Ubuntu Manpage: hledger - robust, friendly plain text accounting (CLI version)

NAME

       hledger - robust, friendly plain text accounting (CLI version)

SYNOPSIS

       hledger
       hledger COMMAND     [OPTS] [ARGS]
       hledger ADDONCMD -- [OPTS] [ARGS]

DESCRIPTION

hledger is a robust, user-friendly, cross-platform set of programs for tracking money, time, or any other
commodity, using double-entry accounting and a simple, editable file format. hledger is inspired by and
largely compatible with ledger(1), and largely interconvertible with beancount(1).

This manual is for hledger's command line interface, version 1.30.1. It also describes the common
options, file formats and concepts used by all hledger programs. It might accidentally teach you some
bookkeeping/accounting as well! You don't need to know everything in here to use hledger productively,
but when you have a question about functionality, this doc should answer it. It is detailed, so do skip
ahead or skim when needed. You can read it on hledger.org, or as an info manual or man page on your
system. You can also get it from hledger itself with
hledger --man, hledger --info or hledger help [TOPIC].

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

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

Here is a small journal file describing one transaction:

2015-10-16 bought food
expenses:food $10
assets:cash

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

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

To get started, run hledger add and follow the prompts, or save some entries like the above in
$HOME/.hledger.journal, then try commands like:
hledger print -x
hledger aregister assets
hledger balance
hledger balancesheet
hledger incomestatement.
Run hledger to list the commands. See also the "Starting a journal file" and "Setting opening balances"
sections in PART 5: COMMON TASKS.

PART 1: USER INTERFACE

Input

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

              $ hledger -f FILE print

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

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

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

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

       Reader:     Reads:                                    Used      for      file
                                                             extensions:
       ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
       journal     hledger  journal  files and some Ledger   .journal  .j   .hledger
                   journals, for transactions                .ledger
       timeclock   timeclock   files,   for  precise  time   .timeclock
                   logging
       timedot     timedot  files,  for  approximate  time   .timedot
                   logging
       csv         CSV/SSV/TSV/character-separated values,   .csv      .ssv     .tsv
                   for data import                           .csv.rules   .ssv.rules
                                                             .tsv.rules

       These formats are described in more detail below.

       hledger detects the format automatically based on the file extensions shown above.  If it can't recognise
       the  file  extension,  it  assumes  journal  format.   So  for non-journal files, it's important to use a
       recognised file extension, so as to either read successfully or to show relevant error messages.

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

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

   Standard input
       The file name - means standard input:

              $ cat FILE | hledger -f- print

       If reading non-journal data in this way, you'll need to add a file format prefix, like:

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

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

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

       • Some directives will not affect previous or subsequent files.

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

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

       • Are the input files parseable, with valid syntax ?

       • Are all transactions balanced ?

       • Do all balance assertions pass ?

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

       • Are all accounts posted to, declared with an account directive ?  (Account error checking)

       • Are all commodities declared with a commodity directive ?  (Commodity error checking)

       • Are all commodity conversions declared explicitly ?

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

Commands

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

To show the commands list, run hledger with no arguments. The commands are described in detail in PART
4: COMMANDS, below.

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

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

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

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

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

Add-on commands
In addition to the built-in commands, you can install add-on commands: programs or scripts named
"hledger-SOMETHING", which will also appear in hledger's commands list. If you used the hledger-install
script, you will have several add-ons installed already. Some more can be found in hledger's bin/
directory, documented at https://hledger.org/scripts.html.

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

You can run add-on commands using hledger, much like built-in commands: hledger ADDONCMD [--
ADDONCMDOPTS] [ADDONCMDARGS]. But note the double hyphen argument, required before add-on-specific
options. Eg: hledger ui -- --watch or hledger web -- --serve. If this causes difficulty, you can always
run the add-on directly, without using hledger: hledger-ui --watch or hledger-web --serve.

Options

       Run hledger -h to see general command line help, and general options which are  common  to  most  hledger
       commands.   These  options  can  be written anywhere on the command line.  They can be grouped into help,
       input, and reporting options:

   General help options
       -h --help
              show general or COMMAND help

       --man  show general or COMMAND user manual with man

       --info show general or COMMAND user manual with info

       --version
              show general or ADDONCMD version

       --debug[=N]
              show debug output (levels 1-9, default: 1)

   General input options
       -f FILE --file=FILE
              use a different input file.  For stdin, use - (default: $LEDGER_FILE or $HOME/.hledger.journal)

       --rules-file=RULESFILE
              Conversion rules file to use when reading CSV (default: FILE.rules)

       --separator=CHAR
              Field separator to expect when reading CSV (default: ',')

       --alias=OLD=NEW
              rename accounts named OLD to NEW

       --anon anonymize accounts and payees

       --pivot FIELDNAME
              use some other field or tag for the account name

       -I --ignore-assertions
              disable balance assertion checks (note: does not disable balance assignments)

       -s --strict
              do extra error checking (check that all posted accounts are declared)

   General reporting options
       -b --begin=DATE
              include postings/txns on or after this date (will be adjusted to preceding  subperiod  start  when
              using a report interval)

       -e --end=DATE
              include  postings/txns  before this date (will be adjusted to following subperiod end when using a
              report interval)

       -D --daily
              multiperiod/multicolumn report by day

       -W --weekly
              multiperiod/multicolumn report by week

       -M --monthly
              multiperiod/multicolumn report by month

       -Q --quarterly
              multiperiod/multicolumn report by quarter

       -Y --yearly
              multiperiod/multicolumn report by year

       -p --period=PERIODEXP
              set start date, end date, and/or reporting interval all at once using period expressions syntax

       --date2
              match the secondary date instead (see command help for other effects)

       --today=DATE
              override today's date (affects relative smart dates, for tests/examples)

       -U --unmarked
              include only unmarked postings/txns (can combine with -P or -C)

       -P --pending
              include only pending postings/txns

       -C --cleared
              include only cleared postings/txns

       -R --real
              include only non-virtual postings

       -NUM --depth=NUM
              hide/aggregate accounts or postings more than NUM levels deep

       -E --empty
              show items with zero amount, normally hidden (and vice-versa in hledger-ui/hledger-web)

       -B --cost
              convert amounts to their cost/selling amount at transaction time

       -V --market
              convert amounts to their market value in default valuation commodities

       -X --exchange=COMM
              convert amounts to their market value in commodity COMM

       --value
              convert amounts to cost or market value, more flexibly than -B/-V/-X

       --infer-equity
              infer conversion equity postings from costs

       --infer-costs
              infer costs from conversion equity postings

       --infer-market-prices
              use costs as additional market prices, as if they were P directives

       --forecast
              generate transactions from periodic rules, between the latest  recorded  txn  and  6  months  from
              today,  or  during  the  specified  PERIOD (= is required).  Auto posting rules will be applied to
              these transactions as well.  Also, in hledger-ui make future-dated transactions visible.

       --auto generate extra postings by applying auto posting rules to all txns (not just forecast txns)

       --verbose-tags
              add visible tags indicating transactions or postings which have been generated/modified

       --commodity-style
              Override  the  commodity  style  in  the  output  for  the  specified  commodity.    For   example
              'EUR1.000,00'.

       --color=WHEN (or --colour=WHEN)
              Should  color-supporting commands use ANSI color codes in text output.  'auto' (default): whenever
              stdout seems to be a color-supporting terminal.  'always' or 'yes': always, useful eg when  piping
              output into 'less -R'.  'never' or 'no': never.  A NO_COLOR environment variable overrides this.

       --pretty[=WHEN]
              Show  prettier output, e.g.  using unicode box-drawing characters.  Accepts 'yes' (the default) or
              'no' ('y', 'n', 'always', 'never' also work).  If you provide an argument you must use  '=',  e.g.
              '--pretty=yes'.

       When a reporting option appears more than once in the command line, the last one takes precedence.

       Some reporting options can also be written as query arguments.

Command line tips

Here are some details useful to know about for hledger command lines (and elsewhere). Feel free to skip
this section until you need it.

Option repetition
If options are repeated in a command line, hledger will generally use the last (right-most) occurence.

Special characters
Single escaping (shell metacharacters)
In shell command lines, characters significant to your shell - such as spaces, <, >, (, ), |, $ and \ -
should be "shell-escaped" if you want hledger to see them. This is done by enclosing them in single or
double quotes, or by writing a backslash before them. Eg to match an account name containing a space:

$ hledger register 'credit card'

or:

$ hledger register credit\ card

Windows users should keep in mind that cmd treats single quote as a regular character, so you should be
using double quotes exclusively. PowerShell treats both single and double quotes as quotes.

Double escaping (regular expression metacharacters)
Characters significant in regular expressions (described below) - such as ., ^, $, [, ], (, ), |, and \ -
may need to be "regex-escaped" if you don't want them to be interpreted by hledger's regular expression
engine. This is done by writing backslashes before them, but since backslash is typically also a shell
metacharacter, both shell-escaping and regex-escaping will be needed. Eg to match a literal $ sign while
using the bash shell:

$ hledger balance cur:'\$'

or:

$ hledger balance cur:\\$

Triple escaping (for add-on commands)
When you use hledger to run an external add-on command (described below), one level of shell-escaping is
lost from any options or arguments intended for by the add-on command, so those need an extra level of
shell-escaping. Eg to match a literal $ sign while using the bash shell and running an add-on command
(ui):

$ hledger ui cur:'\\$'

or:

$ hledger ui cur:\\\\$

If you wondered why four backslashes, perhaps this helps:

unescaped: $
escaped: \$
double-escaped: \\$
triple-escaped: \\\\$

Or, you can avoid the extra escaping by running the add-on executable directly:

$ hledger-ui cur:\\$

Less escaping
Options and arguments are sometimes used in places other than the shell command line, where shell-
escaping is not needed, so there you should use one less level of escaping. Those places include:

• an @argumentfile

• hledger-ui's filter field

• hledger-web's search form

• GHCI's prompt (used by developers).

Unicode characters
hledger is expected to handle non-ascii characters correctly:

• they should be parsed correctly in input files and on the command line, by all hledger tools (add,
iadd, hledger-web's search/add/edit forms, etc.)

• they should be displayed correctly by all hledger tools, and on-screen alignment should be preserved.

This requires a well-configured environment. Here are some tips:

• A system locale must be configured, and it must be one that can decode the characters being used. In
bash, you can set a locale like this: export LANG=en_US.UTF-8. There are some more details in
Troubleshooting. This step is essential - without it, hledger will quit on encountering a non-ascii
character (as with all GHC-compiled programs).

• your terminal software (eg Terminal.app, iTerm, CMD.exe, xterm..) must support unicode

• the terminal must be using a font which includes the required unicode glyphs

• the terminal should be configured to display wide characters as double width (for report alignment)

• on Windows, for best results you should run hledger in the same kind of environment in which it was
built. Eg hledger built in the standard CMD.EXE environment (like the binaries on our download page)
might show display problems when run in a cygwin or msys terminal, and vice versa. (See eg #961).

Regular expressions
hledger uses regular expressions in a number of places:

• query terms, on the command line and in the hledger-web search form: REGEX, desc:REGEX, cur:REGEX,
tag:...=REGEX

• CSV rules conditional blocks: if REGEX ...

• account alias directive and --alias option: alias /REGEX/ = REPLACEMENT, --alias /REGEX/=REPLACEMENT

hledger's regular expressions come from the regex-tdfa library. If they're not doing what you expect,
it's important to know exactly what they support:

1. they are case insensitive

2. they are infix matching (they do not need to match the entire thing being matched)

3. they are POSIX ERE (extended regular expressions)

4. they also support GNU word boundaries (\b, \B, \<, \>)

5. they do not support backreferences; if you write \1, it will match the digit 1. Except when doing
text replacement, eg in account aliases, where backreferences can be used in the replacement string to
reference capturing groups in the search regexp.

6. they do not support mode modifiers ((?s)), character classes (\w, \d), or anything else not mentioned
above.

Some things to note:

• In the alias directive and --alias option, regular expressions must be enclosed in forward slashes
(/REGEX/). Elsewhere in hledger, these are not required.

• In queries, to match a regular expression metacharacter like $ as a literal character, prepend a
backslash. Eg to search for amounts with the dollar sign in hledger-web, write cur:\$.

• On the command line, some metacharacters like $ have a special meaning to the shell and so must be
escaped at least once more. See Special characters.

Argument files
You can save a set of command line options and arguments in a file, and then reuse them by writing
@FILENAME as a command line argument. Eg: hledger bal @foo.args.

Inside the argument file, each line should contain just one option or argument. Don't use spaces except
inside quotes (or you'll see a confusing error); write = (or nothing) between a flag and its argument.
For the special characters mentioned above, use one less level of quoting than you would at the command
prompt.

Output

Output destination
hledger commands send their output to the terminal by default. You can of course redirect this, eg into
a file, using standard shell syntax:

$ hledger print > foo.txt

Some commands (print, register, stats, the balance commands) also provide the -o/--output-file option,
which does the same thing without needing the shell. Eg:

$ hledger print -o foo.txt
$ hledger print -o - # write to stdout (the default)

Output format
Some commands offer other kinds of output, not just text on the terminal. Here are those commands and
the formats currently supported:

- txt csv html json sql
──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
aregister Y Y Y Y
balance Y 1 Y 1 Y 1,2 Y
balancesheet Y 1 Y 1 Y 1 Y
balancesheetequity Y 1 Y 1 Y 1 Y
cashflow Y 1 Y 1 Y 1 Y
incomestatement Y 1 Y 1 Y 1 Y
print Y Y Y Y
register Y Y Y

• 1 Also affected by the balance commands' --layout option.

• 2 balance does not support html output without a report interval or with --budget.

The output format is selected by the -O/--output-format=FMT option:

$ hledger print -O csv # print CSV on stdout

or by the filename extension of an output file specified with the -o/--output-file=FILE.FMT option:

$ hledger balancesheet -o foo.csv # write CSV to foo.csv

The -O option can be combined with -o to override the file extension, if needed:

$ hledger balancesheet -o foo.txt -O csv # write CSV to foo.txt

Some notes about the various output formats:

CSV output
• In CSV output, digit group marks (such as thousands separators) are disabled automatically.

HTML output
• HTML output can be styled by an optional hledger.css file in the same directory.

JSON output
• This is not yet much used; real-world feedback is welcome.

• Our JSON is rather large and verbose, since it is a faithful representation of hledger's internal data
types. To understand the JSON, read the Haskell type definitions, which are mostly in
https://github.com/simonmichael/hledger/blob/master/hledger-lib/Hledger/Data/Types.hs.

• hledger represents quantities as Decimal values storing up to 255 significant digits, eg for repeating
decimals. Such numbers can arise in practice (from automatically-calculated transaction prices), and
would break most JSON consumers. So in JSON, we show quantities as simple Numbers with at most 10
decimal places. We don't limit the number of integer digits, but that part is under your control. We
hope this approach will not cause problems in practice; if you find otherwise, please let us know. (Cf
#1195)

SQL output
• This is not yet much used; real-world feedback is welcome.

• SQL output is expected to work at least with SQLite, MySQL and Postgres.

• For SQLite, it will be more useful if you modify the generated id field to be a PRIMARY KEY. Eg:

$ hledger print -O sql | sed 's/id serial/id INTEGER PRIMARY KEY AUTOINCREMENT NOT NULL/g' | ...

• SQL output is structured with the expectations that statements will be executed in the empty database.
If you already have tables created via SQL output of hledger, you would probably want to either clear
tables of existing data (via delete or truncate SQL statements) or drop tables completely as otherwise
your postings will be duped.

Commodity styles
When displaying amounts, hledger infers a standard display style for each commodity/currency, as
described below in Commodity display style.

If needed, this can be overridden by a -c/--commodity-style option (except for cost amounts and amounts
displayed by the print command, which are always displayed with all decimal digits). For example, the
following will force dollar amounts to be displayed as shown:

$ hledger print -c '$1.000,0'

This option can repeated to set the display style for multiple commodities/currencies. Its argument is
as described in the commodity directive.

Colour
In terminal output, some commands can produce colour when the terminal supports it:

• if the --color/--colour option is given a value of yes or always (or no or never), colour will (or will
not) be used;

• otherwise, if the NO_COLOR environment variable is set, colour will not be used;

• otherwise, colour will be used if the output (terminal or file) supports it.

Box-drawing
In terminal output, you can enable unicode box-drawing characters to render prettier tables:

• if the --pretty option is given a value of yes or always (or no or never), unicode characters will (or
will not) be used;

• otherwise, unicode characters will not be used.

Paging
When showing long output in the terminal, hledger will try to use the pager specified by the PAGER
environment variable, or less, or more. (A pager is a helper program that shows one page at a time
rather than scrolling everything off screen). Currently it does this only for help output, not for
reports; specifically,

• when listing commands, with hledger

• when showing help with hledger [CMD] --help,

• when viewing manuals with hledger help or hledger --man.

Note the pager is expected to handle ANSI codes, which hledger uses eg for bold emphasis. For the common
pager less (and its more compatibility mode), we add R to the LESS and MORE environment variables to make
this work. If you use a different pager, you might need to configure it similarly, to avoid seeing junk
on screen (let us know). Otherwise, you can set the NO_COLOR environment variable to 1 to disable all
ANSI output (see Colour).

Debug output
We intend hledger to be relatively easy to troubleshoot, introspect and develop. You can add --debug[=N]
to any hledger command line to see additional debug output. N ranges from 1 (least output, the default)
to 9 (maximum output). Typically you would start with 1 and increase until you are seeing enough. Debug
output goes to stderr, and is not affected by -o/--output-file (unless you redirect stderr to stdout, eg:
2>&1). It will be interleaved with normal output, which can help reveal when parts of the code are
evaluated. To capture debug output in a log file instead, you can usually redirect stderr, eg:

hledger bal --debug=3 2>hledger.log

Environment

       These environment variables affect hledger:

       COLUMNS This is normally set by your terminal; some hledger commands (register) will format their  output
       to this width.  If not set, they will try to use the available terminal width.

       LEDGER_FILE   The   main   journal   file   to   use   when   not  specified  with  -f/--file.   Default:
       $HOME/.hledger.journal.

       NO_COLOR If this environment variable is set (with any value), hledger will not use ANSI color  codes  in
       terminal output, unless overridden by an explicit --color/--colour option.

PART 2: DATA FORMATS

Journal

hledger's default file format, representing a General Journal. Here's a cheatsheet/mini-tutorial, or you
can skip ahead to About journal format.

Journal cheatsheet
# Here is the main syntax of hledger's journal format
# (omitting extra Ledger compatibility syntax).
# hledger journals contain comments, directives, and transactions, in any order:

###############################################################################
# 1. Comment lines are for notes or temporarily disabling things.
# They begin with #, ;, or a line containing the word "comment".

# hash comment line
; semicolon comment line
comment
These lines
are commented.
end comment

# Some but not all hledger entries can have same-line comments attached to them,
# from ; (semicolon) to end of line.

###############################################################################
# 2. Directives modify parsing or reports in some way.
# They begin with a word or letter (or symbol).

account actifs ; type:A, declare an account that is an Asset. 2+ spaces before ;.
account passifs ; type:L, declare an account that is a Liability, and so on.. (ALERX)
alias chkg = assets:checking
commodity $0.00
decimal-mark .
include /dev/null
payee Whole Foods
P 2022-01-01 AAAA $1.40
~ monthly budget goals ; <- 2+ spaces between period expression and description
expenses:food $400
expenses:home $1000
budgeted

###############################################################################
# 3. Transactions are what it's all about; they are dated events,
# usually describing movements of money.
# They begin with a date.

# DATE DESCRIPTION ; This is a transaction comment.
# ACCOUNT NAME 1 AMOUNT1 ; <- posting 1. This is a posting comment.
# ACCOUNT NAME 2 AMOUNT2 ; <- posting 2. Postings must be indented.
# ; ^^ At least 2 spaces between account and amount.
# ... ; Any number of postings is allowed. The amounts must balance (sum to 0).

2022-01-01 opening balances are declared this way
assets:checking $1000 ; Account names can be anything. lower case is easy to type.
assets:savings $1000 ; assets, liabilities, equity, revenues, expenses are common.
assets:cash:wallet $100 ; : indicates subaccounts.
liabilities:credit card $-200 ; liabilities, equity, revenues balances are usually negative.
equity ; One amount can be left blank; $-1900 is inferred here.

2022-04-15 * (#12345) pay taxes
; There can be a ! or * after the date meaning "pending" or "cleared".
; There can be a transaction code (text in parentheses) after the date/status.
; Amounts' sign represents direction of flow, or credit/debit:
assets:checking $-500 ; minus means removed from this account (credit)
expenses:tax:us:2021 $500 ; plus means added to this account (debit)
; revenue/expense categories are also "accounts"

2022-01-01 ; The description is optional.
; Any currency/commodity symbols are allowed, on either side.
assets:cash:wallet GBP -10
expenses:clothing GBP 10
assets:gringotts -10 gold
assets:pouch 10 gold
revenues:gifts -2 "Liquorice Wands" ; Complex symbols
assets:bag 2 "Liquorice Wands" ; must be double-quoted.

2022-01-01 Cost in another commodity can be noted with @ or @@
assets:investments 2.0 AAAA @ $1.50 ; @ means per-unit cost
assets:investments 3.0 AAAA @@ $4 ; @@ means total cost
assets:checking $-7.00

2022-01-02 assert balances
; Balances can be asserted for extra error checking, in any transaction.
assets:investments 0 AAAA = 5.0 AAAA
assets:pouch 0 gold = 10 gold
assets:savings $0 = $1000

1999-12-31 Ordering transactions by date is recommended but not required.
; Postings are not required.

2022.01.01 These date
2022/1/1 formats are
12/31 also allowed (but consistent YYYY-MM-DD is recommended).

About journal format
hledger's usual data source is a plain text file containing journal entries in hledger journal format.
This file represents a standard accounting general journal. I use file names ending in .journal, but
that's not required. The journal file contains a number of transaction entries, each describing a
transfer of money (or any commodity) between two or more named accounts, in a simple format readable by
both hledger and humans.

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

You can use hledger without learning any more about this file; just use the add or web or import commands
to create and update it.

Many users, though, edit the journal file with a text editor, and track changes with a version control
system such as git. Editor addons such as ledger-mode or hledger-mode for Emacs, vim-ledger for Vim, and
hledger-vscode for Visual Studio Code, make this easier, adding colour, formatting, tab completion, and
useful commands. See Editor configuration at hledger.org for the full list.

Here's a description of each part of the file format (and hledger's data model).

A hledger journal file can contain three kinds of thing: file comments, transactions, and/or directives
(counting periodic transaction rules and auto posting rules as directives).

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

• # for top-level notes

• ; for commenting out things temporarily

• comment for quickly commenting large regions (remember it's there, or you might get confused)

Eg:

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

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

Transactions
Transactions are the main unit of information in a journal file. They represent events, typically a
movement of some quantity of commodities between two or more named accounts.

Each transaction is recorded as a journal entry, beginning with a simple date in column 0. This can be
followed by any of the following optional fields, separated by spaces:

• a status character (empty, !, or *)

• a code (any short number or text, enclosed in parentheses)

• a description (any remaining text until end of line or a semicolon)

• a comment (any remaining text following a semicolon until end of line, and any following indented lines
beginning with a semicolon)

• 0 or more indented posting lines, describing what was transferred and the accounts involved (indented
comment lines are also allowed, but not blank lines or non-indented lines).

Here's a simple journal file containing one transaction:

2008/01/01 income
assets:bank:checking $1
income:salary $-1

Dates
Simple dates
Dates in the journal file use simple dates format: YYYY-MM-DD or YYYY/MM/DD or YYYY.MM.DD, with leading
zeros optional. The year may be omitted, in which case it will be inferred from the context: the current
transaction, the default year set with a Y directive, or the current date when the command is run. Some
examples: 2010-01-31, 2010/01/31, 2010.1.31, 1/31.

(The UI also accepts simple dates, as well as the more flexible smart dates documented in the hledger
manual.)

Posting dates
You can give individual postings a different date from their parent transaction, by adding a posting
comment containing a tag (see below) like date:DATE. This is probably the best way to control posting
dates precisely. Eg in this example the expense should appear in May reports, and the deduction from
checking should be reported on 6/1 for easy bank reconciliation:

2015/5/30
expenses:food $10 ; food purchased on saturday 5/30
assets:checking ; bank cleared it on monday, date:6/1

$ hledger -f t.j register food
2015-05-30 expenses:food $10 $10

$ hledger -f t.j register checking
2015-06-01 assets:checking $-10 $-10

DATE should be a simple date; if the year is not specified it will use the year of the transaction's
date.
The date: tag must have a valid simple date value if it is present, eg a date: tag with no value is not
allowed.

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

mark status
──────────────────
unmarked
! pending
* cleared

When reporting, you can filter by status with the -U/--unmarked, -P/--pending, and -C/--cleared flags; or
the status:, status:!, and status:* queries; or the U, P, C keys in hledger-ui.

Note, in Ledger and in older versions of hledger, the "unmarked" state is called "uncleared". As of
hledger 1.3 we have renamed it to unmarked for clarity.

To replicate Ledger and old hledger's behaviour of also matching pending, combine -U and -P.

Status marks are optional, but can be helpful eg for reconciling with real-world accounts. Some editor
modes provide highlighting and shortcuts for working with status. Eg in Emacs ledger-mode, you can
toggle transaction status with C-c C-e, or posting status with C-c C-c.

What "uncleared", "pending", and "cleared" actually mean is up to you. Here's one suggestion:

status meaning
──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
uncleared recorded but not yet reconciled; needs review
pending tentatively reconciled (if needed, eg during a big
reconciliation)
cleared complete, reconciled as far as possible, and considered
correct

With this scheme, you would use -PC to see the current balance at your bank, -U to see things which will
probably hit your bank soon (like uncashed checks), and no flags to see the most up-to-date state of your
finances.

Code
After the status mark, but before the description, you can optionally write a transaction "code",
enclosed in parentheses. This is a good place to record a check number, or some other important
transaction id or reference number.

Description
A transaction's description is the rest of the line following the date and status mark (or until a
comment begins). Sometimes called the "narration" in traditional bookkeeping, it can be used for
whatever you wish, or left blank. Transaction descriptions can be queried, unlike comments.

Payee and note
You can optionally include a | (pipe) character in descriptions to subdivide the description into
separate fields for payee/payer name on the left (up to the first |) and an additional note field on the
right (after the first |). This may be worthwhile if you need to do more precise querying and pivoting
by payee or by note.

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

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

Postings
A posting is an addition of some amount to, or removal of some amount from, an account. Each posting
line begins with at least one space or tab (2 or 4 spaces is common), followed by:

• (optional) a status character (empty, !, or *), followed by a space

• (required) an account name (any text, optionally containing single spaces, until end of line or a
double space)

• (optional) two or more spaces or tabs followed by an amount.

Positive amounts are being added to the account, negative amounts are being removed.

The amounts within a transaction must always sum up to zero. As a convenience, one amount may be left
blank; it will be inferred so as to balance the transaction.

Be sure to note the unusual two-space delimiter between account name and amount. This makes it easy to
write account names containing spaces. But if you accidentally leave only one space (or tab) before the
amount, the amount will be considered part of the account name.

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

You can use any account names you like, but we usually start with the traditional accounting categories,
which in english are assets, liabilities, equity, revenues, expenses. (You might see these referred to
as A, L, E, R, X for short.)

For more precise reporting, we usually divide the top level accounts into more detailed subaccounts, by
writing a full colon between account name parts. For example, from the account names
assets:bank:checking and expenses:food, hledger will infer this hierarchy of five accounts:

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

Shown as an outline, the hierarchical tree structure is more clear:

assets
bank
checking
expenses
food

hledger reports can summarise the account tree to any depth, so you can go as deep as you like with
subcategories, but keeping your account names relatively simple may be best when starting out.

