Provided by: hledger_1.25-2_amd64 bug

NAME

       This  is  the  command-line interface (CLI) for the hledger accounting tool.  Here we also
       describe hledger's concepts and file formats.  This manual is for hledger 1.25.

SYNOPSIS

       hledger

       hledger [-f FILE] COMMAND [OPTIONS] [ARGS]

       hledger [-f FILE] ADDONCMD -- [OPTIONS] [ARGS]

DESCRIPTION

       hledger is a reliable, 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).

       The basic function of the hledger CLI is to read a plain text  file  describing  financial
       transactions (in accounting terms, a general journal) and print useful reports on standard
       output, or export them as CSV.  hledger can also read some other file formats such as  CSV
       files,  translating  them  to journal format.  Additionally, hledger lists other hledger-*
       executables found in the user’s $PATH and can invoke them as subcommands.

       hledger reads data from one or more files in hledger journal, timeclock, timedot,  or  CSV
       format  specified with -f, or $LEDGER_FILE, or $HOME/.hledger.journal (on windows, perhaps
       C:/Users/USER/.hledger.journal).   If  using  $LEDGER_FILE,  note  this  must  be  a  real
       environment variable, not a shell variable.  You can specify standard input with -f-.

       Transactions  are  dated  movements of money between two (or more) named accounts, and are
       recorded with journal entries like this:

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

       Most users use a text editor to edit the journal, usually with  an  editor  mode  such  as
       ledger-mode  for  added  convenience.  hledger’s interactive add command is another way to
       record new transactions.  hledger never changes existing transactions.

       To get started, you can either save some entries like the above in ~/.hledger.journal,  or
       run  hledger  add  and  follow  the prompts.  Then try some commands like hledger print or
       hledger balance.  Run hledger with no arguments for a list of commands.

OPTIONS

   General options
       To see general usage help, including general options which are supported by  most  hledger
       commands, run hledger -h.

       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-market-prices
              use transaction prices (recorded with @ or @@) as additional market prices,  as  if
              they were P directives

       --auto apply automated posting rules to modify transactions.

       --forecast
              generate future transactions from periodic transaction rules, for the next 6 months
              or till report end date.  In hledger-ui, also  make  ordinary  future  transactions
              visible.

       --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 options
       To see options for a particular command, including command-specific options, run:  hledger
       COMMAND -h.

       Command-specific options must be written after the command name, eg: hledger print -x.

       Additionally, if the command is an add-on, you may need to put its options after a double-
       hyphen, eg: hledger ui -- --watch.  Or,  you  can  run  the  add-on  executable  directly:
       hledger-ui --watch.

   Command arguments
       Most  hledger  commands  accept arguments after the command name, which are often a query,
       filtering the data in some way.

       You can save a set of command line options/arguments in a file, and  then  reuse  them  by
       writing  @FILENAME  as  a  command line argument.  Eg: hledger bal @foo.args.  (To prevent
       this, eg if you have an argument that begins with a literal @, precede  it  with  --,  eg:
       hledger bal -- @ARG).

       Inside the argument file, each line should contain just one option or argument.  Avoid the
       use of spaces, except inside quotes (or you'll see a confusing error).  Between a flag and
       its argument, use = (or nothing).  Bad:

              assets depth:2
              -X USD

       Good:

              assets
              depth:2
              -X=USD

       For  special  characters  (see below), use one less level of quoting than you would at the
       command prompt.  Bad:

              -X"$"

       Good:

              -X$

       See also: Save frequently used options.

   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  directives  and  options:   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.

ENVIRONMENT

       LEDGER_FILE The journal file path when not specified with -f.

       On unix computers, the default value is: ~/.hledger.journal.

       A  more  typical  value  is  something  like  ~/finance/YYYY.journal, where ~/finance is a
       version-controlled   finance   directory   and   YYYY   is   the   current   year.     Or,
       ~/finance/current.journal, where current.journal is a symbolic link to YYYY.journal.

       The  usual  way to set this permanently is to add a command to one of your shell's startup
       files (eg ~/.profile):

              export LEDGER_FILE=~/finance/current.journal`

       On some Mac computers, there is a more thorough way to  set  environment  variables,  that
       will  also  affect applications started from the GUI (eg, Emacs started from a dock icon):
       In ~/.MacOSX/environment.plist, add an entry like:

              {
                "LEDGER_FILE" : "~/finance/current.journal"
              }

       For this to take effect you might need to killall Dock, or reboot.

       On Windows computers, the default value is probably  C:\Users\MyUserName\.hledger.journal.
       You can change this by running a command like this in a powershell window:

              > setx LEDGER_FILE "C:\Users\MyUserName\finance\2021.journal"

       (Let us know if you need to be an Administrator, and if this persists across a reboot.)

       COLUMNS The screen width used by the register command.  Default: the full terminal width.

       NO_COLOR  If this variable exists with any value, hledger will not use ANSI color codes in
       terminal output.  This is overriden by the --color/--colour option.

DATA FILES

       hledger reads transactions from one  or  more  data  files.   The  default  data  file  is
       $HOME/.hledger.journal (or on Windows, something like C:/Users/USER/.hledger.journal).

       You can override this with the $LEDGER_FILE environment variable:

              $ setenv LEDGER_FILE ~/finance/2016.journal
              $ hledger stats

       or with one or more -f/--file options:

              $ hledger -f /some/file -f another_file stats

       The file name - means standard input:


              $ cat some.journal | hledger -f-
   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         comma/semicolon/tab/other-separated       .csv .ssv .tsv
                   values, for data import

       These formats are described in their own sections, 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

       Or to read stdin (-) as timeclock format:

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

   Multiple files
       You can specify multiple -f options, to read multiple files as one big journal.  There are
       some limitations with this:

       • most directives do not affect sibling files

       • balance assertions will not see any account balances from previous files

       If you need either of those things, you can

       • use a single parent file which includes the others

       • or concatenate the files into one before reading, 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.

TIME PERIODS

   Smart dates
       hledger's user interfaces accept a flexible "smart date" syntax.  Smart dates  allow  some
       english  words,  can be relative to today's date, and can have less-significant date parts
       omitted (defaulting to 1).

       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

       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

       Note  "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; those  are
       not affected by --today.)

   Report start & end date
       By  default,  most  hledger  reports  will  show  the full span of time represented by the
       journal data.  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.

       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.

       • A  report  interval  (see  below) will adjust start/end dates, when needed, so that they
         fall on subperiod boundaries.

       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

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

       The following "standard" report intervals can be  enabled  by  using  their  corresponding
       flag:

       • -D/--daily

       • -W/--weekly

       • -M/--monthly

       • -Q/--quarterly

       • -Y/--yearly

       These  standard  intervals always start on natural interval boundaries: eg --weekly starts
       on mondays, --monthly starts on the first of the month, --yearly always starts on  January
       1st, etc.

       Certain  more  complex  intervals,  and  more flexible boundary dates, can be specified by
       -p/--period.  These are described in period expressions, below.

       Report intervals can only be specified by the flags above, and  not  by  query  arguments,
       currently.

       Report  intervals  have another effect: multi-period reports are always expanded to fill a
       whole number of subperiods.  So if you use a report interval (other than --daily), and you
       have  specified  a start or end date, you may notice those dates being overridden (ie, the
       report starts earlier than your requested start date, or ends later  than  your  requested
       end  date).   This  is  done  to  ensure  "full"  first  and  last subperiods, so that all
       subperiods' numbers are comparable.

       To summarise:

       • In multiperiod reports, all subperiods are forced to be the  same  length,  to  simplify
         reporting.

       • Reports with the standard --weekly/--monthly/--quarterly/--yearly intervals are required
         to start on the first day of a week/month/quarter/year.  We'd like more flexibility here
         but it isn't supported yet.

       • --period (below) can specify more complex intervals, starting on any date.

   Period expressions
       The  -p/--period  option accepts period expressions, a shorthand way of expressing a start
       date, end date, and/or report interval all at once.

