gal Lakovnik Gorenec, #2284)

• Bash shell completions are now up to date. #986

Features

Improvements

• Allow clipping depth to be configured per account (until adjusted in app, at least). (Stephen Morgan, #2292)

• Added helix as a supported editor for the e key. (amano.kenji)

• Added --pager and --color options as in hledger, affecting command line help. Also --color=no forces use of the "terminal" theme.

• Added a new debug build flag. Builds made with ghc 9.10+ and this flag will show some kind of partial stack trace if the program exits with an error. These will improve in future ghc versions.

• Disabled the unused ghcdebug build flag and ghc-debug support, for now.

• Allow megaparsec 9.7.

• Allow brick 2.5, 2.6.

• Avoid brick 2.3.2, which doesn't build on windows.

• ghc 9.10 / base 4.20 are now supported.

Docs

• Mention that period navigation uses standard periods #2293
• Install, manual: new shell completions doc. #986

hledger-web 1.41

Breaking changes

• When built with ghc 9.10.1, error messages are displayed with two extra trailing newlines.

Fixes

• Autocompletions now work in newly created account fields. #2215

• Bash shell completions are now up to date. #986

Features

Improvements

• Added --pager and --color options as in hledger, affecting command line help.

• Added a new debug build flag. Builds made with ghc 9.10+ and this flag will show some kind of partial stack trace if the program exits with an error. These will improve in future ghc versions.

• Disabled the unused ghcdebug build flag and ghc-debug support, for now.

• allow megaparsec 9.7

• ghc 9.10 / base 4.20 are now supported.

Docs

• Install, manual: new shell completions doc. #986

project changes 1.41

Docs

• REGRESSIONS: new table format; updates.
• CODE: notes on the use of haddock #2222
• Simplify github bug report template
• Add man pages and info manuals to the release bindists on github

Scripts/addons

• Fixed build errors in all bin/ scripts. (Dmitry Astapov)
• hledger-install: fix installation of hledger-ui

Infrastructure/Misc

• GHC 9.10 is now the default for dev builds and most github workflows.
• Add consistent greppable summaries to all workflows; various other improvements
• Add bash shell completion script to the release bindists (#2223, gesh/hseg, Simon Michael)
• tools/gtree: -u shows untracked files, -I adds ignored files.
• just doctest: pass through doctest arg(s).

credits 1.41

Simon Michael (@simonmichael), Henning Thielemann (@thielema), Dmitry Astapov (@adept), Stephen Morgan (@Xitian9), Bas van Dijk (@basvandijk), Gal Lakovnik Gorenec, amano.kenji, gesh (@hseg).

2024-09-09 hledger-1.40

Config file support, sortable register, FODS output, prettier tables.

hledger 1.40

Fixes

• Account tags (and type declarations) declared in multiple files are now combined correctly. #2202
• Several kinds of report interval now choose a better start date:
  • every Nth day of month from DATE with periodic transactions #2218
  • every M/D from DATE
  • every Nth WEEKDAY from DATE
• The balance commands' html output no longer repeats the "Total" and "Net" headings when the totals row has multiple lines. And the layout has been improved and made more consistent with the text output.
• The --tldr flag now also works with the tealdeer tldr client.

Features

• You can now save command line options in a config file, to be added to your hledger commands either on demand or automatically. (This supersedes the older arguments files feature.) This has been a popular feature request. It has pros and cons, and is experimental; your testing and feedback is welcome. It changes the nature of hledger somewhat, which I have marked by giving this release a more memorable version number (1.40).
• The balance commands can now output in FODS format, a spreadsheet file format accepted by LibreOffice Calc. If you use LibreOffice this is better than CSV because it works across locales (decimal point vs. decimal comma, character encoding stored in XML header), and it supports fixed header rows and columns, cell types (string vs. number vs. date), separation of number and currency, styles (bold), and borders. You can still extract CSV from FODS/ODS with the ods2csv utility from Hackage. (Henning Thielemann)
• The register report can now be sorted by date, description, account, amount, absolute amount, or a combination of these. (Michael Rees, #2211)

Improvements

• Command line processing has been overhauled and should be more robust in certain cases, with tweaked error messages and debug output. Command-specific flags can now optionally appear before the command name. (Though writing them afterward is usually more readable. Addon-specific flags must still come last, after --.)
• The --rules-file option has been renamed to --rules. The old spelling is still supported as a hidden option.
• Weekly reports' week headings are now more compact, especially in single-year balance reports. (#2204, Victor Mihalache)
• The balance command with no report interval, and also balance --budget, now support html output. (Henning Thielemann)
• In balance commands' html and csv output, "Total:" and "Net:" headings are now capitalised consistently.
• bs/cf/is reports now show the report interval in their title.
• The balance commands' text output with the --pretty flag now shows an outer table border and inter-column borders.
• The check recentassertions error message is now more readable.
• Timedot format now allows comment lines to be indented.
• When running the tldr-node-client client, auto-update of the tldr database is now suppressed.
• When running a tldr client fails, the warning now mentions the required --render flag. #2201
• The error message for unsupported regular expressions like (?:foo) has been improved.
• --debug has moved to "General help flags", making it available in more situations.
• Some verbose debug output from command line processing has been demoted to level 2.
• Parsing timedot files now gives debug output at level 9.
• Allow doclayout 0.5.

Docs

• The hledger/hledger-ui/hledger-web manuals now list all command options as shown by --help.
• Added an example config file, hledger.conf.sample.
• The diff and prices commands' help layout has been improved.
• add's doc described the effect of D wrongly, now fixed.
• Date adjustments: rewrites and corrections
• Period headings: added
• Input: clarify that multiple -f options are allowed
• Scripts and add-ons: edits, list add-ons again
• Timeclock: edits, fix ti/to scripts
• Fixed "hledger and Ledger" links [hledger_site#112]
• examples/csv: Monzo CSV rules added
• examples/csv: Tiller CSV rules added
• examples/csv: Nordea CSV rules added (Arto Jonsson)

Scripts/addons

• bin/bashrc updates; add years, eachyear scripts
• bin/hledger-simplebal: ignore config files
• bin/hledger-script-example: explain shebang commands better
• bin/hledger-register-max: update/fix

hledger-ui 1.40

Improvements

• The menu screen now supports the shift arrow and shift T keys, and its header shows any narrowed time period in effect, like other screens.
• Support brick 2.4.

Docs

• The description of the shift-T key (set period to today) has been fixed.
• The shift arrow keys and period narrowing have been clarified

hledger-web 1.40

Improvements

• We now guess a more robust base url when --base-url is not specified. Now relative links to js/css resources will use the same hostname etc. that the main page was requested from, making them work better when accessed via multiple IP addresses/hostnames without an explicit --base-url setting. (A followup to #2099, #2100 and #2127.)
• We now require a http[s] scheme in --base-url's value. Previously it accepted just a hostname, and generated bad links.

project changes 1.40

Docs

• In the hledger 1.29 release notes, Date adjustments has had some corrections.
• Github release notes template cleanups; fix mac, linux install commands.
• README: fixed contributors link.
• RELEASING: updates

Scripts/addons

• hledger-install: cleanups, bump versions, perhaps fix hledger-interest install
• hledger-install: clarify some stack/cabal setup messages

Infrastructure/Misc

• Shake.hs: fix partial warnings
• Shake cmdhelp: renamed to cmddocs, and it now also updates the options listed in the manuals, and shows progress output. It should be run (at some point) after changing commands' docs or options.
• Shake txtmanuals: silence all but wide table warnings
• just file cleanups; update to support just 1.28+
• just twih: date fixes
• just ghci: -fobject-code was a mistake, keep everything interpreted
• just functest: try again to reduce rebuilding/slowdowns when testing
• just installrel: update for .tar.gz
• ci scripts: cleanup, fix a macos-ism

credits 1.40

Simon Michael (@simonmichael), Henning Thielemann (@thielema), Michael Rees (@reesmichael1), Arto Jonsson (@artoj), Victor Mihalache (@victormihalache).

2024-06-01 hledger-1.34

hledger 1.34

--tldr (short command examples), reorganised commands list, ghc-debug support

Breaking changes

• check ordereddates no longer supports --date2. Also (not a breaking change): --date2 and secondary dates are now officially deprecated in hledger, though kept for compatibility.

Features

• You can now get a quick list of example command lines for hledger or its most useful subcommands by adding the --tldr flag (or just --tl). For best appearance you should install the tldr client, though it's not required.

  These short "tldr pages" are a great counterbalance to verbose PTA docs. You can also use tldr without hledger to view the latest versions, or translations: tldr hledger[-COMMAND]. Or you can browse tldr pages online. Consider contributing translations! More tips at https://github.com/simonmichael/hledger/tree/master/doc/tldr.

Improvements

• The hledger commands list has been reorganised, with commands listed roughly in the order you'll need them.

• The general flags descriptions in --help have been updated and grouped.

• Correctness checks now run in a documented order. commodities are now checked before accounts, and tags before recentassertions. When both ordereddates and assertions checks are enabled, ordereddates now runs first, giving more useful error messages.

• -I/--ignore-assertions is now overridden by -s/--strict (or check assertions), enabling more flexible workflows. Eg you can alias hl="hledger -I" to delay balance assertions checking until you add -s to commands.

• --color and --pretty now also accept y or n as argument.

• When built with the ghcdebug flag and started with --debug=-1, hledger can be controlled by ghc-debug clients like ghc-debug-brick or a ghc-debug query script, for analysing memory/profile info.

Fixes

• hledger COMMAND --man and hledger help TOPIC --man now properly scroll the man page to the TOPIC or COMMAND heading. The exact/prefix matching behaviour has been clarified in help --help.

• In journal files, include directives with trailing whitespace are now parsed correctly.

• The help command's help flags are now consistent with other commands (and it has --debug as a hidden flag).

• Build errors with GHC 8.10 have been fixed. #2198

Docs

• The tables of contents on hledger.org pages now just list top-level headings, (and the hledger manual structure has been adjusted for this). This makes the hledger manual on hledger.org more scannable and less scary.
• add: drop lengthy transcript, add simpler example commands (from tldr)
• Amount formatting: move down, it's not the best first topic
• balance: mention the --summary-only flag
• check: expand check descriptions
• examples: CSV rules: vanguard, fidelity, paypal updates
• Generating data: rewrite
• JSON output: link to OpenAPI spec
• manuals: synopsis, options cleanup/consistency
• Options: correction, NO_COLOR does not override --color
• PART 4: COMMANDS: reorganise into groups, like the CLI commands list.
• Period expressions: mention last day of month adjusting #2005
• Secondary dates: expand, and declare them deprecated.
• Time periods cleanup, simplify markup
• Unicode characters: mention UTF-8 on windows

Scripts/addons

• Added hledger-pricehist, an alias for the pricehist market price fetcher so that it can appear in hledger's commands list.

hledger-ui 1.34

Features

• You can now get a quick list of example command lines by running with --tldr (or just --tl). For best appearance, install the tldr client, though it's not required.

Improvements

• The general flags in --help have been updated and grouped, consistent with hledger.

• When built with the ghcdebug flag and started with --debug=-1, hledger-ui can be controlled by ghc-debug clients like ghc-debug-brick or a ghc-debug query script, for analysing memory/profile info.

hledger-web 1.34

Features

• You can now get a quick list of example command lines by running with --tldr (or just --tl). For best appearance, install the tldr client, though it's not required.

Improvements

• The general flags in --help have been updated and grouped, consistent with hledger.

• When built with the ghcdebug flag and started with --debug=-1, hledger-web can be controlled by ghc-debug clients like ghc-debug-brick or a ghc-debug query script, for analysing memory/profile info.

Docs

• A basic OpenAPI specification is provided for hledger-web's JSON-over-HTTP API. This is also applicable to hledger print's JSON output format.

project changes 1.34

Docs

• move release notes from the hledger_site repo to the main hledger repo
• github release notes: show the release notes, hide the install instructions by default
• github release notes: improve windows install commands
• github release notes: start mentioning github usernames, enabling the Contributors avatar list
• dev docs: new Developer FAQ, Contributor Quick Start updates

Scripts/addons

• hledger-install.sh now uses stackage nightly, and a failure on non-Windows platforms has been fixed.

Infrastructure/misc

• A new release workflow creates github releases, uploads release binaries and generates release notes.
• Github release binaries for mac and linux are now in .tar.gz format (no longer tarred and zipped).
• There is a new oldest workflow for testing the oldest GHC we support (currently 8.10.7).
• The binaries-mac-x64 workflow has been bumped from GHC 9.4 to 9.8.
• The master branch's ci workflow has been updated to Ubuntu 24.04 and uses the preinstalled GHC & stack, saving some work.
• md-issue-refs helps generate markdown issue links.
• relnotes.hs helps generate release notes from changelogs.
• The project Makefile has now been fully replaced by Justfile.

credits 1.34

Simon Michael (@simonmichael)

2024-05-02 hledger-1.33.1

hledger 1.33.1

• process >=1.6.19.0 seems not strictly needed and is no longer required, improving installability. #2149

• print and close now show a trailing decimal mark on cost amounts also, when needed to disambiguate a digit group mark.

• The balance commands' HTML output now includes digit group marks when appropriate (fixes a regression in 1.25). #2196

• The add command no longer shows ANSI escape codes in terminals that don't support them.

• Doc updates:

  • import: Skipping -> Date skipping, discuss commodity styles more
  • csv: Amount decimal places: expand, note import behaviour

hledger-ui 1.33.1

• Require vty-windows-0.2.0.2+ to avoid display problems in recent MS Terminal on Windows.

• process >=1.6.19.0 seems not strictly needed and is no longer required, improving installability. #2149

hledger-web 1.33.1

• Support base64 >=1.0

credits 1.33.1

• Simon Michael (@simonnmichael)

2024-04-18 hledger-1.33

close enhancements, hledger-ui 'dark' theme, GHC 9.8 support, Apple ARM binaries

hledger 1.33

Breaking changes

• expr: boolean queries, introduced in hledger 1.30 (2023), no longer allow date: to be used within an OR expression, avoiding unclear semantics which confuse our reports. If you'd like to improve this, see #2178. #2177 #2178

• Some error messages (date parse errors, balance assertion failures) have changed, which might affect error-parsing add-ons like flycheck-hledger.

Fixes

• add, import, web: On MS Windows, don't allow writing to files whose name ends with a period, since it can cause data loss; raise an error instead. I made this change in hledger 1.15 (2019), but it never worked; now it does. #1056

• balance --budget: The budget report in tree mode was omitting parent accounts with no actual or goal amounts and a single child, instead of showing them as a prefix of the child's name. Now it always shows them, on a line of their own (a bit like --no-elide). It's not a perfect fix, but the budget report code is twisty. #2071

• check tags: The special date and date2 tags, and the modified and _modified tags generated by --auto, are now also implicitly declared. #2148, #2119

• Regular expression match group references in CSV if rules, added in hledger 1.32, did not work right when multiple if conditions matched a CSV record. This is now fixed; match group references are now scoped to their local if block. #2158 (Jonathan Dowland)

• roi now correctly interacts with --value. #2190 (Dmitry Astapov)

• hledger now requires process-1.6.19.0+ to avoid any vulnerabilities on Windows from HSEC-2024-0003.

Features

• close has had some enhancements for usability (#2151):

  • It now excludes equity accounts by default; and always excludes the balancing account.