Account names may be capitalised or not; they may contain letters, numbers, symbols, or single spaces.
Note, when an account name and an amount are written on the same line, they must be separated by two or
more spaces (or tabs).

Parentheses or brackets enclosing the full account name indicate virtual postings, described below.
Parentheses or brackets internal to the account name have no special meaning.

Account names can be altered temporarily or permanently by account aliases.

Amounts
After the account name, there is usually an amount. (Important: between account name and amount, there
must be two or more spaces.)

hledger's amount format is flexible, supporting several international formats. Here are some examples.
Amounts have a number (the "quantity"):

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

$1
4000 AAPL
3 "green apples"

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

-$1
$-1

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

+ $1
$- 1

Scientific E notation is allowed:

1E-6
EUR 1E3

Decimal marks, digit group marks
A decimal mark can be written as a period or a comma:

1.23
1,23456780000009

In the integer part of the quantity (left of the decimal mark), groups of digits can optionally be
separated by a digit group mark - a space, comma, or period (different from the decimal mark):

$1,000,000.00
EUR 2.000.000,00
INR 9,99,99,999.00
1 000 000.9455

Note, a number containing a single digit group mark and no decimal mark is ambiguous. Are these digit
group marks or decimal marks ?

1,000
1.000

If you don't tell it otherwise, hledger will assume both of the above are decimal marks, parsing both
numbers as 1.

To prevent confusing parsing mistakes and undetected typos, especially if your data contains digit group
marks (eg, thousands separators), we recommend explicitly declaring the decimal mark character in each
journal file, using a directive at the top of the file. The decimal-mark directive is best, otherwise
commodity directives will also work. These are described below.

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

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

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

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

(If you are writing scripts or working with hledger's internals, these are the Amount and MixedAmount
types.)

Directives influencing number parsing and display
You can add decimal-mark and commodity directives to the journal, to declare and control these things
more explicitly and precisely. These are described below, but here's a quick example:

# the decimal mark character used by all amounts in this file (all commodities)
decimal-mark .

# display styles for the $, EUR, INR and no-symbol commodities:
commodity $1,000.00
commodity EUR 1.000,00
commodity INR 9,99,99,999.00
commodity 1 000 000.9455

Commodity display style
For the amounts in each commodity, hledger chooses a consistent display style to use in most reports.
(Exceptions: price amounts, and all amounts displayed by the print command, are displayed with all of
their decimal digits visible.)

A commodity's display style is inferred as follows.

First, if a default commodity is declared with D, this commodity and its style is applied to any no-
symbol amounts in the journal.

Then each commodity's style is inferred from one of the following, in order of preference:

• The commodity directive for that commodity (including the no-symbol commodity), if any.

• The amounts in that commodity seen in the journal's transactions. (Posting amounts only; prices and
periodic or auto rules are ignored, currently.)

• The built-in fallback style, which looks like this: $1000.00. (Symbol on the left, period decimal
mark, two decimal places.)

A style is inferred from journal amounts as follows:

• Use the general style (decimal mark, symbol placement) of the first amount

• Use the first-seen digit group style (digit group mark, digit group sizes), if any

• Use the maximum number of decimal places of all.

Cost amounts don't affect the commodity display style directly, but occasionally they can do so
indirectly (eg when a posting's amount is inferred using a cost). If you find this causing problems, use
a commodity directive to fix the display style.

To summarise: each commodity's amounts will be normalised to (a) the style declared by a commodity
directive, or (b) the style of the first posting amount in the journal, with the first-seen digit group
style and the maximum-seen number of decimal places. So if your reports are showing amounts in a way you
don't like, eg with too many decimal places, use a commodity directive. Some examples:

# declare euro, dollar, bitcoin and no-symbol commodities and set their
# input number formats and output display styles:
commodity EUR 1.000,
commodity $1000.00
commodity 1000.00000000 BTC
commodity 1 000.

The inferred commodity style can be overridden by supplying a command line option.

Rounding
Amounts are stored internally as decimal numbers with up to 255 decimal places, and displayed with the
number of decimal places specified by the commodity display style. Note, hledger uses banker's rounding:
it rounds to the nearest even number, eg 0.5 displayed with zero decimal places is "0").

Costs
After a posting amount, you can note its cost (when buying) or selling price (when selling) in another
commodity, by writing either @ UNITPRICE or @@ TOTALPRICE after it. This indicates a conversion
transaction, where one commodity is exchanged for another.

(You might also see this called "transaction price" in hledger docs, discussions, or code; that term was
directionally neutral and reminded that it is a price specific to a transaction, but we now just call it
"cost", with the understanding that the transaction could be a purchase or a sale.)

Costs are usually written explicitly with @ or @@, but can also be inferred automatically for simple
multi-commodity transactions. Note, if costs are inferred, the order of postings is significant; the
first posting will have a cost attached, in the commodity of the second.

As an example, here are several ways to record purchases of a foreign currency in hledger, using the cost
notation either explicitly or implicitly:

1. Write the price per unit, as @ UNITPRICE after the amount:

2009/1/1
assets:euros €100 @ $1.35 ; one hundred euros purchased at $1.35 each
assets:dollars ; balancing amount is -$135.00

2. Write the total price, as @@ TOTALPRICE after the amount:

2009/1/1
assets:euros €100 @@ $135 ; one hundred euros purchased at $135 for the lot
assets:dollars

3. Specify amounts for all postings, using exactly two commodities, and let hledger infer the price that
balances the transaction. Note the effect of posting order: the price is added to first posting,
making it €100 @@ $135, as in example 2:

2009/1/1
assets:euros €100 ; one hundred euros purchased
assets:dollars $-135 ; for $135

Amounts can be converted to cost at report time using the -B/--cost flag; this is discussed more in the
˜COST REPORTING section.

Note that the cost normally should be a positive amount, though it's not required to be. This can be a
little confusing, see discussion at --infer-market-prices: market prices from transactions.

Other cost/lot notations
A slight digression for Ledger and Beancount users. Ledger has a number of cost/lot-related notations:

• @ UNITCOST and @@ TOTALCOST

• expresses a conversion rate, as in hledger

• when buying, also creates a lot than can be selected at selling time

• (@) UNITCOST and (@@) TOTALCOST (virtual cost)

• like the above, but also means "this cost was exceptional, don't use it when inferring market
prices".

Currently, hledger treats the above like @ and @@; the parentheses are ignored.

• {=FIXEDUNITCOST} and {{=FIXEDTOTALCOST}} (fixed price)

• when buying, means "this cost is also the fixed price, don't let it fluctuate in value reports"

• {UNITCOST} and {{TOTALCOST}} (lot price)

• can be used identically to @ UNITCOST and @@ TOTALCOST, also creates a lot

• when selling, combined with @ ..., specifies an investment lot by its cost basis; does not check if
that lot is present

• and related: [YYYY/MM/DD] (lot date)

• when buying, attaches this acquisition date to the lot

• when selling, selects a lot by its acquisition date

• (SOME TEXT) (lot note)

• when buying, attaches this note to the lot

• when selling, selects a lot by its note

Currently, hledger accepts any or all of the above in any order after the posting amount, but ignores
them. (This can break transaction balancing.)

For Beancount users, the notation and behaviour is different:

• @ UNITCOST and @@ TOTALCOST

• expresses a cost without creating a lot, as in hledger

• when buying (augmenting) or selling (reducing) a lot, combined with {...}: documents the cost/selling
price (not used for transaction balancing)

• {UNITCOST} and {{TOTALCOST}}

• when buying (augmenting), expresses the cost for transaction balancing, and also creates a lot with
this cost basis attached

• when selling (reducing),

• selects a lot by its cost basis

• raises an error if that lot is not present or can not be selected unambiguously (depending on
booking method configured)

• expresses the selling price for transaction balancing

Currently, hledger accepts the {UNITCOST}/{{TOTALCOST}} notation but ignores it.

• variations: {}, {YYYY-MM-DD}, {"LABEL"}, {UNITCOST, "LABEL"}, {UNITCOST, YYYY-MM-DD, "LABEL"} etc.

Currently, hledger rejects these.

Balance assertions
hledger supports Ledger-style balance assertions in journal files. These look like, for example, =
EXPECTEDBALANCE following a posting's amount. Eg here we assert the expected dollar balance in accounts
a and b after each posting:

2013/1/1
a $1 =$1
b =$-1

2013/1/2
a $1 =$2
b $-1 =$-2

After reading a journal file, hledger will check all balance assertions and report an error if any of
them fail. Balance assertions can protect you from, eg, inadvertently disrupting reconciled balances
while cleaning up old entries. You can disable them temporarily with the -I/--ignore-assertions flag,
which can be useful for troubleshooting or for reading Ledger files. (Note: this flag currently does not
disable balance assignments, described below).

Assertions and ordering
hledger sorts an account's postings and assertions first by date and then (for postings on the same day)
by parse order. Note this is different from Ledger, which sorts assertions only by parse order. (Also,
Ledger assertions do not see the accumulated effect of repeated postings to the same account within a
transaction.)

So, hledger balance assertions keep working if you reorder differently-dated transactions within the
journal. But if you reorder same-dated transactions or postings, assertions might break and require
updating. This order dependence does bring an advantage: precise control over the order of postings and
assertions within a day, so you can assert intra-day balances.

Assertions and multiple included files
Multiple files included with the include directive are processed as if concatenated into one file,
preserving their order and the posting order within each file. It means that balance assertions in later
files will see balance from earlier files.

And if you have multiple postings to an account on the same day, split across multiple files, and you
want to assert the account's balance on that day, you'll need to put the assertion in the right file -
the last one in the sequence, probably.

Assertions and multiple -f files
Unlike include, when multiple files are specified on the command line with multiple -f/--file options,
balance assertions will not see balance from earlier files. This can be useful when you do not want
problems in earlier files to disrupt valid assertions in later files.

If you do want assertions to see balance from earlier files, use include, or concatenate the files
temporarily.

Assertions and commodities
The asserted balance must be a simple single-commodity amount, and in fact the assertion checks only this
commodity's balance within the (possibly multi-commodity) account balance. This is how assertions work
in Ledger also. We could call this a "partial" balance assertion.

To assert the balance of more than one commodity in an account, you can write multiple postings, each
asserting one commodity's balance.

You can make a stronger "total" balance assertion by writing a double equals sign (== EXPECTEDBALANCE).
This asserts that there are no other commodities in the account besides the asserted one (or at least,
that their balance is 0).

2013/1/1
a $1
a 1€
b $-1
c -1€

2013/1/2 ; These assertions succeed
a 0 = $1
a 0 = 1€
b 0 == $-1
c 0 == -1€

2013/1/3 ; This assertion fails as 'a' also contains 1€
a 0 == $1

It's not yet possible to make a complete assertion about a balance that has multiple commodities. One
workaround is to isolate each commodity into its own subaccount:

2013/1/1
a:usd $1
a:euro 1€
b

2013/1/2
a 0 == 0
a:usd 0 == $1
a:euro 0 == 1€

Assertions and prices
Balance assertions ignore costs, and should normally be written without one:

2019/1/1
(a) $1 @ €1 = $1

We do allow prices to be written there, however, and print shows them, even though they don't affect
whether the assertion passes or fails. This is for backward compatibility (hledger's close command used
to generate balance assertions with prices), and because balance assignments do use them (see below).

Assertions and subaccounts
The balance assertions above (= and ==) do not count the balance from subaccounts; they check the
account's exclusive balance only. You can assert the balance including subaccounts by writing =* or ==*,
eg:

2019/1/1
equity:opening balances
checking:a 5
checking:b 5
checking 1 ==* 11

Assertions and virtual postings
Balance assertions always consider both real and virtual postings; they are not affected by the --real/-R
flag or real: query.

Assertions and auto postings
Balance assertions are affected by the --auto flag, which generates auto postings, which can alter
account balances. Because auto postings are optional in hledger, accounts affected by them effectively
have two balances. But balance assertions can only test one or the other of these. So to avoid making
fragile assertions, either:

• assert the balance calculated with --auto, and always use --auto with that file

• or assert the balance calculated without --auto, and never use --auto with that file

• or avoid balance assertions on accounts affected by auto postings (or avoid auto postings entirely).

Assertions and precision
Balance assertions compare the exactly calculated amounts, which are not always what is shown by reports.
Eg a commodity directive may limit the display precision, but this will not affect balance assertions.
Balance assertion failure messages show exact amounts.

Posting comments
Text following ;, at the end of a posting line, and/or on indented lines immediately below it, form
comments for that posting. They are reproduced by print but otherwise ignored, except they may contain
tags, which are not ignored.

2012-01-01
expenses 1 ; a comment for posting 1
assets
; a comment for posting 2
; a second comment line for posting 2

Tags
Tags are a way to add extra labels or labelled data to transactions, postings, or accounts, which you can
then search or pivot on.

They are written as a word (optionally hyphenated) immediately followed by a full colon, in a transaction
or posting or account directive's comment. (This is an exception to the usual rule that things in
comments are ignored.) Eg, here four different tags are recorded: one on the checking account, two on
the transaction, and one on the expenses posting:

account assets:checking ; accounttag:

2017/1/16 bought groceries ; transactiontag-1:
; transactiontag-2:
assets:checking $-1
expenses:food $1 ; postingtag:

Postings also inherit tags from their transaction and their account. And transactions also acquire tags
from their postings (and postings' accounts). So in the example above, the expenses posting effectively
has all four tags (by inheriting from account and transaction), and the transaction also has all four
tags (by acquiring from the expenses posting).

You can list tag names with hledger tags [NAMEREGEX], or match by tag name with a tag:NAMEREGEX query.

Tag values
Tags can have a value, which is any text after the colon up until a comma or end of line (with
surrounding whitespace removed). Note this means that hledger tag values can not contain commas. Eg in
the following posting, the three tags' values are "value 1", "value 2", and "" (empty) respectively:

expenses:food $10 ; foo, tag1: value 1 , tag2:value 2, bar tag3: , baz

Note that tags can be repeated, and are additive rather than overriding: when the same tag name is seen
again with a new value, the new name:value pair is added to the tags. (It is not possible to override a
tag's value or remove a tag.)

You can list a tag's values with hledger tags TAGNAME --values, or match by tag value with a
tag:NAMEREGEX=VALUEREGEX query.

Directives
Besides transactions, there is something else you can put in a journal file: directives. These are
declarations, beginning with a keyword, that modify hledger's behaviour. Some directives can have more
specific subdirectives, indented below them. hledger's directives are similar to Ledger's in many cases,
but there are also many differences. Directives are not required, but can be useful. Here are the main
directives:

purpose directive
──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
READING DATA:
Rewrite account names alias
Comment out sections of the file comment
Declare file's decimal mark, to help decimal-mark
parse amounts accurately
Include other data files include
GENERATING DATA:
Generate recurring transactions or ~
budget goals
Generate extra postings on existing =
transactions
CHECKING FOR ERRORS:
Define valid entities to provide more account, commodity, payee, tag
error checking
REPORTING:
Declare accounts' type and display order account
Declare commodity display styles commodity
Declare market prices P

Directives and multiple files
Directives vary in their scope, ie which journal entries and which input files they affect. Most often,
a directive will affect the following entries and included files if any, until the end of the current
file - and no further. You might find this inconvenient! For example, alias directives do not affect
parent or sibling files. But there are usually workarounds; for example, put alias directives in your
top-most file, before including other files.

The restriction, though it may be annoying at first, is in a good cause; it allows reports to be stable
and deterministic, independent of the order of input. Without it, reports could show different numbers
depending on the order of -f options, or the positions of include directives in your files.

Directive effects
Here are all hledger's directives, with their effects and scope summarised - nine main directives, plus
four others which we consider non-essential:

directive what it does ends
at
file
end?
────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
account Declares an account, for checking all entries in all files; and N
its display order and type. Subdirectives: any text, ignored.
alias Rewrites account names, in following entries until end of Y
current file or end aliases. Command line equivalent: --alias
comment Ignores part of the journal file, until end of current file or Y
end comment.
commodity Declares up to four things: 1. a commodity symbol, for checking N,Y,N,N
all amounts in all files 2. the decimal mark for parsing
amounts of this commodity, in the following entries until end of
current file (if there is no decimal-mark directive) 3. and the
display style for amounts of this commodity 4. which is also
the precision to use for balanced-transaction checking in this
commodity. Takes precedence over D. Subdirectives: format
(Ledger-compatible syntax). Command line equivalent:
-c/--commodity-style
decimal- Declares the decimal mark, for parsing amounts of all Y
mark commodities in following entries until next decimal-mark or end
of current file. Included files can override. Takes precedence
over commodity and D.
include Includes entries and directives from another file, as if they N
were written inline. Command line alternative: multiple
-f/--file
payee Declares a payee name, for checking all entries in all files. N
P Declares the market price of a commodity on some date, for value N
reports.
~ (tilde) Declares a periodic transaction rule that generates future N
transactions with --forecast and budget goals with balance
--budget.
Other
syntax:
apply Prepends a common parent account to all account names, in Y
account following entries until end of current file or end apply
account.
D Sets a default commodity to use for no-symbol amounts;and, if Y,Y,N,N
there is no commodity directive for this commodity: its decimal
mark, balancing precision, and display style, as above.
Y Sets a default year to use for any yearless dates, in following Y
entries until end of current file.
= Declares an auto posting rule that generates extra postings on partly
(equals) matched transactions with --auto, in current, parent, and child
files (but not sibling files, see #1212).
Other Other directives from Ledger's file format are accepted but
Ledger ignored.
directives

account directive
account directives can be used to declare accounts (ie, the places that amounts are transferred from and
to). Though not required, these declarations can provide several benefits:

• They can document your intended chart of accounts, providing a reference.

• In strict mode, they restrict which accounts may be posted to by transactions, which helps detect
typos.

• They control account display order in reports, allowing non-alphabetic sorting (eg Revenues to appear
above Expenses).

• They help with account name completion (in hledger add, hledger-web, hledger-iadd, ledger-mode, etc.)

• They can store additional account information as comments, or as tags which can be used to filter or
pivot reports.

• They can help hledger know your accounts' types (asset, liability, equity, revenue, expense), affecting
reports like balancesheet and incomestatement.

They are written as the word account followed by a hledger-style account name, eg:

account assets:bank:checking

Note, however, that accounts declared in account directives are not allowed to have surrounding brackets
and parentheses, unlike accounts used in postings. So the following journal will not parse:

account (assets:bank:checking)

Account comments
Text following two or more spaces and ; at the end of an account directive line, and/or following ; on
indented lines immediately below it, form comments for that account. They are ignored except they may
contain tags, which are not ignored.

The two-space requirement for same-line account comments is because ; is allowed in account names.

account assets:bank:checking ; same-line comment, at least 2 spaces before the semicolon
; next-line comment
; some tags - type:A, acctnum:12345

Account subdirectives
Ledger-style indented subdirectives are also accepted, but currently ignored:

account assets:bank:checking
format subdirective is ignored

Account error checking
By default, accounts need not be declared; they come into existence when a posting references them. This
is convenient, but it means hledger can't warn you when you mis-spell an account name in the journal.
Usually you'll find that error later, as an extra account in balance reports, or an incorrect balance
when reconciling.

In strict mode, enabled with the -s/--strict flag, hledger will report an error if any transaction uses
an account name that has not been declared by an account directive. Some notes:

• The declaration is case-sensitive; transactions must use the correct account name capitalisation.

• The account directive's scope is "whole file and below" (see directives). This means it affects all of
the current file, and any files it includes, but not parent or sibling files. The position of account
directives within the file does not matter, though it's usual to put them at the top.

• Accounts can only be declared in journal files, but will affect included files of all types.

• It's currently not possible to declare "all possible subaccounts" with a wildcard; every account posted
to must be declared.

Account display order
The order in which account directives are written influences the order in which accounts appear in
reports, hledger-ui, hledger-web etc. By default accounts appear in alphabetical order, but if you add
these account directives to the journal file:

account assets
account liabilities
account equity
account revenues
account expenses

those accounts will be displayed in declaration order:

$ hledger accounts -1
assets
liabilities
equity
revenues
expenses

Any undeclared accounts are displayed last, in alphabetical order.

Sorting is done at each level of the account tree, within each group of sibling accounts under the same
parent. And currently, this directive:

account other:zoo

would influence the position of zoo among other's subaccounts, but not the position of other among the
top-level accounts. This means:

• you will sometimes declare parent accounts (eg account other above) that you don't intend to post to,
just to customize their display order

• sibling accounts stay together (you couldn't display x:y in between a:b and a:c).

Account types
hledger knows that accounts come in several types: assets, liabilities, expenses and so on. This enables
easy reports like balancesheet and incomestatement, and filtering by account type with the type: query.

As a convenience, hledger will detect these account types automatically if you are using common english-
language top-level account names (described below). But generally we recommend you declare types
explicitly, by adding a type: tag to your top-level account directives. Subaccounts will inherit the
type of their parent. The tag's value should be one of the five main account types:

• A or Asset (things you own)

• L or Liability (things you owe)

• E or Equity (investment/ownership; balanced counterpart of assets & liabilities)

• R or Revenue (what you received money from, AKA income; technically part of Equity)

• X or Expense (what you spend money on; technically part of Equity)

or, it can be (these are used less often):

• C or Cash (a subtype of Asset, indicating liquid assets for the cashflow report)

• V or Conversion (a subtype of Equity, for conversions (see COST REPORTING).)

Here is a typical set of account type declarations:

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

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

account equity:conversion ; type: V

Here are some tips for working with account types.

• The rules for inferring types from account names are as follows. These are just a convenience that
sometimes help new users get going; if they don't work for you, just ignore them and declare your
account types. See also Regular expressions.

If account's name contains this (CI) regular expression: | its type is:
--------------------------------------------------------------------|-------------
^assets?(:.+)?:(cash|bank|che(ck|que?)(ing)?|savings?|current)(:|$) | Cash
^assets?(:|$) | Asset
^(debts?|liabilit(y|ies))(:|$) | Liability
^equity:(trad(e|ing)|conversion)s?(:|$) | Conversion
^equity(:|$) | Equity
^(income|revenue)s?(:|$) | Revenue
^expenses?(:|$) | Expense

• If you declare any account types, it's a good idea to declare an account for all of the account types,
because a mixture of declared and name-inferred types can disrupt certain reports.

• Certain uses of account aliases can disrupt account types. See Rewriting accounts > Aliases and
account types.

• As mentioned above, subaccounts will inherit a type from their parent account. More precisely, an
account's type is decided by the first of these that exists:

1. A type: declaration for this account.

2. A type: declaration in the parent accounts above it, preferring the nearest.

3. An account type inferred from this account's name.

4. An account type inferred from a parent account's name, preferring the nearest parent.

5. Otherwise, it will have no type.

• For troubleshooting, you can list accounts and their types with:

$ hledger accounts --types [ACCTPAT] [-DEPTH] [type:TYPECODES]

alias directive
You can define account alias rules which rewrite your account names, or parts of them, before generating
reports. This can be useful for:

• expanding shorthand account names to their full form, allowing easier data entry and a less verbose
journal

• adapting old journals to your current chart of accounts

• experimenting with new account organisations, like a new hierarchy

• combining two accounts into one, eg to see their sum or difference on one line

• customising reports

Account aliases also rewrite account names in account directives. They do not affect account names being
entered via hledger add or hledger-web.

Account aliases are very powerful. They are generally easy to use correctly, but you can also generate
invalid account names with them; more on this below.

CSV

       hledger  can  read  CSV  files  (Character Separated Value - usually comma, semicolon, or tab) containing
       dated records, automatically converting each record into a transaction.

       (To learn about writing CSV, see CSV output.)

       For best error messages when reading CSV/TSV/SSV files, make sure they have a corresponding .csv, .tsv or
       .ssv file extension or use a hledger file prefix (see File Extension below).

       Each CSV file must be described by a corresponding rules file.
       This contains rules describing the CSV data (header line,  fields  layout,  date  format  etc.),  how  to
       construct  hledger transactions from it, and how to categorise transactions based on description or other
       attributes.

       By default hledger looks for a rules file named like the CSV file with an extra .rules extension, in  the
       same  directory.   Eg  when  asked  to  read foo/FILE.csv, hledger looks for foo/FILE.csv.rules.  You can
       specify a different rules file with the --rules-file option.  If no rules file  is  found,  hledger  will
       create a sample rules file, which you'll need to adjust.

       At minimum, the rules file must identify the date and amount fields, and often it also specifies the date
       format and how many header lines there are.  Here's a simple CSV file and a rules file for it:

              Date, Description, Id, Amount
              12/11/2019, Foo, 123, 10.23

              # basic.csv.rules
              skip         1
              fields       date, description, , amount
              date-format  %d/%m/%Y

              $ hledger print -f basic.csv
              2019-11-12 Foo
                  expenses:unknown           10.23
                  income:unknown            -10.23

       There's  an  introductory  Importing CSV data tutorial on hledger.org, and more CSV rules examples below,
       and a larger collection at https://github.com/simonmichael/hledger/tree/master/examples/csv.

   CSV rules cheatsheet
       The following kinds of rule can appear in the rules file, in any order.  (Blank lines and lines beginning
       with # or ; or * are ignored.)

       source                     optionally declare which  file  to  read  data
                                  from
       separator                  declare   the   field  separator,  instead  of
                                  relying on file extension
       skip                       skip one or more header lines at start of file
       date-format                declare how to parse CSV dates/date-times
       timezone                   declare the time zone of ambiguous  CSV  date-
                                  times
       newest-first               improve  txn  order  when:  there are multiple
                                  records, newest first, all with the same date
       intra-day-reversed         improve txn order when: same-day txns  are  in
                                  opposite order to the overall file
       decimal-mark               declare  the decimal mark used in CSV amounts,
                                  when ambiguous
       fields list                name  CSV  fields  for  easy  reference,   and
                                  optionally  assign  their  values  to  hledger
                                  fields
       Field assignment           assign a CSV value or interpolated text  value
                                  to a hledger field
       if block                   conditionally assign values to hledger fields,
                                  or skip a record or end (skip rest of file)
       if table                   conditionally assign values to hledger fields,
                                  using compact syntax
       balance-type               select      which      type     of     balance
                                  assertions/assignments to generate
       include                    inline another CSV rules file

       Working with CSV tips can be found below, including How CSV rules are evaluated.

   source
       If you tell hledger to read a csv file with -f foo.csv, it will look for rules in foo.csv.rules.  Or, you
       can tell it to read the rules file, with -f foo.csv.rules, and it will look for data  in  foo.csv  (since
       1.30).