       Here's a basic period expression specifying the first  quarter  of  2009.   Note,  hledger
       always treats start dates as inclusive and end dates as exclusive:

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

       Keywords  like  "from"  and "to" are optional, and so are the spaces, as long as you don't
       run two dates together.  "to" can also be written as ".." or "-".  These 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, the above can also be written as:

       -p "1/1 4/1"
       -p "january-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 in your journal:

       -p "from 2009/1/1"   everything after january 1, 2009
       -p "from 2009/1"     the same
       -p "from 2009"       the same
       -p "to 2009"         everything  before  january   1,
                            2009

       A single date with no "from" or "to" defines both the start and end date like so:

       -p "2009"       the  year  2009;  equivalent  to
                       “2009/1/1 to 2010/1/1”
       -p "2009/1"     the month of jan; equivalent  to
                       “2009/1/1 to 2009/2/1”
       -p "2009/1/1"   just  that  day;  equivalent  to
                       “2009/1/1 to 2009/1/2”

       Or you can specify a single quarter like so:

       -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
       -p/--period's  argument  can  also  begin with, or entirely consist of, a report interval.
       This should be separated from the start/end dates (if any) by a space,  or  the  word  in.
       The  basic  intervals (which can also be written as command line flags) are daily, weekly,
       monthly, quarterly, and yearly.  Some examples:

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

       As mentioned above, the weekly, monthly, quarterly and yearly intervals require  a  report
       start date that is the first day of a week, month, quarter or year.  And, report start/end
       dates will be expanded if needed to span a whole number of intervals.

       For example:

       -p "weekly from  2009/1/1   starts   on  2008/12/29,  closest  preceding
       to 2009/4/1"                Monday
       -p      "monthly       in   starts on 2018/11/01
       2008/11/25"
       -p     "quarterly    from   starts on 2009/04/01,  ends  on  2009/06/30,
       2009-05-05 to 2009-06-01"   which are first and last days of Q2 2009
       -p      "yearly      from   starts on 2009/01/01, first day of 2009
       2009-12-29"

   More complex report intervals
       Some more complex kinds of interval are also supported in period expressions:

       • biweekly

       • fortnightly

       • bimonthly

       • every day|week|month|quarter|year

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

       These too will cause report start/end dates to be expanded, if needed,  to  span  a  whole
       number of intervals.  Examples:

       -p "bimonthly from 2008"    periods  will have boundaries on 2008/01/01,
                                   2008/03/01, ...
       -p "every 2 weeks"          starts on closest preceding Monday
       -p "every  5  month  from   periods  will have boundaries on 2009/03/01,
       2009/03"                    2009/08/01, ...

   Intervals with custom start date
       All intervals mentioned above are required to start on their natural calendar  boundaries,
       but the following intervals can start on any date:

       Weekly on 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 custom day:

       • every Nth day [of month]

       • every Nth WEEKDAYNAME [of month]

       Yearly on 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  "every  2nd  day  of   periods will go from Tue to Tue
       week"
       -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"

   Periods or dates ?
       Report intervals like the above are most often used with -p|--period,  to  divide  reports
       into  multiple  subperiods  -  each  generated date marks a subperiod boundary.  Here, the
       periods between the dates are what's important.

       But report intervals can also be used with --forecast to generate future transactions,  or
       with  balance --budget to generate budget goal-setting transactions.  For these, the dates
       themselves are what matters.

   Events on multiple weekdays
       The every WEEKDAYNAME form has a special variant with multiple day names, comma-separated.
       Eg: every mon,thu,sat.  Also, weekday and weekendday are shorthand for mon,tue,wed,thu,fri
       and sat,sun respectively.

       This form 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.  (Because gaps between  periods  are  not  allowed;  if
       you'd like to change this, see #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),  commands like account, balance and
       register will show only the uppermost accounts in the account tree,  down  to  level  NUM.
       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:202012- 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
       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.

       while the print command shows 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.

       You can do more powerful queries (such as AND-ing two like terms) by running a first query
       with print, and piping the result into a second hledger command.  Eg:  how  much  of  food
       expenses was paid with cash ?

              $ hledger print assets:cash | hledger -f- -I balance expenses:food

       If you are interested in full boolean expressions for queries, see #203.

   Queries and command options
       Some  queries  can  also  be  expressed  as command-line options: depth:2 is equivalent to
       --depth 2, date:2020 is equivalent to -p 2020, etc.  When  you  mix  command  options  and
       query arguments, generally the resulting query is their intersection.

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

   Queries and valuation
       When amounts are converted to other commodities in cost or value reports,  cur:  and  amt:
       match  the  old  commodity symbol and the old amount quantity, not the new ones (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.

CONVERSION & COST

       This section is about converting between commodities.  Some definitions:

       • A "commodity conversion" is an exchange of one currency or commodity for another.  Eg  a
         foreign currency exchange, or a purchase or sale of stock or cryptocurrency.

       • A "conversion transaction" is a transaction involving one or more such conversions.

       • "Conversion  rate"  is  the  exchange  rate  in  a conversion - the cost per unit of one
         commodity in the other.

       • "Cost" is how much of one commodity was paid to acquire the other (when buying), or  how
         much  was  received  in  exchange  for  the other (when selling).  We call both of these
         "cost" for convenience (after all, it is cost for one party or the other).

   Recording conversions
       As a concrete example, let's assume 100 EUR was converted to 120 USD.  There  are  several
       ways  to  record  this  in the journal, each with pros and cons which will be explained in
       more detail below.  (Also, these examples use journal format which is  properly  explained
       much further below; sorry about that, you may want to read some of that first.)

   Implicit conversion
       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:

       • Easy, concise

       • hledger can do cost reporting

       Con:

       • Less error checking - typos in amounts or commodity symbols may not be detected

       • conversion rate is not clear

       • disturbs the accounting equation

       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.

   Priced conversion
       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 some error checking

       • hledger can do cost reporting

       Con:

       • Disturbs the accounting equation

   Equity conversion
       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

       • works in any double entry accounting system

       Con:

       • More verbose

       • conversion rate is not clear

       • hledger can not do cost reporting

   Priced equity conversion
       Another  possible  notation  would  be  to  record both the conversion rate and the equity
       postings:

              2021-01-01
                  assets:cash        -100 EUR @ 1.20 USD
                  equity:conversion   100 EUR
                  equity:conversion  -120 USD
                  assets:cash         120 USD

       hledger currently does not allow this; instead, you can record the conversion  rate  as  a
       comment.

   Inferring missing conversion rates
       hledger will do this automatically for implicit conversions.  Currently it can not do this
       for equity conversions.

   Inferring missing equity postings
       With the --infer-equity flag, hledger will add equity  postings  to  priced  and  implicit
       conversions (and move the conversion rate into a comment).

   Cost reporting
       With  the  -B/--cost  flag,  hledger  will  convert  the  amounts  in  priced and implicit
       conversions to their cost in the other commodity.  This is useful to see a report of  what
       you  paid for things (or how much you sold things for).  Currently -B/--cost does not work
       on equity conversions, and it disables --infer-equity.

       These operations are transient, only affecting reports.  If you want to change the journal
       file  permanently,  you  could pipe each entry through hledger -f- -I print [-x] [--infer-
       equity] [-B]

   Conversion summary
       • Recording the conversion rate is good because  it  makes  that  clear  and  allows  cost
         reporting.

       • Recording  equity  postings  is  good because it balances the accounting equation and is
         correct bookkeeping.

       • Combining these is  not  yet  supported,  so  you  have  to  choose.   For  now,  priced
         conversions are a good compromise, so that:

         • When you want to see the cost (or sale proceeds) of things, use -B/--cost.

         • When you want to see a balanced balance sheet or correct journal entries, use --infer-
           equity.

         • Combining these is not yet supported; -B/--cost will take precedence.

       • Conversion/cost operations are performed before valuation.

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.

   Market prices
       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 transaction prices.