  • It has new --assert and --assign modes, for generating transactions which make balance assertions or balance assignments. There is also a --assertion-type option for changing the assertion/assignment type.

  • It adds a tag to generated transactions, named start, assert or retain depending on the mode.

  • The start tag's value will be a guess of the new file's name, inferred by incrementing a year number in the current file name. Eg, hledger close --migrate on 2024.journal will add the tag start:2025.journal to both transactions. Tags like this can be helpful when reading multiple files, for excluding closing and opening balances transactions (eg with not:tag:start=2025).

  • You can set different tag values by writing the mode option with an argument. Eg: hledger close --migrate=NEWFILENAME.

  • close now supports --round for controlling display of decimal places, like print.

  • examples/multi-year/ is examples/tutorial for managing multiple files with the close command.

Improvements

• stats has had some improvements:

  • It now also shows some information about memory usage, when hledger is built or is running with the GHC Run Time System available. (Try hledger stats +RTS -T.)

  • The default output is now more private, hiding file paths and commodity symbols. Those can be added by the new -v/--verbose flag.

  • Output is now more compact and more likely to fit in 80-character lines.

  • When generating multiple outputs with a report interval, reports are now separated by an empty line.

• Several more kinds of Unicode space are allowed for separating digit groups in numbers. We now support (my guess of the ones that might show up in real world CSV files): space, no-break space, en space, em space, punctuation space, thin space, narrow no-break space, medium mathematical space.

• Glob patterns in $LEDGER_FILE are now respected. Eg, setting it to *.journal' or 2???.journal now works as expected.

• When hledger is reading a symbolically-linked journal file, relative paths in include directives are now evaluated relative to the directory of the real linked file, not the directory containing the symbolic link.

• Date parse errors are now simpler and clearer. They no longer try to repeat (a reconstruction of) the problem date, since the actual problem date is already visible in the highlighted file excerpt.

• Balance assertion error messages are clearer, and show the difference between expected and actual balance again. With --debug=2 they also show costs.

• tsv: and ssv: file name prefixes are now supported in addition to csv:. They force the file to be read as a .tsv (tab separated values) or .ssv (semicolon-separated values) file. #2164 (Michael Rees)

• In CSV rules files, commented lines are now allowed within "if tables". (Dmitry Astapov)

• balance --budget's CSV and TSV output now shows zeroes instead of nothing when there's no amount.

• bs,bse,cf,is: Report sections which are empty now show zero as their subtotal. (aragaer)

• print and close add a trailing decimal mark when needed to disambiguate a single digit group mark. They now also do this for balance assertion and balance assignment amounts. #2176

• hledger can now be built with GHC 9.8.

• hledger now requires safe >=0.3.20.

Docs

• add version annotations for features added in 1.32 (hamzashezad)
• add Text encoding section, mention UTF-8 BOM support #2189
• journal: note that payee and tag directives can't have tags in comments, unlike account.
• journal: clarify how auto postings work.
• journal: list built-in special tag names
• journal: description/payee/note: clarify
• journal: amounts/commodities/numbers: cleanups
• journal: move intro before cheatsheet
• journal: transactions: explain transaction balancing #2135
• journal: transactions: mention debits, credits and sign
• journal: commodity directive: clarify & fix scope of effects #2135
• journal: D directive: clarify scope #2191
• journal: split Decimal marks, Digit group marks
• journal: move complex commodity styles, lot notation topics later
• journal: drop redundant/wrong Querying with cost or value section
• journal: cheatsheet: cleanups
• journal: assertions and ordering/commodities/subaccounts: cleanups
• csv: matchers: clarify, mention !/& limitation #2088
• csv: if tables: explain comments and order of application (Dmitry Astapov)
• add: document the effect of D default commodity directive #815
• balance: cleanups
• balance: budget report: moved "Budgets and subaccounts" to the Cookbook.
• bs,bse,cf,is: update sample output
• bse: note requirements for checking the accounting equation
• close: rewrite, give a better technique for excluding opening/closing balance txns #2151
• import: rename "deduplication" to "skipping", and rewrite
• examples: expand READMEs, clarify status for examples
• examples: invoicing: cleanups, renames
• examples: invoicing: pandoc-make-invoice: don't write to $LEDGER_FILE; remove the REMOVE THIS LINE line
• examples: csv: daedalus-transactions: update for current daedalus #2171

Scripts/addons

• hledger-bar, hledger-simplebal: shellcheck fixes, cleanups (Colin Dean)

• hledger-bar: Fix an error when NO_COLOR is not defined #2159. Also, it's now more compliant with the no-color.org spec:

  Command-line software which adds ANSI color to its output by default should check for a NO_COLOR environment variable that, when present and not an empty string (regardless of its value), prevents the addition of ANSI color.

  so one can now temporarily override $NO_COLOR=1 in the environment by setting it empty: NO_COLOR= hledger ...

• hledger-txnsbycat: added

API

• move readFileStrictly to hledger-lib:Hledger.Utils.IO

hledger-ui 1.33

Fixes

• Require process 1.6.19.0+ to avoid any vulnerabilities on Windows from HSEC-2024-0003.

Features

• Add a dark theme. (Jonathan Dowland)

Improvements

• Allow building with GHC 9.8.

• Require safe >=0.3.20.

hledger-web 1.33

Fixes

• Exclude base64 >=1.0 to avoid compilation failure. #2166

• Preserve line breaks when showing an error message. #2163 (Martijn van der Ven)

Improvements

• Zero amounts are now shown with their commodity symbol. This was mainly to make the sidebar more informative, but also affects and hopefully helps amounts displayed elsewhere. #2140

• Amounts in the sidebar now also have the amount HTML class.

• Allow building with GHC 9.8.

• Require safe >=0.3.20.

Docs

• Mention the -E/--empty flag for hiding zeros, the non-display of costs, and non-zeros that look like zero because of hidden costs.

project changes 1.33

Misc

• Apple ARM binaries are now included in github releases.

Docs

• REGRESSIONS: we now split the bounty between finder and fixer
• move Developer docs, MOCKUPS, investment-accounting-features to main repo
• merge LINKS into dev docs page; cleanup
• drop unused BACKLOG, TODO pages

credits 1.33

Simon Michael, Jonathan Dowland, Ilja Kocken, Colin Dean, Dmitry Astapov, Vekhir, ShrykeWindgrace, Martijn van der Ven, Michael Rees, aragaer, hamzashezad.

2024-01-28 hledger-1.32.3

hledger 1.32.3

Fixes

• A performance slowdown since 1.29, especially noticeable with many accounts and transactions, has been fixed. #2153

• Balance assertions involving mixed-cost balances are checked correctly again (a regression in 1.30). #2150

• import --catchup works again (a regression in 1.32). #2156

• --anon is now a deprecated hidden flag that raises an error, but is still usable as --obfuscate (also hidden). #2133

• Balance assertion error messages are clearer, and show the diff again.

hledger-ui 1.32.3

• Use hledger-1.32.3

• Allow vty 6.2, brick 2.3

hledger-web 1.32.3

• Use hledger-1.32.3

project changes 1.32.3

• bin/hledger-bar: Fix an error when NO_COLOR is not defined; allow color when NO_COLOR is defined but empty, per no-color spec; and fix shellcheck warnings. #2159 (Colin Dean, Simon Michael)

• bin/hledger-simplebal: Fix shellcheck warnings. (Colin Dean)

credits 1.32.3

Simon Michael, Colin Dean.

2023-12-31 hledger-1.32.2

hledger 1.32.2

Fixes

• In CSV field assignments, %FIELD interpolation and \n can be used together again. #2134

• In timedot data, numbers beginning with a decimal point are accepted again. #2130

• In a balance --budget report, --layout=tall no longer hides commodity symbols.

• Value reports seeing a pathological price chain with 1000 or more steps now write their warning to the console, not a debug log file.

Improvements

• Allow megaparsec 9.6

Docs

• Updated: Queries, Periodic transactions, Auto postings, Assertions and costs, Budget report

hledger-ui 1.32.2

Features

• hledger-ui is now available on Windows (ShrykeWindgrace)

Improvements

• Use Notepad as default editor on Windows (ShrykeWindgrace)

• Allow brick 2.2 (Vekhir)

• Allow megaparsec 9.6

hledger-web 1.32.2

Fixes

• The --base-url option works again. #2127, #2100

• Startup messages are more accurate and informative, eg with --socket. #2127

• The non-working --file-url option has been dropped for now. #2139

Improvements

• Allow megaparsec 9.6

• hledger-web's tests now respect and can test command line options.

• hledger-web's tests now run the app at 127.0.0.1 and port 5000, rather than "any of our IPv4 or IPv6 addresses" and 3000.

2023-12-07 hledger-1.32.1

hledger 1.32.1

• Fixed: import with multiple files now updates .latest files correctly. (#2125)

• Fixed: print --round=hard now properly pads/rounds amounts with inferred costs. (#2123)

• CSV matcher syntax: mention that ! and & can't be used in the same line yet. (#2088)

• Drop the "a difference of ..." line from balance assertion failure output. I feel it made the message harder to read and isn't really necessary.

• Declaring the empty payee name with payee "" now works, to let hledger check payees accept payee-less transactions. (#2119)

• Built-in tags with special meaning like type: and t: are now implicitly declared, so using type: in account declarations or generating t: with timedot letters won't cause hledger check tags to fail. (#2119)

hledger-ui 1.32.1

• Use hledger-1.32.1

hledger-web 1.32.1

• Use hledger-1.32.1

2023-12-01 hledger-1.32

More precision control, beancount output, TSV output, --summary-only, strict/idempotent import, CSV rule enhancements, timedot letters, fixes.

hledger 1.32

Breaking changes

• Display styles and display precision are now managed more carefully during calculations and output, fixing a number of issues (#2111, "Precisiongeddon"). In brief:

  • Cost and value reports, such as print -V, now (1) consistently apply commodity display styles, and (2) do not add or discard decimal digits unnecessarily. (#2105)

  • When "infinite decimals" arise during calculations (eg in value reports, or in prices or roi output), these are now shown limited to 8 decimal digits rather than 255.

  • Non-print-like reports no longer add trailing decimal marks to disambiguate digit group marks (this was an unintended regression in 1.31). (#2115)

  • We now document number formatting adjustments made in certain reports and output formats (hledger manual > REPORTING CONCEPTS > Amount formatting, parseability).

Features

• Timedot format supports a new letters syntax for easier tagged time logging. (#2116)

• print has a new beancount output format for exporting to Beancount. This prints journal output more likely (though not guaranteed) to be readable by Beancount.

• In CSV rules, matchers using regular expressions can now interpolate their matched texts into the values they assign to fields (field assignment values can reference match groups). (#2009) (Jonathan Dowland)

• In CSV rules, matchers can be negated by prepending !. (#2088) (bobobo1618)

• Multi-column balance reports (from bal, bs, is etc.) can use the new --summary-only flag (--summary also works) to display just the Total and Average columns (if enabled by --row-total and -A/--average) and hide the rest. (#1012) (Stephen Morgan)

• All commands that suport csv output now also support tsv (tab-separated values) output. The data is identical, but the fields are separated by tab characters and there is no quoting or escaping. Tab, carriage return, and newline characters in data are converted to spaces (this should rarely if ever happen in practice). (#869) (Peter Sagerson).

Improvements

• Journal format no longer fails to parse Ledger-style lot costs with spaces after the {, improving Ledger compatibility.

• import now does not update any .latest files until it has run without error (no failing strict checks, no failure while writing the journal file). This makes it more idempotent, so you can run it again after fixing problems.

• print now shows zeros with a commodity symbol and decimal digits when possible, preserving more information.

• print has a new option for controlling amount rounding (#2085):

  • --round=none - show amounts with original precisions (default; like 1.31; avoids implying less or more precision than was recorded)

  • --round=soft - add/remove decimal zeros in non-cost amounts (like 1.30 but also affects balance assertion amounts)

  • --round=hard - round non-cost amounts (can hide significant digits)

  • --round=all - round all amounts and costs

  For the record: print shows four kinds of amount: posting amounts, balance assertion amounts, and costs for each of those. Past hledger versions styled and rounded these inconsistently. Since 1.31 they are all styled, and since 1.32 they are rounded as follows:

  hledger-1.32 print	amt	cost	bal	balcost
  (default)	none	none	none	none
  --round=soft	soft	none	soft	none
  --round=hard	hard	none	hard	none
  --round=all	hard	hard	hard	hard

• The prices command has had a number of fixes and improvements (#2111):

  • It now more accurately lists the prices that hledger would use when calculating value reports (similar to what you'd see with hledger bal -V --debug=2).

  • The --infer-reverse-prices flag was confusing, since we always infer and use reverse prices; it has been renamed to --show-reverse.

  • --show-reverse and --infer-market-prices flags now combine properly.

  • --show-reverse now ignores zero prices rather than giving an error.

  • Price amounts are now shown styled.

  • Price amounts are now shown with all their decimal digits; or with 8 decimal digits if they appear to be infinite decimals (which can arise with reverse prices).

  • Filtering prices with cur: or amt: now works properly.

Fixes

• print now styles balance assertion costs consistently, like other amounts.

• import now works with -s/--strict. And more generally, when reading multiple input files, eg with multiple -f options, strict checks are done only for the overall combined journal (not for each individual file). (#2113)

• tag: queries now work when reading CSV files. (#2114)

• Using a .json or .sql file extension with -o/--outputfile now properly selects those output formats.

• Auto postings no longer break redundant equity/cost detection and transaction balancing. (#2110)

• Amounts set by balance assignment now affect commodity styles again. (#2091, a regression in 1.30)

• Timedot quantities with units are parsed more accurately. Eg a quantity like "15m" was evaluated as 0.249999999 not 0.25, and since hledger 1.21, it was printed that way also. Now we round such quantities to two places during parsing to get exact quarter-hour amounts. (#2096)

• The demo command no longer triggers a JSON decode error in asciinema 2.3.0. It now also shows a better error message if asciinema fails (#2094).

• Failing balance assertions with a cost now show correct markers in the error message. (#2083)

Docs

• New:

  • Amount formatting, parseability
  • Started new code docs for developers, based in the Hledger module's haddock

• Updated:

  • aregister
  • commodity directive
  • Commodity display style
  • if table
  • Decimal marks, digit group marks
  • Regular expressions
  • Timedot

hledger-ui 1.32

Fixes

• The V key now preserves the valuation mode specified at the command line, if any. (#2084)

• The hledger-ui package no longer wastefully builds its modules twice.

hledger-web 1.32

Features

• The hledger-web app on the Sandstorm cloud platform has been updated to a recent version (Jacob Weisz, #2102), and now uses Sandstorm's access control. (Jakub Zárybnický, #821)

Improvements

• The --capabilities and --capabilities-header options have been replaced with an easier --allow=view|add|edit|sandstorm option. add is the default access level, while sandstorm is for use on Sandstorm. UI and docs now speak of "permissions" rather than "capabilities". (#834)

• The Sandstorm app's permissions and roles have been renamed for clarity. (#834)

• Permissions are now checked earlier, before the web app is started, producing clearer command line errors when appropriate.