       These  are mostly equivalent, but the second method provides some extra features.  For one, the data file
       can be missing, without causing an error; it is just considered empty.  And, you can specify a  different
       data file by adding a "source" rule:

              source ./Checking1.csv

       If  you  specify  just  a  file  name  with  no path, hledger will look for it in your system's downloads
       directory (~/Downloads, currently):

              source Checking1.csv

       And if you specify a glob pattern, hledger will read the most recent of the matched  files  (useful  with
       repeated downloads):

              source Checking1*.csv

       See also "Working with CSV > Reading files specified by rule".

   separator
       You  can  use  the  separator  rule to read other kinds of character-separated data.  The argument is any
       single separator character, or the words tab or space (case insensitive).  Eg, for comma-separated values
       (CSV):

              separator ,

       or for semicolon-separated values (SSV):

              separator ;

       or for tab-separated values (TSV):

              separator TAB

       If the input file has a .csv, .ssv or .tsv file extension (or a csv:, ssv:, tsv: prefix), the appropriate
       separator will be inferred automatically, and you won't need this rule.

   skip
              skip N

       The word skip followed by a number (or no number, meaning 1) tells hledger to ignore this many  non-empty
       lines  at  the  start  of the input data.  You'll need this whenever your CSV data contains header lines.
       Note, empty and blank lines are skipped automatically, so you don't need to count those.

       skip has a second meaning: it can be used inside if blocks (described below), to skip one or more records
       whenever the condition is true.  Records skipped in this way are ignored, except they are still  required
       to be valid CSV.

   date-format
              date-format DATEFMT

       This  is  a helper for the date (and date2) fields.  If your CSV dates are not formatted like YYYY-MM-DD,
       YYYY/MM/DD or YYYY.MM.DD, you'll need to add a date-format rule describing  them  with  a  strptime-style
       date      parsing      pattern     -     see     https://hackage.haskell.org/package/time/docs/Data-Time-
       Format.html#v:formatTime.  The pattern must parse the CSV date value completely.  Some examples:

              # MM/DD/YY
              date-format %m/%d/%y

              # D/M/YYYY
              # The - makes leading zeros optional.
              date-format %-d/%-m/%Y

              # YYYY-Mmm-DD
              date-format %Y-%h-%d

              # M/D/YYYY HH:MM AM some other junk
              # Note the time and junk must be fully parsed, though only the date is used.
              date-format %-m/%-d/%Y %l:%M %p some other junk

   timezone
              timezone TIMEZONE

       When CSV contains date-times that are implicitly in some time zone other than yours,  but  containing  no
       explicit  time zone information, you can use this rule to declare the CSV's native time zone, which helps
       prevent off-by-one dates.

       When the CSV date-times do contain time zone information, you don't need this rule; instead,  use  %Z  in
       date-format (or %z, %EZ, %Ez; see the formatTime link above).

       In  either of these cases, hledger will do a time-zone-aware conversion, localising the CSV date-times to
       your  current  system  time  zone.   If  you  prefer  to  localise  to  some  other  time  zone,  eg  for
       reproducibility, you can (on unix at least) set the output timezone with the TZ environment variable, eg:

              $ TZ=-1000 hledger print -f foo.csv  # or TZ=-1000 hledger import foo.csv

       timezone  currently  does not understand timezone names, except "UTC", "GMT", "EST", "EDT", "CST", "CDT",
       "MST", "MDT", "PST", or "PDT".  For others, use numeric format: +HHMM or -HHMM.

   newest-first
       hledger tries to ensure that the generated transactions will be ordered chronologically, including intra-
       day transactions.  Usually it can auto-detect how the CSV records are ordered.  But if it encounters  CSV
       where  all  records  are  on the same date, it assumes that the records are oldest first.  If in fact the
       CSV's records are normally newest first, like:

              2022-10-01, txn 3...
              2022-10-01, txn 2...
              2022-10-01, txn 1...

       you can add the newest-first rule to help hledger generate the transactions in correct order.

              # same-day CSV records are newest first
              newest-first

   intra-day-reversed
       CSV records for each day are sometimes ordered in reverse compared to the overall date order.   Eg,  here
       dates are newest first, but the transactions on each date are oldest first:

              2022-10-02, txn 3...
              2022-10-02, txn 4...
              2022-10-01, txn 1...
              2022-10-01, txn 2...

       In  this  situation, add the intra-day-reversed rule, and hledger will compensate, improving the order of
       transactions.

              # transactions within each day are reversed with respect to the overall date order
              intra-day-reversed

   decimal-mark
              decimal-mark .

       or:

              decimal-mark ,

       hledger automatically accepts either period or comma as a decimal mark when parsing numbers (cf Amounts).
       However if any numbers in the CSV contain digit group marks,  such  as  thousand-separating  commas,  you
       should declare the decimal mark explicitly with this rule, to avoid misparsed numbers.

   fields list
              fields FIELDNAME1, FIELDNAME2, ...

       A  fields list (the word fields followed by comma-separated field names) is optional, but convenient.  It
       does two things:

       1. It names the CSV field in each column.  This can be convenient if you are referencing  them  in  other
          rules, so you can say %SomeField instead of remembering %13.

       2. Whenever you use one of the special hledger field names (described below), it assigns the CSV value in
          this  position to that hledger field.  This is the quickest way to populate hledger's fields and build
          a transaction.

       Here's an example that says "use the 1st, 2nd and 4th fields as the transaction's date,  description  and
       amount; name the last two fields for later reference; and ignore the others":

              fields date, description, , amount, , , somefield, anotherfield

       In a fields list, the separator is always comma; it is unrelated to the CSV file's separator.  Also:

       • There must be least two items in the list (at least one comma).

       • Field names may not contain spaces.  Spaces before/after field names are optional.

       • Field names may contain _ (underscore) or - (hyphen).

       • Fields you don't care about can be given a dummy name or an empty name.

       If the CSV contains column headings, it's convenient to use these for your field names, suitably modified
       (eg lower-cased with spaces replaced by underscores).

       Sometimes  you  may  want  to  alter a CSV field name to avoid assigning to a hledger field with the same
       name.  Eg you could call the CSV's "balance" field balance_ to avoid directly setting  hledger's  balance
       field (and generating a balance assertion).

   Field assignment
              HLEDGERFIELD FIELDVALUE

       Field  assignments  are  the  more flexible way to assign CSV values to hledger fields.  They can be used
       instead of or in addition to a fields list (see above).

       To assign a value to a hledger field, write the field name (any of  the  standard  hledger  field/pseudo-
       field  names,  defined  below),  a space, followed by a text value on the same line.  This text value may
       interpolate CSV fields, referenced by their 1-based position in the CSV record (%N), or by the name  they
       were given in the fields list (%CSVFIELD).

       Some examples:

              # set the amount to the 4th CSV field, with " USD" appended
              amount %4 USD

              # combine three fields to make a comment, containing note: and date: tags
              comment note: %somefield - %anotherfield, date: %1

       Tips:

       • Interpolation strips outer whitespace (so a CSV value like " 1 " becomes 1 when interpolated) (#1051).

       • Interpolations  always  refer to a CSV field - you can't interpolate a hledger field.  (See Referencing
         other fields below).

   Field names
       Note the two kinds of field names mentioned here, and used only in hledger CSV rules files:

       1. CSV field names (CSVFIELD in these docs): you can optionally name the CSV columns for  easy  reference
          (since  hledger  doesn't  yet  automatically  recognise  column  headings  in  a CSV file), by writing
          arbitrary names in a fields list, eg:

                  fields When, What, Some_Id, Net, Total, Foo, Bar

       2. Special hledger field names (HLEDGERFIELD in these docs): you must set  at  least  some  of  these  to
          generate  the  hledger transaction from a CSV record, by writing them as the left hand side of a field
          assignment, eg:

                  date        %When
                  code        %Some_Id
                  description %What
                  comment     %Foo %Bar
                  amount1     $ %Total

           or directly in a fields list:

                  fields date, description, code, , amount1, Foo, Bar
                  currency $
                  comment  %Foo %Bar

       Here are all the special hledger field names available, and what happens when you assign values to them:

   date field
       Assigning to date sets the transaction date.

   date2 field
       date2 sets the transaction's secondary date, if any.

   status field
       status sets the transaction's status, if any.

   code field
       code sets the transaction's code, if any.

   description field
       description sets the transaction's description, if any.

   comment field
       comment sets the transaction's comment, if any.

       commentN, where N is a number, sets the Nth posting's comment.

       You can assign multi-line comments by writing literal \n in the code.  A comment starting  with  \n  will
       begin on a new line.

       Comments can contain tags, as usual.

   account field
       Assigning  to  accountN,  where  N  is 1 to 99, sets the account name of the Nth posting, and causes that
       posting to be generated.

       Most often there are two postings, so you'll want to set account1 and account2.   Typically  account1  is
       associated with the CSV file, and is set once with a top-level assignment, while account2 is set based on
       each transaction's description, in conditional rules.

       If  a posting's account name is left unset but its amount is set (see below), a default account name will
       be chosen (like "expenses:unknown" or "income:unknown").

   amount field
       Amount setting can get a bit complex.  Assigning to amount is sufficient  for  simple  transactions,  but
       there are four field name variants you can use for different situations:

       • amountN sets a specific posting's amount from one CSV field or arbitrary value.
       Assigning  to  amountN sets the amount of the Nth posting - and also causes that posting to be generated.
       N is most often 1 or 2 but can go up to 99, potentially generating a  99-posting  transaction.   (Posting
       numbers  don't  have  to  be consecutive; higher posting numbers can sometimes be useful with conditional
       rules, to ensure a certain ordering of postings.)

       • amountN-in/-out sets a specific posting's amount from two CSV fields.
       When the amount is  provided  as  two  CSV  fields  -  "Debit"/"Credit",  "Deposit"/"Withdrawal",  "Money
       In"/"Money  Out" or similar - assign those fields to amountN-in and amountN-out respectively (or possibly
       the other way round, depending on signs).  This will set the Nth posting's amount to whichever of the two
       CSV field values is non-zero.  Some notes:

         • Don't mix amountN and amountN-in/-out.  When you have one CSV amount field, use  amountN.   When  you
           have two CSV amount fields, use amountN-in/amountN-out.

         • amountN-in and amountN-out are always used together, as a pair.  Assign to both of them.

         • They  do  not  generate two separate postings; rather, they generate the Nth posting's single amount,
           from the value found in one or other of the two CSV fields.

         • In each record, at least one of the two CSV fields must contain a zero amount or be empty.

         • hledger assumes the two CSV fields contain unsigned numbers, and it  will  automatically  negate  the
           -out amount.

         • This  variant  can be convenient, but it doesn't handle every two-amount-field situation; if you need
           more flexibility, use an if rule (see "Setting amounts" below).

       The other two variants are older and considered legacy syntax, but can still be convenient sometimes:

       • amount sets posting 1 and 2's amounts from one CSV field or value.
       Assigning to amount, with no posting number,

         • sets posting 1's amount (like amount1)

         • sets posting 2's amount to the same amount but with opposite sign; and also converts it to cost if it
           has a cost price

         • can be overridden by amount1 and/or amount2 assignments.  (This helps with incremental  migration  of
           old rules files to the newer syntax.)

       • amount-in/-out sets posting 1 and 2's amounts from two CSV fields.
       Assigning amount-in and amount-out, with no posting numbers, to two CSV fields reads whichever of the two
       values is non-zero as the amount, and then sets the first two posting amounts as above.

       We recommend using only one of these variants within a rules file, rather than mixing them.  And remember
       that  a fields list can also do assignments, so eg naming a CSV field "amount" counts as an assignment to
       amount; if you don't want that, call it something else, like "amount_".

       In addition to this section, please see also the tips beginning at "Working with CSV >  Setting  amounts"
       below.

   currency field
       currency  sets  a currency symbol, to be prepended to all postings' amounts.  You can use this if the CSV
       amounts do not have a currency symbol, eg if it is in a separate column.

       currencyN prepends a currency symbol to just the Nth posting's amount.

   balance field
       balanceN sets a balance assertion amount (or if the posting amount is left empty, a  balance  assignment)
       on posting N.

       balance is a compatibility spelling for hledger <1.17; it is equivalent to balance1.

       You can adjust the type of assertion/assignment with the balance-type rule (see below).

       See Tips below for more about setting amounts and currency.

   if block
       Rules  can  be applied conditionally, depending on patterns in the CSV data.  This allows flexibility; in
       particular, it is how you can categorise transactions, selecting an appropriate  account  name  based  on
       their  description  (for example).  There are two ways to write conditional rules: "if blocks", described
       here, and "if tables", described below.

       An if block is the word if and one or more "matcher" expressions (can be a word or phrase), one per line,
       starting either on the same or next line; followed by one or more indented rules.  Eg,

              if MATCHER
               RULE

       or

              if
              MATCHER
              MATCHER
              MATCHER
               RULE
               RULE

       If any of the matchers succeeds, all of the indented rules will  be  applied.   They  are  usually  field
       assignments, but the following special rules may also be used within an if block:

       • skip - skips the matched CSV record (generating no transaction from it)

       • end - skips the rest of the current CSV file.

       Some examples:

              # if the record contains "groceries", set account2 to "expenses:groceries"
              if groceries
               account2 expenses:groceries

              # if the record contains any of these phrases, set account2 and a transaction comment as shown
              if
              monthly service fee
              atm transaction fee
              banking thru software
               account2 expenses:business:banking
               comment  XXX deductible ? check it

              # if an empty record is seen (assuming five fields), ignore the rest of the CSV file
              if ,,,,
               end

   Matchers
       There are two kinds:

       1. A  record  matcher is a word or single-line text fragment or regular expression (REGEX), which hledger
          will try to match case-insensitively anywhere within the CSV record.
       Eg: whole foods

       2. A field matcher is preceded with a percent sign and CSV field name (%CSVFIELD  REGEX).   hledger  will
          try to match these just within the named CSV field.
       Eg: %date 2023

       The  regular  expression is (as usual in hledger) a POSIX extended regular expression, that also supports
       GNU word boundaries (\b, \B, \<, \>), and nothing else.  If you have trouble, see  "Regular  expressions"
       in the hledger manual (https://hledger.org/hledger.html#regular-expressions).

       With  record matchers, it's important to know that the record matched is not the original CSV record, but
       a modified one: separators will be converted to commas, and enclosing double quotes  (but  not  enclosing
       whitespace) are removed.  So for example, when reading an SSV file, if the original record was:

              2023-01-01; "Acme, Inc.";  1,000

       the regex would see, and try to match, this modified record text:

              2023-01-01,Acme, Inc.,  1,000

       When an if block has multiple matchers, they are combined as follows:

       • By default they are OR'd (any one of them can match)

       • When  a  matcher is preceded by ampersand (&) it will be AND'ed with the previous matcher (both of them
         must match).

       There's not yet an easy syntax to negate a matcher.

   if table
       "if tables" are an alternative to if blocks; they can express many matchers and field  assignments  in  a
       more compact tabular format, like this:

              if,HLEDGERFIELD1,HLEDGERFIELD2,...
              MATCHERA,VALUE1,VALUE2,...
              MATCHERB,VALUE1,VALUE2,...
              MATCHERC,VALUE1,VALUE2,...
              <empty line>

       The first character after if is taken to be the separator for the rest of the table.  It should be a non-
       alphanumeric  character  like  ,  or  |  that  does  not appear anywhere else in the table.  (Note: it is
       unrelated to the CSV file's separator.)  Whitespace can be used in the matcher lines for readability, but
       not in the if line currently.  The table must be terminated by an empty line (or end of file).  Each line
       must contain the same number of separators; empty values are allowed.

       The above means: try all of the matchers; whenever a matcher succeeds, assign all of the values  on  that
       line  to  the  corresponding hledger fields; later lines can overrider earlier ones.  It is equivalent to
       this sequence of if blocks:

              if MATCHERA
                HLEDGERFIELD1 VALUE1
                HLEDGERFIELD2 VALUE2
                ...

              if MATCHERB
                HLEDGERFIELD1 VALUE1
                HLEDGERFIELD2 VALUE2
                ...

              if MATCHERC
                HLEDGERFIELD1 VALUE1
                HLEDGERFIELD2 VALUE2
                ...

       Example:

              if,account2,comment
              atm transaction fee,expenses:business:banking,deductible? check it
              %description groceries,expenses:groceries,
              2023/01/12.*Plumbing LLC,expenses:house:upkeep,emergency plumbing call-out

   balance-type
       Balance assertions generated by assigning to balanceN are of the simple = type by  default,  which  is  a
       single-commodity,  subaccount-excluding  assertion.   You may find the subaccount-including variants more
       useful, eg if you have created some virtual subaccounts of checking to  help  with  budgeting.   You  can
       select a different type of assertion with the balance-type rule:

              # balance assertions will consider all commodities and all subaccounts
              balance-type ==*

       Here are the balance assertion types for quick reference:

              =    single commodity, exclude subaccounts
              =*   single commodity, include subaccounts
              ==   multi commodity,  exclude subaccounts
              ==*  multi commodity,  include subaccounts

   include
              include RULESFILE

       This  includes  the contents of another CSV rules file at this point.  RULESFILE is an absolute file path
       or a path relative to the current file's directory.  This can be useful for sharing common rules  between
       several rules files, eg:

              # someaccount.csv.rules

              ## someaccount-specific rules
              fields   date,description,amount
              account1 assets:someaccount
              account2 expenses:misc

              ## common rules
              include categorisation.rules

   Working with CSV
       Some tips:

   Rapid feedback
       It's  a  good  idea  to  get rapid feedback while creating/troubleshooting CSV rules.  Here's a good way,
       using entr from eradman.com/entrproject:

              $ ls foo.csv* | entr bash -c 'echo ----; hledger -f foo.csv print desc:SOMEDESC'

       A desc: query (eg) is used to select just one, or a few, transactions of interest.  "bash -c" is used  to
       run multiple commands, so we can echo a separator each time the command re-runs, making it easier to read
       the output.

   Valid CSV
       Note  that  hledger will only accept valid CSV conforming to RFC 4180, and equivalent SSV and TSV formats
       (like RFC 4180 but with semicolon or tab as separators).  This means, eg:

       • Values may be enclosed in double quotes, or not.  Enclosing in  single  quotes  is  not  allowed.   (Eg
         'A','B' is rejected.)

       • When  values are enclosed in double quotes, spaces outside the quotes are not allowed.  (Eg "A", "B" is
         rejected.)

       • When values are not enclosed in quotes, they may not contain double quotes.  (Eg A"A, B is rejected.)

       If your CSV/SSV/TSV is not valid in this sense, you'll need to transform it before reading with  hledger.
       Try using sed, or a more permissive CSV parser like python's csv lib.

   File Extension
       To  help hledger choose the CSV file reader and show the right error messages (and choose the right field
       separator character by default), it's best if CSV/SSV/TSV files are named  with  a  .csv,  .ssv  or  .tsv
       filename extension.  (More about this at Data formats.)

       When  reading  files  with  the  "wrong"  extension, you can ensure the CSV reader (and the default field
       separator) by prefixing the file path with csv:, ssv: or tsv:: Eg:

              $ hledger -f ssv:foo.dat print

       You can also override the default field separator with a separator rule if needed.

   Reading CSV from standard input
       You'll need the file format prefix when reading CSV from stdin also, since hledger assumes journal format
       by default.  Eg:

              $ cat foo.dat | hledger -f ssv:- print

   Reading multiple CSV files
       If you use  multiple  -f  options  to  read  multiple  CSV  files  at  once,  hledger  will  look  for  a
       correspondingly-named  rules  file for each CSV file.  But if you use the --rules-file option, that rules
       file will be used for all the CSV files.

   Reading files specified by rule
       Instead of specifying a CSV file in the command line, you can specify a rules  file,  as  in  hledger  -f
       foo.csv.rules  CMD.  By default this will read data from foo.csv in the same directory, but you can add a
       source rule to specify a different data file, perhaps located in your web browser's download directory.

       This feature was added in hledger 1.30, so you won't see it in most CSV rules  examples.   But  it  helps
       remove some of the busywork of managing CSV downloads.  Most of your financial institutions's default CSV
       filenames  are  different  and  can  be  recognised by a glob pattern.  So you can put a rule like source
       Checking1*.csv in foo-checking.csv.rules, and then periodically follow a workflow like:

       1. Download CSV from Foo's website, using your browser's defaults

       2. Run hledger import foo-checking.csv.rules to import any new transactions

       After import, you can: discard the CSV, or leave it where it is  for  a  while,  or  move  it  into  your
       archives,  as  you  prefer.   If  you  do  nothing,  next  time  your  browser  will  save something like
       Checking1-2.csv, and hledger will use that because of the * wild card and because it is the most recent.

   Valid transactions
       After reading a CSV file, hledger post-processes and validates the generated journal entries as it  would
       for a journal file - balancing them, applying balance assignments, and canonicalising amount styles.  Any
       errors at this stage will be reported in the usual way, displaying the problem entry.

       There  is  one  exception:  balance  assertions,  if  you have generated them, will not be checked, since
       normally these will work only when the CSV data is part of the main journal.  If you  do  need  to  check
       balance assertions generated from CSV right away, pipe into another hledger:

              $ hledger -f file.csv print | hledger -f- print

   Deduplicating, importing
       When  you  download  a  CSV  file periodically, eg to get your latest bank transactions, the new file may
       overlap with the old one, containing some of the same records.

       The import command will (a) detect the new transactions, and (b) append just those transactions  to  your
       main  journal.   It  is idempotent, so you don't have to remember how many times you ran it or with which
       version of the CSV.  (It keeps state in a hidden .latest.FILE.csv file.)  This  is  the  easiest  way  to
       import CSV data.  Eg:

              # download the latest CSV files, then run this command.
              # Note, no -f flags needed here.
              $ hledger import *.csv [--dry]

       This  method works for most CSV files.  (Where records have a stable chronological order, and new records
       appear only at the new end.)

       A  number  of  other  tools  and  workflows,  hledger-specific  and  otherwise,  exist  for   converting,
       deduplicating, classifying and managing CSV data.  See:

       • https://hledger.org/cookbook.html#setups-and-workflows

       • https://plaintextaccounting.org -> data import/conversion

   Setting amounts
       Continuing from amount field above, here are more tips on handling various amount-setting situations:

       1. If the amount is in a single CSV field:
           a. If its sign indicates direction of flow:
           Assign it to amountN, to set the Nth posting's amount.  N is usually 1 or 2 but can go up to 99.

           b. If another field indicates direction of flow:
           Use one or more conditional rules to set the appropriate amount sign.  Eg:

                  # assume a withdrawal unless Type contains "deposit":
                  amount1  -%Amount
                  if %Type deposit
                    amount1  %Amount

       2. If the amount is in one of two CSV fields (eg Debit and Credit):
           a. If both fields are unsigned:
           Assign  the fields to amountN-in and amountN-out.  This sets posting N's amount to whichever of these
           has a non-zero value.  If it's the -out value, the amount will be negated.

           b. If either field is signed:
           Use a conditional rule to flip the sign when needed.  Eg below, the -out value already  has  a  minus
           sign  so  we  undo  hledger's automatic negating by negating once more (but only if the field is non-
           empty, so that we don't leave a minus sign by itself):

                  fields date, description, amount1-in, amount1-out
                  if %amount1-out [1-9]
                   amount1-out -%amount1-out

           c. If both fields can contain a non-zero value (or both can be empty):
           The -in/-out rules normally choose the value which is non-zero/non-empty.  Some value  pairs  can  be
           ambiguous, such as 1 and none.  For such cases, use conditional rules to help select the amount.  Eg,
           to handle the above you could select the value containing non-zero digits:

                  fields date, description, in, out
                  if %in [1-9]
                   amount1 %in
                  if %out [1-9]
                   amount1 %out

       3. If you want posting 2's amount converted to cost:
       Use the unnumbered amount (or amount-in and amount-out) syntax.

       4. If the CSV has only balance amounts, not transaction amounts:
       Assign  to  balanceN,  to set a balance assignment on the Nth posting, causing the posting's amount to be
       calculated automatically.  balance with no number is equivalent to balance1.  In this  situation  hledger
       is more likely to guess the wrong default account name, so you may need to set that explicitly.

   Amount signs
       There  is  some special handling making it easier to parse and to reverse amount signs.  (This only works
       for whole amounts, not for cost amounts such as COST in amount1  AMT @ COST):

       • If an amount value begins with a plus sign:
       that will be removed: +AMT becomes AMT

       • If an amount value is parenthesised:
       it will be de-parenthesised and sign-flipped: (AMT) becomes -AMT

       • If an amount value has two minus signs (or two sets of parentheses, or a minus sign and parentheses):
       they cancel out and will be removed: --AMT or -(AMT) becomes AMT

       • If an amount value contains just a sign (or just a set of parentheses):
       that is removed, making it an empty value.  "+" or "-" or "()" becomes "".

       It's not possible (without preprocessing the CSV) to set an amount to its absolute value, ie discard  its
       sign.

   Setting currency/commodity
       If the currency/commodity symbol is included in the CSV's amount field(s):

              2023-01-01,foo,$123.00

       you  don't  have  to  do  anything  special  for the commodity symbol, it will be assigned as part of the
       amount.  Eg:

              fields date,description,amount

              2023-01-01 foo
                  expenses:unknown         $123.00
                  income:unknown          $-123.00

       If the currency is provided as a separate CSV field:

              2023-01-01,foo,USD,123.00

       You can assign that to the currency pseudo-field, which has the special effect of  prepending  itself  to
       every amount in the transaction (on the left, with no separating space):

              fields date,description,currency,amount

              2023-01-01 foo
                  expenses:unknown       USD123.00
                  income:unknown        USD-123.00

       Or,  you  can  use a field assignment to construct the amount yourself, with more control.  Eg to put the
       symbol on the right, and separated by a space:

              fields date,description,cur,amt
              amount %amt %cur

              2023-01-01 foo
                  expenses:unknown        123.00 USD
                  income:unknown         -123.00 USD

       Note we used a temporary field name (cur) that is not  currency  -  that  would  trigger  the  prepending
       effect, which we don't want here.

   Amount decimal places
       Like  amounts  in  a  journal  file,  the amounts generated by CSV rules like amount1 influence commodity
       display styles, such as the number of decimal places displayed in reports.

       The original amounts as written in the CSV file do  not  affect  display  style  (because  we  don't  yet
       reliably know their commodity).

   Referencing other fields
       In  field  assignments,  you  can interpolate only CSV fields, not hledger fields.  In the example below,
       there's both a CSV field and a hledger field named amount1, but %amount1 always means the CSV field,  not
       the hledger field:

              # Name the third CSV field "amount1"
              fields date,description,amount1

              # Set hledger's amount1 to the CSV amount1 field followed by USD
              amount1 %amount1 USD

              # Set comment to the CSV amount1 (not the amount1 assigned above)
              comment %amount1

       Here, since there's no CSV amount1 field, %amount1 will produce a literal "amount1":

              fields date,description,csvamount
              amount1 %csvamount USD
              # Can't interpolate amount1 here
              comment %amount1

       When  there  are  multiple  field  assignments to the same hledger field, only the last one takes effect.
       Here, comment's value will be be B, or C if "something" is matched, but never A:

              comment A
              comment B
              if something
               comment C

   How CSV rules are evaluated
       Here's how to think of CSV rules being evaluated (if you really need to).  First,

       • include - all includes are inlined, from top to bottom, depth first.  (At each include point  the  file
         is inlined and scanned for further includes, recursively, before proceeding.)

       Then "global" rules are evaluated, top to bottom.  If a rule is repeated, the last one wins:

       • skip (at top level)

       • date-format

       • newest-first

       • fields - names the CSV fields, optionally sets up initial assignments to hledger fields

       Then for each CSV record in turn:

       • test  all  if blocks.  If any of them contain a end rule, skip all remaining CSV records.  Otherwise if
         any of them contain a skip rule, skip that many CSV records.  If there are multiple matched skip rules,
         the first one wins.

       • collect all field assignments at top  level  and  in  matched  if  blocks.   When  there  are  multiple
         assignments for a field, keep only the last one.

       • compute  a  value  for each hledger field - either the one that was assigned to it (and interpolate the
         %CSVFIELD references), or a default

       • generate a hledger transaction (journal entry) from these values.

       This is all part of the CSV reader, one of several readers hledger can use to parse  input  files.   When
       all  files have been read successfully, the transactions are passed as input to whichever hledger command
       the user specified.

   Well factored rules
       Some things than can help reduce duplication and complexity in rules files:

       • Extracting common rules usable with  multiple  CSV  files  into  a  common.rules,  and  adding  include
         common.rules to each CSV's rules file.