       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 transaction prices
       as additional market prices (as Ledger does) ?  We could  produce  value  reports  without
       needing P directives at all.

       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.  (And 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.)

       • but  not,  currently,  from  "more  correct" multicommodity transactions (no @, multiple
         commodities, balanced).

   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, transaction  prices
         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).

PIVOTING

       Normally hledger sums amounts, and organizes them in a hierarchy, based on  account  name.
       The  --pivot  FIELD  option  causes it to sum and organize hierarchy based on the value of
       some other field instead.  FIELD can be: code, description, payee, note, or the full  name
       (case   insensitive)   of   any   tag.    As   with   account   names,  values  containing
       colon:separated:parts will be displayed hierarchically in reports.

       --pivot is a general option affecting all reports; you can think of  hledger  transforming
       the  journal  before any other processing, replacing every posting's account name with the
       value of the specified field on that posting, inheriting it from the transaction or  using
       a blank value if it's not present.

       An example:

              2016/02/16 Member Fee Payment
                  assets:bank account                    2 EUR
                  income:member fees                    -2 EUR  ; member: John Doe

       Normal balance report showing account names:

              $ hledger balance
                             2 EUR  assets:bank account
                            -2 EUR  income:member fees
              --------------------
                                 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, described below):

              $ 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

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)

       hledger  can  optionally  produce  debug  output (if enabled with --debug=N); this goes to
       stderr, and is not affected by -o/--output-file.  If you need to  capture  it,  use  shell
       redirects, eg: hledger bal --debug=3 >file 2>&1.

   Output styling
       hledger  commands  can  produce  colour  output  when  the  terminal supports it.  This is
       controlled by the --color/--colour option: - 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.

       hledger  commands  can  also use unicode box-drawing characters to produce prettier tables
       and output.  This is controlled by the --pretty option: - 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.

   Output format
       Some commands offer additional output formats, other than the usual  plain  text  terminal
       output.  Here are those commands and the formats currently supported:

       -                    txt   csv   html    json   sql
       ────────────────────────────────────────────────────
       aregister            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

   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
       • Not yet much used; real-world feedback is welcome.

       • Our JSON is rather large and verbose, as  it  is  quite  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
       • Not yet much used; real-world feedback is welcome.

       • SQL output is expected to work with sqlite, MySQL and PostgreSQL

       • 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
       The display style of a commodity/currency is inferred according to the rules described  in
       Commodity  display  style.   The  inferred  display style can be overridden by an optional
       -c/--commodity-style option (Exceptions:  as  is  the  case  for  inferred  styles,  price
       amounts,  and  all  amounts  displayed by the print command, will be displayed with all of
       their decimal digits visible, regardless of the specified precision).   For  example,  the
       following will override the display style for dollars.

              $ hledger print -c '$1.000,0'

       The  format  specification  of  the  style  is  identical  to  the commodity display style
       specification for the commodity directive.   The  command  line  option  can  be  supplied
       repeatedly to override the display style for multiple commodity/currency symbols.

COMMANDS

       hledger  provides  a number of commands for producing reports and managing your data.  Run
       hledger with no arguments to list the  commands  available,  and  hledger  CMD  to  run  a
       command.   CMD  can  be  the  full command name, or its standard abbreviation shown in the
       commands list, or any unambiguous prefix of the name.  Eg: hledger bal.

       Here are the built-in commands, with the most often-used in bold:

       Data entry:

       These data entry commands are the only ones which can modify your journal file.

       • add - add transactions using guided prompts

       • import - add any new transactions from other files (eg csv)

       Data management:

       • check - check for various kinds of issue in the data

       • close (equity) - generate balance-resetting transactions

       • diff - compare account transactions in two journal files

       • rewrite - generate extra postings, similar to print --auto

       Financial statements: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

       • roi - show return on investments

       Miscellaneous reports:

       • accounts - show account names

       • activity - show postings-per-interval bar charts

       • balance (bal) - show balance changes/end balances/budgets in any accounts

       • codes - show transaction codes

       • commodities - show commodity/currency symbols

       • descriptions - show unique transaction descriptions

       • files - show input file paths

       • help - show hledger user manuals in several formats

       • notes - show unique note segments of transaction descriptions

       • payees - show unique payee segments of transaction descriptions

       • prices - show market price records

       • print - show transactions (journal entries)

       • print-unique - show only transactions with unique descriptions

       • register (reg) - show postings in one or more accounts & running total

       • register-match - show a recent posting that best matches a description

       • stats - show journal statistics

       • tags - show tag names

       • test - run self tests

       Add-on commands:

       Programs or scripts named hledger-SOMETHING in your PATH are add-on commands; these appear
       in  the  commands  list  with  a  +  mark.   Two of these are maintained and released with
       hledger:

       • ui - an efficient terminal interface (TUI) for hledger

       • web - a simple web interface (WUI) for hledger

       And these add-ons are maintained separately:

       • iadd - a more interactive alternative for the add command

       • interest - generates interest transactions according to various schemes

       • stockquotes  -  downloads  market  prices  for  your   commodities   from   AlphaVantage
         (experimental)

       Next, the detailed command docs, in alphabetical order.

   accounts
       accounts
       Show account names.

       This  command  lists  account names, either declared with account directives (--declared),
       posted to (--used), or both (the default).  With query  arguments,  only  matched  account
       names and account names referenced by matched postings are shown.  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.)

       Examples:

              $ hledger accounts
              assets:bank:checking
              assets:bank:saving
              assets:cash
              expenses:food
              expenses:supplies
              income:gifts
              income:salary
              liabilities:debts

   activity
       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
       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  journal  file
       (if there are multiple -f FILE options, the first file is used.) Existing transactions are
       not changed.  This is the only hledger command that writes to the journal file.

       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,  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 the tutorial for a detailed explanation):

              $ 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
       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.   (Eg  if  you  have  assets:aaa:checking  and
       assets:bbb:checking accounts, hledger areg checking would select assets:aaa:checking.)

       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.

       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
       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)

       ..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.  For real-world accounts, this should also match 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.

   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

   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

   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.

   Data layout
       The  --layout  option  affects  how  multi-commodity amounts are displayed, and some other
       things, influencing the overall layout of the report data:

       • --layout=wide[,WIDTH]: commodities are shown on a single line, possibly  elided  to  the
         specified width

       • --layout=tall: each commodity is shown on a separate line

       • --layout=bare:  amounts  are shown as bare numbers, with commodity symbols in a separate
         column

       • --layout=tidy: data is normalised to tidy  form,  with  one  row  per  data  value.   We
         currently  support this with CSV output only.  In tidy mode, totals and row averages are
         disabled (-N/--no-total is implied and -T/--row-total and -A/--average will be ignored).

       These --layout modes are supported with some but not all of the output formats:

       -      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 when 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 is a column  and  each
         row      represents      a      single      data      point     (see     https://cran.r-
         project.org/web/packages/tidyr/vignettes/tidy-data.html).  This  kind  of  data  is  the
         easiest to process with other software:

                $ 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"

   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:

              $ hledger -f examples/sample.journal bal expenses -Q -%
              Balance changes in 2008:

                                 || 2008Q1   2008Q2  2008Q3  2008Q4
              ===================++=================================
               expenses:food     ||      0   50.0 %       0       0
               expenses:supplies ||      0   50.0 %       0       0
              -------------------++---------------------------------
                                 ||      0  100.0 %       0       0

       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:€

   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
       For more flexible reporting, there are three important option groups:

       hledger balance [CALCULATIONTYPE] [ACCUMULATIONTYPE] [VALUATIONTYPE] ...

       The first two are the most important: calculation type selects the  basic  calculation  to
       perform  for  each  table  cell,  while  accumulation  type  says which postings should be
       included in each cell's calculation.  Typically one or  both  of  these  are  selected  by
       default, so you don't need to write them explicitly.  A valuation type can be added if you
       want to convert the basic report to value or cost.