• Account's adeclarationinfo field is now included in JSON output. (#2097) (S. Zeid)

Fixes

• The app can now serve on address 0.0.0.0 (exposing it on all interfaces), which previously didn't work. (#2099) (Philipp Klocke)

• The broken "File format help" link in the edit form has been fixed. (#2103)

project changes 1.32

Scripts/addons

• hledger-install.sh: replaced hledger-stockquotes with pricehist

• added gsheet-csv.hs: fetch a google sheet as CSV

• added hledger-report1: an example custom compound report, with haskell and bash versions

• justfile: updated import, time report scripts

Examples

• New:

  • Fidelity CSV rules

• Updated:

  • roi-unrealised.ledger (Charlie Ambrose)

Docs

• New:

  • Started a weekly This Week In Hledger news post, inspired by Matrix.
  • There's now a News page, for This Week In Hledger etc.
  • hledgermatic, an up-to-date, simple journal-first workflow
  • How to record journal entries: added
  • Reporting version control stats: added
  • Moved regression bounty info from the issue tracker to Developer docs > REGRESSIONS.

• Updated:

  • Checking for errors
  • Common workflows
  • Ledger
  • Simon's old setup
  • Videos
  • All docs now use the cli class instead of shell for command-line examples, avoiding inaccurate highlighting.

Infrastructure

• hledger.org website:

  • Fixed the webhook that was not updating the site on git push.

  • Fixed a problem with cloudflare authentication that was preventing automatic TLS certificate renewal on hledger.org.

  • Updated and committed hledger.org's caddy config and short urls (redirects)

  • Enabled https for code.hledger.org and site.hledger.org short urls.

  • Updated the stars.hledger.org redirect (we have reached the top 30 github-starred Haskell projects 🌟 🎉).

  • Set up a self-hosted Sandstorm server, and a public hledger-web instance (sandbox.hledger.org) in it that is fully writable (until spammers find it). Use it as a pastebin for examples, eg.

• Github CI (continuous integration) workflows have been optimised somewhat:

  • Scheduled weekly builds have been disabled, as they were propagating to forks and running wastefully there in some cases.

  • Some repeated rebuilding of the hledger-lib and hledger packages that seems unnecessary has been stopped.

  • hledger-ui no longer builds its modules twice.

  • Haddock testing now done only at release time.

  • renamed main CI workflow and branch to "ci"

• Tools:

  • .ghci: added an :rmain alias, which is like :main but reloads first - saves typing, and is useful eg when changing --debug level.

  • make haddock-watch is now fast

Finance

• Updated project finance scripts, regenerated the journal with consistent precisions.

• Updated reports with the last few months of data from Open Collective.

credits 1.32

Simon Michael, Jonathan Dowland, S. Zeid, Charlie Ambrose, Jacob Weisz, Peter Sagerson, Philipp Klocke, Stephen Morgan, bobobo1618.

2023-09-03 hledger-1.31

More tolerant equity/cost matching; print amounts in original style; multi-pivot.

hledger 1.31

Features

• Multi-pivot: the --pivot option now accepts multiple arguments, colon-delimited, to construct account names from multiple fields. (#2050, Eric Mertens)

Improvements

• The print command now more closely replicates the original journal amount styles, which is helpful when round-tripping / cleaning up journal files:

  • Amounts in conversion transactions could be displayed rounded to a lower precision; this no longer happens. (#2079)

  • Amounts could be displayed with extra zeros after the decimal mark; this no longer happens.

  • Amounts could display with a different precision if the journal included a timedot file; this no longer happens.

  • Costs in balance assertions were not displayed with standard styles like other amounts; now they are.

  • Zero amounts were always shown as just "0"; now they are shown with their original commodity symbol and style. (And if an inferred amount has multiple zeros in different commodities, a posting is displayed for each of these.)

• print no longer displays numbers with a single digit group mark and no decimal mark, which are ambiguous and hard to re-parse. Now if a number has digit group marks the decimal mark will always be shown also. Eg 1,000 (where the comma is a thousands separator) is now shown as 1,000..

• The check command's balancedwithautoconversion and balancednoautoconversion checks have been renamed to autobalanced and balanced.

• hledger check recentassertions now reports failures at the first posting that's more than 7 days later than the latest balance assertion (rather than at the balance assertion). This is the thing actually triggering the error, and it is more likely to be visible or at least closer when you are working at the end of a journal file.

  Also, the suggested sample balance assertion now uses the same commodity symbol as in the failing posting (the first, if there are more than one); and, no longer includes a cleared mark.

• The import command now shows the file path being imported to.

• With --pivot, desc is now the preferred spelling for pivoting on description.

• The demo command now ignores an invalid journal file, like the other HELP commands.

• Debug output for equity conversion postings has been improved, making troubleshooting easier.

• Allow aeson 2.2, megaparsec 9.5.

Fixes

• In journal files, valid multicommodity transactions where the matching non-equity postings can't be auto-detected are no longer considered an error (as they were in hledger 1.29 and 1.30). Now, such transactions are accepted, and --infer-cost has no effect on them. This is similar to the behaviour of --cost, --infer-equity, and --infer-market-prices. (#2045)

• In journal files, equity conversion postings are now detected more tolerantly, using the same precision as the conversion posting's amount (#2041). Eg, the following transaction is now accepted:

  2023-01-01
      Assets               -84.01 USD @ 2.495 GEL
        ; ^ 209.60495 GEL, recognised as a match for the 209.60 below
      Equity:Conversion     84.01 USD
      Equity:Conversion   -209.60 GEL
      Assets               209.60 GEL
  

• The roi command now reports TWR per period and overall TWR for multi-period reports. (#2068, Dmitry Astapov)

• The commands list no longer shows bar when hledger-bar is not installed (#2065), and had a few other cleanups.

hledger-ui 1.31

Improvements

• Allow megaparsec 9.5

hledger-web 1.31

Improvements

• Allow aeson 2.2, megaparsec 9.5

project changes 1.31

Scripts/addons

• ft, tt shell scripts for collecting financial and time reports

• A justfile implementation of ft and tt

Examples

• self-tracking

• RPG ledger (Eric Mertens)

Docs

Infrastructure

• tools, CI: checkembeddedfiles, checkversions

• Shake: avoid making empty commits

• make functest-PAT: runs a subset of functional tests

• Provide a ghc-tags.yaml file to make use of ghc-tags with Hledger easy.

  ghc-tags is a standalone tool to replace the formerly-built-in ":ctags" feature (and I presume ":etags") in GHCi. These walked over the source and produced a TAGS file (in vim-compatible ctags or Emacs-compatible etags format) that allows the relevant editors to quickly navigate around function definitions.

  ghc-tags trips over some of the CPP used in Hledger. The solution is to provide ghc-tags with explicit CPP defines via a YAML file. However, if a YAML file is provided, one also must specify the source paths, as the tool XORs config file | paths-on-command-line.

  See https://github.com/arybczak/ghc-tags/issues/6 for more information. (Jonathan Dowland)

credits 1.31

Simon Michael, Dmitry Astapov, Eric Mertens, Jay Neubrand, Jonathan Dowland.

2023-06-02 hledger-1.30.1

hledger 1.30.1

Fixes

• Add missing files to Hackage release, making it buildable.

Docs

• Replace note about repeated options.

2023-06-01 hledger-1.30

Boolean queries, easier CSV file management, built-in demos, hledger-ui cash accounts screen, fixes.

hledger 1.30

Breaking changes

• The CSV reader now properly skips all empty lines, as specified by docs. Previously, inner empty lines were not being skipped automatically. You might need to adjust the skip count in some CSV rules files. (#2024)

• Timedot format now generates a single multi-posting transaction per date line, and supports comments and tags on all lines. (#1754)

• Timeclock format now supports comments and tags. Descriptions can no longer contain semicolons. (#1220)

Features

• CSV rules files can now be read directly, as in hledger -f foo.csv.rules CMD. By default this will read data from foo.csv in the same directory.

• CSV rules files can use a new source FILE rule to specify the data file, with some convenience features:

  • If the data file does not exist, it is treated as empty, not an error.

  • If FILE is a relative path, it is relative to the rules file's directory. If it is just a file name with no path, it is relative to ~/Downloads/.

  • If FILE is a glob pattern, the most recently modified matched file is used.

  This 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, periodically download CSV from Foo's website accepting your browser's defaults, and then run hledger import checking.csv.rules to import any new transactions. The next time, if you have done no cleanup, your browser will probably save it as something like Checking1-2.csv, and hledger will still see that because of the * wild card. You can choose whether to delete CSVs after import, or keep them for a while as temporary backups, or archive them somewhere. (Experimental)

• The balance command has a new --count report type which reports posting counts instead of amounts.

• Full boolean queries, allowing arbitrary use of AND, OR, NOT (case insensitive) and parentheses for grouping, are now supported. For backward compatibility, these require an expr: prefix. Existing queries work as before, and you can mix and match the old and new styles if you like. (Chris Lemaire)

• demo: This new command plays brief asciinema screencasts explaining various features and use cases. We will add more of these over time. (Experimental)

Improvements

• Add-on commands can now have .js, .lua, or .php file extensions.

• Generated and modified transactions and postings have the same hidden tags (beginning with underscore) as before, but no longer have visible tags added by default. Use --verbose-tags if you want them added.

• We now try harder to ensure less (and its more mode) show our ANSI formatting properly in help output. If you use some other $PAGER, you may have to configure it yourself to show ANSI (or disable ANSI entirely, eg by setting NO_COLOR=1). This is now documented in hledger manual > Paging. (#2015)

• The print command's --match mode has been refined. Previously, similarity completely outweighed recency, so a slightly-more-similar transaction would always be selected no matter how old it was. Now similarity and recency are more balanced, and it should produce the desired transaction more often. There is also new debug output (at debug level 1) for troubleshooting.

• Miscellaneous commands list updates. Help has been added for all published add-on commands (like hledger-lots).

• The help command's documentation now mentions an issue caused by a too-old info program, as on mac. (#1770)

Fixes

• Unbalanced virtual postings with no amount always infer a zero amount. This is fixing and clarifying the status quo; they always did this, but print always showed them with no amount, even with -x, and the behaviour was undocumented.

• On windows systems with multiple drive letters, the commands list could fail to show all installed add-ons. (#2040)

• Balancing a transaction with a balance assignment now properly respects costs. (#2039)

• The commands list no longer lists non-installed addons. (#2034)

• Since hledger 1.25, "every Nth day of month" period rules with N > 28 could be calculated wrongly by a couple of days when given certain forecast start dates. Eg ~ every 31st day of month with --forecast='2023-03-30..'. This is now fixed. (#2032)

• Postings are now processed in correct date order when inferring balance assignments. (#2025)

• Posting comment lines no longer disrupt the underline position in error messages. (#1927)

• Debug output is now formatted to fit the terminal width.

Docs

• Miscellaneous manual cleanups.

• Rewrite introductory sections, Date adjustment, Directives, Forecasting, etc.

• Add Paging section.

• Remove archaic mentions of setenv.

API

• Renamed: Hledger.Cli.Commands: findCommand -> findBuiltinCommand

hledger-ui 1.30

Features

• A "Cash accounts" screen has been added, showing accounts of the Cash type.

Improvements

• The top-level menu screen is now the default screen. Power users can use the --cash/--bs/--is/--all flags to start up in another screen.

• "All accounts" screen has been moved to the bottom of the list.

• Screens' help footers have been improved.

Docs

• The transaction screen's inability to update is now noted.

• Miscellaneous manual cleanups.

hledger-web 1.30

Fixes

• A command line depth limit now works properly. (#1763)

Docs

• Miscellaneous manual cleanups.

project changes 1.30

Scripts/addons

• hledger-bar: new script for making simple bar charts in the terminal

• hledger-install: also list cabal, stack, pip tool versions

Examples

• examples/csv: added a more up-to-date CSV makefile

• examples/i18: Added sample top level account and type declarations in several languages

Docs

• A shorter, more example-heavy home page on the website.

• Simplified website and FAQ structure.

credits 1.30

Simon Michael, Chris Lemaire, Yehoshua Pesach Wallach.

2023-04-07 hledger-1.29.2

hledger 1.29.2

Breaking changes

• 1.29's cleanup of the close command has been continued. Here are all the changes to close since hledger 1.28:

  • The default behaviour is now to print only one transaction: a closing transaction.

  • To print both closing and opening transactions as before, use the new --migrate flag.

  • The accounts closed by default are now just the ALE accounts (accounts declared or inferred as type Asset, Liability, or Equity). If you don't have account types configured, or to close some other set of accounts, provide query arguments that match them. To close all accounts as before, use a . argument to match them all.

  • To print a retain earnings transaction for RX accounts (accounts of type Revenue or Expense), use the new --retain flag.

  • The equity command alias, removed in 1.29, has been restored.

  • The --open-acct option, removed in 1.29, has been restored.

  • The --closing and --opening flags have been renamed to --close and --open. (--close had been removed in 1.29 and is now restored.)

  • The docs have been rewritten. Also the 1.29 release notes now mention the breaking change.

  • The command is marked experimental again.

  (#2020)

Fixes

• type: queries now "see through" account aliases and pivots, as they did in hledger <1.27, and as acct: queries do. (#2018)

• The corruption in 1.29's info manual is fixed. (#2023)

• The 1.29 release notes for periodic reports'/periodic transactions' start dates have been improved. Also the hledger manual's "Date adjustment" section has been corrected and clarified.

hledger-ui 1.29.2

Improvements

• A pager is used to show --help output when needed, as in hledger.

Fixes

• The corruption in 1.29's info manual is fixed. (#2023)

hledger-web 1.29.2

Improvements

• A pager is used to show --help output when needed, as in hledger.

Fixes

• The corruption in 1.29's info manual is fixed. (#2023)

project changes 1.29.2

Scripts/addons

• hledger-install: re-enable hledger-interest, hledger-iadd; add hledger-lots

credits 1.29.2

Simon Michael

2023-03-16 hledger-1.29.1

hledger 1.29.1

Improvements

• Hledger.Cli.Script now also exports

   Control.Applicative
   Control.Concurrent
   Data.Char
   Data.Functor
   System.IO
   System.IO.Error
  

  and new string helpers

   strip1Char
   stripBy
   strip1By
  

• Allow building with GHC 9.6.1 (#2011)

Fixes

• The stats report no longer displays "Exact" in front of dates. (#2012)

Docs

• remove duplicate in hledger close docs (Yehoshua Pesach Wallach)

hledger-ui 1.29.1

• Allow building with GHC 9.6.1 (#2011)

hledger-web 1.29.1

• Allow building with GHC 9.6.1 (#2011)

2023-03-11 hledger-1.29

Tag checking, flexible multi-period start dates, flexible cost/conversion posting combining, new commands list, hledger manual reorg, easier close command, 10% more Ledger file compatible

hledger 1.29

Breaking changes

• Weekly reports are no longer automatically adjusted to start on a monday; in some cases you might need to adjust their start date to preserve simple week headings (see below).

Features

• In journal format there is now a tag directive for declaring tag names, and the check command now has a tags check to enforce use of declared tag names.

• Periodic transactions and multi-period reports can now start on any date. To enable this while still maintaining pretty good backward compatibility, hledger now keeps explicitly specified start dates as they are, but still automatically adjusts inferred start dates to interval boundaries. This means, eg:

  • A periodic rule like ~ monthly from 2023-01-15 now works as you'd expect instead of raising an error. This also improves our ability to read Ledger files.