       • Splitting if blocks into smaller if blocks, extracting the frequently used parts.

   CSV rules examples
   Bank of Ireland
       Here's  a  CSV  with  two  amount fields (Debit and Credit), and a balance field, which we can use to add
       balance assertions, which is not necessary but provides extra error checking:

              Date,Details,Debit,Credit,Balance
              07/12/2012,LODGMENT       529898,,10.0,131.21
              07/12/2012,PAYMENT,5,,126

              # bankofireland-checking.csv.rules

              # skip the header line
              skip

              # name the csv fields, and assign some of them as journal entry fields
              fields  date, description, amount-out, amount-in, balance

              # We generate balance assertions by assigning to "balance"
              # above, but you may sometimes need to remove these because:
              #
              # - the CSV balance differs from the true balance,
              #   by up to 0.0000000000005 in my experience
              #
              # - it is sometimes calculated based on non-chronological ordering,
              #   eg when multiple transactions clear on the same day

              # date is in UK/Ireland format
              date-format  %d/%m/%Y

              # set the currency
              currency  EUR

              # set the base account for all txns
              account1  assets:bank:boi:checking

              $ hledger -f bankofireland-checking.csv print
              2012-12-07 LODGMENT       529898
                  assets:bank:boi:checking         EUR10.0 = EUR131.2
                  income:unknown                  EUR-10.0

              2012-12-07 PAYMENT
                  assets:bank:boi:checking         EUR-5.0 = EUR126.0
                  expenses:unknown                  EUR5.0

       The balance assertions don't raise an error above, because we're reading directly from CSV, but they will
       be checked if these entries are imported into a journal file.

   Coinbase
       A simple example with some CSV from Coinbase.  The spot price  is  recorded  using  cost  notation.   The
       legacy amount field name conveniently sets amount 2 (posting 2's amount) to the total cost.

              # Timestamp,Transaction Type,Asset,Quantity Transacted,Spot Price Currency,Spot Price at Transaction,Subtotal,Total (inclusive of fees and/or spread),Fees and/or Spread,Notes
              # 2021-12-30T06:57:59Z,Receive,USDC,100,GBP,0.740000,"","","","Received 100.00 USDC from an external account"

              # coinbase.csv.rules
              skip         1
              fields       Timestamp,Transaction_Type,Asset,Quantity_Transacted,Spot_Price_Currency,Spot_Price_at_Transaction,Subtotal,Total,Fees_Spread,Notes
              date         %Timestamp
              date-format  %Y-%m-%dT%T%Z
              description  %Notes
              account1     assets:coinbase:cc
              amount       %Quantity_Transacted %Asset @ %Spot_Price_at_Transaction %Spot_Price_Currency

              $ hledger print -f coinbase.csv
              2021-12-30 Received 100.00 USDC from an external account
                  assets:coinbase:cc    100 USDC @ 0.740000 GBP
                  income:unknown                 -74.000000 GBP

   Amazon
       Here  we  convert  amazon.com order history, and use an if block to generate a third posting if there's a
       fee.  (In practice you'd probably get this data from your bank instead, but it's an example.)

              "Date","Type","To/From","Name","Status","Amount","Fees","Transaction ID"
              "Jul 29, 2012","Payment","To","Foo.","Completed","$20.00","$0.00","16000000000000DGLNJPI1P9B8DKPVHL"
              "Jul 30, 2012","Payment","To","Adapteva, Inc.","Completed","$25.00","$1.00","17LA58JSKRD4HDGLNJPI1P9B8DKPVHL"

              # amazon-orders.csv.rules

              # skip one header line
              skip 1

              # name the csv fields, and assign the transaction's date, amount and code.
              # Avoided the "status" and "amount" hledger field names to prevent confusion.
              fields date, _, toorfrom, name, amzstatus, amzamount, fees, code

              # how to parse the date
              date-format %b %-d, %Y

              # combine two fields to make the description
              description %toorfrom %name

              # save the status as a tag
              comment     status:%amzstatus

              # set the base account for all transactions
              account1    assets:amazon
              # leave amount1 blank so it can balance the other(s).
              # I'm assuming amzamount excludes the fees, don't remember

              # set a generic account2
              account2    expenses:misc
              amount2     %amzamount
              # and maybe refine it further:
              #include categorisation.rules

              # add a third posting for fees, but only if they are non-zero.
              if %fees [1-9]
               account3    expenses:fees
               amount3     %fees

              $ hledger -f amazon-orders.csv print
              2012-07-29 (16000000000000DGLNJPI1P9B8DKPVHL) To Foo.  ; status:Completed
                  assets:amazon
                  expenses:misc          $20.00

              2012-07-30 (17LA58JSKRD4HDGLNJPI1P9B8DKPVHL) To Adapteva, Inc.  ; status:Completed
                  assets:amazon
                  expenses:misc          $25.00
                  expenses:fees           $1.00

   Paypal
       Here's a real-world rules file for (customised) Paypal CSV, with some Paypal-specific rules, and a second
       rules file included:

              "Date","Time","TimeZone","Name","Type","Status","Currency","Gross","Fee","Net","From Email Address","To Email Address","Transaction ID","Item Title","Item ID","Reference Txn ID","Receipt ID","Balance","Note"
              "10/01/2019","03:46:20","PDT","Calm Radio","Subscription Payment","Completed","USD","-6.99","0.00","-6.99","simon@joyful.com","memberships@calmradio.com","60P57143A8206782E","MONTHLY - $1 for the first 2 Months: Me - Order 99309. Item total: $1.00 USD first 2 months, then $6.99 / Month","","I-R8YLY094FJYR","","-6.99",""
              "10/01/2019","03:46:20","PDT","","Bank Deposit to PP Account ","Pending","USD","6.99","0.00","6.99","","simon@joyful.com","0TU1544T080463733","","","60P57143A8206782E","","0.00",""
              "10/01/2019","08:57:01","PDT","Patreon","PreApproved Payment Bill User Payment","Completed","USD","-7.00","0.00","-7.00","simon@joyful.com","support@patreon.com","2722394R5F586712G","Patreon* Membership","","B-0PG93074E7M86381M","","-7.00",""
              "10/01/2019","08:57:01","PDT","","Bank Deposit to PP Account ","Pending","USD","7.00","0.00","7.00","","simon@joyful.com","71854087RG994194F","Patreon* Membership","","2722394R5F586712G","","0.00",""
              "10/19/2019","03:02:12","PDT","Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.","Subscription Payment","Completed","USD","-2.00","0.00","-2.00","simon@joyful.com","tle@wikimedia.org","K9U43044RY432050M","Monthly donation to the Wikimedia Foundation","","I-R5C3YUS3285L","","-2.00",""
              "10/19/2019","03:02:12","PDT","","Bank Deposit to PP Account ","Pending","USD","2.00","0.00","2.00","","simon@joyful.com","3XJ107139A851061F","","","K9U43044RY432050M","","0.00",""
              "10/22/2019","05:07:06","PDT","Noble Benefactor","Subscription Payment","Completed","USD","10.00","-0.59","9.41","noble@bene.fac.tor","simon@joyful.com","6L8L1662YP1334033","Joyful Systems","","I-KC9VBGY2GWDB","","9.41",""

              # paypal-custom.csv.rules

              # Tips:
              # Export from Activity -> Statements -> Custom -> Activity download
              # Suggested transaction type: "Balance affecting"
              # Paypal's default fields in 2018 were:
              # "Date","Time","TimeZone","Name","Type","Status","Currency","Gross","Fee","Net","From Email Address","To Email Address","Transaction ID","Shipping Address","Address Status","Item Title","Item ID","Shipping and Handling Amount","Insurance Amount","Sales Tax","Option 1 Name","Option 1 Value","Option 2 Name","Option 2 Value","Reference Txn ID","Invoice Number","Custom Number","Quantity","Receipt ID","Balance","Address Line 1","Address Line 2/District/Neighborhood","Town/City","State/Province/Region/County/Territory/Prefecture/Republic","Zip/Postal Code","Country","Contact Phone Number","Subject","Note","Country Code","Balance Impact"
              # This rules file assumes the following more detailed fields, configured in "Customize report fields":
              # "Date","Time","TimeZone","Name","Type","Status","Currency","Gross","Fee","Net","From Email Address","To Email Address","Transaction ID","Item Title","Item ID","Reference Txn ID","Receipt ID","Balance","Note"

              fields date, time, timezone, description_, type, status_, currency, grossamount, feeamount, netamount, fromemail, toemail, code, itemtitle, itemid, referencetxnid, receiptid, balance, note

              skip  1

              date-format  %-m/%-d/%Y

              # ignore some paypal events
              if
              In Progress
              Temporary Hold
              Update to
               skip

              # add more fields to the description
              description %description_ %itemtitle

              # save some other fields as tags
              comment  itemid:%itemid, fromemail:%fromemail, toemail:%toemail, time:%time, type:%type, status:%status_

              # convert to short currency symbols
              if %currency USD
               currency $
              if %currency EUR
               currency E
              if %currency GBP
               currency P

              # generate postings

              # the first posting will be the money leaving/entering my paypal account
              # (negative means leaving my account, in all amount fields)
              account1 assets:online:paypal
              amount1  %netamount

              # the second posting will be money sent to/received from other party
              # (account2 is set below)
              amount2  -%grossamount

              # if there's a fee, add a third posting for the money taken by paypal.
              if %feeamount [1-9]
               account3 expenses:banking:paypal
               amount3  -%feeamount
               comment3 business:

              # choose an account for the second posting

              # override the default account names:
              # if the amount is positive, it's income (a debit)
              if %grossamount ^[^-]
               account2 income:unknown
              # if negative, it's an expense (a credit)
              if %grossamount ^-
               account2 expenses:unknown

              # apply common rules for setting account2 & other tweaks
              include common.rules

              # apply some overrides specific to this csv

              # Transfers from/to bank. These are usually marked Pending,
              # which can be disregarded in this case.
              if
              Bank Account
              Bank Deposit to PP Account
               description %type for %referencetxnid %itemtitle
               account2 assets:bank:wf:pchecking
               account1 assets:online:paypal

              # Currency conversions
              if Currency Conversion
               account2 equity:currency conversion

              # common.rules

              if
              darcs
              noble benefactor
               account2 revenues:foss donations:darcshub
               comment2 business:

              if
              Calm Radio
               account2 expenses:online:apps

              if
              electronic frontier foundation
              Patreon
              wikimedia
              Advent of Code
               account2 expenses:dues

              if Google
               account2 expenses:online:apps
               description google | music

              $ hledger -f paypal-custom.csv  print
              2019-10-01 (60P57143A8206782E) Calm Radio MONTHLY - $1 for the first 2 Months: Me - Order 99309. Item total: $1.00 USD first 2 months, then $6.99 / Month  ; itemid:, fromemail:simon@joyful.com, toemail:memberships@calmradio.com, time:03:46:20, type:Subscription Payment, status:Completed
                  assets:online:paypal          $-6.99 = $-6.99
                  expenses:online:apps           $6.99

              2019-10-01 (0TU1544T080463733) Bank Deposit to PP Account for 60P57143A8206782E  ; itemid:, fromemail:, toemail:simon@joyful.com, time:03:46:20, type:Bank Deposit to PP Account, status:Pending
                  assets:online:paypal               $6.99 = $0.00
                  assets:bank:wf:pchecking          $-6.99

              2019-10-01 (2722394R5F586712G) Patreon Patreon* Membership  ; itemid:, fromemail:simon@joyful.com, toemail:support@patreon.com, time:08:57:01, type:PreApproved Payment Bill User Payment, status:Completed
                  assets:online:paypal          $-7.00 = $-7.00
                  expenses:dues                  $7.00

              2019-10-01 (71854087RG994194F) Bank Deposit to PP Account for 2722394R5F586712G Patreon* Membership  ; itemid:, fromemail:, toemail:simon@joyful.com, time:08:57:01, type:Bank Deposit to PP Account, status:Pending
                  assets:online:paypal               $7.00 = $0.00
                  assets:bank:wf:pchecking          $-7.00

              2019-10-19 (K9U43044RY432050M) Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. Monthly donation to the Wikimedia Foundation  ; itemid:, fromemail:simon@joyful.com, toemail:tle@wikimedia.org, time:03:02:12, type:Subscription Payment, status:Completed
                  assets:online:paypal             $-2.00 = $-2.00
                  expenses:dues                     $2.00
                  expenses:banking:paypal      ; business:

              2019-10-19 (3XJ107139A851061F) Bank Deposit to PP Account for K9U43044RY432050M  ; itemid:, fromemail:, toemail:simon@joyful.com, time:03:02:12, type:Bank Deposit to PP Account, status:Pending
                  assets:online:paypal               $2.00 = $0.00
                  assets:bank:wf:pchecking          $-2.00

              2019-10-22 (6L8L1662YP1334033) Noble Benefactor Joyful Systems  ; itemid:, fromemail:noble@bene.fac.tor, toemail:simon@joyful.com, time:05:07:06, type:Subscription Payment, status:Completed
                  assets:online:paypal                       $9.41 = $9.41
                  revenues:foss donations:darcshub         $-10.00  ; business:
                  expenses:banking:paypal                    $0.59  ; business:

Timeclock

       The time logging format of timeclock.el, as read by hledger.

       hledger can read time logs in timeclock format.  As with Ledger, these are (a subset  of)  timeclock.el's
       format,  containing  clock-in  and clock-out entries as in the example below.  The date is a simple date.
       The time format is HH:MM[:SS][+-ZZZZ].  Seconds and timezone are optional.   The  timezone,  if  present,
       must  be  four  digits  and is ignored (currently the time is always interpreted as a local time).  Lines
       beginning with # or ; or *, and blank lines, are ignored.

              i 2015/03/30 09:00:00 some account  optional description after 2 spaces ; optional comment, tags:
              o 2015/03/30 09:20:00
              i 2015/03/31 22:21:45 another:account
              o 2015/04/01 02:00:34

       hledger treats each clock-in/clock-out pair as a transaction posting some number of hours to an  account.
       Or  if the session spans more than one day, it is split into several transactions, one for each day.  For
       the above time log, hledger print generates these journal entries:

              $ hledger -f t.timeclock print
              2015-03-30 * optional description after 2 spaces   ; optional comment, tags:
                  (some account)           0.33h

              2015-03-31 * 22:21-23:59
                  (another:account)           1.64h

              2015-04-01 * 00:00-02:00
                  (another:account)           2.01h

       Here is a sample.timeclock to download and some queries to try:

              $ hledger -f sample.timeclock balance                               # current time balances
              $ hledger -f sample.timeclock register -p 2009/3                    # sessions in march 2009
              $ hledger -f sample.timeclock register -p weekly --depth 1 --empty  # time summary by week

       To generate time logs, ie to clock in and clock out, you could:

       • use emacs and the built-in timeclock.el, or the extended  timeclock-x.el  and  perhaps  the  extras  in
         ledgerutils.el

       • at the command line, use these bash aliases: shell     alias ti="echo i `date '+%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S'` \$*
         >>$TIMELOG"     alias to="echo o `date '+%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S'` >>$TIMELOG"

       • or  use the old ti and to scripts in the ledger 2.x repository.  These rely on a "timeclock" executable
         which I think is just the ledger 2 executable renamed.

Timedot

       timedot format is hledger's human-friendly time logging format.  Compared to timeclock format, it is

       • convenient for quick, approximate, and retroactive time logging

       • readable: you can see at a glance where time was spent.

       A timedot file contains a series of day entries, which might look like this:

              2023-05-01
              hom:errands          .... ....  ; two hours
              fos:hledger:timedot  ..         ; half an hour
              per:admin:finance

       hledger reads this as a transaction on  this  day  with  three  (unbalanced)  postings,  where  each  dot
       represents  "0.25".   No  commodity  is  assumed,  but  normally  we interpret it as hours, with each dot
       representing a quarter-hour.  It's convenient, though not required, to group the dots in fours  for  easy
       reading.

              $ hledger -f a.timedot print   # .timedot file extension (or timedot: prefix) is required
              2023-05-01 *
                  (hom:errands)                    2.00  ; two hours
                  (fos:hledger:timedot)            0.50  ; half an hour
                  (per:admin:finance)                 0

       A  transaction  begins  with  a  non-indented simple date (Y-M-D, Y/M/D, or Y.M.D).  It can optionally be
       preceded by one or more stars and a space, for Emacs  org  mode  compatibility.   It  can  optionally  be
       followed  on  the  same  line  by  a  transaction  description,  and/or a transaction comment following a
       semicolon.

       After the date line are zero or more time postings, consisting of:

       • an account name - any hledger-style account name, optionally hierarchical, optionally indented.

       • two or more spaces - a field separator, required if there is an amount (as in journal format).

       • an optional timedot amount  -  dots  representing  quarter  hours,  or  a  number  representing  hours,
         optionally with a unit suffix.

       • an optional posting comment following a semicolon.

       Timedot amounts can be:

       • dots:  zero  or more period characters (.), each representing 0.25.  Spaces are ignored and can be used
         for grouping.  Eg: .... ..

       • or a number.  Eg: 1.5

       • or a number immediately followed by a unit symbol s, m, h, d, w, mo, or y.  These  are  interpreted  as
         seconds, minutes, hours, days weeks, months or years, and converted to hours, assuming:
       60s = 1m, 60m = 1h, 24h = 1d, 7d = 1w, 30d = 1mo, 365d = 1y.  Eg 90m is parsed as 1.5.

       There  is  some added flexibility to help with keeping time log data in the same file as your notes, todo
       lists, etc.:

       • Blank lines and lines beginning with # or ; are ignored.

       • Before the first date line, lines beginning with * are ignored.

       • From the first date line onward, one or more *'s followed by a space at beginning  of  lines  (ie,  the
         headline  prefix  used by Emacs Org mode) is ignored.  This means the time log can be kept under an Org
         headline, and date lines or time transaction lines can be Org headlines.

       • Lines not ending with a double-space and  amount  are  parsed  as  postings  with  zero  amount.   Note
         hledger's register reports hide these by default (add -E to see them).

       More examples:

              # on this day, 6h was spent on client work, 1.5h on haskell FOSS work, etc.
              2016/2/1
              inc:client1   .... .... .... .... .... ....
              fos:haskell   .... ..
              biz:research  .

              2016/2/2
              inc:client1   .... ....
              biz:research  .

              2016/2/3
              inc:client1   4
              fos:hledger   3
              biz:research  1

              * Time log
              ** 2023-01-01
              *** adm:time  .
              *** adm:finance  .

              * 2023 Work Diary
              ** Q1
              *** 2023-02-29
              **** DONE
              0700 yoga
              **** UNPLANNED
              **** BEGUN
              hom:chores
               cleaning  ...
               water plants
                outdoor - one full watering can
                indoor - light watering
              **** TODO
              adm:planning: trip
              *** LATER

       Reporting:

              $ hledger -f a.timedot print date:2016/2/2
              2016-02-02 *
                  (inc:client1)          2.00

              2016-02-02 *
                  (biz:research)          0.25

              $ hledger -f a.timedot bal --daily --tree
              Balance changes in 2016-02-01-2016-02-03:

                          ||  2016-02-01d  2016-02-02d  2016-02-03d
              ============++========================================
               biz        ||         0.25         0.25         1.00
                 research ||         0.25         0.25         1.00
               fos        ||         1.50            0         3.00
                 haskell  ||         1.50            0            0
                 hledger  ||            0            0         3.00
               inc        ||         6.00         2.00         4.00
                 client1  ||         6.00         2.00         4.00
              ------------++----------------------------------------
                          ||         7.75         2.25         8.00

       Using period instead of colon as account name separator:

              2016/2/4
              fos.hledger.timedot  4
              fos.ledger           ..

              $ hledger -f a.timedot --alias /\\./=: bal --tree
                              4.50  fos
                              4.00    hledger:timedot
                              0.50    ledger
              --------------------
                              4.50

       A sample.timedot file.

PART 3: REPORTING CONCEPTS

Time periods

   Report start & end date
       By  default, most hledger reports will show the full span of time represented by the journal.  The report
       start date will be the earliest transaction or posting date, and the report end date will be  the  latest
       transaction, posting, or market price date.

       Often  you  will  want  to  see  a shorter time span, such as the current month.  You can specify a start
       and/or end date using -b/--begin, -e/--end, -p/--period or a date: query (described below).  All of these
       accept the smart date syntax (below).

       Some notes:

       • End dates are exclusive, as in Ledger, so you should write the date after the last day you want to  see
         in the report.

       • As  noted  in  reporting  options: among start/end dates specified with options, the last (i.e.  right-
         most) option takes precedence.

       • The effective report start and end dates are the intersection of the start/end dates from  options  and
         that  from  date:  queries.   That is, date:2019-01 date:2019 -p'2000 to 2030' yields January 2019, the
         smallest common time span.

       • In some cases a report interval will adjust start/end dates to fall on interval boundaries (see below).

       Examples:

       -b 2016/3/17       begin on St. Patrick’s day 2016
       -e 12/1            end at the start of  december  1st  of  the  current  year
                          (11/30 will be the last date included)
       -b thismonth       all transactions on or after the 1st of the current month
       -p thismonth       all transactions in the current month
       date:2016/3/17..   the  above  written  as  queries  instead  (.. can also be
                          replaced with -)
       date:..12/1
       date:thismonth..
       date:thismonth

   Smart dates
       hledger's user interfaces accept a "smart date" syntax for added convenience.  Smart dates optionally can
       be relative to today's date, be written with english  words,  and  have  less-significant  parts  omitted
       (missing parts are inferred as 1).  Some examples:

       2004/10/1,   2004-01-01,           exact date, several separators allowed.   Year
       2004.9.1                           is 4+ digits, month is 1-12, day is 1-31
       2004                               start of year
       2004/10                            start of month
       10/1                               month and day in current year
       21                                 day in current month
       october, oct                       start of month in current year
       yesterday,        today,           -1, 0, 1 days from today
       tomorrow
       last/this/next                     -1, 0, 1 periods from the current period
       day/week/month/quarter/year
       in                        n        n periods from the current period
       days/weeks/months/quarters/years
       n                                  n periods from the current period
       days/weeks/months/quarters/years
       ahead
       n                                  -n periods from the current period
       days/weeks/months/quarters/years
       ago
       20181201                           8 digit YYYYMMDD with valid year month and day
       201812                             6 digit YYYYMM with valid year and month

       Some counterexamples - malformed digit sequences might give surprising results:

       201813        6  digits  with  an  invalid  month  is  parsed as start of
                     6-digit year
       20181301      8 digits with an  invalid  month  is  parsed  as  start  of
                     8-digit year
       20181232      8 digits with an invalid day gives an error
       201801012     9+ digits beginning with a valid YYYYMMDD gives an error

       "Today's  date"  can  be  overridden  with  the  --today  option,  in case it's needed for testing or for
       recreating old reports.  (Except for periodic transaction rules, which are not affected by --today.)

   Report intervals
       A report interval can be specified so that reports like  register,  balance  or  activity  become  multi-
       period, showing each subperiod as a separate row or column.

       The following standard intervals can be enabled with command-line flags:

       • -D/--daily

       • -W/--weekly

       • -M/--monthly

       • -Q/--quarterly

       • -Y/--yearly

       More complex intervals can be specified using -p/--period, described below.

   Date adjustment
       When  there  is a report interval (other than daily), report start/end dates which have been inferred, eg
       from the journal, are automatically adjusted to  natural  period  boundaries.   This  is  convenient  for
       producing simple periodic reports.  More precisely:

       • an inferred start date will be adjusted earlier if needed to fall on a natural period boundary

       • an  inferred  end  date will be adjusted later if needed to make the last period the same length as the
         others.

       By contrast, start/end dates which have been specified explicitly, with -b, -e, -p or date:, will not  be
       adjusted  (since  hledger  1.29).   This makes it possible to specify non-standard report periods, but it
       also means that if you are specifying a start date, you should pick one that's on a  period  boundary  if
       you want to see simple report period headings.

   Period expressions
       The  -p/--period option specifies a period expression, which is a compact way of expressing a start date,
       end date, and/or report interval.

       Here's a period expression with a start and end date (specifying the first quarter of 2009):

       -p "from 2009/1/1 to 2009/4/1"

       Several keywords like "from" and "to" are supported for readability; these are optional.  "to"  can  also
       be  written  as  ".." or "-".  The spaces are also optional, as long as you don't run two dates together.
       So the following are equivalent to the above:

       -p "2009/1/1 2009/4/1"
       -p2009/1/1to2009/4/1
       -p2009/1/1..2009/4/1

       Dates are smart dates, so if the current year is 2009, these are also equivalent to the above:

       -p "1/1 4/1"
       -p "jan-apr"
       -p "this year to 4/1"

       If you specify only one date, the missing start or end date will be the earliest  or  latest  transaction
       date in the journal:

       -p "from 2009/1/1"   everything after january 1, 2009
       -p "since 2009/1"    the same, since is a synonym
       -p "from 2009"       the same
       -p "to 2009"         everything before january 1, 2009

       You can also specify a period by writing a single partial or full date:

       -p "2009"        the year 2009; equivalent to “2009/1/1 to 2010/1/1”
       -p "2009/1"      the  month  of january 2009; equivalent to “2009/1/1 to
                        2009/2/1”
       -p "2009/1/1"    the first day  of  2009;  equivalent  to  “2009/1/1  to
                        2009/1/2”

       or by using the "Q" quarter-year syntax (case insensitive):

       -p "2009Q1"       first  quarter  of  2009,  equivalent  to  “2009/1/1 to
                         2009/4/1”
       -p "q4"           fourth quarter of the current year

   Period expressions with a report interval
       A period expression can also begin with a report interval, separated from the start/end dates (if any) by
       a space or the word in:

       -p "weekly from 2009/1/1 to 2009/4/1"
       -p "monthly in 2008"
       -p "quarterly"

   More complex report intervals
       Some more complex intervals can be specified within period expressions, such as:

       • biweekly (every two weeks)

       • fortnightly

       • bimonthly (every two months)

       • every day|week|month|quarter|year

       • every N days|weeks|months|quarters|years

       Weekly on a custom day:

       • every Nth day of week (th, nd, rd, or st are all accepted after the number)

       • every WEEKDAYNAME (full or three-letter english weekday name, case insensitive)

       Monthly on a custom day:

       • every Nth day [of month]

       • every Nth WEEKDAYNAME [of month]

       Yearly on a custom day:

       • every MM/DD [of year] (month number and day of month number)

       • every MONTHNAME DDth [of year] (full or three-letter english month name, case insensitive, and  day  of
         month number)

       • every DDth MONTHNAME [of year] (equivalent to the above)

       Examples:

       -p "bimonthly from 2008"
       -p "every 2 weeks"
       -p  "every  5  months  from
       2009/03"
       -p "every 2nd day of week"    periods will go from Tue to Tue
       -p "every Tue"                same
       -p "every 15th day"           period boundaries will be on 15th  of  each
                                     month
       -p "every 2nd Monday"         period  boundaries will be on second Monday
                                     of each month
       -p "every 11/05"              yearly periods with boundaries  on  5th  of
                                     November
       -p "every 5th November"       same
       -p "every Nov 5th"            same

       Show historical balances at end of the 15th day of each month (N is an end date, exclusive as always):

              $ hledger balance -H -p "every 16th day"

       Group  postings  from the start of wednesday to end of the following tuesday (N is both (inclusive) start
       date and (exclusive) end date):

              $ hledger register checking -p "every 3rd day of week"

   Multiple weekday intervals
       This special form is also supported:

       • every WEEKDAYNAME,WEEKDAYNAME,... (full or three-letter english weekday names, case insensitive)

       Also, weekday and weekendday are shorthand for mon,tue,wed,thu,fri and sat,sun.