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

       • --sum : sum the posting amounts (default)

       • --budget : like --sum but also show a goal amount

       • --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)

       Accumulation type:
       Which postings should be included in each cell's calculation.  It is one of:

       • --change : postings from column start to  column  end,  ie  within  the  cell's  period.
         Typically used to see revenues/expenses.  (default for balance, incomestatement)

       • --cumulative  : postings from report start to column end, eg to show changes accumulated
         since the report's start date.  Rarely used.

       • --historical/-H : postings from journal start  to  column  end,  ie  all  postings  from
         account  creation to the end of the cell's period.  Typically used to see historical end
         balances of assets/liabilities/equity.  (default for  balancesheet,  balancesheetequity,
         cashflow)

       Valuation type:
       Which  kind of valuation, valuation date(s) and optionally a target valuation commodity to
       use.  It is one of:

       • no valuation, show amounts in their original commodities (default)

       • --value=cost[,COMM] : no valuation, show amounts converted to cost

       • --value=then[,COMM] : show value at transaction dates

       • --value=end[,COMM] : show value at  period  end  date(s)  (default  with  --valuechange,
         --gain)

       • --value=now[,COMM] : show value at today's date

       • --value=YYYY-MM-DD[,COMM] : show value at another date

       or one of their aliases: --cost/-B, --market/-V or --exchange/-X.

       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:                                                            MM-DD /now
       v
       ─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
       --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

   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

   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  very  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:

       • Only accounts with budget goals during the report period are shown, by default.

       • In each column, in square brackets after the actual  amount,  budget  goal  amounts  are
         shown,  and  the  actual/goal  percentage.   (Note:  budget  goals should be in the same
         commodity as the actual amount.)

       • All parent accounts are always shown, even in list mode.  Eg  assets,  assets:bank,  and
         expenses above.

       • Amounts always include all subaccounts, budgeted or unbudgeted, even in list mode.

       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]

       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  the  print  command  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.

   Customising single-period balance reports
       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  (plus  a  newline)  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

   balancesheet
       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.

       The  asset and liability accounts shown are those accounts declared with the Asset or Cash
       or Liability type, or otherwise all accounts under a top-level asset or liability  account
       (case insensitive, plurals allowed).

       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
       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.

       The asset, liability and equity accounts shown are those accounts declared with the Asset,
       Cash, Liability or Equity type,  or  otherwise  all  accounts  under  a  top-level  asset,
       liability or equity account (case insensitive, plurals allowed).

       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
       cashflow, cf
       This  command  displays  a  cashflow statement, showing the inflows and outflows affecting
       "cash" (ie,  liquid)  assets.   Amounts  are  shown  with  normal  positive  sign,  as  in
       conventional financial statements.

       The "cash" accounts shown are those accounts declared with the Cash type, or otherwise all
       accounts under a top-level asset account (case insensitive, plural allowed) which  do  not
       have fixed, investment, receivable or A/R in their name.

       Example:

              $ 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
       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

       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  transaction  prices or
         automatically-inferred transaction prices

       • 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
         transaction prices 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

       • 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.

   close
       close, equity
       Prints  a sample "closing" transaction bringing specified account balances to zero, and an
       inverse "opening" transaction restoring the same account balances.

       If like most people you split your journal files by time, eg by year: at the  end  of  the
       year you can use this command to "close out" your asset and liability (and perhaps equity)
       balances in the old file, and reinitialise them in the new file.  This helps  ensure  that
       report  balances  remain correct whether you are including old files or not.  (Because all
       closing/opening transactions except the very first will cancel out - see example below.)

       Some people also use this command to close out revenue and expense balances at the end  of
       an  accounting  period.   This  properly  records  the  period's  profit/loss as "retained
       earnings" (part of equity), and allows the accounting equation (A-L=E) to  balance,  which
       you could then check by the bse report's zero total.

       You  can print just the closing transaction by using the --close flag, or just the opening
       transaction with the --open flag.

       Their descriptions are closing balances and opening balances by default; you can customise
       these with the --close-desc and --open-desc options.

       Just  one balancing equity posting is used by default, with the amount left implicit.  The
       default account name is equity:opening/closing balances.  You can  customise  the  account
       name(s)  with --close-acct and --open-acct.  (If you specify only one of these, it will be
       used for both.)

       With --x/--explicit, the equity posting's amount will  be  shown  explicitly,  and  if  it
       involves  multiple commodities, there will be a separate equity posting for each commodity
       (as in the print command).

       With --interleaved, each equity posting is shown next to the posting it balances (good for
       troubleshooting).

   close and prices
       Transaction  prices  are  ignored  (and  discarded)  by  closing/opening  transactions, by
       default.  With --show-costs, they are preserved; there will be a separate  equity  posting
       for  each  cost in each commodity.  This means balance -B reports will look the same after
       the transition.  Note if you have many foreign currency or investment  transactions,  this
       will generate very large journal entries.

   close date
       The default closing date is yesterday, or the journal's end date, whichever is later.

       Unless  you  are  running close on exactly the first day of the new period, you'll want to
       override the closing date.  This is done by specifying a report end date, where "last  day
       of  the report period" will be the closing date.  The opening date is always the following
       day.  So to close on (end of) 2020-12-31 and open on (start of) 2021-01-01, any  of  these
       will work:

       end date argument   explanation
       ─────────────────────────────────────────────────────
       -e 2021-01-01       end dates are exclusive
       -e 2021             equivalent, per smart dates
       -p 2020             equivalent,  the  period's begin
                           date is ignored
       date:2020           equivalent query

   Example: close asset/liability accounts for file transition
       Carrying asset/liability balances from 2020.journal into a new file for 2021:

              $ hledger close -f 2020.journal -p 2020 assets liabilities
              # copy/paste the closing transaction to the end of 2020.journal
              # copy/paste the opening transaction to the start of 2021.journal

       Or:

              $ hledger close -f 2020.journal -p 2020 assets liabilities --open  >> 2021.journal  # add 2021's first transaction
              $ hledger close -f 2020.journal -p 2020 assets liabilities --close >> 2020.journal  # add 2020's last transaction

       Now,

              $ hledger bs -f 2021.journal                   # just new file - balances correct
              $ hledger bs -f 2020.journal -f 2021.journal   # old and new files - balances correct
              $ hledger bs -f 2020.journal                   # just old files - balances are zero ?
                                                             # (exclude final closing txn, see below)

   Hiding opening/closing transactions
       Although the closing/opening transactions cancel out, they will be visible in reports like
       print  and register, creating some visual clutter.  You can exclude them all with a query,
       like:

              $ hledger print not:desc:'opening|closing'             # less typing
              $ hledger print not:'equity:opening/closing balances'  # more precise

       But when reporting on multiple files, this can get a bit tricky; you may need to keep  the
       earliest opening balances, for a historical register report; or you may need to suppress a
       closing transaction, to see year-end balances.  If you find yourself needing more  precise
       queries,   here's   one   solution:   add  more  easily-matched  tags  to  opening/closing
       transactions, like this:

              ; 2019.journal
              2019-01-01 opening balances  ; earliest opening txn, no tag here
              ...
              2019-12-31 closing balances  ; clopen:2020
              ...

              ; 2020.journal
              2020-01-01 opening balances  ; clopen:2020
              ...
              2020-12-31 closing balances  ; clopen:2021
              ...

              ; 2021.journal
              2021-01-01 opening balances  ; clopen:2021
              ...

       Now with

              ; all.journal
              include 2019.journal
              include 2020.journal
              include 2021.journal

       you could do eg:

              $ hledger -f all.journal reg -H checking not:tag:clopen
                  # all years checking register, hiding non-essential opening/closing txns

              $ hledger -f all.journal bs -p 2020 not:tag:clopen=2020
                  # 2020 year end balances, suppressing 2020 closing txn

   close and balance assertions
       The closing and opening transactions will include balance assertions, verifying  that  the
       accounts have first been reset to zero and then restored to their previous balance.  These
       provide valuable error checking, alerting you when things get out of  line,  but  you  can
       ignore them temporarily with -I or just remove them if you prefer.