  • Period options like -p 'monthly from 2023/1/15' or -M -b 2023/1/15 now start the report on exactly 1/15 instead of being adjusted to 1/1.

  • -p 'weekly in 2023-01', which previously was adjusted to start on a monday, now starts exactly on 2023-01-01. This can cause more verbose report headings. To ensure simple week headings, now weekly reports must start on a monday, eg -p 'weekly from 2022-12-26 to 2023-02'. (#1982)

• You can now freely combine @/@@ notation and conversion postings in a single transaction. This can help readability, and also allows more flexibility when recording cost. hledger will check that the two notations are in agreement, and ignore the redundancy if they are. (Conversion postings are postings to accounts with type V/Conversion or name equity:conversion/equity:trade/equity:trading, or subaccounts of these. See also COST.)

Improvements

• hledger's commands list has been reorganised for clarity. More add-on commands are now recognised and categorised, and unrecognised add-on commands are listed in a more compact multi-column layout. (Simon Michael, Michael Grünewald)

• hledger's commands list and command line help now use ANSI (bold headings) when supported.

• hledger's commands list and command line help now use a pager (respecting $PAGER) for long output except on MS Windows.

• hledger's --version output no longer shows + for dev builds made in dirty repos (it was buggy).

• The add command's Description completions now also include payee names (declared with payee or recorded in transactions with |), not just full descriptions.

• aregister now supports HTML output. (#1996) (Jonathan Dowland)

• aregister now shows a " (matching query)" hint in report title when extra query args (other than date: or depth:) are used, to reduce confusion.

• close now has three modes, --retain/--migrate/--open, clarifying its uses and providing more useful defaults.

• register-match is now the --match mode of the register command. (This command was used by ledger-autosync at one point; if you still need it, hopefully register --match works similarly.)

• print-unique has been dropped, because it doesn't support print's options, it disorders same-day transactions, I don't know of any users or use cases, and it could easily be recreated as an addon script.

• print's JSON output now also includes source positions for --forecast transactions. (Chris Lemaire)

• Journal format now allows the empty commodity symbol to be written as "", so it's now possible to declare market prices for it: P 2022-01-01 "" $100. This can be useful for timedot data.

• Inferring costs from equity now happens after transaction balancing, not before. As a result, --infer-costs now works in transactions where an amount is left blank.

• account declarations now reject parenthesised account names, reducing confusion. (Chris Lemaire)

• Our journal reader now accepts more Ledger syntax, improving Ledger file compatibility (#1962). We now test our ability to at least read the sample journals from Ledger's baseline functional tests, and our success rate has improved from 80% to 90% since 1.28.

  • since is accepted as synonym of from in period expressions
  • apply year and year are accepted as synonyms of Y
  • (lot notes) in amounts and ((valuation expressions)) after amounts are now ignored
  • directives A, assert, bucket, capture, check, define, expr, eval, python, value, apply fixed, apply tag, end apply fixed, end apply tag, end apply year are now ignored
  • subdirectives of payee, tag, and commodity (other than format) are now ignored
  • pop directive is no longer supported

• When reading CSV, we now check that assigned account names are valid (parseable). (#1978)

Fixes

• aregister now handles an extra account query correctly. (#2007)

• balance's --help now mentions --layout=tidy

• Balance commands with --layout=bare now generate proper table layout in HTML output.

• register's -w/--width option no longer gives ugly parse error messages.

• stats's --help no longer wrongly claims to support -O/--output-format.

• Balance assignments with a cost now generate a correct balance assertion. (#1965)

• The CSV reader now properly skips header lines before attempting to parse records. (#1967)

Scripts/addons

• Scripts can now use Hledger.Cli.Script, a convenient new prelude which helps reduce import boilerplate. It currently re-exports:

  Control.Monad
  Data.Either
  Data.List
  Data.Maybe
  Data.Ord
  Data.Time
  Text.Printf hiding (formatString)
  Data.Text (Text, pack, unpack)
  Safe hiding (at)
  System.Directory
  System.Environment
  System.Exit
  System.FilePath
  System.Process
  Hledger
  Hledger.Cli
  Hledger.Cli.Main (argsToCliOpts)
  

  (Not much of Data.Text/Data.Text.IO because those need to be qualified.)

Docs

• chunk the hledger manual into parts, rename and rearrange sections for better structure/flow
• add a cheatsheet demonstrating all the main journal features that I recommend
• move a number of my not-so-recommended journal features into a less visible "Other syntax" section
• add: payees/descriptions completion
• areg: more advice on account-matching
• bal: --budget: clarify use of print --forecast
• bal: budget: compare with forecasting; add some tips
• balance cleanups/reorder
• check: adjacentconversionpostings was dropped
• cli: balance: fix link to Budgeting page
• cli: fix all links to Journal > Tags / Commands > tags
• codes: improve example suggested by Rob Nielsen
• csv, timeclock, timedot: clarify comment lines (#1953)
• csv: add new coinbase example
• csv: clarify amount-in/amount-out docs (#1970)
• csv: clarify skip/valid csv semantics (#1967)
• csv: clarify valid CSV requirements and issues (fix #1966)
• csv: cleanup, reorder, CSV rules tips -> Working with CSV
• csv: fix wrong if tables doc; rewrite several sections (#1977)
• csv: flatten, clean up CSV sections
• csv: improve Amount field / Setting amounts
• csv: note -in and -out are used together for one posting (#1970)
• csv: rules factoring tips
• csv: try to clarify how CSV fields and hledger fields work
• document --infer-market-prices with signed costs (#1870)
• fix duplicate market prices heading breaking info navigation
• import: note a pitfall with multifile import
• improve Directives summaries
• introduction/input/output improvements
• journal: cheatsheet: clarify date tag
• journal: rewrite Account names, mention brackets/parentheses (#1915)
• mention pivoting on a tag with multiple values (#1950)
• more cost notation docs; describe Ledger and Beancount cost notation
• more mention of posting order effect on inferring cost (#1959)
• period expressions doc updates
• Removed redundant paragraph in documentation. (J. B. Rainsberger)
• rename directive sections, fix many links
• reorganise commands list, like the CLI
• reorganise bin/README & the Scripts page, add entries for recent scripts
• replace "transaction prices" terminology with "costs"
• tags: discuss multi-values/overriding (#1950)
• update market price inference docs per sol
• Updated section on pivoting. Used synonyms for "member" in cases where there could be confusion with the tag named "member." (Robert Nielsen)
• use more standard and consistent boilerplate in hledger, ui, web man pages
• virtual postings: improve wording per Robert Nielsen

hledger-ui 1.29

• In the help dialog, mention that LEFT shows other screens.

• In the manual, mention shift-up/down config needed for Terminal.app.

hledger-web 1.29

• The add form's typeahead now shows non-ascii text correctly. (#1961) (Arsen Arsenović)

• In the manual, improve --base-url's description. (#1562)

project changes 1.29

Scripts/addons

• hledger-script-example.hs: rename/cleanup
• sortandmergepostings: new, sorts postings and merges duplicates (Caleb Maclennan, Murukesh Mohanan)
• hledger-register-max: new, prints the posting with largest historical balance
• hledger-git: record shows better error output, no longer force-adds ignored files
• hledger-git: status is fixed, also shows diffs
• hledger-git: add short command aliases r, s, l
• hledger-git: -h is fixed
• hledger-git: pass unrecognised commands to git
• hledger-install: also install hledger-edit, hledger-plot
• hledger-install: add support for installing python packages
• hledger-install: show quieter stack/cabal output
• hledger-install: align install status list
• hledger-install: don't list hledger-install.sh in PATH
• hledger-install: drop hledger-iadd for now https://github.com/hpdeifel/hledger-iadd/issues/71

Docs

• move most dev docs to doc/
• Scripting hledger: move plugin types table here
• Scripts: add hledger-plot, hledger-edit, hledger-fifo (Yann Büchau, Simon Michael)
• update lots mockups, move to Mockups page
• split Contributor Guide into Contributor Quick Start, LINKS, ISSUES
• add REPOS, FILES, DECISIONS
• CREDITS: updates, link to github contributors list

Infrastructure

• pr template: mention COMMITS page and prefix convention (#1997)
• make ghc 9.4 and current stackage nightly the default for dev builds
• require megaparsec 9.3+ in dev builds, for its useful dbg tool
• make site-watch: fix runaway recursion, be more verbose
• new make rules: man-watch
• new tools: ciwatch, push, pushdocs, gtree
• misc process updates

credits 1.29

Simon Michael, Chris Lemaire, Caleb Maclennan, Jonathan Dowland, J. B. Rainsberger, Michael Grünewald, Robert Nielsen, Yann Büchau.

2022-12-01 hledger-1.28

new hledger-ui screens, better debug output; accounts, print, csv-reading improvements; new hledger-move, watchaccounts scripts

hledger 1.28

Features

• The accounts command has new flags: --undeclared (show accounts used but not declared), --unused (show accounts declared but not used), and --find (find the first account matched by the first command argument, a convenience for scripts). Also -u and -d short flags have been added for --used and --declared.

• A new CSV rule intra-day-reversed helps generate transactions in correct order with CSVs where records are reversed within each day.

• CSV rules can now correctly convert CSV date-times with a implicit or explicit timezone to dates in your local timezone. Previously, CSV date-times with a different time zone from yours could convert to off-by-one dates, because the CSV's timezone was ignored. Now,

  1. When a CSV has date-times with an implicit timezone different from yours, you can use the timezone rule to declare it.

  2. CSV date-times with a known timezone (either declared by timezone or parsed with %Z) will be localised to the system timezone (or to the timezone set with the TZ environment variable).

  (#1936)

Improvements

• print --match now respects -o and -O.

• print --match now returns a non-zero exit code when there is no acceptable match.

• Support megaparsec 9.3. (Felix Yan)

• Support GHC 9.4.

Fixes

• In CSV rules, when assigning a parenthesised account name to accountN, extra whitespace is now ignored, allowing unbalanced postings to be detected correctly.

Scripts/addons

• bin/hledger-move helps record transfers involving subaccounts and costs, eg when withdrawing some or all of an investment balance containing many lots and costs.

• bin/hledger-git no longer uses the non-existent git record command. (#1942) (Patrick Fiaux)

• bin/watchaccounts is a small shell script for watching the account tree as you make changes.

hledger-ui 1.28

Features

• New "Balance sheet accounts" and "Income statement accounts" screens have been added, along with a new top-level "Menu" screen for navigating between these and the "All accounts" screen.

• hledger-ui now starts in the "Balance sheet accounts" screen by default (unless no asset/liability/equity accounts can be detected, or command line account query arguments are provided). This provides a more useful default view than the giant "All accounts" list. Or, you can force a particular starting screen with the new --menu/--all/--bs/--is flags (eg, hledger-ui --all to replicate the old behaviour).

Improvements

• The ENTER key is equivalent to RIGHT for navigation.

• hledger-ui debug output is now always logged to ./hledger-ui.log rather than the console, --debug with no argument is equivalent to --debug=1, and debug output is much more informative.

• Support GHC 9.4.

• Support megaparsec 9.3 (Felix Yan)

• Support (and require) brick 1.5, fsnotify 0.4.x.

Fixes

• Mouse-clicking in empty space below the last list item no longer navigates back. It was too obtrusive, eg when you just want to focus the window. You can still navigate back with the mouse by clicking the left edge of the window.

• A possible bug with detecting change of date while in --watch mode has been fixed.

API

• hledger-ui's internal types have been changed to allow fewer invalid states
  and make it easier to develop and debug. (#1889, #1919).

• Debug logging helpers have been added and cleaned up in Hledger.Ui.UIUtils: dbgui dbguiIO dbguiEv dbguiScreensEv mapScreens screenId screenRegisterDescriptions

hledger-web 1.28

Improvements

• --debug with no argument is now equivalent to --debug=1.

• Allow megaparsec 9.3 (Felix Yan)

• Support GHC 9.4

project changes 1.28

Docs

• Miscellaneous improvements.

Examples

• Indian National Pension Service CSV rules (Pranesh Prakash)

Infrastructure

• make site-watch: switch from entr to watchexec.

• make hoogle-setup, hoogle-serve: run a local hoogle on hledger code.

• make man-watch-PROG: watch a hledger program's man page as source files change.

credits 1.28

Simon Michael, Felix Yan, Patrick Fiaux.

2022-09-18 hledger-1.27.1

hledger 1.27.1

Fixes

• Balance commands using -T -O html no longer fail with an error when there is no data to report. (#1933)

hledger-ui 1.27.1

• Uses hledger-1.27.1

hledger-web 1.27.1

Fixes

• The add form no longer gives an error when there is just a single file and no file field showing. (#1932)

• Uses hledger-1.27.1

2022-09-01 hledger-1.27

Infer costs from equity postings, new error checks, improved error messages, fixes.

hledger 1.27

Features

• hledger check recentassertions (and flycheck-hledger in Emacs if you enable this check) requires that all balance-asserted accounts have a balance assertion within 7 days before their latest posting.

  This helps remind you to not only record transactions, but also to regularly check account balances against the real world, to catch errors sooner and avoid a time-consuming hunt.

• The --infer-costs general flag has been added, as the inverse operation to --infer-equity. --infer-costs detects commodity conversion transactions which have been written with equity conversion postings (the traditional accounting notation) and adds PTA cost notation (@@) to them (allowing cost reporting). See https://hledger.org/hledger.html#equity-conversion-postings . (Stephen Morgan)

Improvements

• Many error messages have been improved. Most error messages now use a consistent, more informative format. (#1436)

• The accounts command has a new --directives flag which makes it show valid account directives which you can paste into a journal.

• The accounts command has a new --positions flag which shows where accounts were declared, useful for troubleshooting. (#1909)

• Bump lower bounds for Diff and githash. (Andrew Lelechenko)

• GHC 8.6 and 8.8 are no longer supported. Building hledger now requires GHC 8.10 or greater.

Fixes

• Account display order is now calculated correctly even when accounts are declared in multiple files. (#1909)

• At --debug 5 and up, account declarations info is logged. (#1909)

• hledger aregister and hledger-ui now show transactions correctly when there is a type: query. (#1905)

• bal: Allow cumulative gain and valuechange reports. Previously, --cumulative with --gain or --valuechange would produce an empty report. This fixes this issue to produce a reasonable report. (Stephen Morgan)

• bal: budget goal amounts now respect -c styles (fixes #1907)

• bal: budget goals now respect -H (#1879)

• bal: budget goals were ignoring rule-specified start date

• cf/bs/is: Fixed non-display of child accounts when there is an intervening account of another type. (#1921) (Stephen Morgan)

• roi: make sure empty cashflows are skipped when determining first cashflow (Charlotte Van Petegem) Empty cashflows are added when the begin date of the report is before the first transaction.

Scripts/addons

• https://hledger.org/scripts.html - an overview of scripts and addons in bin/.

• paypaljson, paypaljson2csv - download txns from paypal API

• hledger-check-postable.hs - check that no postings are made to accounts with a postable:(n|no) tag

• hledger-addon-example.hs - script template

hledger-ui 1.27

Improvements

• At --debug=2 and up, log debug output to ./debug.log.

• Use/require brick 1.0+. (#1889)

• Use hledger 1.27

hledger-web 1.27

Improvements

• Improve the add form's layout and space usage.