       This is mainly intended for use with --forecast, to generate periodic transactions on arbitrary  days  of
       the  week.   It may be less useful with -p, since it divides each week into subperiods of unequal length,
       which is unusual.  (Related: #1632)

       Examples:

       -p          "every   dates  will  be  Mon, Wed, Fri; periods will be Mon-
       mon,wed,fri"         Tue, Wed-Thu, Fri-Sun
       -p "every weekday"   dates will be Mon, Tue, Wed, Thu, Fri; periods  will
                            be Mon, Tue, Wed, Thu, Fri-Sun
       -p          "every   dates will be Sat, Sun; periods will be Sat, Sun-Fri
       weekendday"

Depth

       With the --depth NUM option (short form: -NUM), reports will show accounts only to the  specified  depth,
       hiding  deeper  subaccounts.   Use this when you want a summary with less detail.  This flag has the same
       effect as a depth: query argument: depth:2, --depth=2 or -2 are equivalent.

Queries

One of hledger's strengths is being able to quickly report on a precise subset of your data. Most
hledger commands accept optional query arguments to restrict their scope. The syntax is as follows:

• Zero or more space-separated query terms. These are most often account name substrings:

utilities food:groceries

• Terms with spaces or other special characters should be enclosed in quotes:

"personal care"

• Regular expressions are also supported:

"^expenses\b" "accounts (payable|receivable)"

• Add a query type prefix to match other parts of the data:

date:202312- desc:amazon cur:USD amt:">100" status:

• Add a not: prefix to negate a term:

not:cur:USD

Query types
Here are the types of query term available. Remember these can also be prefixed with not: to convert
them into a negative match.

acct:REGEX, REGEX
Match account names containing this (case insensitive) regular expression. This is the default query
type when there is no prefix, and regular expression syntax is typically not needed, so usually we just
write an account name substring, like expenses or food.

amt:N, amt:<N, amt:<=N, amt:>N, amt:>=N
Match postings with a single-commodity amount equal to, less than, or greater than N. (Postings with
multi-commodity amounts are not tested and will always match.) The comparison has two modes: if N is
preceded by a + or - sign (or is 0), the two signed numbers are compared. Otherwise, the absolute
magnitudes are compared, ignoring sign.

code:REGEX
Match by transaction code (eg check number).

cur:REGEX
Match postings or transactions including any amounts whose currency/commodity symbol is fully matched by
REGEX. (For a partial match, use .*REGEX.*). Note, to match special characters which are regex-
significant, you need to escape them with \. And for characters which are significant to your shell you
may need one more level of escaping. So eg to match the dollar sign:
hledger print cur:\\$.

desc:REGEX
Match transaction descriptions.

date:PERIODEXPR
Match dates (or with the --date2 flag, secondary dates) within the specified period. PERIODEXPR is a
period expression with no report interval. Examples:
date:2016, date:thismonth, date:2/1-2/15, date:2021-07-27..nextquarter.

date2:PERIODEXPR
Match secondary dates within the specified period (independent of the --date2 flag).

depth:N
Match (or display, depending on command) accounts at or above this depth.

note:REGEX
Match transaction notes (the part of the description right of |, or the whole description if there's no
|).

payee:REGEX
Match transaction payee/payer names (the part of the description left of |, or the whole description if
there's no |).

real:, real:0
Match real or virtual postings respectively.

status:, status:!, status:*
Match unmarked, pending, or cleared transactions respectively.

type:TYPECODES
Match by account type (see Declaring accounts > Account types). TYPECODES is one or more of the single-
letter account type codes ALERXCV, case insensitive. Note type:A and type:E will also match their
respective subtypes C (Cash) and V (Conversion). Certain kinds of account alias can disrupt account
types, see Rewriting accounts > Aliases and account types.

tag:REGEX[=REGEX]
Match by tag name, and optionally also by tag value. (To match only by value, use tag:.=REGEX.)

When querying by tag, note that:

• Accounts also inherit the tags of their parent accounts

• Postings also inherit the tags of their account and their transaction

• Transactions also acquire the tags of their postings.

(inacct:ACCTNAME
A special query term used automatically in hledger-web only: tells hledger-web to show the transaction
register for an account.)

Combining query terms
When given multiple space-separated query terms, most commands select things which match:

• any of the description terms AND

• any of the account terms AND

• any of the status terms AND

• all the other terms.

The print command is a little different, showing transactions which:

• match any of the description terms AND

• have any postings matching any of the positive account terms AND

• have no postings matching any of the negative account terms AND

• match all the other terms.

We also support more complex boolean queries with the 'expr:' prefix. This allows one to combine queries
using one of three operators: AND, OR, and NOT, where NOT is different syntax for 'not:'.

Examples of such queries are:

• Match transactions with 'cool' in the description AND with the 'A' tag

expr:"desc:cool AND tag:A"

• Match transactions NOT to the 'expenses:food' account OR with the 'A' tag

expr:"NOT expenses:food OR tag:A"

• Match transactions NOT involving the 'expenses:food' account OR with the 'A' tag AND involving the
'expenses:drink' account. (the AND is implicitly added by space-separation, following the rules above)

expr:"expenses:food OR (tag:A expenses:drink)"

Queries and command options
Some queries can also be expressed as command-line options: depth:2 is equivalent to --depth 2, date:2023
is equivalent to -p 2023, etc. When you mix command options and query arguments, generally the resulting
query is their intersection.

Queries and valuation
When amounts are converted to other commodities in cost or value reports, cur: and amt: match the old
commodity symbol and the old amount quantity, not the new ones (except in hledger 1.22.0 where it's
reversed, see #1625).

Querying with account aliases
When account names are rewritten with --alias or alias, note that acct: will match either the old or the
new account name.

Querying with cost or value
When amounts are converted to other commodities in cost or value reports, note that cur: matches the new
commodity symbol, and not the old one, and amt: matches the new quantity, and not the old one. Note:
this changed in hledger 1.22, previously it was the reverse, see the discussion at #1625.

Pivoting

       Normally, hledger groups and sums amounts within each account.  The --pivot FIELD option substitutes some
       other transaction field for account names, causing amounts to be grouped and summed by that field's value
       instead.   FIELD  can  be  any of the transaction fields status, code, description, payee, note, or a tag
       name.  When pivoting on a tag and a posting has multiple values of that tag,  only  the  first  value  is
       displayed.  Values containing colon:separated:parts will be displayed hierarchically, like account names.

       Some examples:

              2016/02/16 Yearly Dues Payment
                  assets:bank account                 2 EUR
                  income:dues                        -2 EUR  ; member: John Doe

       Normal balance report showing account names:

              $ hledger balance
                             2 EUR  assets:bank account
                            -2 EUR  income:dues
              --------------------
                                 0

       Pivoted balance report, using member: tag values instead:

              $ hledger balance --pivot member
                             2 EUR
                            -2 EUR  John Doe
              --------------------
                                 0

       One way to show only amounts with a member: value (using a query):

              $ hledger balance --pivot member tag:member=.
                            -2 EUR  John Doe
              --------------------
                            -2 EUR

       Another way (the acct: query matches against the pivoted "account name"):

              $ hledger balance --pivot member acct:.
                            -2 EUR  John Doe
              --------------------
                            -2 EUR

Generating data

hledger has several features for generating data, such as:

• Periodic transaction rules can generate single or repeating transactions following a template. These
are usually dated in the future, eg to help with forecasting. They are activated by the --forecast
option.

• The balance command's --budget option uses these same periodic rules to generate goals for the budget
report.

• Auto posting rules can generate extra postings on certain matched transactions. They are always
applied to forecast transactions; with the --auto flag they are applied to transactions recorded in the
journal as well.

• The --infer-equity flag infers missing conversion equity postings from @/@@ costs. And the inverse
--infer-costs flag infers missing @/@@ costs from conversion equity postings.

Generated data of this kind is temporary, existing only at report time. But you can see it in the output
of hledger print, and you can save that to your journal, in effect converting it from temporary generated
data to permanent recorded data. This could be useful as a data entry aid.

If you are wondering what data is being generated and why, add the --verbose-tags flag. In hledger print
output you will see extra tags like generated-transaction, generated-posting, and modified on
generated/modified data. Also, even without --verbose-tags, generated data always has equivalen hidden
tags (with an underscore prefix), so eg you could match generated transactions with tag:_generated-
transaction.

Forecasting

       Forecasting,  or  speculative  future  reporting,  can  be  useful for estimating future balances, or for
       exploring different future scenarios.

       The simplest and most flexible way to do it with hledger is to manually record a  bunch  of  future-dated
       transactions.   You  could keep these in a separate future.journal and include that with -f only when you
       want to see them.

   --forecast
       There is another way: with the --forecast option, hledger can generate temporary "forecast  transactions"
       for  reporting  purposes,  according to periodic transaction rules defined in the journal.  Each rule can
       generate multiple recurring transactions, so  by  changing  one  rule  you  can  change  many  forecasted
       transactions.  (These same rules can also generate budget goals, described in Budgeting.)

       Forecast  transactions  usually start after ordinary transactions end.  By default, they begin after your
       latest-dated ordinary transaction, or today, whichever is later, and they  end  six  months  from  today.
       (The exact rules are a little more complicated, and are given below.)

       This is the "forecast period", which need not be the same as the report period.  You can override it - eg
       to  forecast  farther  into  the  future,  or  to  force  forecast  transactions to overlap your ordinary
       transactions - by giving the --forecast option a period expression argument,  like  --forecast=..2099  or
       --forecast=2023-02-15...  Note that the = is required.

   Inspecting forecast transactions
       print is the best command for inspecting and troubleshooting forecast transactions.  Eg:

              ~ monthly from 2022-12-20    rent
                  assets:bank:checking
                  expenses:rent           $1000

              $ hledger print --forecast --today=2023/4/21
              2023-05-20 rent
                  ; generated-transaction: ~ monthly from 2022-12-20
                  assets:bank:checking
                  expenses:rent                  $1000

              2023-06-20 rent
                  ; generated-transaction: ~ monthly from 2022-12-20
                  assets:bank:checking
                  expenses:rent                  $1000

              2023-07-20 rent
                  ; generated-transaction: ~ monthly from 2022-12-20
                  assets:bank:checking
                  expenses:rent                  $1000

              2023-08-20 rent
                  ; generated-transaction: ~ monthly from 2022-12-20
                  assets:bank:checking
                  expenses:rent                  $1000

              2023-09-20 rent
                  ; generated-transaction: ~ monthly from 2022-12-20
                  assets:bank:checking
                  expenses:rent                  $1000

       Here  there  are  no  ordinary  transactions, so the forecasted transactions begin on the first occurence
       after today's date.  (You won't normally use --today; it's just to make these examples reproducible.)

   Forecast reports
       Forecast transactions affect all reports, as you would expect.  Eg:

              $ hledger areg rent --forecast --today=2023/4/21
              Transactions in expenses:rent and subaccounts:
              2023-05-20 rent                 as:ba:checking               $1000         $1000
              2023-06-20 rent                 as:ba:checking               $1000         $2000
              2023-07-20 rent                 as:ba:checking               $1000         $3000
              2023-08-20 rent                 as:ba:checking               $1000         $4000
              2023-09-20 rent                 as:ba:checking               $1000         $5000

              $ hledger bal -M expenses --forecast --today=2023/4/21
              Balance changes in 2023-05-01..2023-09-30:

                             ||   May    Jun    Jul    Aug    Sep
              ===============++===================================
               expenses:rent || $1000  $1000  $1000  $1000  $1000
              ---------------++-----------------------------------
                             || $1000  $1000  $1000  $1000  $1000

   Forecast tags
       Forecast transactions generated by --forecast have a hidden tag, _generated-transaction.  So if you  ever
       need  to match forecast transactions, you could use tag:_generated-transaction (or just tag:generated) in
       a query.

       For troubleshooting, you can add the --verbose-tags flag.  Then, visible generated-transaction tags  will
       be  added  also,  so you can view them with the print command.  Their value indicates which periodic rule
       was responsible.

   Forecast period, in detail
       Forecast start/end dates are chosen so as to do something useful by default  in  almost  all  situations,
       while also being flexible.  Here are (with luck) the exact rules, to help with troubleshooting:

       The forecast period starts on:

       • the later of

         • the start date in the periodic transaction rule

         • the start date in --forecast's argument

       • otherwise (if those are not available): the later of

         • the report start date specified with -b/-p/date:

         • the day after the latest ordinary transaction in the journal

       • otherwise (if none of these are available): today.

       The forecast period ends on:

       • the earlier of

         • the end date in the periodic transaction rule

         • the end date in --forecast's argument

       • otherwise: the report end date specified with -e/-p/date:

       • otherwise: 180 days (~6 months) from today.

   Forecast troubleshooting
       When --forecast is not doing what you expect, one of these tips should help:

       • Remember to use the --forecast option.

       • Remember to have at least one periodic transaction rule in your journal.

       • Test with print --forecast.

       • Check for typos or too-restrictive start/end dates in your periodic transaction rule.

       • Leave at least 2 spaces between the rule's period expression and description fields.

       • Check for future-dated ordinary transactions suppressing forecasted transactions.

       • Try setting explicit report start and/or end dates with -b, -e, -p or date:

       • Try adding the -E flag to encourage display of empty periods/zero transactions.

       • Try setting explicit forecast start and/or end dates with --forecast=START..END

       • Consult Forecast period, in detail, above.

       • Check inside the engine: add --debug=2 (eg).

Budgeting

       With  the  balance  command's  --budget report, each periodic transaction rule generates recurring budget
       goals in specified accounts, and goals and actual performance can be compared.  See the balance command's
       doc below.

       You can generate budget goals and forecast transactions at the same time,  from  the  same  or  different
       periodic transaction rules: hledger bal -M --budget --forecast ...

       See also: Budgeting and Forecasting.

Cost reporting

       This  section is about recording the cost of things, in transactions where one commodity is exchanged for
       another.  Eg an exchange of currency, or a stock purchase or sale.  First, a quick glossary:

       • Conversion - an exchange of one currency or commodity for another.  Eg a foreign currency exchange,  or
         a purchase or sale of stock or cryptocurrency.

       • Conversion transaction - a transaction involving one or more conversions.

       • Conversion rate - the cost per unit of one commodity in the other, ie the exchange rate.

       • Cost  -  how much of one commodity was paid to acquire the other.  And more generally, in hledger docs:
         the amount exchanged in the "secondary" commodity (usually your base currency), whether in  a  purchase
         or  a  sale,  and  whether  expressed  per  unit  or in total.  Also, the "@/@@ PRICE" notation used to
         represent this.

   -B: Convert to cost
       As discussed in JOURNAL > Costs, when recording a transaction you can also record the  amount's  cost  in
       another commodity, by adding @ UNITPRICE or @@ TOTALPRICE.

       Then  you  can see a report with amounts converted to cost, by adding the -B/--cost flag.  (Mnemonic: "B"
       from "cost Basis", as in Ledger).  Eg:

              2022-01-01
                assets:dollars  $-135          ; 135 dollars is exchanged for..
                assets:euros     €100 @ $1.35  ; one hundred euros purchased at $1.35 each

              $ hledger bal -N
                             $-135  assets:dollars
                              €100  assets:euros
              $ hledger bal -N -B
                             $-135  assets:dollars
                              $135  assets:euros    # <- the euros' cost

       Notes:

       -B is sensitive to the order of postings when a cost is inferred: the  inferred  price  will  be  in  the
       commodity  of  the  last  amount.   So  if  example  3's  postings are reversed, while the transaction is
       equivalent, -B shows something different:

              2022-01-01
                assets:dollars  $-135              ; 135 dollars sold
                assets:euros     €100              ; for 100 euros

              $ hledger bal -N -B
                             €-100  assets:dollars  # <- the dollars' selling price
                              €100  assets:euros

       The @/@@ cost notation is convenient, but has some drawbacks: it does not truly balance the  transaction,
       so it disrupts the accounting equation and tends to causes a non-zero total in balance reports.

   Equity conversion postings
       By  contrast,  conventional  double  entry  bookkeeping (DEB) uses a different notation: an extra pair of
       equity postings to balance conversion transactions.  In this style, the above entry might be written:

              2022-01-01 one hundred euros purchased at $1.35 each
                  assets:dollars      $-135
                  equity:conversion    $135
                  equity:conversion   €-100
                  assets:euros         €100

       This style is more correct, but it's also more verbose and makes cost reporting more  difficult  for  PTA
       tools.

       Happily,  current  hledger  can read either notation, or convert one to the other when needed, so you can
       use the one you prefer.

       You can even use cost notation and equivalent conversion postings at the same time, for clarity.  hledger
       will ignore the redundancy.  But be sure the cost and conversion posting amounts match, or you'll  see  a
       not-so-clear transaction balancing error message.

   Inferring equity postings from cost
       With  --infer-equity,  hledger  detects  transactions  written  with  PTA  cost  notation and adds equity
       conversion postings to them:

              2022-01-01
                assets:dollars  -$135
                assets:euros     €100 @ $1.35

              $ hledger print --infer-equity
              2022-01-01
                  assets:dollars                    $-135
                  assets:euros               €100 @ $1.35
                  equity:conversion:$-€:€           €-100  ; generated-posting:
                  equity:conversion:$-€:$         $135.00  ; generated-posting:

       The conversion account names can be changed with the conversion account type declaration.

       --infer-equity is useful when when transactions have been recorded using cost notation, to help  preserve
       the  accounting equation and balance reports' zero total, or to produce more conventional journal entries
       for sharing with non-PTA-users.

   Inferring cost from equity postings
       The reverse operation is possible using --infer-costs, which detects  transactions  written  with  equity
       conversion postings and adds cost notation to them:

              2022-01-01
                  assets:dollars            $-135
                  equity:conversion          $135
                  equity:conversion         €-100
                  assets:euros               €100

              $ hledger print --infer-costs
              2022-01-01
                  assets:dollars       $-135 @@ €100
                  equity:conversion             $135
                  equity:conversion            €-100
                  assets:euros                  €100

       --infer-costs is useful when combined with -B/--cost, allowing cost reporting even when transactions have
       been recorded using equity postings:

              $ hledger print --infer-costs -B
              2009-01-01
                  assets:dollars           €-100
                  assets:euros              €100

       Notes:

       For --infer-costs to work, an exchange must consist of four postings:

       1. two non-equity postings

       2. two equity postings, next to one another

       3. the  equity  accounts  must  be declared, with account type V/Conversion (or if they are not declared,
          they must be named equity:conversion, equity:trade, equity:trading or subaccounts of these)

       4. the equity postings' amounts must exactly match the non-equity postings' amounts.

       Multiple such exchanges can coexist within a single transaction.

       When inferring cost, the order of postings matters: the cost is added to  the  first  of  the  non-equity
       postings  involved  in  the  exchange,  in  the  commodity of the last non-equity posting involved in the
       exchange.  If you don't want to write your postings in the required order,  you  can  use  explicit  cost
       notation instead.

       --infer-equity  and  --infer-costs  can be used together, if you have a mixture of both notations in your
       journal.

   When to infer cost/equity
       Inferring equity postings or costs is still fairly new, so not enabled by default.  We're not sure yet if
       that should change.  Here are two suggestions to try, experience reports welcome:

       1. When you use -B, always use --infer-costs as well.  Eg: hledger bal -B --infer-costs

       2. Always run hledger with both flags enabled.  Eg: alias hl="hledger --infer-equity --infer-costs"

   How to record conversions
       Essentially there are four ways to record a conversion transaction in hledger.  Here  are  all  of  them,
       with pros and cons.

   Conversion with implicit cost
       Let's  assume 100 EUR is converted to 120 USD.  You can just record the outflow (100 EUR) and inflow (120
       USD) in the appropriate asset account:

              2021-01-01
                  assets:cash    -100 EUR
                  assets:cash     120 USD

       hledger will assume this transaction is balanced, inferring that the conversion rate must be 1 EUR = 1.20
       USD.  You can see the inferred rate by using hledger print -x.

       Pro:

       • Concise, easy

       Con:

       • Less error checking - typos in amounts or commodity symbols may not be detected

       • Conversion rate is not clear

       • Disturbs the accounting equation, unless you add the --infer-equity flag

       You can prevent accidental implicit conversions due to a mistyped  commodity  symbol,  by  using  hledger
       check commodities.

       You  can  prevent  implicit  conversions  entirely,  by  using hledger check balancednoautoconversion, or
       -s/--strict.

   Conversion with explicit cost
       You can add the conversion rate using @ notation:

              2021-01-01
                  assets:cash        -100 EUR @ 1.20 USD
                  assets:cash         120 USD

       Now hledger will check that 100 * 1.20 = 120, and would report an error otherwise.

       Pro:

       • Still concise

       • Makes the conversion rate clear

       • Provides more error checking

       Con:

       • Disturbs the accounting equation, unless you add the --infer-equity flag

   Conversion with equity postings
       In strict double entry bookkeeping, the above transaction is not balanced in EUR or in  USD,  since  some
       EUR  disappears,  and  some  USD  appears.  This violates the accounting equation (A+L+E=0), and prevents
       reports like balancesheetequity from showing a zero total.

       The proper way to make it balance is to add a balancing posting  for  each  commodity,  using  an  equity
       account:

              2021-01-01
                  assets:cash        -100 EUR
                  equity:conversion   100 EUR
                  equity:conversion  -120 USD
                  assets:cash         120 USD

       Pro:

       • Preserves the accounting equation

       • Keeps track of conversions and related gains/losses in one place

       • Standard, works in any double entry accounting system

       Con:

       • More verbose

       • Conversion rate is not obvious

       • Cost reporting requires adding the --infer-costs flag

   Conversion with equity postings and explicit cost
       Here both equity postings and @ notation are used together.

              2021-01-01
                  assets:cash        -100 EUR @ 1.20 USD
                  equity:conversion   100 EUR
                  equity:conversion  -120 USD
                  assets:cash         120 USD

       Pro:

       • Preserves the accounting equation

       • Keeps track of conversions and related gains/losses in one place

       • Makes the conversion rate clear

       • Provides more error checking

       Con:

       • Most verbose

       • Not compatible with ledger

   Cost tips
       • Recording  the  cost/conversion  rate  explicitly  is good because it makes that clear and helps detect
         errors.

       • Recording equity postings is good because it  is  correct  bookkeeping  and  preserves  the  accounting
         equation.

       • Combining these is possible.

       • When you want to see the cost (or sale proceeds) of things, use -B (short form of --cost).

       • If you use conversion postings without cost notation, add --infer-costs also.

       • If  you  use cost notation without conversion postings, and you want to see a balanced balance sheet or
         print correct journal entries, use --infer-equity.

       • Conversion to cost is performed before valuation (described next).

Valuation

       Instead of reporting amounts in their original commodity, hledger can convert them  to  cost/sale  amount
       (using  the conversion rate recorded in the transaction), and/or to market value (using some market price
       on a certain date).  This is controlled by the --value=TYPE[,COMMODITY] option, which will  be  described
       below.  We also provide the simpler -V and -X COMMODITY options, and often one of these is all you need:

   -V: Value
       The  -V/--market  flag  converts  amounts to market value in their default valuation commodity, using the
       market prices in effect on the valuation date(s), if any.  More on these in a minute.

   -X: Value in specified commodity
       The -X/--exchange=COMM option is like -V, except you tell it which currency you want to convert  to,  and
       it tries to convert everything to that.

   Valuation date
       Since  market prices can change from day to day, market value reports have a valuation date (or more than
       one), which determines which market prices will be used.

       For single period reports, if an explicit report end  date  is  specified,  that  will  be  used  as  the
       valuation date; otherwise the valuation date is the journal's end date.

       For multiperiod reports, each column/period is valued on the last day of the period, by default.

   Finding market price
       To  convert a commodity A to its market value in another commodity B, hledger looks for a suitable market
       price (exchange rate) as follows, in this order of preference :

       1. A declared market price or inferred market price: A's latest market  price  in  B  on  or  before  the
          valuation  date  as  declared by a P directive, or (with the --infer-market-prices flag) inferred from
          costs.

       2. A reverse market price: the inverse of a declared or inferred market price from B to A.

       3. A forward chain of market prices: a  synthetic  price  formed  by  combining  the  shortest  chain  of
          "forward" (only 1 above) market prices, leading from A to B.

       4. Any chain of market prices: a chain of any market prices, including both forward and reverse prices (1
          and 2 above), leading from A to B.

       There  is  a  limit to the length of these price chains; if hledger reaches that length without finding a
       complete chain or exhausting all possibilities, it will give up (with a  "gave  up"  message  visible  in
       --debug=2 output).  That limit is currently 1000.

       Amounts for which no suitable market price can be found, are not converted.

   --infer-market-prices: market prices from transactions
       Normally,  market  value  in  hledger is fully controlled by, and requires, P directives in your journal.
       Since adding and updating those can be a chore, and since transactions usually take  place  at  close  to
       market  value,  why not use the recorded costs as additional market prices (as Ledger does) ?  Adding the
       --infer-market-prices flag to -V, -X or --value enables this.

       So for example, hledger bs -V --infer-market-prices will get market prices both  from  P  directives  and
       from transactions.  If both occur on the same day, the P directive takes precedence.

       There  is a downside: value reports can sometimes be affected in confusing/undesired ways by your journal
       entries.  If this happens to you, read all of this Valuation section carefully, and try adding --debug or
       --debug=2 to troubleshoot.

       --infer-market-prices can infer market prices from:

       • multicommodity transactions with explicit prices (@/@@)

       • multicommodity transactions with implicit prices (no @, two commodities, unbalanced).  (With these, the
         order of postings matters.  hledger print -x can be useful for troubleshooting.)

       • multicommodity transactions with equity postings, if cost is inferred with --infer-costs.

       There is a limitation (bug) currently: when a valuation commodity is not specified, prices inferred  with
       --infer-market-prices do not help select a default valuation commodity, as P prices would.  So conversion
       might  not  happen  because  no valuation commodity was detected (--debug=2 will show this).  To be safe,
       specify the valuation commmodity, eg:

       • -X EUR --infer-market-prices, not -V --infer-market-prices

       • --value=then,EUR --infer-market-prices, not --value=then --infer-market-prices

       Signed costs and market prices can be confusing.  For reference, here is  the  current  behaviour,  since
       hledger 1.25.  (If you think it should work differently, see #1870.)

              2022-01-01 Positive Unit prices
                  a        A 1
                  b        B -1 @ A 1

              2022-01-01 Positive Total prices
                  a        A 1
                  b        B -1 @@ A 1

              2022-01-02 Negative unit prices
                  a        A 1
                  b        B 1 @ A -1

              2022-01-02 Negative total prices
                  a        A 1
                  b        B 1 @@ A -1

              2022-01-03 Double Negative unit prices
                  a        A -1
                  b        B -1 @ A -1

              2022-01-03 Double Negative total prices
                  a        A -1
                  b        B -1 @@ A -1

       All  of  the  transactions  above  are  considered  balanced  (and  on each day, the two transactions are
       considered equivalent).  Here are the market prices inferred for B:

              $ hledger -f- --infer-market-prices prices
              P 2022-01-01 B A 1
              P 2022-01-01 B A 1.0
              P 2022-01-02 B A -1
              P 2022-01-02 B A -1.0
              P 2022-01-03 B A -1
              P 2022-01-03 B A -1.0

   Valuation commodity
       When you specify a valuation commodity (-X COMM or --value TYPE,COMM):
       hledger will convert all amounts to COMM, wherever it can find a  suitable  market  price  (including  by
       reversing or chaining prices).