       You  probably  shouldn't  use  status  or realness filters (like -C or -R or status:) with
       close, or the generated balance assertions will depend on these flags.  Likewise,  if  you
       run this command with --auto, the balance assertions would probably always require --auto.

       Multi-day  transactions  (where  some  postings  have  a different date) break the balance
       assertions, because the money is temporarily "invisible" while in transit:

              2020/12/30 a purchase made in december, cleared in the next year
                  expenses:food          5
                  assets:bank:checking  -5  ; date: 2021/1/2

       To fix the assertions, you can add a temporary account  to  track  such  in-transit  money
       (splitting the multi-day transaction into two single-day transactions):

              ; in 2020.journal:
              2020/12/30 a purchase made in december, cleared in the next year
                  expenses:food          5
                  liabilities:pending

              ; in 2021.journal:
              2021/1/2 clearance of last year's pending transactions
                  liabilities:pending    5 = 0
                  assets:bank:checking

   Example: close revenue/expense accounts to retained earnings
       For  this,  use  --close  to  suppress  the opening transaction, as it's not needed.  Also
       you'll want to change the equity account  name  to  your  equivalent  of  "equity:retained
       earnings".

       Closing 2021's first quarter revenues/expenses:

              $ hledger close -f 2021.journal --close revenues expenses -p 2021Q1 \
                  --close-acct='equity:retained earnings' >> 2021.journal

       The same, using the default journal and current year:

              $ hledger close --close revenues expenses -p Q1 \
                  --close-acct='equity:retained earnings' >> $LEDGER_FILE

       Now,  the  first  quarter's  balance  sheet  should show a zero (unless you are using @/@@
       notation without equity postings):

              $ hledger bse -p Q1

       And we must suppress the closing transaction to see the first quarter's  income  statement
       (using the description; not:'retained earnings' won't work here):

              $ hledger is -p Q1 not:desc:'closing balances'

   codes
       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:

              1/1 (123)
               (a)  1

              1/1 ()
               (a)  1

              1/1
               (a)  1

              1/1 (126)
               (a)  1

              $ hledger codes
              123
              124
              126

              $ hledger codes -E
              123
              124

              126

   commodities
       commodities
       List all commodity/currency symbols used or declared in the journal.

   descriptions
       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
       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
       files
       List  all  files included in the journal.  With a REGEX argument, only file names matching
       the regular expression (case sensitive) are shown.

   help
       help
       Show the hledger user manual in one of several formats, optionally positioned at  a  given
       TOPIC (if possible).

       TOPIC  is any heading in the manual, or the start of any heading (but not the middle).  It
       is case insensitive.

       Some examples: commands, print, forecast, "auto postings", "commodity column".

       This command shows the user manual built in to this hledger version.  It can be useful  if
       the  correct  version of the hledger manual, or the usual viewing tools, are not installed
       on your system.

       By default it uses the best viewer it can find in $PATH, in this order: info, man,  $PAGER
       (unless  a  topic  is  specified), less, or stdout.  When run non-interactively, it always
       uses stdout.  Or you can select a particular viewer with the -i (info), -m  (man),  or  -p
       (pager) flags.

   import
       import
       Read  new transactions added to each FILE since last run, and add them to the main journal
       file.  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.

       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'

   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
       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.

       The  revenue  and  expense  accounts shown are those accounts declared with the Revenue or
       Expense type, or otherwise all accounts under a top-level revenue  or  income  or  expense
       account (case insensitive, plurals allowed).

       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
       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
       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
       prices
       Print  market  price  directives  from  the journal.  With --infer-market-prices, generate
       additional market prices  from  transaction  prices.   With  --infer-reverse-prices,  also
       generate  market  prices  by inverting transaction prices.  Prices (and postings providing
       transaction prices) can be filtered by a query.  Price amounts are  displayed  with  their
       full precision.

   print
       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 transaction price is implied but not written, it will not appear in  the
       output.   You  can  use  the -x/--explicit flag to make all amounts and transaction prices
       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 transaction prices are converted to cost  using  that  price.
       This can be used for troubleshooting.

       With  -m/--match  and a STR argument, print will show at most one transaction: the one one
       whose description is most similar to STR, and is most recent.  STR should contain at least
       two characters.  If there is no similar-enough match, no transaction will be shown.

       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.)

   print-unique
       print-unique
       Print transactions which do not reuse an already-seen description.

       Example:

              $ cat unique.journal
              1/1 test
               (acct:one)  1
              2/2 test
               (acct:two)  2
              $ LEDGER_FILE=unique.journal hledger print-unique
              (-f option not supported)
              2015/01/01 test
                  (acct:one)             1

   register
       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.

       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.

   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.

   register-match
       register-match
       Print  the  one  posting whose transaction description is closest to DESC, in the style of
       the register command.  If there are multiple equally  good  matches,  it  shows  the  most
       recent.   Query options (options, not arguments) can be used to restrict the search space.
       Helps ledger-autosync detect already-seen transactions when importing.

   rewrite
       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
       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
       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 also supports output destination and output format selection.

   tags
       tags
       List  the  unique tag names used in the journal.  With a TAGREGEX argument, only tag names
       matching the regular expression (case insensitive) are shown.  With QUERY arguments,  only
       transactions matching the query are considered.

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

       With  --parsed  flag,  all  tags or values are shown in the order they are parsed from the
       input data, including duplicates.

       With -E/--empty, any blank/empty values will also be shown, otherwise they are omitted.

   test
       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).

   About add-on commands
       Add-on commands are programs or scripts in your PATH


       • whose name starts with hledger-
       • whose    name    ends    with    a    recognised    file    extension:   .bat,.com,.exe,
         .hs,.lhs,.pl,.py,.rb,.rkt,.sh or none

       • and (on unix, mac) which are executable by the current user.

       Add-ons are a relatively easy way to add local features  or  experiment  with  new  ideas.
       They  can  be  written in any language, but haskell scripts have a big advantage: they can
       use the same hledger  library  functions  that  built-in  commands  use  for  command-line
       options,  parsing and reporting.  Some experimental/example add-on scripts can be found in
       the hledger repo's bin/ directory.

       Note in a hledger command line,  add-on  command  flags  must  have  a  double  dash  (--)
       preceding them.  Eg you must write:

              $ hledger web -- --serve

       and not:

              $ hledger web --serve

       (because the --serve flag belongs to hledger-web, not hledger).

       The -h/--help and --version flags don't require --.

       If  you  have  any  trouble  with  this,  remember  you  can always run the add-on program
       directly, eg:

              $ hledger-web --serve

JOURNAL FORMAT

       hledger's default file format, representing a General Journal.

       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 a compatible subset, mostly, of ledger's  journal  format,  so
       hledger can work with compatible ledger journal files as well.  It's safe, and encouraged,
       to run both hledger and ledger on the same journal file, eg to validate the results you're
       getting.

       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).   These
       are  mostly  in  the  order  you'll use them, but in some cases related concepts have been
       grouped together for easy reference, or linked before they are introduced, so feel free to
       skip over anything that looks unnecessary right now.

   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  default  year
       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.)

   Secondary dates
       Real-life  transactions  sometimes  involve  more  than one date - eg the date you write a
       cheque, and the date it clears in your bank.  When  you  want  to  model  this,  for  more
       accurate daily balances, you can specify individual posting dates.

       Or,  you  can  use  the  older  secondary  date feature (Ledger calls it auxiliary date or
       effective date).  Note: we  support  this  for  compatibility,  but  I  usually  recommend
       avoiding this feature; posting dates are almost always clearer and simpler.

       A secondary date is written after the primary date, following an equals sign.  If the year
       is omitted, the primary date's year is assumed.  When running reports, the primary  (left)
       date  is  used  by  default, but with the --date2 flag (or --aux-date or --effective), the
       secondary (right) date will be used instead.