• Pre-fill the add form's date field.

• Highlight today in the add form's date picker.

• Focus the add form's description field by default.

• Allow an empty description in the add form.

• Use hledger 1.27

Fixes

• Respect the add form's file selector again. (Simon Michael, Kerstin, #1229)

project changes 1.27

Docs

• https://hledger.org/ERRORS.html - an overview of hledger's error messages.

• Rewrite/consolidate cost and conversion docs.

• New template for github releases, with improved install instructions for binaries.

• Add modern windows binary install instructions. (Lazar Lazarov, Simon Michael)

• Fix tables of contents in developer documentation. (Alex Hirzel)

• Update ACHIEVEMENTS. (Alex Hirzel)

• Corrected the extension for the CREDITS file. (Pranesh Prakash)

• Fix broken link in bin/README.md. (David D Lowe)

Examples

• Add example for capital one credit cards CSV. (max thomas)

Process

• Revive github projects, set up http://projects.hledger.org shortcut url

• Many cleanups and improvements to the CI test and binary-generating github actions. The CI tests for master now also include hledger-lib's doctests.

• All packages now disallow name shadowing in their code.

• make scc gives a modern report of code line counts.

• make ghci-unit-test loads hledger-lib unit tests in GHCI.

credits 1.27

Simon Michael, Stephen Morgan, Alex Hirzel, Pranesh Prakash, David D Lowe, Charlotte Van Petegem, Max Thomas, Andrew Lelechenko.

2022-07-11 hledger-1.26.1

hledger 1.26.1

• require safe 0.3.19+ to avoid deprecation warning

hledger-ui 1.26.1

• support doclayout 0.4, brick 0.72+

• require safe 0.3.19+ to avoid deprecation warning

2022-06-04 hledger-1.26

Miscellaneous improvements.

hledger 1.26

Improvements

• register and aregister have been made faster, by

  • considering only the first 1000 items for choosing column widths. You can restore the old behaviour (guaranteed alignment across all items) with the new --align-all flag. (#1839](https://github.com/simonmichael/hledger/issues/1839), Stephen Morgan)

  • discarding cost data more aggressively, giving big speedups for large journals with many costs. (#1828, Stephen Morgan)

• Most error messages from the journal reader and the check command now use a consistent layout, with an "Error:" prefix, line and column numbers, and an excerpt highlighting the problem. Work in progress. (#1436) (Simon Michael, Stephen Morgan)

• hledger check ordereddates now always checks all transactions (previously it could be restricted by query arguments).

• The --pivot option now supports a status argument, to pivot on transaction status.

• Update bash completions (Jakob Schöttl)

Fixes

• Value reports with --date2 and a report interval (like hledger bal -VM --date2) were failing with a "expected all spans to have an end date" error since 1.22; this is now fixed. (#1851, Stephen Morgan)

• In CSV rules, interpolation of a non-existent field like %999 or %nosuchfield is now ignored (previously it inserted that literal text). Note this means such an error will not be reported; Simon chose this as the more convenient behaviour when converting CSV. Experimental. (#1803, #1814) (Stephen Morgan)

• --infer-market-price was inferring a negative price when selling. (#1813, Stephen Morgan)

• Allow an escaped forward slash in regular expression account aliases. (#982, Stephen Morgan)

• The tags command now also lists tags from unused account declarations. It also has improved command-line help layout. (#1857)

• hledger accounts now shows its debug output at a more appropriate level (4).

hledger-ui 1.26

• Uses hledger 1.26.

hledger-web 1.26

Fixes

• Don't add link URLs when printing.

Improvements

• Now builds with GHC 9.2.

• Uses hledger 1.26.

project changes 1.26

Scripts/addons

• renamed hledger-number.sh to hledger-simplebal

• added hledger-git, hledger-pijul

• fin (and bin) scripts show available scripts and their help

• renamed aliases.sh to bashrc

• Get hledger-print-location working. (Stephen Morgan)

Docs

• README cleanup, inspired by feedback from README reviewer Lars Wirzenius.

• Clearer sponsoring info and more complete sponsor lists on website and README.

• The new https://github.com/simonmichael/hledger_finance repo keeps track of our public finances (on Open Collective, Liberapay etc.)

Examples

• invoice: calculate dates accurately on last days of month

Process

• Stackage nightly and GHC 9.2 are now the default for dev builds.

• CI workflows:

  • Workflows and binaries have more consistent naming, mentioning platform and architecture.
  • The main test workflow is now linux-x64-test, replacing push and pull. It runs for both pushes and pull requests, and generates binaries on every run.
  • Pushes/merges to master, including Simon's, are required to have passed linux-x64-test on another github branch first.
  • Mac and Windows binaries are now stripped also (if applicable).

• make buildtimes, make buildtimes-cabal show GHC codegen times.

credits 1.26

Simon Michael, Stephen Morgan, Jakob Schöttl, Patrik Keller.

2022-03-04 hledger 1.25

Account type and tag querying, infer equity postings from @ notation, easily-consumed "tidy" CSV output

hledger 1.25

Breaking changes

• Journal format's account NAME TYPECODE syntax, deprecated in 1.13, has been dropped. Please use account NAME ; type:TYPECODE instead. (Stephen Morgan)

• The rule for auto-detecting "cash" (liquid asset) accounts in the cashflow report has changed: it's now "all accounts under a top-level asset account, with cash, bank, checking or saving in their name" (case insensitive, variations allowed). So if you see a change in your cashflow reports, you might need to add account directives with type:C tags, declaring your top-most cash accounts.

Features

• The new type:TYPECODES query matches accounts by their accounting type. Account types are declared with a type: tag in account directives, or inferred from common english account names, or inherited from parent accounts, as described at [Declaring accounts > Account types]. This generalises the account type detection of balancesheet, incomestatement etc., so you can now select accounts by type without needing fragile account name regexps. Also, the accounts command has a new --types flag to show account types. Eg:

  hledger bal type:AL  # balance report showing assets and liabilities
  hledger reg type:x   # register of all expenses
  hledger acc --types  # list accounts and their types
  

  (#1820, #1822) (Simon Michael, Stephen Morgan)

• The tag: query can now also match account tags, as defined in account directives. Subaccounts inherit tags from their parents. Accounts, postings and transactions can be filtered by account tag. (#1817)

• The new --infer-equity flag replaces the @/@@ price notation in commodity conversion transactions with more correct equity postings (when not using -B/--cost). This makes these transactions fully balanced, and preserves the accounting equation. For example:

  2000-01-01
    a             1 AAA @@ 2 BBB
    b            -2 BBB
  
  $ hledger print --infer-equity
  2000-01-01
    a                               1 AAA
    equity:conversion:AAA-BBB:AAA  -1 AAA
    equity:conversion:AAA-BBB:BBB   2 BBB
    b                              -2 BBB
  

  equity:conversion is the account used by default. To use a different account, declare it with an account directive and the new V (Conversion) account type. Eg:

  account Equity:Trading    ; type:V
  

  (#1554) (Stephen Morgan, Simon Michael)

• Balance commands (bal, bs etc.) can now generate easy-to-process "tidy" CSV data with -O csv --layout tidy. In tidy data, every variable is a column and each row represents a single data point (cf https://vita.had.co.nz/papers/tidy-data.html). (#1768, #1773, #1775) (Stephen Morgan)

Improvements

• Strict mode (-s/--strict) now also checks periodic transactions (--forecast) and auto postings (--auto). (#1810) (Stephen Morgan)

• hledger check commodities now always accepts zero amounts which have no commodity symbol. (#1767) (Stephen Morgan)

• Relative smart dates may now specify an arbitrary number of some period into the future or past). Some examples:

  • in 5 days
  • in -6 months
  • 5 weeks ahead
  • 2 quarters ago

  (Stephen Morgan)

• CSV output now always disables digit group marks (eg, thousands separators), making it more machine readable by default. (#1771) (Stephen Morgan)

• Unicode may now be used in field names/references in CSV rules files. (#1809) (Stephen Morgan)

• Error messages improved:

  • Balance assignments
  • aregister
  • Command line parsing (less "user error")

Fixes

• --layout=bare no longer shows a commodity symbol for zero amounts. (#1789) (Stephen Morgan)

• balance --budget no longer elides boring parents of unbudgeted accounts if they have a budget. (#1800) (Stephen Morgan)

• roi now reports TWR correctly

  • when there are several PnL changes occurring on a single day
  • and also when investment is fully sold/withdrawn/discounted at the end of a particular reporting period.

  (#1791) (Dmitry Astapov)

Documentation

• There is a new CONVERSION & COST section, replacing COSTING. (#1554)

• Some problematic interactions of account aliases with other features have been noted. (#1788)

• Updated: Declaring accounts > Account types

hledger-ui 1.25

• Uses hledger 1.25.

hledger-web 1.25

• Uses hledger 1.25.

project changes 1.25

Scripts/addons

• hledger-install.sh now also installs Pavan Rikhi's hledger-stockquotes tool.

• The bin/hledger-number addon was added.

• The bin/hledger-check-fancyassertions addon now shows docs in --help.

• A new invoice-making script was added: examples/invoicing/invoice-script/invoice

Process/tools

• The RELEASING doc and release process has been updated, and a new helper script added: tools/releaseprep. make hackageupload now only works from a branch named VERSION-branch or VERSION-release. Ie, making releases from master is no longer allowed, a release branch is always required,

• CI: The commitlint check is more robust, and now runs only in the push to master and pull request workflows, and not eg when building release binaries. linux-x64 binaries are now built with ghc 9.0, not 8.10. Workflow, branch, and binary names have been improved.

• make ghci-ui/make ghcid-ui now use older ghc 8.10 to avoid ghc 9.0-triggered failures.

• hls support: The hie.yaml added to help hls work on mac m1 has been moved out of the way, since it probably makes things worse on other architectures.

credits 1.25

Simon Michael, Stephen Morgan, Dmitry Astapov, Patrik Keller.

2021-12-10 hledger-1.24.1

hledger 1.24.1

Fixes

• balance --declared is now filtered correctly by a not:ACCT query. (#1783)

• More reliable --version output, with commit date and without patch level.

hledger-ui 1.24.1

Fixes

• An extra "root" account is no longer shown (a regression in 1.24). (#1782)

• Declared accounts are now filtered correctly by a not:ACCT query. (#1783)

• More reliable --version output, with commit date and without patch level.

hledger-web 1.24.1

Fixes

• More reliable --version output, with commit date and without patch level.

2021-12-01 hledger-1.24

New report layout options with less eliding, hledger-ui mouse support, misc fixes and improvements.

hledger 1.24

Features

• balance commands provide more control over how multicommodity amounts are displayed. (And they no longer elide too-wide amounts by default.) The --commodity-column flag has been deprecated and replaced by a new --layout option, with three values:

  • wide (the default, shows amounts on one line unelided, like older hledger versions)
  • tall (a new display mode, shows one amount per line)
  • bare (like the old --commodity-columm, shows one commodity per line with symbols in their own column)

  (Stephen Morgan)

• The balance commands have a new --declared flag, causing them to include leaf (ie, non-parent) accounts declared by account directives, even if they contain no transactions yet. Together with -E, this shows a balance for both used and declared accounts. The idea 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. (#1765)

• journal files now support a decimal-mark directive as a more principled way (than commodity directives) to specify the decimal character in use in that file, to ensure accurate number parsing. (#1670, Lawrence Wu)

Improvements

• The stats command now shows rough but useful performance stats: run time and processing speed in transactions per second.

• balance: support the --related flag, like register, showing the other postings from the transactions. (#1469, Stephen Morgan)

• roi now uses posting dates when available, and honors the --date2 flag. This will not change the results computed for the typical use-case, it just makes "roi" more thorough/consistent. (Dmitry Astapov)

• aregister now shows transactions' secondary date if the --date2 flag is used. (#1731)

• timedot: a D default commodity (and style) declared in a parent journal file will now be applied to timedot amounts. This means they can be priced and valued/converted.

• cli: The --pretty and --forecast options can now be written after the command name, like other general options. (Stephen Morgan)

• register -V -H with no interval now values at report end date, like balance. (#1718, Stephen Morgan)

• Allow megaparsec 9.2.

• Drop the base-compat-batteries dependency. (Stephen Morgan)

Fixes

• prices: Do not include zero amounts when calculating amounts for balance assignments. This is not usually a problem, but can get in the way of auto-inferring prices. (#1736, Stephen Morgan)

• csv: Successfully parse an empty csv file. (#1183, Stephen Morgan)

• balance: Balance reports with --depth=0 properly report aggregated values, not zero everywhere. (#1761, Stephen Morgan)

• prices: Do not try to generate prices when there would be a zero denominator. Also correctly generate reverse prices for zero amounts. (Stephen Morgan)

• csv: Allow both amount-in and amount-out fields to contain a zero. (#1733, Stephen Morgan)

• balance: Balance reports should consider date: queries when calculating report span with --date2. (#1745, Stephen Morgan)

• print: auto: The print command should always display inferred amounts for --auto generated postings. (#1276, Stephen Morgan)

hledger-ui 1.24

Features

• hledger-ui can now be controlled with mouse or touchpad. Click to enter things, click left margin or bottom blank area to return to previous screen, and use mouse wheel / swipe to scroll.

• In addition to accounts with postings, hledger-ui now also shows declared accounts, even if they are empty (just leaf accounts, not parents). The idea is to show a useful list of accounts out of the box, when all you have is a starter file with account declarations.

Improvements

• The Z key for toggling display of zeroes is now the easier lower-case z.

• The --watch feature now has a convenient short flag, -w.

• Drop the base-compat-batteries dependency. (Stephen Morgan)

• Allow megaparsec 9.2

Fixes

• When an invalid regular expression is entered at the / (filter) prompt, we now display an error instead of silently ignoring it. (#1394, Stephen Morgan)

• Entering the register screen now always positions the selection mid-screen. Previously it would be at bottom of screen on the first entry.

• Report layout in the terminal is now robust with more kinds of wide characters, such as emoji. (#895, Stephen Morgan)

hledger-web 1.24

Improvements

• Allow megaparsec 9.2

project changes 1.24

Software

• bin/hledger-check-fancyassertions.hs: fix ugly assertion parse errors. (ShrykeWindgrace)

• bin/hledger-check-tagfiles.hs: Update description, clarify wording. (Pranesh Prakash)

Docs

• Account types: prioritise the short one-letter names, hide the deprecated legacy syntax.

• Directives: a more compact and accurate overview.

• examples/templates/basic: A new starter file set, and a place to collect them.

• Expose more developer docs as separate web pages: CHANGELOGS, COMMITS, RELEASING, etc.

• Fix a link to developer workflows. (Joaquin "Florius" Azcarate)

Process

• PR template: Fix our github PR template to use proper comment syntax, and link to more relevant docs. (toonn)

• cabal.project: Drop obsolete compatibility comment. (#1365, toonn)

• Bump default stackage snapshot to one avoiding buggy happy version.

• bin/changelog: a new helper making changelog edits more pleasant.

• make throughput{,-dev,-EXE}: reports transactions per second for a range of file sizes with the hledger in PATH, hledger dev build, or named hledger executable.

• make install-as-FOO: build executables and save as bin/hledger*-FOO

• perf: bench-ledger.sh for comparative benchmarking with Ledger.