       When you leave the valuation commodity unspecified (-V or --value TYPE):
       For  each  commodity  A,  hledger  picks  a  default  valuation  commodity  as  follows, in this order of
       preference:

       1. The price commodity from the latest P-declared market price for A on or before valuation date.

       2. The price commodity from the latest P-declared market price for A on any date.  (Allows conversion  to
          proceed when there are inferred prices before the valuation date.)

       3. If  there  are  no  P  directives at all (any commodity or date) and the --infer-market-prices flag is
          used: the price commodity from the latest transaction-inferred price for  A  on  or  before  valuation
          date.

       This means:

       • If you have P directives, they determine which commodities -V will convert, and to what.

       • If you have no P directives, and use the --infer-market-prices flag, costs determine it.

       Amounts for which no valuation commodity can be found are not converted.

   Simple valuation examples
       Here are some quick examples of -V:

              ; one euro is worth this many dollars from nov 1
              P 2016/11/01 € $1.10

              ; purchase some euros on nov 3
              2016/11/3
                  assets:euros        €100
                  assets:checking

              ; the euro is worth fewer dollars by dec 21
              P 2016/12/21 € $1.03

       How many euros do I have ?

              $ hledger -f t.j bal -N euros
                              €100  assets:euros

       What are they worth at end of nov 3 ?

              $ hledger -f t.j bal -N euros -V -e 2016/11/4
                           $110.00  assets:euros

       What are they worth after 2016/12/21 ?  (no report end date specified, defaults to today)

              $ hledger -f t.j bal -N euros -V
                           $103.00  assets:euros

   --value: Flexible valuation
       -V and -X are special cases of the more general --value option:

               --value=TYPE[,COMM]  TYPE is then, end, now or YYYY-MM-DD.
                                    COMM is an optional commodity symbol.
                                    Shows amounts converted to:
                                    - default valuation commodity (or COMM) using market prices at posting dates
                                    - default valuation commodity (or COMM) using market prices at period end(s)
                                    - default valuation commodity (or COMM) using current market prices
                                    - default valuation commodity (or COMM) using market prices at some date

       The TYPE part selects cost or value and valuation date:

       --value=then
              Convert  amounts  to  their  value in the default valuation commodity, using market prices on each
              posting's date.

       --value=end
              Convert amounts to their value in the default valuation commodity, using market prices on the last
              day of the report period (or if unspecified, the journal's end date); or in  multiperiod  reports,
              market prices on the last day of each subperiod.

       --value=now
              Convert  amounts to their value in the default valuation commodity using current market prices (as
              of when report is generated).

       --value=YYYY-MM-DD
              Convert amounts to their value in the default valuation commodity  using  market  prices  on  this
              date.

       To  select  a  different  valuation  commodity,  add  the  optional  ,COMM part: a comma, then the target
       commodity's symbol.  Eg: --value=now,EUR.  hledger will do its best to convert amounts to this commodity,
       deducing market prices as described above.

   More valuation examples
       Here are some examples showing the effect of --value, as seen with print:

              P 2000-01-01 A  1 B
              P 2000-02-01 A  2 B
              P 2000-03-01 A  3 B
              P 2000-04-01 A  4 B

              2000-01-01
                (a)      1 A @ 5 B

              2000-02-01
                (a)      1 A @ 6 B

              2000-03-01
                (a)      1 A @ 7 B

       Show the cost of each posting:

              $ hledger -f- print --cost
              2000-01-01
                  (a)             5 B

              2000-02-01
                  (a)             6 B

              2000-03-01
                  (a)             7 B

       Show the value as of the last day of the report period (2000-02-29):

              $ hledger -f- print --value=end date:2000/01-2000/03
              2000-01-01
                  (a)             2 B

              2000-02-01
                  (a)             2 B

       With no report period specified, that shows the value as of the last day of the journal (2000-03-01):

              $ hledger -f- print --value=end
              2000-01-01
                  (a)             3 B

              2000-02-01
                  (a)             3 B

              2000-03-01
                  (a)             3 B

       Show the current value (the 2000-04-01 price is still in effect today):

              $ hledger -f- print --value=now
              2000-01-01
                  (a)             4 B

              2000-02-01
                  (a)             4 B

              2000-03-01
                  (a)             4 B

       Show the value on 2000/01/15:

              $ hledger -f- print --value=2000-01-15
              2000-01-01
                  (a)             1 B

              2000-02-01
                  (a)             1 B

              2000-03-01
                  (a)             1 B

       You may need to explicitly set a commodity's display style, when reverse prices are used.  Eg this output
       might be surprising:

              P 2000-01-01 A 2B

              2000-01-01
                a  1B
                b

              $ hledger print -x -X A
              2000-01-01
                  a               0
                  b               0

       Explanation: because there's no amount or commodity directive specifying a display style for A, 0.5A gets
       the default style, which shows no decimal digits.  Because the displayed  amount  looks  like  zero,  the
       commodity  symbol  and  minus  sign  are  not displayed either.  Adding a commodity directive sets a more
       useful display style for A:

              P 2000-01-01 A 2B
              commodity 0.00A

              2000-01-01
                a  1B
                b

              $ hledger print -X A
              2000-01-01
                  a           0.50A
                  b          -0.50A

   Interaction of valuation and queries
       When matching postings based on queries in the presence of valuation, the following happens.

       1. The query is separated into two parts:

           1. the currency (cur:) or amount (amt:).

           2. all other parts.

       2. The postings are matched to the currency and amount queries based on pre-valued amounts.

       3. Valuation is applied to the postings.

       4. The postings are matched to the other parts of the query based on post-valued amounts.

       See: 1625

   Effect of valuation on reports
       Here is a reference for how valuation is supposed to  affect  each  part  of  hledger's  reports  (and  a
       glossary).   (It's wide, you'll have to scroll sideways.)  It may be useful when troubleshooting.  If you
       find problems, please report them, ideally with a reproducible example.  Related: #329, #1083.

       Report                   -B, --cost     -V, -X         --value=then        --value=end    --value=DATE,
       type                                                                                      --value=now
       ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
       print
       posting                  cost           value     at   value at  posting   value     at   value      at
       amounts                                 report   end   date                report    or   DATE/today
                                               or today                           journal end
       balance                  unchanged      unchanged      unchanged           unchanged      unchanged
       assertions/assignments

       register
       starting balance (-H)    cost           value     at   valued   at   day   value     at   value      at
                                               report    or   each   historical   report    or   DATE/today
                                               journal end    posting was made    journal end
       starting  balance (-H)   cost           value at day   valued   at   day   value at day   value      at
       with report interval                    before         each   historical   before         DATE/today
                                               report    or   posting was made    report    or
                                               journal                            journal
                                               start                              start
       posting amounts          cost           value     at   value  at posting   value     at   value      at
                                               report    or   date                report    or   DATE/today
                                               journal end                        journal end
       summary        posting   summarised     value     at   sum  of  postings   value     at   value      at
       amounts  with   report   cost           period ends    in      interval,   period ends    DATE/today
       interval                                               valued         at
                                                              interval start
       running total/average    sum/average    sum/average    sum/average    of   sum/average    sum/average
                                of displayed   of displayed   displayed values    of displayed   of  displayed
                                values         values                             values         values

       balance  (bs, bse, cf,
       is)
       balance changes          sums      of   value     at   value  at posting   value     at   value      at
                                costs          report   end   date                report    or   DATE/today of
                                               or  today of                       journal  end   sums       of
                                               sums      of                       of  sums  of   postings
                                               postings                           postings
       budget         amounts   like balance   like balance   like      balance   like           like  balance
       (--budget)               changes        changes        changes             balances       changes
       grand total              sum       of   sum       of   sum  of displayed   sum       of   sum        of
                                displayed      displayed      valued              displayed      displayed
                                values         values                             values         values

       balance (bs, bse,  cf,
       is)     with    report
       interval
       starting balances (-H)   sums      of   value     at   sums of values of   value     at   sums       of
                                costs     of   report start   postings   before   report start   postings
                                postings       of  sums  of   report  start  at   of  sums  of   before report
                                before         all postings   respective          all postings   start
                                report start   before         posting dates       before
                                               report start                       report start
       balance  changes (bal,   sums      of   same      as   sums of values of   balance        value      at
       is,  bs  --change,  cf   costs     of   --value=end    postings       in   change    in   DATE/today of
       --change)                postings  in                  period         at   each period,   sums       of
                                period                        respective          valued    at   postings
                                                              posting dates       period ends
       end  balances (bal -H,   sums      of   same      as   sums of values of   period   end   value      at
       is --H, bs, cf)          costs     of   --value=end    postings     from   balances,      DATE/today of
                                postings                      before     period   valued    at   sums       of
                                from  before                  start  to  period   period ends    postings
                                report start                  end at respective
                                to    period                  posting dates
                                end
       budget         amounts   like balance   like balance   like      balance   like           like  balance
       (--budget)               changes/end    changes/end    changes/end         balances       changes/end
                                balances       balances       balances                           balances
       row     totals,    row   sums,          sums,          sums, averages of   sums,          sums,
       averages (-T, -A)        averages  of   averages  of   displayed values    averages  of   averages   of
                                displayed      displayed                          displayed      displayed
                                values         values                             values         values
       column totals            sums      of   sums      of   sums of displayed   sums      of   sums       of
                                displayed      displayed      values              displayed      displayed
                                values         values                             values         values
       grand   total,   grand   sum, average   sum, average   sum,  average  of   sum, average   sum,  average
       average                  of    column   of    column   column totals       of    column   of     column
                                totals         totals                             totals         totals

       --cumulative is omitted to save space, it works like -H but with a zero starting balance.

       Glossary:

       cost   calculated using price(s) recorded in the transaction(s).

       value  market  value  using available market price declarations, or the unchanged amount if no conversion
              rate can be found.

       report start
              the first day of the report period specified with -b or -p or date:, otherwise today.

       report or journal start
              the first day of the report period specified with -b  or  -p  or  date:,  otherwise  the  earliest
              transaction date in the journal, otherwise today.

       report end
              the last day of the report period specified with -e or -p or date:, otherwise today.

       report or journal end
              the  last  day  of  the  report  period  specified  with  -e  or -p or date:, otherwise the latest
              transaction date in the journal, otherwise today.

       report interval
              a flag (-D/-W/-M/-Q/-Y) or  period  expression  that  activates  the  report's  multi-period  mode
              (whether showing one or many subperiods).

PART 4: COMMANDS

   Commands overview
       Here are the built-in commands:

   DATA ENTRY
       These data entry commands are the only ones which can modify your journal file.

       • add - add transactions using terminal prompts

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

   DATA CREATION
       • close - generate balance-zeroing/restoring transactions

       • rewrite - generate auto postings, like print --auto

   DATA MANAGEMENT
       • check - check for various kinds of error in the data

       • diff - compare account transactions in two journal files

   REPORTS, FINANCIAL
       • aregister (areg) - show transactions in a particular account

       • balancesheet (bs) - show assets, liabilities and net worth

       • balancesheetequity (bse) - show assets, liabilities and equity

       • cashflow (cf) - show changes in liquid assets

       • incomestatement (is) - show revenues and expenses

   REPORTS, VERSATILE
       • balance (bal) - show balance changes, end balances, budgets, gains..

       • print - show transactions or export journal data

       • register (reg) - show postings in one or more accounts & running total

       • roi - show return on investments

   REPORTS, BASIC
       • accounts - show account names

       • activity - show bar charts of posting counts per period

       • codes - show transaction codes

       • commodities - show commodity/currency symbols

       • descriptions - show transaction descriptions

       • files - show input file paths

       • notes - show note parts of transaction descriptions

       • payees - show payee parts of transaction descriptions

       • prices - show market prices

       • stats - show journal statistics

       • tags - show tag names

       • test - run self tests

   HELP
       • help - show the hledger manual with info/man/pager

       • demo - show small hledger demos in the terminal

   ADD-ONS
       And  here  are  some typical add-on commands.  Some of these are installed by the hledger-install script.
       If installed, they will appear in hledger's commands list:

       • ui - run hledger's terminal UI

       • web - run hledger's web UI

       • iadd - add transactions using a TUI (currently hard to build)

       • interest - generate interest transactions

       • stockquotes - download market prices from AlphaVantage

       • Scripts and add-ons - check-fancyassertions, edit, fifo, git, move, pijul, plot, and more..

       Next, each command is described in detail, in alphabetical order.

   accounts
       Show account names.

       This command lists account names.  By default it shows all known accounts, either used in transactions or
       declared with account directives.

       With query arguments, only matched account names and account names referenced  by  matched  postings  are
       shown.

       Or  it  can  show just the used accounts (--used/-u), the declared accounts (--declared/-d), the accounts
       declared but not used (--unused), the accounts used but not declared (--undeclared), or the first account
       matched by an account name pattern, if any (--find).

       It shows a flat list by default.  With --tree, it uses indentation to show  the  account  hierarchy.   In
       flat  mode  you  can  add  --drop  N to omit the first few account name components.  Account names can be
       depth-clipped with depth:N or --depth N or -N.

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

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

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

       The  --find flag can be used to look up a single account name, in the same way that the aregister command
       does.  It returns the alphanumerically-first matched account name, or if none can be found, it fails with
       a non-zero exit code.

       Examples:

              $ hledger accounts
              assets:bank:checking
              assets:bank:saving
              assets:cash
              expenses:food
              expenses:supplies
              income:gifts
              income:salary
              liabilities:debts

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

   activity
       Show an ascii barchart of posting counts per interval.

       The activity command displays an ascii histogram showing transaction counts by day, week, month or  other
       reporting interval (by day is the default).  With query arguments, it counts only matched transactions.

       Examples:

              $ hledger activity --quarterly
              2008-01-01 **
              2008-04-01 *******
              2008-07-01
              2008-10-01 **

   add
       Prompt  for  transactions  and add them to the journal.  Any arguments will be used as default inputs for
       the first N prompts.

       Many hledger users edit their journals directly with a text editor, or generate them from CSV.  For  more
       interactive  data  entry,  there  is  the add command, which prompts interactively on the console for new
       transactions, and appends them to the main journal file (which should be in  journal  format).   Existing
       transactions  are  not  changed.  This is one of the few hledger commands that writes to the journal file
       (see also import).

       To use it, just run hledger add and follow the prompts.  You can add as many transactions  as  you  like;
       when you are finished, enter . or press control-d or control-c to exit.

       Features:

       • add  tries  to  provide  useful  defaults,  using  the most similar (by description) recent transaction
         (filtered by the query, if any) as a template.

       • You can also set the initial defaults with command line arguments.

       • Readline-style edit keys can be used during data entry.

       • The tab key will auto-complete whenever possible -  accounts,  payees/descriptions,  dates  (yesterday,
         today, tomorrow).  If the input area is empty, it will insert the default value.

       • If the journal defines a default commodity, it will be added to any bare numbers entered.

       • A parenthesised transaction code may be entered following a date.

       • Comments and tags may be entered following a description or amount.

       • If you make a mistake, enter < at any prompt to go one step backward.

       • Input prompts are displayed in a different colour when the terminal supports it.

       Example (see https://hledger.org/add.html for a detailed tutorial):

              $ hledger add
              Adding transactions to journal file /src/hledger/examples/sample.journal
              Any command line arguments will be used as defaults.
              Use tab key to complete, readline keys to edit, enter to accept defaults.
              An optional (CODE) may follow transaction dates.
              An optional ; COMMENT may follow descriptions or amounts.
              If you make a mistake, enter < at any prompt to go one step backward.
              To end a transaction, enter . when prompted.
              To quit, enter . at a date prompt or press control-d or control-c.
              Date [2015/05/22]:
              Description: supermarket
              Account 1: expenses:food
              Amount  1: $10
              Account 2: assets:checking
              Amount  2 [$-10.0]:
              Account 3 (or . or enter to finish this transaction): .
              2015/05/22 supermarket
                  expenses:food             $10
                  assets:checking        $-10.0

              Save this transaction to the journal ? [y]:
              Saved.
              Starting the next transaction (. or ctrl-D/ctrl-C to quit)
              Date [2015/05/22]: <CTRL-D> $

       On  Microsoft  Windows,  the  add command makes sure that no part of the file path ends with a period, as
       that would cause problems (#1056).

   aregister
       (areg)

       Show the transactions and running historical balance of a single account, with each transaction displayed
       as one line.

       aregister shows the overall transactions affecting a particular  account  (and  any  subaccounts).   Each
       report  line  represents  one transaction in this account.  Transactions before the report start date are
       always included in the running balance (--historical mode is always on).

       This is a more "real world", bank-like view than the register command (which shows  individual  postings,
       possibly  from  multiple  accounts, not necessarily in historical mode).  As a quick rule of thumb: - use
       aregister for reviewing and reconciling real-world asset/liability accounts - use register for  reviewing
       detailed revenues/expenses.

       aregister  requires  one argument: the account to report on.  You can write either the full account name,
       or a case-insensitive regular expression which will select the alphabetically first matched account.

       When there are multiple matches, the alphabetically-first choice  can  be  surprising;  eg  if  you  have
       assets:per:checking   1   and   assets:biz:checking  2  accounts,  hledger  areg  checking  would  select
       assets:biz:checking 2.  It's just a convenience to save typing, so if in doubt, write  the  full  account
       name, or a distinctive substring that matches uniquely.

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

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

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

              $ hledger areg checking date:jul

       Each aregister line item shows:

       • the transaction's date (or the relevant posting's date if different, see below)

       • the names of all the other account(s) involved in this transaction (probably abbreviated)

       • the total change to this account's balance from this transaction

       • the account's historical running balance after this transaction.

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

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

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

   aregister and custom posting dates
       Transactions  whose  date is outside the report period can still be shown, if they have a posting to this
       account dated inside the report period.  (And in this case it's the posting date that  is  shown.)   This
       ensures  that  aregister  can  show  an  accurate  historical  running balance, matching the one shown by
       register -H with the same arguments.

       To filter strictly by transaction date instead, add the --txn-dates flag.  If you use this flag and  some
       of your postings have custom dates, it's probably best to assume the running balance is wrong.

   balance
       (bal)

       Show accounts and their balances.

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

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

   balance features
       Here's  a  quick  overview  of the balance command's features, followed by more detailed descriptions and
       examples.  Many of these work with the higher-level commands as well.

       balance can show..

       • accounts as a list (-l) or a tree (-t)

       • optionally depth-limited (-[1-9])

       • sorted by declaration order and name, or by amount

       ..and their..

       • balance changes (the default)

       • or actual and planned balance changes (--budget)

       • or value of balance changes (-V)

       • or change of balance values (--valuechange)

       • or unrealised capital gain/loss (--gain)

       • or postings count (--count)

       ..in..

       • one time period (the whole journal period by default)

       • or multiple periods (-D, -W, -M, -Q, -Y, -p INTERVAL)

       ..either..

       • per period (the default)

       • or accumulated since report start date (--cumulative)

       • or accumulated since account creation (--historical/-H)

       ..possibly converted to..

       • cost (--value=cost[,COMM]/--cost/-B)

       • or market value, as of transaction dates (--value=then[,COMM])

       • or at period ends (--value=end[,COMM])

       • or now (--value=now)

       • or at some other date (--value=YYYY-MM-DD)

       ..with..

       • totals (-T), averages (-A), percentages (-%), inverted sign (--invert)

       • rows and columns swapped (--transpose)

       • another field used as account name (--pivot)

       • custom-formatted line items (single-period reports only) (--format)

       • commodities displayed on the same line or multiple lines (--layout)

       This command supports the output destination and output format options, with  output  formats  txt,  csv,
       json,  and  (multi-period  reports  only:) html.  In txt output in a colour-supporting terminal, negative
       amounts are shown in red.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

              $ hledger -f examples/sample.journal balance --format "%20(account) %12(total)"
                            assets          $-1
                       bank:saving           $1
                              cash          $-2
                          expenses           $2
                              food           $1
                          supplies           $1
                            income          $-2
                             gifts          $-1
                            salary          $-1
                 liabilities:debts           $1
              ---------------------------------
                                              0

       The  FMT format string specifies the formatting applied to each account/balance pair.  It may contain any
       suitable text, with data fields interpolated like so:

       %[MIN][.MAX](FIELDNAME)

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

       • MAX truncates at this width (optional)

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

         • depth_spacer - a number of spaces equal to the account's depth, or if MIN is specified, MIN  *  depth
           spaces.

         • account - the account's name

         • total - the account's balance/posted total, right justified

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

       • %_ - render on multiple lines, bottom-aligned (the default)

       • %^ - render on multiple lines, top-aligned

       • %, - render on one line, comma-separated

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

       Some example formats:

       • %(total) - the account's total

       • %-20.20(account) - the account's name, left justified, padded  to  20  characters  and  clipped  at  20
         characters

       • %,%-50(account)  %25(total) - account name padded to 50 characters, total padded to 20 characters, with
         multiple commodities rendered on one line

       • %20(total)  %2(depth_spacer)%-(account) - the default format for the single-column balance report

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

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

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

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

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

       Notes:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

              $ hledger -f examples/sample.journal bal --quarterly income expenses -E
              Balance changes in 2008:

                                 ||  2008q1  2008q2  2008q3  2008q4
              ===================++=================================
               expenses:food     ||       0      $1       0       0
               expenses:supplies ||       0      $1       0       0
               income:gifts      ||       0     $-1       0       0
               income:salary     ||     $-1       0       0       0
              -------------------++---------------------------------
                                 ||     $-1      $1       0       0

       Notes:

       • The  report's  start/end  dates  will  be  expanded,  if  necessary,  to  fully encompass the displayed
         subperiods (so that the first and last subperiods have the same duration as the others).

       • Leading and trailing periods (columns) containing all zeroes are not shown, unless -E/--empty is used.

       • Accounts (rows) containing all zeroes are not shown, unless -E/--empty is used.

       • Amounts with many commodities are shown in abbreviated form, unless --no-elide is used.  (experimental)

       • Average and/or total columns can be added with the -A/--average and -T/--row-total flags.

       • The --transpose flag can be used to exchange rows and columns.

       • The --pivot FIELD option causes a different transaction field  to  be  used  as  "account  name".   See
         PIVOTING.

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

       • Hide the totals row with -N/--no-total

       • Convert to a single currency with -V

       • Maximize the terminal window

       • Reduce the terminal's font size

       • View with a pager like less, eg: hledger bal -D --color=yes | less -RS

       • Output as CSV and use a CSV viewer like visidata (hledger bal -D -O csv | vd -f csv),  Emacs'  csv-mode
         (M-x csv-mode, C-c C-a), or a spreadsheet (hledger bal -D -o a.csv && open a.csv)

       • Output as HTML and view with a browser: hledger bal -D -o a.html && open a.html

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

       There are three important option groups:

       hledger balance [CALCULATIONTYPE] [ACCUMULATIONTYPE] [VALUATIONTYPE] ...

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

       • --sum : sum the posting amounts (default)

       • --budget : sum the amounts, but also show the budget goal amount (for each account/period)

       • --valuechange :  show  the  change  in  period-end  historical  balance  values  (caused  by  deposits,
         withdrawals, and/or market price fluctuations)

       • --gain  :  show  the  unrealised  capital  gain/loss,  (the  current valued balance minus each amount's
         original cost)

       • --count : show the count of postings

   Accumulation type
       How amounts should accumulate across report periods.  Another way to say it: which time period's postings
       should contribute to each cell's calculation.  It is one of:

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

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

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

   Valuation type
       Which kind of value or cost conversion should be applied, if any, before displaying the  report.   It  is
       one of:

       • no valuation type : don't convert to cost or value (default)

       • --value=cost[,COMM] : convert amounts to cost (then optionally to some other commodity)

       • --value=then[,COMM] : convert amounts to market value on transaction dates

       • --value=end[,COMM] : convert amounts to market value on period end date(s)
       (default with --valuechange, --gain)

       • --value=now[,COMM] : convert amounts to market value on today's date

       • --value=YYYY-MM-DD[,COMM] : convert amounts to market value on another date

       or one of the equivalent simpler flags:

       • -B/--cost  :  like --value=cost (though, note --cost and --value are independent options which can both
         be used at once)

       • -V/--market : like --value=end

       • -X COMM/--exchange COMM : like --value=end,COMM

       See Cost reporting and Valuation for more about these.

   Combining balance report types
       Most combinations of these options should produce reasonable reports, but if you find any that seem wrong
       or misleading, let us know.  The following restrictions are applied:

       • --valuechange implies --value=end

       • --valuechange makes --change the default when used with the balancesheet/balancesheetequity commands

       • --cumulative or --historical disables --row-total/-T

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

       Valuation:>      no valuation       --value= then       --value= end      --value= YYYY-
       Accumulation:v                                                            MM-DD /now
       ─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
       --change         change in period   sum  of  posting-   period-end        DATE-value  of
                                           date       market   value of change   change      in
                                           values in period    in period         period
       --cumulative     change      from   sum  of  posting-   period-end        DATE-value  of
                        report  start to   date       market   value of change   change    from
                        period end         values       from   from     report   report   start
                                           report  start  to   start to period   to period end
                                           period end          end
       --historical     change      from   sum  of  posting-   period-end        DATE-value  of
       /-H              journal start to   date       market   value of change   change    from
                        period       end   values       from   from    journal   journal  start
                        (historical  end   journal start  to   start to period   to period end
                        balance)           period end          end

   Budget report
       The  --budget  report  type activates extra columns showing any budget goals for each account and period.
       The budget goals are defined by periodic transactions.  This is useful for comparing planned  and  actual
       income, expenses, time usage, etc.

       For  example,  you  can  take  average  monthly  expenses in the common expense categories to construct a
       minimal monthly budget:

              ;; Budget
              ~ monthly
                income  $2000
                expenses:food    $400
                expenses:bus     $50
                expenses:movies  $30
                assets:bank:checking

              ;; Two months worth of expenses
              2017-11-01
                income  $1950
                expenses:food    $396
                expenses:bus     $49
                expenses:movies  $30
                expenses:supplies  $20
                assets:bank:checking

              2017-12-01
                income  $2100
                expenses:food    $412
                expenses:bus     $53
                expenses:gifts   $100
                assets:bank:checking

       You can now see a monthly budget report:

              $ hledger balance -M --budget
              Budget performance in 2017/11/01-2017/12/31:

                                    ||                      Nov                       Dec
              ======================++====================================================
               assets               || $-2445 [  99% of $-2480]  $-2665 [ 107% of $-2480]
               assets:bank          || $-2445 [  99% of $-2480]  $-2665 [ 107% of $-2480]
               assets:bank:checking || $-2445 [  99% of $-2480]  $-2665 [ 107% of $-2480]
               expenses             ||   $495 [ 103% of   $480]    $565 [ 118% of   $480]
               expenses:bus         ||    $49 [  98% of    $50]     $53 [ 106% of    $50]
               expenses:food        ||   $396 [  99% of   $400]    $412 [ 103% of   $400]
               expenses:movies      ||    $30 [ 100% of    $30]       0 [   0% of    $30]
               income               ||  $1950 [  98% of  $2000]   $2100 [ 105% of  $2000]
              ----------------------++----------------------------------------------------
                                    ||      0 [              0]       0 [              0]

       This is different from a normal balance report in several ways.  Currently:

       • Accounts with budget goals during the report period, and their parents, are shown.

       • Their subaccounts are not shown (regardless of the depth setting).

       • Accounts without budget goals, if any, are aggregated and shown as "<unbudgeted>".

       • Amounts are always inclusive (subaccount-including), even in list mode.

       • After each actual amount, the corresponding goal amount and percentage of goal reached are also  shown,
         in square brackets.

       This  means  that  the  numbers  displayed  will not always add up!  Eg above, the expenses actual amount
       includes the gifts and supplies transactions, but the expenses:gifts and expenses:supplies  accounts  are
       not shown, as they have no budget amounts declared.