       The meaning of secondary dates is up to you, but it's best to follow  a  consistent  rule.
       Eg "primary = the bank's clearing date, secondary = date the transaction was initiated, if
       different", as shown here:

              2010/2/23=2/19 movie ticket
                expenses:cinema                   $10
                assets:checking

              $ hledger register checking
              2010-02-23 movie ticket         assets:checking                $-10         $-10

              $ hledger register checking --date2
              2010-02-19 movie ticket         assets:checking                $-10         $-10

   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.   You  can  set  the secondary date similarly, with date2:DATE2.  The
       date: or date2: tags must have a valid simple date value if they are present, eg  a  date:
       tag with no value is not allowed.

       Ledger's   earlier,  more  compact  bracketed  date  syntax  is  also  supported:  [DATE],
       [DATE=DATE2] or [=DATE2].  hledger will attempt to parse any square-bracketed sequence  of
       the  0123456789/-.=  characters  in this way.  With this syntax, DATE infers its year from
       the transaction and DATE2 infers its year from DATE.

   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.

   Comments
       Lines in the journal beginning with a semicolon (;) or hash (#) or star (*) are  comments,
       and  will  be  ignored.  (Star comments cause org-mode nodes to be ignored, allowing emacs
       users to fold and navigate their journals with org-mode or orgstruct-mode.)

       You can attach comments to a transaction by writing  them  after  the  description  and/or
       indented on the following lines (before the postings).  Similarly, you can attach comments
       to an individual posting by writing them after the amount and/or indented on the following
       lines.  Transaction and posting comments must begin with a semicolon (;).

       Some examples:

              # a file comment
              ; another file comment
              * also a file comment, useful in org/orgstruct mode

              comment
              A multiline file comment, which continues
              until a line containing just "end comment"
              (or end of file).
              end comment

              2012/5/14 something  ; a transaction comment
                  ; the transaction comment, continued
                  posting1  1  ; a comment for posting 1
                  posting2
                  ; a comment for posting 2
                  ; another comment line for posting 2
              ; a file comment (because not indented)

       You can also comment larger regions of a file using comment and end comment directives.

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

       A simple tag is a word (which may contain hyphens)  followed  by  a  full  colon,  written
       inside a transaction or posting comment line:

              2017/1/16 bought groceries  ; sometag:

       Tags  can  have a value, which is the text after the colon, up to the next comma or end of
       line, with leading/trailing whitespace removed:

                  expenses:food    $10 ; a-posting-tag: the tag value

       Note this means hledger's tag values can not contain commas or newlines.  Ending at commas
       means you can write multiple short tags on one line, comma separated:

                  assets:checking  ; a comment containing tag1:, tag2: some value ...

       Here,

       • "a comment containing" is just comment text, not a tag

       • "tag1" is a tag with no value

       • "tag2" is another tag, whose value is "some value ..."

       Tags  in  a transaction comment affect the transaction and all of its postings, while tags
       in a posting comment affect only that posting.  For example, the following transaction has
       three tags (A, TAG2, third-tag) and the posting has four (those plus posting-tag):

              1/1 a transaction  ; A:, TAG2:
                  ; third-tag: a third transaction tag, <- with a value
                  (a)  $1  ; posting-tag:

       Tags are like Ledger's metadata feature, except hledger's tag values are simple strings.

   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.

   Virtual postings
       A posting with a parenthesised account name is called  a  virtual  posting  or  unbalanced
       posting,  which  means it is exempt from the usual rule that a transaction's postings must
       balance add up to zero.

       This is not part of double entry accounting, so you might choose to  avoid  this  feature.
       Or you can use it sparingly for certain special cases where it can be convenient.  Eg, you
       could set opening balances without using a balancing equity account:

              1/1 opening balances
                (assets:checking)   $1000
                (assets:savings)    $2000

       A posting with a bracketed account  name  is  called  a  balanced  virtual  posting.   The
       balanced  virtual  postings  in  a  transaction must add up to zero (separately from other
       postings).  Eg:

              1/1 buy food with cash, update budget envelope subaccounts, & something else
                assets:cash                    $-10 ; <- these balance
                expenses:food                    $7 ; <-
                expenses:food                    $3 ; <-
                [assets:checking:budget:food]  $-10    ; <- and these balance
                [assets:checking:available]     $10    ; <-
                (something:else)                 $5       ; <- not required to balance

       Ordinary non-parenthesised, non-bracketed postings are  called  real  postings.   You  can
       exclude virtual postings from reports with the -R/--real flag or real:1 query.

   Account names
       Account  names  typically have several parts separated by a full colon, from which hledger
       derives a hierarchical chart of accounts.  They can be anything you like, but  in  finance
       there  are  traditionally five top-level accounts: assets, liabilities, revenue, expenses,
       and equity.

       Account names may contain single spaces, eg: assets:accounts receivable.  Because of this,
       they must always be followed by two or more spaces (or newline).

       Account names can be aliased.

   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"):

              1

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

              $1
              4000 AAPL
              3 "green apples"

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

              -$1
              $-1

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

              + $1
              $-      1

       Scientific E notation is allowed:

              1E-6
              EUR 1E3

   Decimal marks, 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 detail 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, in JOURNAL FORMAT
       -> Declaring commodities.  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.

       Transaction  price  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
       transaction  price).   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").  (Guaranteed since hledger 1.17.1; in older
       versions this could vary if hledger was built with Decimal < 0.5.1.)

   Transaction prices
       Within a transaction, you can note an amount's price in another commodity.   This  can  be
       used  to  document  the  cost  (in a purchase) or selling price (in a sale).  For example,
       transaction prices are useful to record purchases of a foreign currency.  Note transaction
       prices  are  fixed  at the time of the transaction, and do not change over time.  See also
       market prices, which represent prevailing exchange rates on a certain date.

       There are several ways to record a transaction price:

       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:

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

       4. Like  1,  but  the @ is parenthesised, i.e.  (@); this is for compatibility with Ledger
          journals (Virtual posting costs), and is equivalent to 1 in hledger.

       5. Like 2, but as in 4 the @@ is parenthesised, i.e.  (@@); in hledger, this is equivalent
          to 2.

       Use  the -B/--cost flag to convert amounts to their transaction price's commodity, if any.
       (mnemonic: "B" is from "cost Basis", as in Ledger).  Eg here is how -B affects the balance
       report for the example above:

              $ hledger bal -N --flat
                             $-135  assets:dollars
                              €100  assets:euros
              $ hledger bal -N --flat -B
                             $-135  assets:dollars
                              $135  assets:euros    # <- the euros' cost

       Note  -B  is  sensitive to the order of postings when a transaction price 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:

              2009/1/1
                assets:dollars  $-135              ; 135 dollars sold
                assets:euros     €100              ; for 100 euros

              $ hledger bal -N --flat -B
                             €-100  assets:dollars  # <- the dollars' selling price
                              €100  assets:euros

   Lot prices, lot dates
       Ledger   allows   another   kind   of   price,  lot  price  (four  variants:  {UNITPRICE},
       {{TOTALPRICE}}, {=FIXEDUNITPRICE}, {{=FIXEDTOTALPRICE}}), and/or a lot date ([DATE]) to be
       specified.   These  are  normally  used to select a lot when selling investments.  hledger
       will parse these, for compatibility with Ledger journals, but currently ignores  them.   A
       transaction  price,  lot  price and/or lot date may appear in any order, after the posting
       amount and before the balance assertion if any.

   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, 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 included files
       With included files, things are  a  little  more  complicated.   Including  preserves  the
       ordering  of  postings and assertions.  If you have multiple postings to an account on the
       same day, split across different files, and you also want to assert the account's  balance
       on the same day, you'll have to put the assertion in the right file.

   Assertions and multiple -f options
       Balance  assertions  don't work well across files specified with multiple -f options.  Use
       include or concatenate the files instead.

   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 unasserted commodities in the
       account (or, 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 transaction prices, 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 are checked against all postings, both real and virtual.  They are  not
       affected by the --real/-R flag or real: query.

   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.