• CI: commitlint: be more forgiving when we can't figure out recent commits (don't check any).

• CI: commitlint: recognise any commit starting with ‘Merge’ as a merge commit (and ignore it). (Stephen Morgan)

credits 1.24

Simon Michael, Stephen Morgan, toonn, Pranesh Prakash, Dmitry Astapov, ShrykeWindgrace, Joaquin Azcarate, Lawrence Wu.

2021-09-21 hledger-1.23

Capital gains report, separate symbol/number display, command line commodity styling, budget selection, weekday/weekend recurrence, 10% speedup, fixes.

project changes 1.23

Software:

• The bin/hledger-check-fancyassertions.hs addon script, allowing more complex balance assertions, works again. (#1464, Stephen Morgan)

• Many code cleanups suggested by hlint (Stephen Morgan)

Docs:

• Added a public BACKLOG.org to the hledger repo and website.

• Website updates:

  • Reorganised site content.
  • Improved page tables of contents.
  • Content fixes.
  • New docs: Currency conversion. hledger and Beancount/GnuCash/Ledger/Quicken.

• New examples: systemd and nginx configs for hledger-web (Alan Young)

Tools/process:

• make site-watch works again

• make list-commits and make showauthors show those things.

• Shake cabalfiles now uses (and requires) hpack in $PATH, to avoid building. It should be the version that's in the current stack release, to avoid commit conflicts.

• shake: changelogs: A leading semicolon now means "skip most CI steps", not "omit from changelog".

• ci: most steps are skipped if commit message begins with ;.

• hledger developers now use GHC 9.0/stackage nightly by default. (#1503)

• Our doctests are disabled with GHC 9 for now to work around an upstream bug. (#1503, #1615)

• tools/commitlint is a new tool for hledger developers which checks and describes new commit conventions which simplify maintenance of change docs and releasing. It can be run locally while developing, manually or as a pre-commit hook (ln -sf ../../bin/commitling .git/hooks/commit-msg), and is also run by our CI workflows to check pull requests. https://hledger.org/CONTRIBUTING.html#commit-messages, tools/commitlint (#1602)

hledger 1.23

Features

• The balance command has a new --gain report type, showing unrealised capital gains/losses. Essentially, this is the difference between the amounts' costs and their total present value. More precisely, between the value of the amounts' costs and the value of the amounts on the valuation date(s). (Ie, you can report gain in a different currency.) (#1623, #1432, Stephen Morgan, Charlotte Van Petegem)

• The new -c/--commodity-style option makes it easy to override commodity display styles at runtime, eg to adjust the number of decimal places or change the position of the symbol. (#1593, Arjen Langebaerd)

• The balance commands have a new --commodity-column flag that displays commodity symbols in a dedicated column, showing one line per commodity and all amounts as bare numbers. (#1559, #1626, #1654, Lawrence Wu, Simon Michael, Stephen Morgan)

• The balance --budget option can now take an argument, a case insensitive description substring which selects a subset of the journal's periodic transactions for setting budget goals. This makes it possible to keep multiple named budgets in one journal, and select the one you want with --budget's argument. (#1612)

• Period expressions now support every weekday, every weekendday and every mon,wed,... (multiple days of the week). This is intended for periodic transaction rules used with --forecast (or bal --budget). (#1632, Lawrence Wu)

• The new --today=DATE option allows overriding today's date. This can be useful in tests and examples using relative dates, to make them reproducible. (#1674, Stephen Morgan)

• In CSV rules, multi-line comments are now supported. Newlines in CSV data are preserved, or newlines can be added by writing \n when assigning to comment, comment1 etc. (Malte Brandy)

Improvements

• Incremental performance improvements; hledger 1.23 is the fastest hledger yet, about 10% faster than 1.22. (Stephen Morgan)

• register no longer slows down when there are many report intervals. (#1683, Stephen Morgan)

• Numbers in SQL output now always use decimal period (.), independent of commodity display styles. (Stephen Morgan)

• --sort now gives a more intuitive sort oder when there are multiple commodities. Negative numbers in one commodity are always less than positive numbers in another commodity. (#1563, Stephen Morgan)

• --infer-market-price has been renamed to --infer-market-prices. (The old spelling still works, since we accept flag prefixes.)

• Our pretty-printed JSON now orders object attributes alphabetically, across all GHC and haskell lib versions.

• register with a report interval starting on custom dates (eg: `hledger reg -p "every 15th day of month") now makes the date column wide enough to show the start and end dates. It also wastes less whitespace after the column. (#1655, Stephen Morgan)

• In JSON output, object attributes are now ordered alphabetically, consistently for all GHC and haskell lib versions. (#1618, Stephen Morgan)

• JSON output now indents with 2 spaces rather than 4. (Stephen Morgan)

• The balance commands' -S/--sort-amount flag now behaves more predictably and intuitively with multiple commodities. Multi-commodity amounts are sorted by comparing their amounts in each commodity, with alphabetically-first commodity symbols being most significant, and assuming zero when a commodity is missing. (#1563, #1564, Stephen Morgan)

• The close command now uses the later of today or journal's last day as default closing date, providing more intuitive behaviour when closing a journal with future transactions. Docs have been improved. (#1604)

• Rules for selecting the forecast period (within with --forecast generates transactions) have been tweaked slightly, and some disagreement between docs and implementation has been fixed. Now, the forecast period begins on:

  • the start date supplied to the --forecast argument, if any
  • otherwise, the later of
    • the report start date if specified with -b/-p/date:
    • the day after the latest normal (non-periodic) transaction in the journal, if any
  • otherwise today.

  It ends on:

  • the end date supplied to the --forecast argument, if any
  • otherwise the report end date if specified with -e/-p/date:
  • otherwise 180 days (6 months) from today.

  This is more intuitive in some cases. (Eg: hledger reg --forecast -b 2020-01-01 on a journal containing only periodic transaction rules now shows forecast transactions starting from 2020-01-01, rather than from today.) (#1648, #1665, #1667, Stephen Morgan, Simon Michael)

• Require base >=4.11, prevent red squares on Hackage's build matrix. (We officially support GHC 8.6+, which means base 4.12, but Hackage shows all packages building successfully with base 4.11/GHC 8.4+ somehow, so it's still allowed..)

Fixes

• A rare bug causing incorrect balances to be reported by the cf/bs/bse/is commands, since hledger 1.19, has been fixed. (cf/bs/bse/is with --tree --no-elide --begin DATE and certain account directives could show wrong balances). (#1698, Stephen Morgan)

• aregister now aligns multicommodity amounts properly (broken since 1.21). (#1656, Stephen Morgan)

• balance -E (and hledger-ui Z) now correctly show zero parent accounts, fixing a bug introduced in hledger 1.19. (#1688, Stephen Morgan)

• The roi command no longer gives an ugly error in a certain case with PnL applied on the first day of investment. (Dmitry Astapov)

• --forecast now generates transactions up to the day before the specified report end date (instead of two days before). (#1633, Stephen Morgan)

• Certain errors in CSV conversion, such as a failing balance assertion, were always being reported as line 2.

hledger-ui 1.23

Improvements

• Depend on hledger 1.23.

• Require base >=4.11, prevent red squares on Hackage's build matrix.

hledger-web 1.23

Improvements

• Drop the obsolete hidden --binary-filename flag.

• Depend on hledger 1.23.

• Require base >=4.11, preventing red squares on Hackage's build matrix.

Fixes

• Toggle showing zero items properly even when called with --empty. (#1237, Stephen Morgan)

• Do not hide empty accounts if they have non-empty subaccounts. (#1237, Stephen Morgan)

• Allow unbalanced postings (parenthesised account name) in the add transaction form. (#1058, Stephen Morgan)

• An XSS (cross-site scripting) vulnerability has been fixed. Previously (since hledger-web 0.24), javascript code could be added to any autocompleteable field and could be executed automatically by subsequent visitors viewing the journal. Thanks to Gaspard Baye and Hamidullah Muslih for reporting this vulnerability. (#1525, Arsen Arsenović)

credits 1.23

Simon Michael, Stephen Morgan, Lawrence Wu, Jakob Schöttl, Dmitry Astapov, Malte Brandy, Arsen Arsenović, Arjen Langebaerd, Alan Young, Daniel Gröber.

2021-08-07 hledger-1.22.2

hledger 1.22.2

Breaking changes

• aregister no longer hides future transactions by default. This is a consequence of the fix for #1638. It makes aregister consistent, so we think it's a reasonable change. So if you have future-dated transactions in your journal which you don't want reported, you now must exclude them with -e tomorrow or date:-tomorrow in the command, as with other reports. (Stephen Morgan)

Improvements

• Timedot format's doc has been rewritten.

Fixes

• Make balance assignments in forecasted transactions work again (broken in 1.22.1). Forecast transactions are now generated early and processed in the same way as other transactions. (#1638, Stephen Morgan)

• aregister preserves the order of same-day transactions again (broken in 1.22.1). (#1642, Stephen Morgan)

hledger-ui 1.22.2

• Use hledger 1.22.2.

hledger-web 1.22.2

• Use hledger 1.22.2.

credits 1.22.2

Simon Michael, Stephen Morgan.

2021-08-02 hledger-1.22.1

hledger 1.22.1

Improvements

• Bash shell completions (for hledger, hledger-ui, hledger-web) are now included in the hledger package's release tarballs, making them more likely to be installed by system packages. (Jakob Schöttl)

• roi docs now discuss how to quote multi-word queries. (#1609, Dmitry Astapov)

• Allow megaparsec 9.1

Fixes

• cur: and amt: queries now match the original amounts before valuation and cost conversion, as they did before hledger 1.22. We believe this is the more useful behaviour in practice. (#1625, Stephen Morgan)

• Queries now work better with register --related, no longer showing duplicate postings when more than one posting in a transaction is matched. (#1629, Stephen Morgan)

• Valuation now works with register --related. (#1630, Stephen Morgan)

• Auto posting rules now also see inferred amounts, not just explicit amounts. (#1412, Stephen Morgan)

• The aregister command now properly ignores a depth: argument. It might now also behave more correctly with valuation or --txn-dates. (#1634, Stephen Morgan)

• Our info manuals now have more robust directory metadata (no subdirectory path), making them more likely to be linked in your top-level Info directory by system packages. (#1594) (Simon Michael, Damien Cassou)

• The error message for a non-existent input file no longer shows excess double quotes. (#1601, Stephen Morgan)

• Journal format docs: The commodity directive's scope is now correctly described (lasts until end of current file).

hledger-ui 1.22.1

Improvements

• Document watch mode and its limitations. (#1617, #911, #836)

• Allow megaparsec 9.1.

Fixes

• Up/down keys work on the transaction screen again (broken since 1.22). (#1607, Stephen Morgan)

• Fix a possible off-by-one bug with valuation date when using V key on the transaction screen. (If it ever needs to use the journal's last day as valuation date, use that day, not the day after.)

hledger-web 1.22.1

Improvements

• deps: Allow megaparsec 9.1.

Fixes

• The register chart works again when there are multiple commodities and transaction prices (broken since 1.22). (#1597, Stephen Morgan)

credits 1.22.1

Simon Michael, Stephen Morgan, Jakob Schöttl, Dmitry Astapov.

2021-07-03 hledger-1.22

Optimisations, bugfixes. (announcement)

project changes 1.22

Software:

• We now provide static executables for GNU/Linux on x64 (amd64) and arm32v7 architectures. These are more portable and more likely to work on your linux system than the dynamic Ubuntu executables we have been providing. These will also be useful for Nextcloud.com users. (#1571) (Garret McGraw)

• GHC 9.0 support has been added. We have dropped official support for GHC 8.0/8.2/8.4; building hledger now requires GHC 8.6 or newer.

Docs:

• The info manuals now have the proper metadata so you or your packager can install them with install-info and they will appear in info's Directory. We also provide a dir file making it easy for developers to see the latest dev manuals in their info Directory. (#1585) (Damien Cassou, Simon Michael)

Chat:

• The hledger IRC channels ( #hledger:libera.chat, #hledger-bots:libera.chat ) moved to Libera.chat.

• The hledger Matrix room ( #hledger:matrix.org ), is now on at least equal "official" footing with the IRC channel.

• I upgraded the matrix room to a newer version of the Matrix protocol. This effectively splits it into an old (read only) room and a new room. If you are joined to the old room, you might not have noticed; in your matrix client, please follow the link to the new room, ie #hledger:matrix.org.

• I briefly bridged the IRC and matrix rooms, because having two chats (four if we consider #plaintextaccounting) is a pain. I hope to try the experiment again at some point.

hledger 1.22

Features

• check: A new balancednoautoconversion check requires transactions to balance without the use of inferred transaction prices. (Explicit transaction prices are allowed.) This check is included in --strict mode. The old autobalanced check has been renamed to balancedwithautoconversion. (Stephen Morgan)

Improvements

• Many internal optimisations have been applied (cf hledger-lib changelog). Overall, you can expect most reports to be about 20% faster. The register report is more than 2x faster and uses 4x less memory. (Stephen Morgan)

  ~/src/hledger$ quickbench -w hledger-1.21,hledger
  Running 5 tests 1 times with 2 executables at 2021-06-29 13:13:26 HST:
  
  Best times:
  +----------------------------------------------------++--------------+---------+
  |                                                    || hledger-1.21 | hledger |
  +====================================================++==============+=========+
  | -f examples/10000x1000x10.journal print            ||         1.18 |    0.90 |
  | -f examples/10000x1000x10.journal register         ||        12.82 |    5.95 |
  | -f examples/10000x1000x10.journal balance          ||         1.38 |    0.86 |
  | -f examples/1000x1000x10.journal balance --weekly  ||         0.96 |    0.78 |
  | -f examples/10000x1000x10.journal balance --weekly ||        13.07 |   10.79 |
  +----------------------------------------------------++--------------+---------+
  

• ANSI color is now disabled automatically (on stdout) when the -o/--output-file option is used (with a value other than -). (#1533)

• ANSI color is now also available in debug output, determined in the usual way by --color, NO_COLOR, and whether the output (stderr) is interactive.

• The --version flag shows more details of the build, when known: git tag, number of commits since the tag, commit hash, platform and architecture. (Stephen Morgan)

• balance: Capitalisation of "account" and "total" (and lack of a colon in the latter) in CSV output is now consistent for single- and multi-period reports.

• balance reports' CSV output now includes full account names. (#1566) (Stephen Morgan)

• csv: We now accept spaces when parsing amounts from CSV. (Eric Mertens)

• json: Avoid adding unnecessary decimal places in JSON output. (Don't increase them all to 10 decimal places.) (Stephen Morgan)

• json: Simplify amount precision (asprecision) in JSON output. It is now just the number of decimal places, rather than an object. (Stephen Morgan)

• GHC 9.0 is now officially supported. GHC 8.0, 8.2, 8.4 are no longer supported; we now require GHC 8.6 or greater.