       This  can be confusing.  When you need to make things clearer, use the -E/--empty flag, which will reveal
       all accounts including unbudgeted ones, giving the full picture.  Eg:

              $ hledger balance -M --budget --empty
              Budget performance in 2017/11/01-2017/12/31:

                                    ||                      Nov                       Dec
              ======================++====================================================
               assets               || $-2445 [  99% of $-2480]  $-2665 [ 107% of $-2480]
               assets:bank          || $-2445 [  99% of $-2480]  $-2665 [ 107% of $-2480]
               assets:bank:checking || $-2445 [  99% of $-2480]  $-2665 [ 107% of $-2480]
               expenses             ||   $495 [ 103% of   $480]    $565 [ 118% of   $480]
               expenses:bus         ||    $49 [  98% of    $50]     $53 [ 106% of    $50]
               expenses:food        ||   $396 [  99% of   $400]    $412 [ 103% of   $400]
               expenses:gifts       ||      0                      $100
               expenses:movies      ||    $30 [ 100% of    $30]       0 [   0% of    $30]
               expenses:supplies    ||    $20                         0
               income               ||  $1950 [  98% of  $2000]   $2100 [ 105% of  $2000]
              ----------------------++----------------------------------------------------
                                    ||      0 [              0]       0 [              0]

       You can roll over unspent budgets to next period with --cumulative:

              $ hledger balance -M --budget --cumulative
              Budget performance in 2017/11/01-2017/12/31:

                                    ||                      Nov                       Dec
              ======================++====================================================
               assets               || $-2445 [  99% of $-2480]  $-5110 [ 103% of $-4960]
               assets:bank          || $-2445 [  99% of $-2480]  $-5110 [ 103% of $-4960]
               assets:bank:checking || $-2445 [  99% of $-2480]  $-5110 [ 103% of $-4960]
               expenses             ||   $495 [ 103% of   $480]   $1060 [ 110% of   $960]
               expenses:bus         ||    $49 [  98% of    $50]    $102 [ 102% of   $100]
               expenses:food        ||   $396 [  99% of   $400]    $808 [ 101% of   $800]
               expenses:movies      ||    $30 [ 100% of    $30]     $30 [  50% of    $60]
               income               ||  $1950 [  98% of  $2000]   $4050 [ 101% of  $4000]
              ----------------------++----------------------------------------------------
                                    ||      0 [              0]       0 [              0]

       It's common to limit budgets/budget reports to just expenses

              hledger bal -M --budget expenses

       or just revenues and expenses (eg, using account types):

              hledger bal -M --budget type:rx

       It's also common to limit or convert them to a single currency  (cur:COMM  or  -X  COMM  [--infer-market-
       prices]).  If showing multiple currencies, --layout bare or --layout tall can help.

       For more examples and notes, see Budgeting.

   Budget report start date
       This  might  be  a  bug,  but for now: when making budget reports, it's a good idea to explicitly set the
       report's start date to the first day of a reporting period,  because  a  periodic  rule  like  ~  monthly
       generates  its  transactions on the 1st of each month, and if your journal has no regular transactions on
       the 1st, the default report start date could exclude that budget goal, which can be a little  surprising.
       Eg here the default report period is just the day of 2020-01-15:

              ~ monthly in 2020
                (expenses:food)  $500

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

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

                            || 2020-01-15
              ==============++============
               <unbudgeted> ||       $400
              --------------++------------
                            ||       $400

       To  avoid  this,  specify the budget report's period, or at least the start date, with -b/-e/-p/date:, to
       ensure it includes the budget goal transactions (periodic transactions) that you  want.   Eg,  adding  -b
       2020/1/1 to the above:

              $ hledger bal expenses --budget -b 2020/1/1
              Budget performance in 2020-01-01..2020-01-15:

                             || 2020-01-01..2020-01-15
              ===============++========================
               expenses:food ||     $400 [80% of $500]
              ---------------++------------------------
                             ||     $400 [80% of $500]

   Budgets and subaccounts
       You can add budgets to any account in your account hierarchy.  If you have budgets on both parent account
       and  some  of  its children, then budget(s) of the child account(s) would be added to the budget of their
       parent, much like account balances behave.

       In the most simple case this means that once you add a budget to any account, all its parents would  have
       budget as well.

       To illustrate this, consider the following budget:

              ~ monthly from 2019/01
                  expenses:personal             $1,000.00
                  expenses:personal:electronics    $100.00
                  liabilities

       With  this,  monthly  budget for electronics is defined to be $100 and budget for personal expenses is an
       additional $1000, which implicitly means that budget for both expenses:personal and expenses is $1100.

       Transactions in expenses:personal:electronics will be counted both towards its $100 budget and  $1100  of
       expenses:personal  ,  and  transactions  in  any  other  subaccount of expenses:personal would be counted
       towards only towards the budget of expenses:personal.

       For example, let's consider these transactions:

              ~ monthly from 2019/01
                  expenses:personal             $1,000.00
                  expenses:personal:electronics    $100.00
                  liabilities

              2019/01/01 Google home hub
                  expenses:personal:electronics          $90.00
                  liabilities                           $-90.00

              2019/01/02 Phone screen protector
                  expenses:personal:electronics:upgrades          $10.00
                  liabilities

              2019/01/02 Weekly train ticket
                  expenses:personal:train tickets       $153.00
                  liabilities

              2019/01/03 Flowers
                  expenses:personal          $30.00
                  liabilities

       As   you   can   see,   we    have    transactions    in    expenses:personal:electronics:upgrades    and
       expenses:personal:train  tickets, and since both of these accounts are without explicitly defined budget,
       these  transactions   would   be   counted   towards   budgets   of   expenses:personal:electronics   and
       expenses:personal accordingly:

              $ hledger balance --budget -M
              Budget performance in 2019/01:

                                             ||                           Jan
              ===============================++===============================
               expenses                      ||  $283.00 [  26% of  $1100.00]
               expenses:personal             ||  $283.00 [  26% of  $1100.00]
               expenses:personal:electronics ||  $100.00 [ 100% of   $100.00]
               liabilities                   || $-283.00 [  26% of $-1100.00]
              -------------------------------++-------------------------------
                                             ||        0 [                 0]

       And with --empty, we can get a better picture of budget allocation and consumption:

              $ hledger balance --budget -M --empty
              Budget performance in 2019/01:

                                                      ||                           Jan
              ========================================++===============================
               expenses                               ||  $283.00 [  26% of  $1100.00]
               expenses:personal                      ||  $283.00 [  26% of  $1100.00]
               expenses:personal:electronics          ||  $100.00 [ 100% of   $100.00]
               expenses:personal:electronics:upgrades ||   $10.00
               expenses:personal:train tickets        ||  $153.00
               liabilities                            || $-283.00 [  26% of $-1100.00]
              ----------------------------------------++-------------------------------
                                                      ||        0 [                 0]

   Selecting budget goals
       The  budget  report  evaluates  periodic transaction rules to generate special "goal transactions", which
       generate the goal amounts for each account in each report subperiod.  When troubleshooting, you  can  use
       print --forecast to show these as forecasted transactions:

              $ hledger print --forecast=BUDGETREPORTPERIOD tag:generated

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

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

   Budget vs forecast
       hledger --forecast ... and hledger balance --budget ... are separate features, though both  of  them  use
       the  periodic  transaction rules defined in the journal, and both of them generate temporary transactions
       for reporting purposes ("forecast transactions" and "budget goal transactions", respectively).   You  can
       use  both  features  at the same time if you want.  Here are some differences between them, as of hledger
       1.29:

       CLI:

       • --forecast is a general hledger option, usable with any command

       • --budget is a balance command option, usable only with that command.

       Visibility of generated transactions:

       • forecast transactions are visible in any report, like ordinary transactions

       • budget goal transactions are invisible except for the goal amounts they produce in --budget reports.

       Periodic transaction rules:

       • --forecast uses all available periodic transaction rules

       • --budget uses all periodic rules (--budget) or a selected subset (--budget=DESCPAT)

       Period of generated transactions:

       • --forecast generates forecast transactions

         • from after the last regular transaction to the end of the report period (--forecast)

         • or, during a specified period (--forecast=PERIODEXPR)

         • possibly further restricted by a period specified in the periodic transaction rule

         • and always restricted within the bounds of the report period

       • --budget generates budget goal transactions

         • throughout the report period

         • possibly restricted by a period specified in the periodic transaction rule.

   Data layout
       The --layout option affects how balance reports show multi-commodity amounts and commodity symbols, which
       can improve readability.  It can also normalise the data for easy consumption by other programs.  It  has
       four possible values:

       • --layout=wide[,WIDTH]: commodities are shown on a single line, optionally elided to WIDTH

       • --layout=tall: each commodity is shown on a separate line

       • --layout=bare: commodity symbols are in their own column, amounts are bare numbers

       • --layout=tidy: data is normalised to easily-consumed "tidy" form, with one row per data value

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

       -      txt   csv   html   json   sql
       ─────────────────────────────────────
       wide   Y     Y     Y
       tall   Y     Y     Y
       bare   Y     Y     Y
       tidy         Y

       Examples:

       • Wide layout.  With many commodities, reports can be very wide:

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

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

       • Limited wide layout.  A width limit reduces the width, but some commodities will be hidden:

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

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

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

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

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

       • Bare layout.  Commodity symbols are kept in one column, each commodity gets its own report row, account
         names are repeated:

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

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

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

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

       • Tidy  layout  produces  normalised  "tidy  data",  where every variable has its own column and each row
         represents a  single  data  point.   See  https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/tidyr/vignettes/tidy-
         data.html  for  more.   This  is the easiest kind of data for other software to consume.  Here's how it
         looks:

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

   Useful balance reports
       Some frequently used balance options/reports are:

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

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

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

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

       Also:

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

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

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

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

   balancesheet
       (bs)

       This  command  displays  a  balance  sheet,  showing  historical  ending  balances of asset and liability
       accounts.  (To see equity as well, use the balancesheetequity command.)  Amounts are  shown  with  normal
       positive sign, as in conventional financial statements.

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

       Example:

              $ hledger balancesheet
              Balance Sheet

              Assets:
                               $-1  assets
                                $1    bank:saving
                               $-2    cash
              --------------------
                               $-1

              Liabilities:
                                $1  liabilities:debts
              --------------------
                                $1

              Total:
              --------------------
                                 0

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

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

   balancesheetequity
       (bse)

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

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

       Example:

              $ hledger balancesheetequity
              Balance Sheet With Equity

              Assets:
                               $-2  assets
                                $1    bank:saving
                               $-3    cash
              --------------------
                               $-2

              Liabilities:
                                $1  liabilities:debts
              --------------------
                                $1

              Equity:
                        $1  equity:owner
              --------------------
                        $1

              Total:
              --------------------
                                 0

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

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

   cashflow
       (cf)

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

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

       • under a top-level account named asset (case insensitive, plural allowed)

       • whose name contains some variation of cash, bank, checking or saving.

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

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

       and their subaccounts.

       An example cashflow report:

              $ hledger cashflow
              Cashflow Statement

              Cash flows:
                               $-1  assets
                                $1    bank:saving
                               $-2    cash
              --------------------
                               $-1

              Total:
              --------------------
                               $-1

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

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

   check
       Check for various kinds of errors in your data.

       hledger  provides a number of built-in error checks to help prevent problems in your data.  Some of these
       are run automatically; or, you can use this check command to run them on demand, with  no  output  and  a
       zero exit code if all is well.  Specify their names (or a prefix) as argument(s).

       Some examples:

              hledger check      # basic checks
              hledger check -s   # basic + strict checks
              hledger check ordereddates payees  # basic + two other checks

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

       Here are the checks currently available:

   Basic checks
       These checks are always run automatically, by (almost) all hledger commands, including check:

       • parseable - data files are well-formed and can be successfully parsed

       • balancedwithautoconversion - all transactions are balanced, inferring missing amounts where  necessary,
         and possibly converting commodities using costs or automatically-inferred costs

       • assertions  -  all  balance  assertions  in  the journal are passing.  (This check can be disabled with
         -I/--ignore-assertions.)

   Strict checks
       These additional checks are run when the -s/--strict (strict mode) flag is used.  Or, they can be run  by
       giving their names as arguments to check:

       • accounts - all account names used by transactions have been declared

       • commodities - all commodity symbols used have been declared

       • balancednoautoconversion  -  transactions  are balanced, possibly using explicit costs but not inferred
         ones

   Other checks
       These checks can be run only by giving their names as arguments to check.  They are more specialised  and
       not desirable for everyone, therefore optional:

       • ordereddates - transactions are ordered by date within each file

       • payees - all payees used by transactions have been declared

       • recentassertions  -  all  accounts with balance assertions have a balance assertion no more than 7 days
         before their latest posting

       • tags - all tags used by transactions have been declared

       • uniqueleafnames - all account leaf names are unique

   Custom checks
       A    few    more    checks    are    are    available     as     separate     add-on     commands,     in
       https://github.com/simonmichael/hledger/tree/master/bin:

       • hledger-check-tagfiles - all tag values containing / (a forward slash) exist as file paths

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

       You could make similar scripts to perform your own custom checks.  See: Cookbook -> Scripting.

   More about specific checks
       hledger  check  recentassertions  will  complain  if any balance-asserted account does not have a balance
       assertion within 7 days before its latest posting.  This aims to prevent  the  situation  where  you  are
       regularly  updating  your journal, but forgetting to check your balances against the real world, then one
       day must dig back through months of data to find an error.  It assumes that adding  a  balance  assertion
       requires/reminds  you to check the real-world balance.  That may not be true if you auto-generate balance
       assertions from bank data; in that case, I recommend to  import  transactions  uncleared,  then  use  the
       manual-review-and-mark-cleared  phase  as  a  reminder  to check the latest assertions against real-world
       balances.

   close
       (equity)

       Generate transactions which transfer account balances to and/or from another account (typically  equity).
       This  can  be useful for migrating balances to a new journal file, or for merging earnings into equity at
       end of accounting period.

       By default, it prints a transaction that zeroes out ALE accounts (asset, liability, equity accounts; this
       requires account types to be configured); or if ACCTQUERY is provided, the accounts matched by that.

       (experimental)

       This command has four main modes, corresponding to the most common use cases:

       1. With --close (default), it prints a  "closing  balances"  transaction  that  zeroes  out  ALE  (asset,
          liability,  equity)  accounts by default (this requires account types to be inferred or declared); or,
          the accounts matched by the provided ACCTQUERY arguments.

       2. With --open, it prints an opposite "opening balances" transaction that restores  those  balances  from
          zero.  This is similar to Ledger's equity command.

       3. With  --migrate,  it  prints  both the closing and opening transactions.  This is the preferred way to
          migrate balances to a new file: run hledger close --migrate, add the closing transaction at the end of
          the old file, and  add  the  opening  transaction  at  the  start  of  the  new  file.   The  matching
          closing/opening  transactions  cancel  each  other  out, preserving correct balances during multi-file
          reporting.

       4. With --retain, it prints a "retain earnings" transaction  that  transfers  RX  (revenue  and  expense)
          balances  to equity:retained earnings.  Businesses traditionally do this at the end of each accounting
          period; it is less necessary with computer-based accounting, but it could still be useful if you  want
          to see the accounting equation (A=L+E) satisfied.

       In all modes, the defaults can be overridden:

       • the transaction descriptions can be changed with --close-desc=DESC and --open-desc=DESC

       • the account to transfer to/from can be changed with --close-acct=ACCT and --open-acct=ACCT

       • the accounts to be closed/opened can be changed with ACCTQUERY (account query arguments).

       • the closing/opening dates can be changed with -e DATE (a report end date)

       By  default  just  one  destination/source  posting  will  be  used, with its amount left implicit.  With
       --x/--explicit, the amount will be shown explicitly, and if it involves multiple commodities, a  separate
       posting will be generated for each of them (similar to print -x).

       With  --show-costs,  any amount costs are shown, with separate postings for each cost.  This is currently
       the best way to view investment lots.  If you have many currency conversion or  investment  transactions,
       it can generate very large journal entries.

       With  --interleaved,  each individual transfer is shown with source and destination postings next to each
       other.  This could be useful for troubleshooting.

       The default closing date is yesterday, or the journal's end date, whichever is  later.   You  can  change
       this  by  specifying  a  report  end date with -e.  The last day of the report period will be the closing
       date, eg -e 2024 means "close on 2023-12-31".  The opening date is always the day after the closing date.

   close and balance assertions
       Balance assertions will be generated, verifying that the accounts have  been  reset  to  zero  (and  then
       restored to their previous balances, if there is an opening transaction).

       These  provide  useful error checking, but you can ignore them temporarily with -I, or remove them if you
       prefer.

       You probably should avoid filtering transactions by status or realness (-C, -R, status:),  or  generating
       postings (--auto), with this command, since the balance assertions would depend on these.

       Note custom posting dates spanning the file boundary will disrupt the balance assertions:

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

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

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

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

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

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

       Note  2022's  income  statement  will now show only zeroes, because revenues and expenses have been moved
       entirely to equity.  To see them again, you could exclude the retain transaction:

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

   Example: migrate balances to a new file
       Close assets/liabilities/equity on 2022-12-31 and re-open them on 2023-01-01:

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

       Now 2022's balance sheet will show only zeroes, indicating a balanced accounting equation.   (Unless  you
       are  using  @/@@  notation  -  in that case, try adding --infer-equity.)  To see the end-of-year balances
       again, you could exclude the closing transaction:

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

   Example: excluding closing/opening transactions
       When combining many files for multi-year reports, the closing/opening transactions cause  some  noise  in
       transaction-oriented  reports  like  print  and  register.   You  can  exclude  them  as shown above, but
       not:desc:... is not ideal as it depends on consistent descriptions; also you will want to avoid excluding
       the very first opening transaction, which could be awkward.  Here is one alternative, using tags:

       Add clopen: tags to all opening/closing balances transactions except the first, like this:

              ; 2021.journal
              2021-06-01 first opening balances
              ...
              2021-12-31 closing balances  ; clopen:2022
              ...

              ; 2022.journal
              2022-01-01 opening balances  ; clopen:2022
              ...
              2022-12-31 closing balances  ; clopen:2023
              ...

              ; 2023.journal
              2023-01-01 opening balances  ; clopen:2023
              ...

       Now, assuming a combined journal like:

              ; all.journal
              include 2021.journal
              include 2022.journal
              include 2023.journal

       The clopen: tag can exclude all but the first opening transaction.  To show a clean  multi-year  checking
       register:

              $ hledger -f all.journal areg checking not:tag:clopen

       And the year values allow more precision.  To show 2022's year-end balance sheet:

              $ hledger -f all.journal bs -e2023 not:tag:clopen=2023

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

       This  command  prints  the value of each transaction's code field, in the order transactions were parsed.
       The transaction code is an optional value written in parentheses between the date and description,  often
       used to store a cheque number, order number or similar.

       Transactions  aren't  required  to  have a code, and missing or empty codes will not be shown by default.
       With the -E/--empty flag, they will be printed as blank lines.

       You can add a query to select a subset of transactions.

       Examples:

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

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

              2022/1/3 Supermarket
               Food      $11.23
               Checking

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

              $ hledger codes
              123
              124
              126

              $ hledger codes -E
              123
              124

              126

   commodities
       List all commodity/currency symbols used or declared in the journal.

   demo
       Play demos of hledger usage in the terminal, if asciinema is installed.

       Run this command with no argument to list the demos.  To play a demo, write its number  or  a  prefix  or
       substring of its title.  Tips:

       Make your terminal window large enough to see the demo clearly.

       Use the -s/--speed SPEED option to set your preferred playback speed, eg -s4 to play at 4x original speed
       or -s.5 to play at half speed.  The default speed is 2x.

       Other asciinema options can be added following a double dash, eg -- -i.1 to limit pauses or -- -h to list
       asciinema's other options.

       During  playback,  several keys are available: SPACE to pause/unpause, .  to step forward (while paused),
       CTRL-c quit.

       Examples:

              $ hledger demo               # list available demos
              $ hledger demo 1             # play the first demo at default speed (2x)
              $ hledger demo install -s4   # play the "install" demo at 4x speed

   descriptions
       List the unique descriptions that appear in transactions.

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

       Example:

              $ hledger descriptions
              Store Name
              Gas Station | Petrol
              Person A

   diff
       Compares a particular account's transactions in two input files.   It  shows  any  transactions  to  this
       account which are in one file but not in the other.

       More  precisely,  for  each  posting  affecting this account in either file, it looks for a corresponding
       posting in the other file which posts the same amount to the same account  (ignoring  date,  description,
       etc.)  Since postings not transactions are compared, this also works when multiple bank transactions have
       been combined into a single journal entry.

       This is useful eg if you have downloaded an account's transactions from your bank (eg as CSV data).  When
       hledger and your bank disagree about the account balance, you can compare the bank data with your journal
       to find out the cause.

       Examples:

              $ hledger diff -f $LEDGER_FILE -f bank.csv assets:bank:giro
              These transactions are in the first file only:

              2014/01/01 Opening Balances
                  assets:bank:giro              EUR ...
                  ...
                  equity:opening balances       EUR -...

              These transactions are in the second file only:

   files
       List  all  files  included  in  the journal.  With a REGEX argument, only file names matching the regular
       expression (case sensitive) are shown.

   help
       Show the hledger user manual in the terminal, with info, man, or a pager.  With a TOPIC argument, open it
       at that topic if possible.  TOPIC  can  be  any  heading  in  the  manual,  or  a  heading  prefix,  case
       insensitive.  Eg: commands, print, forecast, journal, amount, "auto postings".

       This  command  shows the hledger manual built in to your hledger version.  It can be useful when offline,
       or when you prefer the terminal to a web browser, or when the appropriate hledger manual or viewing tools
       are not installed on your system.

       By default it chooses the best viewer found in $PATH, trying (in this order): info,  man,  $PAGER,  less,
       more.   You  can force the use of info, man, or a pager with the -i, -m, or -p flags, If no viewer can be
       found, or the command is run non-interactively, it just prints the manual to stdout.

       If using info, note that version 6 or greater is needed for TOPIC lookup.  If you are  on  mac  you  will
       likely  have  info  4.8,  and  should  consider  installing a newer version, eg with brew install texinfo
       (#1770).

       Examples

              $ hledger help --help      # show how the help command works
              $ hledger help             # show the hledger manual with info, man or $PAGER
              $ hledger help journal     # show the journal topic in the hledger manual
              $ hledger help -m journal  # show it with man, even if info is installed

   import
       Read new transactions added to each FILE since last run, and add them to the journal.  Or with --dry-run,
       just print the transactions that would be added.   Or  with  --catchup,  just  mark  all  of  the  FILEs'
       transactions as imported, without actually importing any.

       This  command  may  append new transactions to the main journal file (which should be in journal format).
       Existing transactions are not changed.  This is one of the  few  hledger  commands  that  writes  to  the
       journal file (see also add).

       Unlike  other  hledger  commands,  with  import the journal file is an output file, and will be modified,
       though only by appending (existing data  will  not  be  changed).   The  input  files  are  specified  as
       arguments,  so to import one or more CSV files to your main journal, you will run hledger import bank.csv
       or perhaps hledger import *.csv.

       Note you can import from any file format, though CSV files are the most common import source,  and  these
       docs focus on that case.

   Deduplication
       As  a  convenience  import  does  deduplication  while  reading transactions.  This does not mean "ignore
       transactions that look the same", but rather "ignore transactions that have been seen before".   This  is
       intended  for  when  you  are  periodically  importing  foreign  data  which may contain already-imported
       transactions.  So eg, if every day you download bank CSV files containing redundant data, you can  safely
       run hledger import bank.csv and only new transactions will be imported.  (import is idempotent.)

       Since  the  items being read (CSV records, eg) often do not come with unique identifiers, hledger detects
       new transactions by date, assuming that:

       1. new items always have the newest dates

       2. item dates do not change across reads

       3. and items with the same date remain in the same relative order across reads.

       These are often true of CSV files representing transactions, or true enough so that it works pretty  well
       in practice.  1 is important, but violations of 2 and 3 amongst the old transactions won't matter (and if
       you import often, the new transactions will be few, so less likely to be the ones affected).

       hledger remembers the latest date processed in each input file by saving a hidden ".latest" state file in
       the   same   directory.    Eg   when   reading   finance/bank.csv,  it  will  look  for  and  update  the
       finance/.latest.bank.csv state file.  The format is simple: one or more lines containing  the  same  ISO-
       format  date  (YYYY-MM-DD), meaning "I have processed transactions up to this date, and this many of them
       on that date." Normally you won't see or manipulate these state files yourself.  But if needed,  you  can
       delete  them  to reset the state (making all transactions "new"), or you can construct them to "catch up"
       to a certain date.

       Note deduplication (and updating of state files) can also be done by print --new, but this is less  often
       used.

   Import testing
       With --dry-run, the transactions that will be imported are printed to the terminal, without updating your
       journal  or state files.  The output is valid journal format, like the print command, so you can re-parse
       it.  Eg, to see any importable transactions which CSV rules have not categorised:

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

       or (live updating):

              $ ls bank.csv* | entr bash -c 'echo ====; hledger import --dry bank.csv | hledger -f- -I print unknown'

       Note: when importing from multiple files at once, it's currently possible for some .latest  files  to  be
       updated  successfully,  while  the  actual import fails because of a problem in one of the files, leaving
       them out of sync (and causing some transactions to be missed).  To prevent this, do a --dry-run first and
       fix any problems before the real import.

   Importing balance assignments
       Entries added by import will have their posting amounts made explicit  (like  hledger  print  -x).   This
       means  that any balance assignments in imported files must be evaluated; but, imported files don't get to
       see the main file's account balances.  As a result, importing entries with balance assignments  (eg  from
       an  institution  that  provides  only  balances and not posting amounts) will probably generate incorrect
       posting amounts.  To avoid this problem, use print instead of import:

              $ hledger print IMPORTFILE [--new] >> $LEDGER_FILE

       (If you think import should leave amounts implicit like print does,  please  test  it  and  send  a  pull
       request.)

   Commodity display styles
       Imported  amounts will be formatted according to the canonical commodity styles (declared or inferred) in
       the main journal file.

   incomestatement
       (is)

       This command displays an income statement, showing revenues and expenses  during  one  or  more  periods.
       Amounts are shown with normal positive sign, as in conventional financial statements.

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

       Example:

              $ hledger incomestatement
              Income Statement

              Revenues:
                               $-2  income
                               $-1    gifts
                               $-1    salary
              --------------------
                               $-2

              Expenses:
                                $2  expenses
                                $1    food
                                $1    supplies
              --------------------
                                $2

              Total:
              --------------------
                                 0

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

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

   notes
       List the unique notes that appear in transactions.

       This command lists the unique notes that appear in transactions, in alphabetic  order.   You  can  add  a
       query  to select a subset of transactions.  The note is the part of the transaction description after a |
       character (or if there is no |, the whole description).

       Example:

              $ hledger notes
              Petrol
              Snacks

   payees
       List the unique payee/payer names that appear in transactions.

       This command lists unique payee/payer names which have been declared with payee directives  (--declared),
       used in transaction descriptions (--used), or both (the default).

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

       You can add query arguments to select a subset of transactions.  This implies --used.

       Example:

              $ hledger payees
              Store Name
              Gas Station
              Person A

   prices
       Print  market  price directives from the journal.  With --infer-market-prices, generate additional market
       prices from costs.  With --infer-reverse-prices, also generate market prices by inverting  known  prices.
       Prices can be filtered by a query.  Price amounts are displayed with their full precision.

   print
       Show transaction journal entries, sorted by date.

       The  print command displays full journal entries (transactions) from the journal file, sorted by date (or
       with --date2, by secondary date).