   Balance assignments
       Ledger-style  balance  assignments are also supported.  These are like balance assertions,
       but with no posting amount on the left side of the equals sign; instead it  is  calculated
       automatically  so  as  to  satisfy  the  assertion.  This can be a convenience during data
       entry, eg when setting opening balances:

              ; starting a new journal, set asset account balances
              2016/1/1 opening balances
                assets:checking            = $409.32
                assets:savings             = $735.24
                assets:cash                 = $42
                equity:opening balances

       or when adjusting a balance to reality:

              ; no cash left; update balance, record any untracked spending as a generic expense
              2016/1/15
                assets:cash    = $0
                expenses:misc

       The calculated amount depends on the account's balance in  the  commodity  at  that  point
       (which depends on the previously-dated postings of the commodity to that account since the
       last balance assertion or assignment).  Note that using  balance  assignments  makes  your
       journal  a  little less explicit; to know the exact amount posted, you have to run hledger
       or do the calculations yourself, instead of just reading it.

   Balance assignments and prices
       A transaction price in a balance assignment will cause the calculated amount to have  that
       price attached:

              2019/1/1
                (a)             = $1 @ €2

              $ hledger print --explicit
              2019-01-01
                  (a)         $1 @ €2 = $1 @ €2

   Directives
       A directive is a line in the journal beginning with a special keyword, that influences how
       the journal is processed, how things are displayed, and so on.  hledger's  directives  are
       based on (a subset of) Ledger's, but there are many differences, and also some differences
       between hledger versions.  Here are some more definitions:

       • subdirective - Some directives support subdirectives, written indented below the  parent
         directive.

       • decimal  mark  -  The  character  to  interpret as a decimal mark (period or comma) when
         parsing amounts of a commodity.

       • display style - How to display amounts  of  a  commodity  in  output:  symbol  side  and
         spacing, digit groups, decimal mark, and number of decimal places.

       Directives are not required when starting out with hledger, but you will probably add some
       as your needs grow.  Here is an overview of directives by purpose:

       purpose                           directives               command      line
                                                                  options      with
                                                                  similar effect
       ─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
       READING/GENERATING DATA:
       Declare a commodity's or file's   commodity, D, decimal-
       decimal   mark  to  help  parse   mark
       amounts accurately
       Apply changes to the data while   alias, apply  account,   --alias
       parsing                           comment, D, Y
       Inline extra data files           include                  multiple
                                                                  -f/--file's
       Generate extra transactions  or   ~
       budget goals
       Generate extra postings           =
       CHECKING FOR ERRORS:
       Define  valid entities to allow   account,    commodity,
       stricter error checking           payee
       DISPLAYING REPORTS:
       Declare accounts' display order   account
       and accounting type
       Declare    commodity    display   commodity, D             -c/--commodity-
       styles                                                     style

       And here are all the directives and their precise effects:

       directive   effects                                                         ends
                                                                                   at
                                                                                   file
                                                                                   end?
       ───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
       account     Declares an account, for checking all entries in  all  files;
                   and  its display order and type, for reports.  Subdirectives:
                   any text, ignored.
       alias       Rewrites account names, in following  entries  until  end  of   Y
                   current file or end aliases.
       apply       Prepends a common parent account to  all  account  names,  in   Y
       account     following  entries  until  end  of  current file or end apply
                   account.
       comment     Ignores part of the journal file, until end of  current  file   Y
                   or end comment.
       commodity   Declares  a commodity, for checking all entries in all files;   N, Y
                   the decimal mark for parsing amounts of this  commodity,  for
                   following  entries until end of current file; and its display
                   style, for reports.  Takes precedence over D.  Subdirectives:
                   format (alternate syntax).
       D           Sets  a  default  commodity to use for no-symbol amounts, and   Y
                   its decimal mark for parsing amounts  of  this  commodity  in
                   following  entries until end of current file; and its display
                   style, for reports.
       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
                   were written inline.
       payee       Declares a payee name, for checking all entries in all files.
       P           Declares  a  market  price  for a commodity on some date, for
                   valuation reports.
       Y           Declares a year for yearless  dates,  for  following  entries   Y
                   until end of current file.
       ~ (tilde)   Declares  a  periodic  transaction rule that generates future
                   transactions with --forecast and budget  goals  with  balance
                   --budget.
       =           Declares an auto posting rule that generates  extra  postings   partly
       (equals)    on  matched transactions with --auto, in current, parent, and
                   child files (but not sibling files, see #1212).

   Directives and multiple files
       If  you  use  multiple  -f/--file  options, or the include directive, hledger will process
       multiple input files.  But directives which affect input typically have effect only  until
       the end of the file in which they occur (and on any included files in that region).

       This   may   seem  inconvenient,  but  it's  intentional;  it  makes  reports  stable  and
       deterministic, independent of the order of  input.   Otherwise  you  could  see  different
       numbers if you happened to write -f options in a different order, or if you moved includes
       around while cleaning up your files.

       It can be surprising though; for example, it means that alias  directives  do  not  affect
       parent or sibling files (see below).

   Comment blocks
       A  line  containing  just  comment  starts  a  commented  region  of  the file, and a line
       containing just end comment (or the end of the current file) ends it.  See also comments.

   Including other files
       You can pull in the content of additional files by  writing  an  include  directive,  like
       this:

              include FILEPATH

       Only  journal  files  can  include,  and  only  journal, timeclock or timedot files can be
       included (not CSV files, currently).

       If the file path does not begin with a slash, it is relative to the current file's folder.

       A tilde means home directory, eg: include ~/main.journal.

       The path may contain glob patterns to match multiple files, eg: include *.journal.

       There is limited support for recursive wildcards: **/ (the slash is required) matches 0 or
       more subdirectories.  It's not super convenient since you have to avoid include cycles and
       including directories, but this can be done, eg: include */**/*.journal.

       The path may also be prefixed to  force  a  specific  file  format,  overriding  the  file
       extension (as described in hledger.1 -> Input files): include timedot:~/notes/2020*.md.

   Default year
       You  can  set  a  default year to be used for subsequent dates which don't specify a year.
       This is a line beginning with Y followed by the year.  Eg:

              Y2009  ; set default year to 2009

              12/15  ; equivalent to 2009/12/15
                expenses  1
                assets

              Y2010  ; change default year to 2010

              2009/1/30  ; specifies the year, not affected
                expenses  1
                assets

              1/31   ; equivalent to 2010/1/31
                expenses  1
                assets

   Declaring payees
       The payee directive can be used to declare a limited set of payees  which  may  appear  in
       transaction  descriptions.   The  "payees"  check  will report an error if any transaction
       refers to a payee that has not been declared.  Eg:

              payee Whole Foods

   Declaring the decimal mark
       You can use a decimal-mark directive - usually one per file, at the top of the file  -  to
       declare  which  character represents a decimal mark when parsing amounts in this file.  It
       can look like

              decimal-mark .

       or

              decimal-mark ,

       This prevents any ambiguity when  parsing  numbers  in  the  file,  so  we  recommend  it,
       especially if the file contains digit group marks (eg thousands separators).

   Declaring commodities
       You  can  use  commodity  directives  to  declare your commodities.  In fact the commodity
       directive performs several functions at once:

       1. It declares commodities which may be used in  the  journal.   This  can  optionally  be
          enforced, providing useful error checking.  (Cf Commodity error checking)

       2. It  declares  which  decimal  mark  character (period or comma), to expect when parsing
          input - useful to disambiguate international number  formats  in  your  data.   Without
          this, hledger will parse both 1,000 and 1.000 as 1.  (Cf Amounts)

       3. It  declares how to render the commodity's amounts when displaying output - the decimal
          mark, any digit group marks, the number of decimal places, symbol placement and so  on.
          (Cf Commodity display style)

       You  will  run into one of the problems solved by commodity directives sooner or later, so
       we recommend using them, for robust and predictable parsing and display.

       Generally you should put them at the top of your journal file (since for function 2,  they
       affect only following amounts, cf #793).