• Added a now-required lower bound on containers. (#1514)

Fixes

• Auto posting rules now match postings more precisely, respecting cur: and amt: queries. (#1582) (Stephen Morgan)

• balance reports: Fix empty cells when amounts are too wide to fit (broken since 1.20) (#1526). (Stephen Morgan)

• csv: Fix the escaping of double quotes in CSV output (broken in 1.21). (Stephen Morgan)

• register: Fix the running total when there is a report interval (broken since 1.19) (#1568). (Stephen Morgan)

• stats: No longer gets confused by posting dates. (#772) (Stephen Morgan)

• timeclock: hledger print shows timeclock amounts with just 2 decimal places again (broken in 1.21). (#1527)

• When all transaction amounts have the same sign, the error message no longer adds an inferred price. (#1551) (Stephen Morgan)

• Cleaned up some references to old man pages. (Felix Yan)

hledger-ui 1.22

Improvements

• Don't reset the B/V (cost, value) state when reloading with g or --watch. (Stephen Morgan)

• The accounts screen is a little smarter at allocating space to columns. (Stephen Morgan)

• Add support for the kakoune editor, and improve the invocations of some other editors. (crocket)

• The --version flag shows more detail (git tag/patchlevel/commit hash, platform/architecture). (Stephen Morgan)

• GHC 9.0 is now officially supported. GHC 8.0, 8.2, 8.4 are no longer supported; we now require GHC 8.6 or greater.

• Added a now-required lower bound on containers. (#1514)

Fixes

• Queries in the register screen work again (broken in 1.21). (#1523) (Stephen Morgan)

• Don't write to ./debug.log when toggling value with V, or when reloading with g or --watch in the Transaction screen. (#1556) (Simon Michael, Stephen Morgan)

hledger-web 1.22

Improvements

• The --version flag shows more detail (git tag/patchlevel/commit hash, platform/architecture). (Stephen Morgan)

• Allow yesod-form 1.7 (Felix Yan)

• Add now-required lower bound on containers. (#1514)

• GHC 9.0 is now officially supported. GHC 8.0, 8.2, 8.4 are no longer supported; we now require GHC 8.6 or greater.

Fixes

• In the add form, fix a bug where extra posting rows were not added when needed in certain web browsers. (charukiewicz)

credits 1.22

This release was brought to you by Simon Michael, Stephen Morgan, Felix Yan, crocket, Eric Mertens, Damien Cassou, charukiewicz, and Garret McGraw.

2021-03-10 hledger-1.21

More speed; more cli-accessible docs; value change report; improvements to balance reports, valuation and more (announcement)

project-wide changes 1.21

• roi has a new cookbook doc, and example files have been updated. (Dmitry Astapov)

• Example CSV rules for the Daedalus wallet have been added.

• The default stackage resolver/GHC version has been bumped to lts-17.4/ghc-8.10.4.

• tools/generatejournal now includes more commodities and prices in generated journals. (Stephen Morgan)

• Our functional tests now also run on BSD. (#1434, Felix Van der Jeugt)

• Addon scripts in bin/ have been updated for latest hledger API (Stephen Morgan).

• Addon scripts are now compiled as part of our CI tests, and always with the same version of hledger source they were shipped with. We now require script users to check out the hledger source tree and run the scripts (or, bin/compile.sh) from there. This keeps users and tests in sync, making things more reliable for everyone. (#1453)

• Last but not least, hledger's bash completions (provided in ./shell-completions/) have been thoroughly updated (#1404, #1410, Vladimir Zhelezov).

hledger cli 1.21

general

• hledger is now generally about 10% more memory- and time-efficient, and significantly more so in certain cases, eg journals with many total transaction prices. (Stephen Morgan)

• The --help/-h and --version flags are no longer position-sensitive; if there is a command argument, they now always refer to the command (where applicable).

• The new --info flag opens the hledger info manual, if "info" is in $PATH. hledger COMMAND --info will open COMMAND's info node.

• The --man flag opens the hledger man page, if "man" is in $PATH. hledger COMMAND --man will scroll the page to CMD's section, if "less" is in $PATH. (We force the use of "less" in this case, overriding any $PAGER or $MAN_PAGER setting.)

• Some command aliases, considered deprecated, have been removed: txns, equity, and the single-letter command aliases a, b, p, and r. This was discussed at https://github.com/simonmichael/hledger/pull/1423 and on the hledger mail list. It might annoy some folks; please read the issue and do follow up there if needed.

• Notable documentation updates: the separate file format manuals have been merged into the hledger manual, the topic hierarchy has been simplified, the balance command docs and "commands" section have been rewritten.

valuation

• Costing and valuation are now independent, and can be combined. --value=cost and --value=cost,COMM are still supported (equivalent to --cost and --cost --value=then,COMM respectively), but deprecated. (Stephen Morgan)

• -V is now always equivalent to --value=end. (Stephen Morgan)

• --value=end now includes market price directives as well as transactions when choosing a valuation date for single-period reports. (#1405, Stephen Morgan)

• --value=end now picks a consistent valuation date for single- and and multi-period reports. (#1424, Stephen Morgan)

• --value=then is now supported with all reports, not just register. (Stephen Morgan)

• The too-vague --infer-value flag has been renamed to --infer-market-price. Tip: typing --infer-market or even --infer is sufficient. The old spelling still works, but is now deprecated.

commands

• add: Infix matches are now scored higher. If the search pattern occurs in full within the other description, that match gets a +0.5 score boost.

• add: --debug now shows transaction matching results, useful when troubleshooting.

• balance: To accomodate new report types, the --change|--cumulative|--historical|--budget flags have been split into two groups: report type (--sum|--budget|...) and accumulation type (--change|--cumulative|--historical). --sum and --change are the defaults, and your balance commands should still work as before. (Stephen Morgan et al, #1353)

• balance: The --valuechange report type has been added, showing the changes in period-end values. (Stephen Morgan, #1353)

• balance: With --budget, the first and last subperiods are enlarged to whole intervals for calculating the budget goals also. (Stephen Morgan)

• balance: In multi-period balance reports, specifying a report period now also forces leading/trailing empty columns to be displayed, without having to add -E. This is consistent with balancesheet etc. (#1396, Stephen Morgan)

• balancesheet, cashflow: declaring just a Cash account no longer hides other Asset accounts.

• check: Various improvements:

  • check name arguments may be given as case-insensitive prefixes
  • accounts and commodities may also be specified as arguments
  • ordereddates now checks each file separately (#1493)
  • ordereddates no longer supports the --unique flag or query arguments
  • payees is a new check requiring payee declarations
  • uniqueleafnames now gives a fancy error message like the others
  • the old checkdates/checkdupes commands have been dropped

• help: The help command now shows only the hledger (CLI) manual, its --info/--man/--pager flags have been renamed to -i/-m/-p, and --cat has been dropped.

• help: With a TOPIC argument (any heading or heading prefix, case insensitive), it will open the manual positioned at this topic if possible. (Similar to the new --man and --info flags described above.)

• payees: Add --used/--declared flags, like the accounts command.

• print: Now always shows amounts with all decimal places, unconstrained by commodity display style. This ensures more parseable and sensible-looking output in more cases, and behaves more like Ledger's print. (There may be a cosmetic issue with trailing zeroes.) (#931, #1465)

• print: With --match, infix matches are now scored higher, as with the add command.

• print: --match now provides debug output useful for troubleshooting.

  If you forget to give --match an argument, it can confusingly consume a following flag. Eg if you write:

  hledger print --match -x somebank   # should be: hledger print --match=somebank -x
  

  it gets quietly parsed as:

  hledger print --match="-x"
  

  Now you can at least use --debug to figure it out:

  hledger print --match -x somebank --debug
  finding best match for description: "-x"
  similar transactions:
  ...
  

• roi: Now supports the valuation options (#1417, #1483), and uses commodity display styles. Also the manual has been simplified, with some content moved to the Cookbook. (Dmitry Astapov):

journal format

• The commodity directive now properly sets the display style of the no-symbol commodity. (#1461)

csv format

• More kinds of malformed signed numbers are now ignored, in particular just a sign without a number, which simplifies sign flipping with amount-in/amount-out.

hledger-ui 1.21

• Register screen: also show transactions below the depth limit, as in 1.19, keeping the register balance in agreement with the balance shown on the accounts screen. This regressed in 1.20. (#1468)

• Transaction screen: all decimal places are now shown. On the accounts screen and register screen we round amounts according to commodity display styles, but when you drill down to a transaction you probably want to see the unrounded amounts. (Like print, #cf #931.)

• New flags --man and --info open the man page or info manual. (See hledger)

hledger-web 1.21

• Register: a date range can be selected by dragging over a region on the chart. (Arnout Engelen, #1471)

• Add form: the description field's autocompletions now also offer declared and used payee names.

• New flags --man and --info open the man page or info manual. (See hledger)

credits 1.21

This release was brought to you by Simon Michael, Vladimir Zhelezov, Stephen Morgan, Dmitry Astapov, Arnout Engelen, Damien Cassou, aragaer, Doug Goldstein, Caleb Maclennan, and Felix Van der Jeugt.

2021-01-29 hledger-1.20.4

• aregister: ignore a depth limit, as in 1.19 (#1468). In 1.20-1.20.3, aregister had stopped showing transactions in subaccounts below a depth limit. Now it properly shows all subaccount transactions, ensuring that the register's final total matches a balance report with similar arguments.

2021-01-29 hledger-ui-1.20.4

• ui: register: show all txns in/under an account at the depth limit (#1468). In 1.20-1.20.3, the register screen had stopped showing transactions in accounts below a depth limit. Now it properly shows all subaccount transactions, even when there is a depth limit, ensuring that the register's final total matches the balance shown on the account screen.

2021-01-29 hledger-web-1.20.4

• Use hledger 1.20.4.

2021-01-14 hledger 1.20.3, hledger-ui 1.20.3, hledger-web 1.20.3

• When searching for price chains during valuation/currency conversion:

  • It no longer hangs when there are price loops. (And in case of future bugs, it will give up rather than search forever.) (#1439)
  • It now really finds the shortest path. (#1443)
  • Useful progress info is displayed with --debug=1 or --debug=2.

• balance, incomestatement: End-valued multi-period balance change reports (eg: bal -MV) have been reverted to show value-of-change, as in previous hledger versions, rather than change-of-value, for now. (#1353, #1428) (Stephen Morgan)

• balance: End-valued balance change reports now choose the same final valuation date and show consistent results whether single-period or multi-period. (#1424) (Stephen Morgan)

• balance: the --drop option now works with csv and html output. (#1456) (Ilya Konovalov)

• check: the commodities check, and -s/--strict mode, now ignore the "AUTO" internal pseudo-commodity. (#1419) (Ilya Konovalov)

• register: Then-valued multi-period register reports (eg: register -M --value=then) now calculate the correct values. (#1449) (Stephen Morgan)

• roi: now shows a better error message when required prices are missing. (#1446) (Dmitry Astapov)

• The no-symbol commodity's input number format can now be set by a commodity directive, like other commodities. (#1461)

2020-12-28 hledger 1.20.2

• help: Fix loss of capitalisation in part of the hledger-ui manual.

• help: Fix the node structure in info manuals.

• Drop unused parsec dependency.

2020-12-28 hledger-ui 1.20.2

• Fix loss of capitalisation in part of the manual.

• Fix the info manual's node structure.

2020-12-28 hledger-web 1.20.2

• Fix the info manual's node structure.

2020-12-15 hledger 1.20.1

• bal, bs, cf, is: In amount-sorted balance reports, equal-balance accounts are now reliably sorted by name. (Simon Michael, Stephen Morgan)

• help: Fix the topic hierarchy in Info manuals.

2020-12-15 hledger-ui 1.20.1

• Fix the F key (toggle future/forecast transactions), which in 1.20 would only work twice. (#1411)

• Fix loss of forecasted transactions when the journal was reloaded while they were hidden. (#1204)

2020-12-06 hledger-web-1.20.1

• don't hang when reloading the journal, eg after adding a transaction or editing the file. (#1409)

2020-12-05 hledger-1.20

Strict mode; check command; rendering, speed, and valuation fixes

project-wide changes 1.20

• examples: clean up & add more budgeting examples; stripe csv

• a hie.yaml file has been added, so hledger source loads easily in IDEs supporting haskell-language-server

• The functional tests in tests/ have been moved into the respective packages, eg hledger/test/ and hledger-ui/test/.

• Shake cabalfiles: now gives an error when it fails

• make bench: add some large tabular reports; run just the slowest commands by default; run after make (func)test

hledger cli 1.20

general

• strict mode: with -s/--strict, hledger requires that all accounts and commodities are declared with directives.

• Reverted a stripAnsi change in 1.19.1 that caused a 3x slowdown of amount rendering in terminal reports. (#1350)

• Amount and table rendering has been improved, so that stripAnsi is no longer needed. This speeds up amount rendering in the terminal, speeding up some reports by 10% or more since 1.19. (Stephen Morgan)

• Amount eliding no longer displays corrupted ANSI codes (#1352, Stephen Morgan)

• Eliding of multicommodity amounts now makes better use of available space, avoiding unnecessary eliding (showing as many amounts as possible within 32 characters). (Stephen Morgan)

• Command line help for --no-elide now mentions that it also disables eliding of multicommodity amounts.

• Query terms containing quotes (eg to match account names containing quotes) now work properly. (#1368, Stephen Morgan)

• cli, journal: Date range parsing is more robust, fixing failing/incorrect cases such as: (Stephen Morgan)

  • a hyphenated range with just years (2017-2018)
  • a hyphenated date with no day in a hyphenated range (2017-07-2018)
  • a dotted date with no day in a dotted range (2017.07..2018.02)

• Debug output is prettier (eg, in colour), using pretty-simple instead of pretty-show.

• csv, timedot, timeclock files now respect command line --alias options, like journal files. (#859)

• Market price lookup for value reports is now more robust, fixing several bugs (and debug output is more informative). There has been a slight change in functionality: when chaining prices, we now prefer chains of all "forward" prices, even if longer, with chains involving reverse prices being the last resort. (#1402)

commands

• add: number style (eg thousands separators) no longer disturbs the value that is offered as default. (#1378)

• bal: --invert now affects -S/--sort-amount, reversing the order. (#1283, #1379) (Stephen Morgan)

• bal: --budget reports no longer insert an extra space inside the brackets. (Stephen Morgan)

• bal: --budget reports now support CSV output (#1155)

• bal, is, bs --change: Valued multiperiod balance change reports now show changes of value, rather than the value of changes. (#1353, Stephen Morgan)

• bal: clearer debug output, following debug levels policy

• check: A new command which consolidating the various check-* commands. It runs the default, strict, or specified checks and produces no output and a zero exit code if all is well.

• check-dates: this command is deprecated and will be removed in next release; use "hledger check ordereddates" instead.

• check-dupes: this command is deprecated and will be removed in next release; use "hledger check uniqueleafnames" instead.

• import: The journal's commodity styles (declared or inferred) are now applied to imported amounts, overriding their original number format.

• roi: TWR now handles same-day pnl changes and cashflows, calculation failure messages have been improved, and the documentation includes more detail and examples. (#1398) (Dmitry Astapov)

journal format

• The journal's commodity styles are now applied to forecasted transactions. (#1371)

• journal, csv: commodity style is now inferred from the first amount, as documented, not the last. This was "working wrongly" since hledger 1.12..

• A zero market price no longer causes "Ratio has zero denominator" error in valued reports. (#1373)

csv format

• The new decimal-mark rule allows reliable number parsing when CSV numbers contain digit group marks (eg thousands separators).