       Amounts are shown mostly normalised to commodity display style, eg the  placement  of  commodity  symbols
       will  be  consistent.   All of their decimal places are shown, as in the original journal entry (with one
       alteration: in some cases trailing zeroes are added.)

       Amounts are shown right-aligned within each transaction (but not across all transactions).

       Directives and inter-transaction comments are not shown, currently.  This  means  the  print  command  is
       somewhat  lossy,  and if you are using it to reformat your journal you should take care to also copy over
       the directives and file-level comments.

       Eg:

              $ hledger print
              2008/01/01 income
                  assets:bank:checking            $1
                  income:salary                  $-1

              2008/06/01 gift
                  assets:bank:checking            $1
                  income:gifts                   $-1

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

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

              2008/12/31 * pay off
                  liabilities:debts               $1
                  assets:bank:checking           $-1

       print's output is usually a valid hledger journal, and you can process it again  with  a  second  hledger
       command.  This can be useful for certain kinds of search, eg:

              # Show running total of food expenses paid from cash.
              # -f- reads from stdin. -I/--ignore-assertions is sometimes needed.
              $ hledger print assets:cash | hledger -f- -I reg expenses:food

       There are some situations where print's output can become unparseable:

       • Valuation  affects posting amounts but not balance assertion or balance assignment amounts, potentially
         causing those to fail.

       • Auto postings can generate postings with too many missing amounts.

       • Account aliases can generate bad account names.

       Normally, the journal entry's explicit or implicit amount style  is  preserved.   For  example,  when  an
       amount  is  omitted  in the journal, it will not appear in the output.  Similarly, when a cost is implied
       but not written, it will not appear in the output.  You can  use  the  -x/--explicit  flag  to  make  all
       amounts  and  costs  explicit,  which  can  be useful for troubleshooting or for making your journal more
       readable and robust against data entry errors.  -x is also implied by using any of -B,-V,-X,--value.

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

       With -B/--cost, amounts with costs are converted to  cost  using  that  price.   This  can  be  used  for
       troubleshooting.

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

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

       This  command also supports the output destination and output format options The output formats supported
       are txt, csv, and (experimental) json and sql.

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

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

       • There is one CSV record per posting, with the parent transaction's fields repeated.

       • The "txnidx" (transaction index) field shows which postings belong  to  the  same  transaction.   (This
         number  might  change  if  transactions  are  reordered within the file, files are parsed/included in a
         different order, etc.)

       • The amount is separated into "commodity" (the symbol) and "amount" (numeric quantity) fields.

       • The numeric amount is repeated in either the "credit" or "debit" column, for convenience.  (Those names
         are not accurate in the accounting sense; it just puts  negative  amounts  under  credit  and  zero  or
         greater amounts under debit.)

   register
       (reg)

       Show postings and their running total.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

   Custom register output
       register  uses  the  full terminal width by default, except on windows.  You can override this by setting
       the COLUMNS environment variable (not a bash shell variable) or by using the --width/-w option.

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

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

       and some examples:

              $ hledger reg                     # use terminal width (or 80 on windows)
              $ hledger reg -w 100              # use width 100
              $ COLUMNS=100 hledger reg         # set with one-time environment variable
              $ export COLUMNS=100; hledger reg # set till session end (or window resize)
              $ hledger reg -w 100,40           # set overall width 100, description width 40
              $ hledger reg -w $COLUMNS,40      # use terminal width, & description width 40

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

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

       This  is  a  start at a generic rewriter of transaction entries.  It reads the default journal and prints
       the transactions, like print, but adds one or more specified postings to any transactions matching QUERY.
       The posting amounts can be fixed, or a multiplier of the existing transaction's first posting amount.

       Examples:

              $ hledger-rewrite.hs ^income --add-posting '(liabilities:tax)  *.33  ; income tax' --add-posting '(reserve:gifts)  $100'
              $ hledger-rewrite.hs expenses:gifts --add-posting '(reserve:gifts)  *-1"'
              $ hledger-rewrite.hs -f rewrites.hledger

       rewrites.hledger may consist of entries like:

              = ^income amt:<0 date:2017
                (liabilities:tax)  *0.33  ; tax on income
                (reserve:grocery)  *0.25  ; reserve 25% for grocery
                (reserve:)  *0.25  ; reserve 25% for grocery

       Note the single quotes to protect the dollar sign from bash, and  the  two  spaces  between  account  and
       amount.

       More:

              $ hledger rewrite -- [QUERY]        --add-posting "ACCT  AMTEXPR" ...
              $ hledger rewrite -- ^income        --add-posting '(liabilities:tax)  *.33'
              $ hledger rewrite -- expenses:gifts --add-posting '(budget:gifts)  *-1"'
              $ hledger rewrite -- ^income        --add-posting '(budget:foreign currency)  *0.25 JPY; diversify'

       Argument  for  --add-posting  option  is  a  usual  posting  of  transaction with an exception for amount
       specification.  More precisely, you can use '*' (star symbol) before the amount  to  indicate  that  that
       this is a factor for an amount of original matched posting.  If the amount includes a commodity name, the
       new  posting  amount  will be in the new commodity; otherwise, it will be in the matched posting amount's
       commodity.

   Re-write rules in a file
       During the run this tool will execute so called "Automated Transactions" found in any journal it process.
       I.e instead of specifying this operations in command line you can put them in a journal file.

              $ rewrite-rules.journal

       Make contents look like this:

              = ^income
                  (liabilities:tax)  *.33

              = expenses:gifts
                  budget:gifts  *-1
                  assets:budget  *1

       Note that '=' (equality symbol) that is used instead of date  in  transactions  you  usually  write.   It
       indicates the query by which you want to match the posting to add new ones.

              $ hledger rewrite -- -f input.journal -f rewrite-rules.journal > rewritten-tidy-output.journal

       This is something similar to the commands pipeline:

              $ hledger rewrite -- -f input.journal '^income' --add-posting '(liabilities:tax)  *.33' \
                | hledger rewrite -- -f - expenses:gifts      --add-posting 'budget:gifts  *-1'       \
                                                              --add-posting 'assets:budget  *1'       \
                > rewritten-tidy-output.journal

       It  is  important to understand that relative order of such entries in journal is important.  You can re-
       use result of previously added postings.

   Diff output format
       To use this tool for batch modification of your journal files you may  find  useful  output  in  form  of
       unified diff.

              $ hledger rewrite -- --diff -f examples/sample.journal '^income' --add-posting '(liabilities:tax)  *.33'

       Output might look like:

              --- /tmp/examples/sample.journal
              +++ /tmp/examples/sample.journal
              @@ -18,3 +18,4 @@
               2008/01/01 income
              -    assets:bank:checking  $1
              +    assets:bank:checking            $1
                   income:salary
              +    (liabilities:tax)                0
              @@ -22,3 +23,4 @@
               2008/06/01 gift
              -    assets:bank:checking  $1
              +    assets:bank:checking            $1
                   income:gifts
              +    (liabilities:tax)                0

       If  you'll  pass this through patch tool you'll get transactions containing the posting that matches your
       query be updated.  Note that multiple files might be update according to list of  input  files  specified
       via --file options and include directives inside of these files.

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

       See also:

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

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

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

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

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

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

       At  a  minimum,  you  need  to  supply  a  query  (which  could  be  just an account name) to select your
       investment(s) with --inv, and another query to identify your profit and loss transactions with --pnl.

       If you do not record changes in the value of your investment manually, or do not require  computation  of
       time-weighted return (TWR), --pnl could be an empty query (--pnl "" or --pnl STR where STR does not match
       any of your accounts).

       This  command  will  compute  and display the internalized rate of return (IRR) and time-weighted rate of
       return (TWR) for your investments for the time period requested.  Both rates  of  return  are  annualized
       before display, regardless of the length of reporting interval.

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

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

       • Error (NotBracketed): No solution for Internal Rate of Return (IRR).   Possible  causes:  IRR  is  huge
         (>1000000%), balance of investment becomes negative at some point in time.

       • Error  (SearchFailed):  Failed  to find solution for Internal Rate of Return (IRR).  Either search does
         not converge to a solution, or converges too slowly.

       Examples:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

                2019-01-01 Investing in Snake Oil
                  assets:cash          -$100
                  investment:snake oil

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

       Internal rate of return, or "IRR" (also called  "money-weighted  rate  of  return")  takes  into  account
       effects  of  in-flows  and  out-flows.  Naively, if you are withdrawing from your investment, your future
       gains would be smaller (in  absolute  numbers),  and  will  be  a  smaller  percentage  of  your  initial
       investment,  and  if  you  are  adding  to  your  investment, you will receive bigger absolute gains (but
       probably at the same rate of return).  IRR is a way to compute rate of return for each period between in-
       flow or out-flow of money, and then combine them in a way that gives you a compound annual rate of return
       that investment is expected to generate.

       As mentioned before, in-flows and out-flows would be any cash that you personally put in or withdraw, and
       for the "roi" command, these are the postings that match the query in the--inv argument and NOT match the
       query in the--pnl argument.

       If you manually record changes in the value of your investment as transactions that balance them  against
       "profit  and  loss"  (or  "unrealized  gains")  account or use price directives, then in order for IRR to
       compute the precise effect of your in-flows and out-flows on the rate of return, you will need to  record
       the value of your investement on or close to the days when in- or out-flows occur.

       In  technical  terms, IRR uses the same approach as computation of net present value, and tries to find a
       discount rate that makes net present value of all the cash flows of your investment to add  up  to  zero.
       This could be hard to wrap your head around, especially if you haven't done discounted cash flow analysis
       before.  Implementation of IRR in hledger should produce results that match the XIRR formula in Excel.

       Second way to compute rate of return that roi command implements is called "time-weighted rate of return"
       or  "TWR".   Like  IRR,  it will also break the history of your investment into periods between in-flows,
       out-flows and value changes, to compute rate of return per each  period  and  then  a  compound  rate  of
       return.  However, internal workings of TWR are quite different.

       TWR  represents  your  investment as an imaginary "unit fund" where in-flows/ out-flows lead to buying or
       selling "units" of your investment and changes in its  value  change  the  value  of  "investment  unit".
       Change in "unit price" over the reporting period gives you rate of return of your investment.

       References:

       • Explanation of rate of return

       • Explanation of IRR

       • Explanation of TWR

       • Examples of computing IRR and TWR and discussion of the limitations of both metrics

   stats
       Show journal and performance statistics.

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

       At the end, it shows (in the terminal) the overall run time and  number  of  transactions  processed  per
       second.   Note  these  are  approximate  and will vary based on machine, current load, data size, hledger
       version, haskell lib versions, GHC version..  but they may be of interest.  The stats command's run  time
       is similar to that of a single-column balance report.

       Example:

              $ hledger stats -f examples/1000x1000x10.journal
              Main file                : /Users/simon/src/hledger/examples/1000x1000x10.journal
              Included files           :
              Transactions span        : 2000-01-01 to 2002-09-27 (1000 days)
              Last transaction         : 2002-09-26 (6995 days ago)
              Transactions             : 1000 (1.0 per day)
              Transactions last 30 days: 0 (0.0 per day)
              Transactions last 7 days : 0 (0.0 per day)
              Payees/descriptions      : 1000
              Accounts                 : 1000 (depth 10)
              Commodities              : 26 (A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, X, Y, Z)
              Market prices            : 1000 (A)

              Run time                 : 0.12 s
              Throughput               : 8342 txns/s

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

   tags
       List the tags used in the journal, or their values.

       This  command  lists  the  tag  names  used in the journal, whether on transactions, postings, or account
       declarations.

       With a TAGREGEX argument, only tag names  matching  this  regular  expression  (case  insensitive,  infix
       matched) are shown.

       With  QUERY  arguments,  only transactions and accounts matching this query are considered.  If the query
       involves transaction fields  (date:,  desc:,  amt:,  ...),  the  search  is  restricted  to  the  matched
       transactions and their accounts.

       With  the  --values  flag,  the  tags'  unique  non-empty  values  are  listed instead.  With -E/--empty,
       blank/empty values are also shown.

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

       Tip:  remember,  accounts  also  acquire  tags  from their parents, postings also acquire tags from their
       account and transaction, transactions also acquire tags from their postings.

   test
       Run built-in unit tests.

       This command runs the unit tests built in to hledger and hledger-lib, printing the results on stdout.  If
       any test fails, the exit code will be non-zero.

       This is mainly used by hledger developers, but you can also use it to sanity-check the installed  hledger
       executable  on  your platform.  All tests are expected to pass - if you ever see a failure, please report
       as a bug!

       This command also accepts tasty test runner options, written after a -- (double hyphen).  Eg to run  only
       the tests in Hledger.Data.Amount, with ANSI colour codes disabled:

              $ hledger test -- -pData.Amount --color=never

       For  help  on  these,  see  https://github.com/feuerbach/tasty#options  (-- --help currently doesn't show
       them).

PART 5: COMMON TASKS

       Here are some quick examples of how to do some basic tasks with hledger.

   Getting help
       Here's how to list commands and view options and command docs:

              $ hledger                # show available commands
              $ hledger --help         # show common options
              $ hledger CMD --help     # show CMD's options, common options and CMD's documentation

       You can also view your hledger version's manual in several formats by using the help command.  Eg:

              $ hledger help           # show the hledger manual with info, man or $PAGER (best available)
              $ hledger help journal   # show the journal topic in the hledger manual
              $ hledger help --help    # find out more about the help command

       To view manuals and introductory docs on the web, visit https://hledger.org.  Chat and mail list  support
       and discussion archives can be found at https://hledger.org/support.

   Constructing command lines
       hledger has a flexible command line interface.  We strive to keep it simple and ergonomic, but if you run
       into one of the sharp edges described in OPTIONS, here are some tips that might help:

       • command-specific  options must go after the command (it's fine to put common options there too: hledger
         CMD OPTS ARGS)

       • running add-on executables directly simplifies command line parsing (hledger-ui OPTS ARGS)

       • enclose "problematic" args in single quotes

       • if needed, also add a backslash to hide regular expression metacharacters from the shell

       • to see how a misbehaving command line is being parsed, add --debug=2.

   Starting a journal file
       hledger looks for your accounting data in a journal file, $HOME/.hledger.journal by default:

              $ hledger stats
              The hledger journal file "/Users/simon/.hledger.journal" was not found.
              Please create it first, eg with "hledger add" or a text editor.
              Or, specify an existing journal file with -f or LEDGER_FILE.

       You can override this by setting the LEDGER_FILE environment variable (see below).  It's a good  practice
       to  keep  this  important file under version control, and to start a new file each year.  So you could do
       something like this:

              $ mkdir ~/finance
              $ cd ~/finance
              $ git init
              Initialized empty Git repository in /Users/simon/finance/.git/
              $ touch 2023.journal
              $ echo "export LEDGER_FILE=$HOME/finance/2023.journal" >> ~/.profile
              $ source ~/.profile
              $ hledger stats
              Main file                : /Users/simon/finance/2023.journal
              Included files           :
              Transactions span        :  to  (0 days)
              Last transaction         : none
              Transactions             : 0 (0.0 per day)
              Transactions last 30 days: 0 (0.0 per day)
              Transactions last 7 days : 0 (0.0 per day)
              Payees/descriptions      : 0
              Accounts                 : 0 (depth 0)
              Commodities              : 0 ()
              Market prices            : 0 ()

   Setting LEDGER_FILE
       How to set LEDGER_FILE permanently depends on your setup:

       On unix and mac, running these commands in the terminal will work for many people; adapt as needed:

              $ echo 'export LEDGER_FILE=~/finance/2023.journal` >> ~/.profile
              $ source ~/.profile

       When correctly configured, in a new terminal window env | grep LEDGER_FILE will show your  file,  and  so
       will hledger files.

       On  mac,  this  additional step might be helpful for GUI applications (like Emacs started from the dock):
       add an entry to ~/.MacOSX/environment.plist like

              {
                "LEDGER_FILE" : "~/finance/2023.journal"
              }

       and then run killall Dock in a terminal window (or restart the machine).

       On Windows, see https://www.java.com/en/download/help/path.html, or  try  running  these  commands  in  a
       powershell window (let us know if it persists across a reboot, and if you need to be an Administrator):

              > CD
              > MKDIR finance
              > SETX LEDGER_FILE "C:\Users\USERNAME\finance\2023.journal"

   Setting opening balances
       Pick  a  starting  date  for which you can look up the balances of some real-world assets (bank accounts,
       wallet..)  and liabilities (credit cards..).

       To avoid a lot of data entry, you may want to start with just one or two  accounts,  like  your  checking
       account  or  cash  wallet; and pick a recent starting date, like today or the start of the week.  You can
       always come back later and add more accounts and older transactions, eg going back to january 1st.

       Add an opening balances transaction to the journal, declaring the balances on this date.   Here  are  two
       ways to do it:

       • The first way: open the journal in any text editor and save an entry like this:

                2023-01-01 * opening balances
                    assets:bank:checking                $1000   = $1000
                    assets:bank:savings                 $2000   = $2000
                    assets:cash                          $100   = $100
                    liabilities:creditcard               $-50   = $-50
                    equity:opening/closing balances

         These are start-of-day balances, ie whatever was in the account at the end of the previous day.

         The * after the date is an optional status flag.  Here it means "cleared & confirmed".

         The  currency  symbols  are  optional,  but  usually  a  good  idea  as you'll be dealing with multiple
         currencies sooner or later.

         The = amounts are optional balance assertions, providing extra error checking.

       • The second way: run hledger add and follow the prompts to record a similar transaction:

                $ hledger add
                Adding transactions to journal file /Users/simon/finance/2023.journal
                Any command line arguments will be used as defaults.
                Use tab key to complete, readline keys to edit, enter to accept defaults.
                An optional (CODE) may follow transaction dates.
                An optional ; COMMENT may follow descriptions or amounts.
                If you make a mistake, enter < at any prompt to go one step backward.
                To end a transaction, enter . when prompted.
                To quit, enter . at a date prompt or press control-d or control-c.
                Date [2023-02-07]: 2023-01-01
                Description: * opening balances
                Account 1: assets:bank:checking
                Amount  1: $1000
                Account 2: assets:bank:savings
                Amount  2 [$-1000]: $2000
                Account 3: assets:cash
                Amount  3 [$-3000]: $100
                Account 4: liabilities:creditcard
                Amount  4 [$-3100]: $-50
                Account 5: equity:opening/closing balances
                Amount  5 [$-3050]:
                Account 6 (or . or enter to finish this transaction): .
                2023-01-01 * opening balances
                    assets:bank:checking                      $1000
                    assets:bank:savings                       $2000
                    assets:cash                                $100
                    liabilities:creditcard                     $-50
                    equity:opening/closing balances          $-3050

                Save this transaction to the journal ? [y]:
                Saved.
                Starting the next transaction (. or ctrl-D/ctrl-C to quit)
                Date [2023-01-01]: .

       If you're using version control, this could be a good time to commit the journal.  Eg:

              $ git commit -m 'initial balances' 2023.journal

   Recording transactions
       As you spend or receive money, you can record these transactions using one of  the  methods  above  (text
       editor,  hledger add) or by using the hledger-iadd or hledger-web add-ons, or by using the import command
       to convert CSV data downloaded from your bank.

       Here are some simple transactions, see the hledger_journal(5) manual and hledger.org for more ideas:

              2023/1/10 * gift received
                assets:cash   $20
                income:gifts

              2023.1.12 * farmers market
                expenses:food    $13
                assets:cash

              2023-01-15 paycheck
                income:salary
                assets:bank:checking    $1000

   Reconciling
       Periodically you should reconcile - compare your hledger-reported balances against  external  sources  of
       truth,  like  bank  statements or your bank's website - to be sure that your ledger accurately represents
       the real-world balances (and, that the real-world institutions have not made a mistake!).  This gets easy
       and fast with (1) practice and (2) frequency.  If you do it daily, it can take 2-10 minutes.  If you  let
       it pile up, expect it to take longer as you hunt down errors and discrepancies.

       A typical workflow:

       1. Reconcile  cash.   Count what's in your wallet.  Compare with what hledger reports (hledger bal cash).
          If they are different, try to remember the missing transaction, or look for the error in the  already-
          recorded  transactions.   A  register report can be helpful (hledger reg cash).  If you can't find the
          error, add an adjustment transaction.  Eg if you have $105 after the  above,  and  can't  explain  the
          missing $2, it could be:

                  2023-01-16 * adjust cash
                      assets:cash    $-2 = $105
                      expenses:misc

       2. Reconcile  checking.  Log in to your bank's website.  Compare today's (cleared) balance with hledger's
          cleared balance (hledger bal checking -C).  If they are different, track down the error or record  the
          missing  transaction(s) or add an adjustment transaction, similar to the above.  Unlike the cash case,
          you can usually compare the transaction history and running  balance  from  your  bank  with  the  one
          reported  by  hledger  reg checking -C.  This will be easier if you generally record transaction dates
          quite similar to your bank's clearing dates.

       3. Repeat for other asset/liability accounts.

       Tip: instead of the register command, use hledger-ui to see a live-updating register while you  edit  the
       journal: hledger-ui --watch --register checking -C

       After  reconciling,  it  could be a good time to mark the reconciled transactions' status as "cleared and
       confirmed", if you want to track that, by adding the * marker.  Eg in  the  paycheck  transaction  above,
       insert * between 2023-01-15 and paycheck

       If you're using version control, this can be another good time to commit:

              $ git commit -m 'txns' 2023.journal

   Reporting
       Here are some basic reports.

       Show all transactions:

              $ hledger print
              2023-01-01 * opening balances
                  assets:bank:checking                      $1000
                  assets:bank:savings                       $2000
                  assets:cash                                $100
                  liabilities:creditcard                     $-50
                  equity:opening/closing balances          $-3050

              2023-01-10 * gift received
                  assets:cash              $20
                  income:gifts

              2023-01-12 * farmers market
                  expenses:food             $13
                  assets:cash

              2023-01-15 * paycheck
                  income:salary
                  assets:bank:checking           $1000

              2023-01-16 * adjust cash
                  assets:cash               $-2 = $105
                  expenses:misc

       Show account names, and their hierarchy:

              $ hledger accounts --tree
              assets
                bank
                  checking
                  savings
                cash
              equity
                opening/closing balances
              expenses
                food
                misc
              income
                gifts
                salary
              liabilities
                creditcard

       Show all account totals:

              $ hledger balance
                             $4105  assets
                             $4000    bank
                             $2000      checking
                             $2000      savings
                              $105    cash
                            $-3050  equity:opening/closing balances
                               $15  expenses
                               $13    food
                                $2    misc
                            $-1020  income
                              $-20    gifts
                            $-1000    salary
                              $-50  liabilities:creditcard
              --------------------
                                 0

       Show only asset and liability balances, as a flat list, limited to depth 2:

              $ hledger bal assets liabilities -2
                             $4000  assets:bank
                              $105  assets:cash
                              $-50  liabilities:creditcard
              --------------------
                             $4055

       Show the same thing without negative numbers, formatted as a simple balance sheet:

              $ hledger bs -2
              Balance Sheet 2023-01-16

                                      || 2023-01-16
              ========================++============
               Assets                 ||
              ------------------------++------------
               assets:bank            ||      $4000
               assets:cash            ||       $105
              ------------------------++------------
                                      ||      $4105
              ========================++============
               Liabilities            ||
              ------------------------++------------
               liabilities:creditcard ||        $50
              ------------------------++------------
                                      ||        $50
              ========================++============
               Net:                   ||      $4055

       The final total is your "net worth" on the end date.  (Or use bse for a full balance sheet with equity.)

       Show income and expense totals, formatted as an income statement:

              hledger is
              Income Statement 2023-01-01-2023-01-16

                             || 2023-01-01-2023-01-16
              ===============++=======================
               Revenues      ||
              ---------------++-----------------------
               income:gifts  ||                   $20
               income:salary ||                 $1000
              ---------------++-----------------------
                             ||                 $1020
              ===============++=======================
               Expenses      ||
              ---------------++-----------------------
               expenses:food ||                   $13
               expenses:misc ||                    $2
              ---------------++-----------------------
                             ||                   $15
              ===============++=======================
               Net:          ||                 $1005

       The final total is your net income during this period.

       Show transactions affecting your wallet, with running total:

              $ hledger register cash
              2023-01-01 opening balances     assets:cash                   $100          $100
              2023-01-10 gift received        assets:cash                    $20          $120
              2023-01-12 farmers market       assets:cash                   $-13          $107
              2023-01-16 adjust cash          assets:cash                    $-2          $105

       Show weekly posting counts as a bar chart:

              $ hledger activity -W
              2019-12-30 *****
              2023-01-06 ****
              2023-01-13 ****

   Migrating to a new file
       At  the  end  of  the year, you may want to continue your journal in a new file, so that old transactions
       don't slow down or clutter your reports, and to help ensure the integrity  of  your  accounting  history.
       See the close command.

       If using version control, don't forget to git add the new file.

BUGS

We welcome bug reports in the hledger issue tracker (shortcut: http://bugs.hledger.org), or on the
#hledger chat or hledger mail list (https://hledger.org/support).

Some known issues and limitations:

The need to precede add-on command options with -- when invoked from hledger is awkward. (See Command
options, Constructing command lines.)

A UTF-8-aware system locale must be configured to work with non-ascii data. (See Unicode characters,
Troubleshooting.)

On Microsoft Windows, depending whether you are running in a CMD window or a Cygwin/MSYS/Mintty window
and how you installed hledger, non-ascii characters and colours may not be supported, and the tab key may
not be supported by hledger add. (Running in a WSL window should resolve these.)

When processing large data files, hledger uses more memory than Ledger.

Troubleshooting
Here are some common issues you might encounter when you run hledger, and how to resolve them (and
remember also you can usually get quick Support):

PATH issues: I get an error like "No command 'hledger' found"
Depending how you installed hledger, the executables may not be in your shell's PATH. Eg on unix
systems, stack installs hledger in ~/.local/bin and cabal installs it in ~/.cabal/bin. You may need to
add one of these directories to your shell's PATH, and/or open a new terminal window.

LEDGER_FILE issues: I configured LEDGER_FILE but hledger is not using it
• LEDGER_FILE should be a real environment variable, not just a shell variable. Eg on unix, the command
env | grep LEDGER_FILE should show it. You may need to use export (see
https://stackoverflow.com/a/7411509).

• You may need to force your shell to see the new configuration. A simple way is to close your terminal
window and open a new one.

LANG issues: I get errors like "Illegal byte sequence" or "Invalid or incomplete multibyte or wide
character" or "commitAndReleaseBuffer: invalid argument (invalid character)"
Programs compiled with GHC (hledger, haskell build tools, etc.) need the system locale to be
UTF-8-aware, or they will fail when they encounter non-ascii characters. To fix it, set the LANG
environment variable to a locale which supports UTF-8 and which is installed on your system.

On unix, locale -a lists the installed locales. Look for one which mentions utf8, UTF-8 or similar.
Some examples: C.UTF-8, en_US.utf-8, fr_FR.utf8. If necessary, use your system package manager to
install one. Then select it by setting the LANG environment variable. Note, exact spelling and
capitalisation of the locale name may be important: Here's one common way to configure this permanently
for your shell:

$ echo "export LANG=en_US.utf8" >>~/.profile
# close and re-open terminal window

COMPATIBILITY ISSUES: hledger gives an error with my Ledger file
Not all of Ledger's journal file syntax or feature set is supported. See hledger and Ledger for full
details.

AUTHORS

       Simon Michael <simon@joyful.com> and contributors.
       See http://hledger.org/CREDITS.html

COPYRIGHT

       Copyright 2007-2023 Simon Michael and contributors.

LICENSE

       Released under GNU GPL v3 or later.