Converting time to money

Perhaps you track billable hours with hledger, and you’d like to see those hours as money. The method depends on where you store time records:

Journal files

If you might have a different rate for each job, and there aren’t too many transactions per job: you could record the rate as a cost (2h @ $100), and run a cost report with -B/--cost.

When the rate doesn’t change much and there are many transactions, it’s more convenient to declare it with a P directive, and run a value report with -V/-X.

Timeclock files

You can’t write P directives in timeclock format, but you can include the timeclock file(s) from a journal file, and write the directives there. (See below.)

Timedot files

Timedot files can’t hold P directives, so include them from a journal file, which can. Also timedot amounts normally have no commodity symbol, making them hard to price; but you can give them one with the D directive:

# 2022-time.journal
D 1.0 h
P 2022-01-01 h $100
include 2022.timedot

# 2022.timedot
2022-01-01
a   ....

$ hledger -f 2022-time.journal bal 
               1.0 h  a
--------------------
               1.0 h  

$ hledger -f 2022-time.journal bal -V
                $100  a
--------------------
                $100  

If your rate changes, start a new timedot file:

# 2022-time.journal
D 1.0 h

P 2022-01-01 h $100
include 2022.timedot

P 2022-03-01 h $120
include 2022b.timedot

$ hledger -f 2022-time.journal bal -MVTA
Balance changes in 2022Q1, valued at period ends:

   ||  Jan  Feb   Mar    Total  Average 
===++===================================
 a || $100    0  $120     $220      $73 
---++-----------------------------------
   || $100    0  $120     $220      $73