• The CSV reader's verbose "assignment" debug output is now at level 9.

hledger-ui 1.20

• When entering a query with /, malformed queries/regular expressions no longer cause the program to exit. (Stephen Morgan)

• Eliding of multicommodity amounts now makes better use of available space. (Stephen Morgan)

• E now parses the HLEDGER_UI_EDITOR or EDITOR environment variable correctly on Windows (ignoring the file extension), so if you have that set it should be better at opening your editor at the correct line.

• E now supports positioning when HLEDGER_UI_EDITOR or EDITOR is VS Code ("code") (#1359)

• hledger-ui now has a (human-powered) test suite.

hledger-web 1.20

• hledger-web's test suite is re-enabled, now included in the main executable. hledger-web --test [-- HSPECARGS] runs it.

• Fix --forecast, broken in hledger-web since 1.18 (#1390)

• Fix unescaped slashes in hledger-web description on hackage (TANIGUCHI Kohei)

• The hledger-web version string is now provided at /version, as JSON (#1152)

• The session file (hledger-web_client_session_key.aes) is now written in $XDG_DATA_DIR rather than the current directory. Eg on non-Windows systems this is ~/.cache/ by default (cf https://hackage.haskell.org/package/directory/docs/System-Directory.html#t:XdgDirectory). (#1344) (Félix Sipma)

credits 1.20

This release was brought to you by Simon Michael, Stephen Morgan, Dmitry Astapov, TANIGUCHI Kohei, legrostdg.

2020/09/07 hledger 1.19.1

hledger cli 1.19.1

• Fix alignment of coloured numbers (#1345, #1349, Stephen Morgan)

• Fix a regression in account type autodetection for accounts with capitalised names. (#1341)

• Allow megaparsec 9

hledger-ui 1.19.1

• Allow megaparsec 9

hledger-web 1.19.1

• Allow megaparsec 9

• Drop redundant semigroups dependency (Felix Yan)

2020/09/01 hledger-1.19

New aregister and codes commands, more powerful CSV conditional rules, new sql output format, consistently default to flat mode, better colour control, cashflow report customisable like the others, more number/date/regexp parsing/validation, more speed.

hledger cli 1.19

new

• aregister: a new command showing a transaction-oriented register for a single account. This is like hledger-ui, hledger-web, or your bank statement, and unlike the register command which shows individual postings possibly spanning multiple accounts. You might prefer aregister when reconciling real-world asset/liability accounts, and register when reviewing detailed revenues/expenses. (#1294)

• codes: a new command for listing transaction codes

• print: a new sql output format has been added (Dmitry Astapov)

• A --color/--colour command line option, support for the NO_COLOR environment variable, and smarter autodetection of colour terminals have been added. (#1296)

• In queries, you can now use q or Q to specify a year quarter, like 2020q1 or Q4. (#1247, Henning Thieleman, Stephen Morgan)

• When specifying report intervals, you can use fortnightly as a synonym for biweekly. (Stephen Morgan)

improved

• Reports involving multiple commodities now show at most two commodities per amount by default, making multicolumn reports less wide and more readable. Use the --no-elide flag to prevent this.

• Flat (AKA list) mode is now the consistent default used by all balance reports and other commands showing accounts. (Stephen Morgan)

• All commands supporting tree/list mode now accept -t and -l as short forms of the --tree and --flat flags. (#1286)

• account,bal,bs,cf,is: --drop now also works in tree mode (Stephen Morgan)

• bal,bs,cf,is: tabular balance reports now elide (compress) boring parent accounts, like the non-tabular reports. (Stephen Morgan)

• bal,bs,cf,is: monthly column headings are no longer be displayed as just the month abbreviations, if multiple years are being displayed.

• bal --budget: with --cumulative or --historical, column headings now correctly show the period end dates rather than date spans.

• bs,cf,is: --no-total now hides subtotals as well as the grand total (Stephen Morgan)

• bs,cf,is: -%/--percent no longer implies --no-total. (Stephen Morgan)

• roi: errors are now shown without a call stack

• tags: the new --parsed flag causes all tags or values to be shown, including duplicates, in the order they were parsed. Blank/empty values are omitted by default and can be shown with -E/--empty.

• Debug output is now organised better by debug level. The levels are:

  0. normal command output only (no warnings)
  1. useful warnings & most common troubleshooting info (valuation, eg)
  2. common troubleshooting info, more detail
  3. report options selection
  4. report generation
  5. report generation, more detail
  6. input file reading
  7. input file reading, more detail
  8. command line parsing
  9. any other rarely needed or more in-depth info

correctness/robustness

• Added a missing lower bound for aeson, making cabal installs more reliable. (#1268)

• When parsing dates, we now require the year to have at least four digits. So eg Feb 1 in the year 10 would need to be written 0010-02-01, not 10/02/01. would need to be written 0200/1/1. This change was made for consistency and to avoid ambiguities; let us know if it causes you trouble.

• Command line options taking a numeric argument are now validated more carefully to avoid any issues with unexpected negatives or Int overflow. (Stephen Morgan)

• Numbers with more than 255 decimal places, which we do not support, now give an error instead of silently misparsing. (#1326)

• Digit groups in numbers are now limited to at most 255 digits each. (#1326)

• Account aliases (on command line or in journal) containing a bad regular expression now give a more detailed error message.

• In the argument of amt: queries, whitespace around the operator, sign, or number no longer causes a parse error. (#1312)

• A tab character could get parsed as part of a commodity symbol, with confusing results. This no longer happens. (#1301, Dmitry Astapov)

• add: fixed an error in the command line help (arguments are inputs, not a query)

journal format

• account directives can specify a new account type, Cash, for accounts which should be displayed in the cashflow report. Cash accounts are also Asset accounts.

• Documentation of account types has been improved.

csv format

• Conditional rule patterns can now be grouped with the & (AND) operator, allowing more powerful matching. (Michael Sanders)

• "If tables", a compact bulk format for conditional rules, have been added. (Dmitry Astapov)

• csv conversion with a lot of conditional rules is now faster (Dmitry Astapov)

• Invalid csv rules files now give clearer parse error messages. (Dmitry Astapov)

• Inferring the appropriate default field separator based on file extension (, for .csv, ; for .ssv, \t for .tsv) now works as documented.

hledger-ui 1.19

• A --color/--colour command line option, support for the NO_COLOR environment variable, and smarter autodetection of colour terminals have been added. (#1296)

• -t and -l have been added as short forms of --tree and --flat command line flags.

• Flat (AKA list) mode is now the default for the accounts screen.

• t now toggles tree/list mode, while T sets the "today" period (#1286)

• register screen: multicommodity amounts containing more than two commodities are now elided, unless the --no-elide flag is used.

• register screen: a transaction dated outside the report period now is not shown even if it has postings dated inside the report period.

• ESC now restores exactly the app's state at startup, which includes clearing any report period limit. (#1286)

• DEL/BS no longer changes the tree/list mode.

• q now exits the help dialog, if active; press q again to exit the app. (#1286)

• The help dialog's layout is improved.

hledger-web 1.19

• Added a missing lower bound for aeson, making cabal installs more reliable. (#1268)

• Queries containing a malformed regular expression (eg the single character ?) now show a tidy error message instead "internal server error". (Stephen Morgan, Simon Michael) (#1245)

• In account registers, a transaction dated outside the report period now is not shown even if it has postings dated inside the report period.

credits 1.19

This release was brought to you by Simon Michael, Stephen Morgan, Dmitry Astapov, Michael Sanders, Henning Thielemann, Martin Michlmayr, Colin Woodbury.

2020/06/21 hledger 1.18.1

hledger cli 1.18.1

• value reports now work as in 1.17 again; inferring market prices from transactions is now an option, requiring the --infer-value flag. (#1239, #1253)

• print: amounts in csv output now have commodity symbol, digit group separators and prices removed (Dmitry Astapov)

• begin more systematic level usage in --debug output

• journal: document recursive wildcards

hledger-ui 1.18.1

• Fix F key having no effect (#1255) (Dmitry Astapov)

2020/06/07 hledger 1.18

Fixed JSON output; market prices inferred from transactions; more Ledger file compatibility; more flexible journal entries from CSV; misc. fixes and improvements.

project-wide changes 1.18

• new example scripts:

  • hledger-combine-balances.hs, hledger-balance-as-budget.hs (Dmitry Astapov)
  • hledger-check-tag-files.hs, hledger-check-tag-files2.hs

• more CSV rule examples: coinbase, waveapp

• new CI (continuous integration) system using Github Actions. Thanks to Travis and Appveyor for their service to date. Improvements:

  • one CI service instead of several
  • more closely integrated with code repo
  • tests run on the three main platforms (linux, mac, windows)
  • harmless commits are ignored automatically ([ci skip] no longer needed for doc commits)
  • scheduled and on-demand testing (push to master, push to ci-* branches, pull request, weekly)
  • now tested: all GHC versions, doctests, haddock building
  • new shortcut url: https://ci.hledger.org

hledger cli 1.18

• The --forecast flag now takes an optional argument (--forecast=PERIODICEXPR), allowing periodic transactions to start/end on any date and to overlap recorded transactions. (#835, #1236) (Dmitry Astapov)

• An upper case file extension no longer confuses file format detection. (#1225)

• In the commands list, redundant source scripts are now hidden properly when a corresponding .com/.exe file exists. (#1225)

• We now show .. instead of - to indicate date ranges, eg in report titles, to stand out more from hyphenated dates. (Stephen Morgan)

• Period expressions (eg in -p, date:, and periodic rules) now accept to, until, -, or .. as synonyms. (Stephen Morgan)

• When parsing amounts, whitespace between sign and number is now allowed.

• A clearer error message is shown on encountering a malformed regular expression.

commands

• commands allowing different output formats now list their supported formats accurately in --help (#689)

• commands allowing JSON output now actually produce JSON (#689)

• bal, bs: show .. (not ,,) in report titles, like other reports

journal format

• We now also infer market prices from transactions, like Ledger. See https://hledger.org/hledger.html#market-prices (#1239).

  Upgrade note: this means value reports (-V, -X etc.) can give different output compared to hledger 1.17. If needed, you can prevent this by adding a P directive declaring the old price, on or after the date of the transaction causing the issue.

• The include directive now accepts a file format prefix, like the -f/--file option. This works with glob patterns too, applying the prefix to each path. This can be useful when included files don't have the standard file extension, eg:

  include timedot:2020*.md
  

• We now accept (and ignore) Ledger-style lot dates ([DATE]) and four lot price forms ({PRICE}, {{PRICE}}, {=PRICE}, {{=PRICE}}), anywhere after the posting amount but before any balance assertion.

• We now accept Ledger-style parenthesised "virtual posting costs" ((@), (@@)). In hledger these are equivalent to the unparenthesised form.

• The unbalanced transaction error message is clearer, especially when postings all have the same sign, and is split into multiple lines for readability.

csv format

• You can now generate up to 99 postings in a transaction. (Vladimir Sorokin)

• You can now generate postings with an explicit 0 amount. (#1112)

• For each posting, when both numbered and unnumbered amount assignments are active (eg: both amount and amount1), we ignore the unnumbered ones. This makes it easier to override old amount rules.

• Fix a 1.17.1 regression involving amount-in/amount-out. (#1226)

• Assigning too many non-zero or zero values to a posting amount now gives a clearer error. (#1226)

hledger-ui 1.18

• builds with hledger 1.18

hledger-web 1.18

• The filter query is now preserved when clicking a different account in the sidebar. (Henning Thielemann)

• Hyperlinks are now more robust when there are multiple journal files, eg links from register to journal now work properly. (#1041) (Henning Thielemann)

add form

• Fixed a 2016 regression causing too many rows to be added by keypresses in the last amount field or CTRL-plus (#422, #1059).

• Always start with four rows when opened.

• Drop unneeded C-minus/C-plus keys & related help text.

credits 1.18

This release was brought to you by Simon Michael, Stephen Morgan, Dmitry Astapov, Henning Thielemann, Andriy Mykhaylyk, Pavan Rikhi, Vladimir Sorokin.

2020/03/01 hledger 1.17

CSV single-field matching; easier SSV/TSV conversion; fixed/enhanced close command; undo in add command; more JSON output; org headline support in timedot format; GHC 8.10 support.

project-wide changes 1.17

• hledger-install tweaks

• Simpler, clearer structure in the manuals and hledger.org sidebar.

• A new Quick Start page

• A new Common Tasks section in the hledger manual

• A new Invoicing how-to

• A basic example of rule parsing for the output of csb2format. (Evilham) csb2format deals with the CSB43/AEB43 format, which all banks operating in Spain must support.

hledger cli 1.17

• hledger's default date format is now ISO-8601 (YYYY-MM-DD). (Brian Wignall, Jakob Schöttl, Simon Michael)

• Drop the file format auto-detection feature.

  For a long time hledger has auto-detected the file format when it's not known, eg when reading from a file with unusual extension (like .dat or .txt), or from standard input (-f-), or when using the include directive (which currently ignores file extensions). This was done by trying all readers until one succeeded. Recent changes to timedot format have made this unreliable. So now, hledger will no longer guess; when there's no file extension or reader prefix available, it always assumes journal format. To specify one of the other formats, you must use its standard file extension (.timeclock, .timedot, .csv, .ssv, .tsv), or a reader prefix (-f csv:foo.txt, -f timedot:-). Experimental, feedback welcome.

• More robust quoting of arguments for addons (#457). (Jacek Generowicz) Command lines like hledger ui 'amt:>200' failed, because the process of dispatching from hledger to hledger-ui lost the quotes around amt:>20 and the > character was interpreted as a shell redirection operator.

• --output-format now rejects invalid formats

• Numbers in JSON output now provide a floating point Number representation as well as our native Decimal object representation, since the latter can sometimes contain 255-digit integers. The floating point numbers can have up to 10 decimal digits (and an unbounded number of integer digits.) Experimental, suggestions needed. (#1195)

• Fix finding latest date in queryEndDate Or queries and simplify date comparison code. (Stephen Morgan)

• Fix extra $ symbol (Mateus Furquim)

commands

• add: you can use < to undo and redo previous inputs (Gaith Hallak)

• bs, cf, is, bal, print, reg: support json output

• bs, cf, is: fix excess subreport columns in csv output

• bs, cf, is, bal: fix an issue with border intersections in --pretty-tables output. (Eric Mertens)

• close: fix a rounding bug that could generate unbalanced transactions. (#1164)

• close: hide cost prices by default, show them with --show-costs. close no longer preserves costs (transaction prices) unless you ask it to, since that can generate huge entries when there are many foreign currency/investment transactions. (#1165)

• close: equity amounts are omitted by default, for simpler entries; -x/--explicit shows them (usually causing more postings). (#1165)

• close: --interleaved generates equity postings alongside each closed account, making troubleshooting easier.

• close: "equity:opening/closing balances" is now the default closing and opening account.

• close: --close-desc/--open-desc customise the closing/opening transaction descriptions. (#1165)

• close: some --open*/--close* flags have been simplified for memorability:

  --closing -> --close
  --opening -> --open
  --close-to -> --close-acct
  --open-from -> --open-acct
  

  The old flags are accepted as hidden aliases, and deprecated. (#1165)

• print, register: a new valuation type, --value=then, shows the market value at each posting's date.

• print: -V/-X/--value now imply -x/--explicit, as -B/--cost does. This avoids a bug where print -V of a transaction with an implicit commodity conversion would convert only some of its postings to value.