       A commodity directive is just the word commodity followed by a sample amount, like this:

              ;commodity SAMPLEAMOUNT

              commodity $1000.00
              commodity 1,000.0000 AAAA  ; optional same-line comment

       It  may  also be written on multiple lines, and use the format subdirective, as in Ledger.
       Note in this case the commodity symbol appears twice; it must be the same in both places:

              ;commodity SYMBOL
              ;  format SAMPLEAMOUNT

              ; display indian rupees with currency name on the left,
              ; thousands, lakhs and crores comma-separated,
              ; period as decimal point, and two decimal places.
              commodity INR
                format INR 1,00,00,000.00

       Remember that if the commodity symbol contains spaces, numbers, or punctuation, it must be
       enclosed in double quotes (cf Commodity).

       The  amount's quantity does not matter; only the format is significant.  It must include a
       decimal mark - either a period or a comma - followed by 0 or more decimal digits.

       A few more examples:

              # number formats for $, EUR, INR and the no-symbol commodity:
              commodity $1,000.00
              commodity EUR 1.000,00
              commodity INR 9,99,99,999.0
              commodity 1 000 000.

       Note hledger normally uses banker's rounding, so 0.5 displayed with zero decimal digits is
       "0".  (More at Commodity display style.)

       Even  in  the  presence  of commodity directives, the commodity display style can still be
       overridden by supplying a command line option.

   Commodity error checking
       In strict mode, enabled with the -s/--strict flag, hledger  will  report  an  error  if  a
       commodity  symbol is used that has not been declared by a commodity directive.  This works
       similarly to account error checking, see the notes there for more details.

       Note, this disallows amounts without  a  commodity  symbol,  because  currently  it's  not
       possible (?) to declare the "no-symbol" commodity with a directive.  This is one exception
       for convenience: zero amounts are always allowed to have no commodity symbol.

   Default commodity
       The D directive sets a default commodity, to be  used  for  any  subsequent  commodityless
       amounts  (ie,  plain numbers) seen while parsing the journal.  This effect lasts until the
       next D directive, or the end of the journal.

       For compatibility/historical reasons, D also acts like a commodity directive (setting  the
       commodity's decimal mark for parsing and display style for output).

       The syntax is D AMOUNT.  As with commodity, the amount must include a decimal mark (either
       period or comma).  Eg:

              ; commodity-less amounts should be treated as dollars
              ; (and displayed with the dollar sign on the left, thousands separators and two decimal places)
              D $1,000.00

              1/1
                a     5  ; <- commodity-less amount, parsed as $5 and displayed as $5.00
                b

       If both commodity and D directives are found for a commodity, commodity  takes  precedence
       for setting decimal mark and display style.

       If  you  are  using  D  and  also  checking  commodities, you will need to add a commodity
       directive similar to the D.  (The hledger  check  commodities  command  expects  commodity
       directives, and ignores D).

   Declaring market prices
       The P directive declares a market price, which is an exchange rate between two commodities
       on a certain date.  (In Ledger, they are called  "historical  prices".)  These  are  often
       obtained from a stock exchange, cryptocurrency exchange, or the foreign exchange market.

       The format is:

              P DATE COMMODITY1SYMBOL COMMODITY2AMOUNT

       DATE  is  a simple date, COMMODITY1SYMBOL is the symbol of the commodity being priced, and
       COMMODITY2AMOUNT is the amount (symbol and quantity) of  commodity  2  that  one  unit  of
       commodity 1 is worth on this date.  Examples:

              # one euro was worth $1.35 from 2009-01-01 onward:
              P 2009-01-01 € $1.35

              # and $1.40 from 2010-01-01 onward:
              P 2010-01-01 € $1.40

       The  -V,  -X  and  --value  flags use these market prices to show amount values in another
       commodity.  See Valuation.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

       The  simplest  form  is just the word account followed by a hledger-style account name, eg
       this account directive declares the assets:bank:checking account:

              account assets:bank:checking

   Account error checking
       By default, accounts come into existence when a transaction references them by name.  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 the 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 in other
         formats).

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

   Account comments
       Comments, beginning with a semicolon, can be added:

       • on the same line, after two or more spaces (because ; is allowed in account names)

       • on the next lines, indented

       An example of both:

              account assets:bank:checking    ; same-line comment, note 2+ spaces required before ;
                ; next-line comment
                ; some tags, type:A, acctnum:12345

       Compatibility note: same-line comments are not supported by Ledger or hledger <1.13.

   Account subdirectives
       We also allow (and ignore) Ledger-style indented subdirectives, just for compatibility.:

              account assets:bank:checking
                format blah blah  ; <- subdirective, ignored

       Here is the full syntax of account directives:

              account ACCTNAME  [;type:ACCTTYPE] [COMMENT]
                [;COMMENTS]
                [LEDGER-STYLE SUBDIRECTIVES, IGNORED]

   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 CONVERSION & COST).)

       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.  Note the
         Cash regexp changed in hledger 1.24.99.2.

                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  each  of
         them, 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.   To  be
         precise, an account's type is decided by the first of these that exists:

         1. A type: declaration for this account.

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

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

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

         5. Otherwise, it will have no type.

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

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

   Account display order
       Account  directives also set the order in which accounts are displayed, eg in reports, the
       hledger-ui accounts screen, and the hledger-web sidebar.  By default accounts  are  listed
       in alphabetical order.  But if you have these account directives in the journal:

              account assets
              account liabilities
              account equity
              account revenues
              account expenses

       you'll see those accounts displayed in declaration order, not alphabetically:

              $ hledger accounts -1
              assets
              liabilities
              equity
              revenues
              expenses

       Undeclared accounts, if any, are displayed last, in alphabetical order.

       Note  that 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).

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

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

       • adapting old journals to your current chart of accounts

       • experimenting with new account organisations, like a new hierarchy

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

       • customising reports

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

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

       See also Rewrite account names.

   Basic aliases
       To set an account alias, use the alias directive in your journal file.  This  affects  all
       subsequent  journal  entries  in  the  current  file  or its included files (but note: not
       sibling or parent files).  The spaces around the = are optional:

              alias OLD = NEW

       Or, you can use the --alias 'OLD=NEW' option  on  the  command  line.   This  affects  all
       entries.  It's useful for trying out aliases interactively.

       OLD and NEW are case sensitive full account names.  hledger will replace any occurrence of
       the old account name with the new one.  Subaccounts are also affected.  Eg:

              alias checking = assets:bank:wells fargo:checking
              ; rewrites "checking" to "assets:bank:wells fargo:checking", or "checking:a" to "assets:bank:wells fargo:checking:a"

   Regex aliases
       There is also a more powerful variant that uses a regular  expression,  indicated  by  the
       forward slashes:

              alias /REGEX/ = REPLACEMENT

       or --alias '/REGEX/=REPLACEMENT'.

       REGEX  is  a  case-insensitive  regular expression.  Anywhere it matches inside an account
       name, the matched part will be replaced by REPLACEMENT.  If REGEX  contains  parenthesised
       match  groups, these can be referenced by the usual numeric backreferences in REPLACEMENT.
       Eg:

              alias /^(.+):bank:([^:]+):(.*)/ = \1:\2 \3
              ; rewrites "assets:bank:wells fargo:checking" to  "assets:wells fargo checking"

       Also note that REPLACEMENT continues to the end of line (or on command  line,  to  end  of
       option argument), so it can contain trailing whitespace.

   Combining aliases
       You  can  define as many aliases as you like, using journal directives and/or command line
       options.

       Recursive aliases - where an account name is rewritten  by  one  alias,  then  by  another
       alias, and so on - are allowed.  Each alias sees the effect of previously applied aliases.

       In such cases it can be important to understand which aliases will be applied and in which
       order.  For (each account name in) each journal entry, we apply:

       1. alias directives preceding the journal entry, most recently parsed first  (ie,  reading
          upward from the journal entry, bottom to top)

       2. --alias options, in the order they appeared on the command line (left to right).

       In other words, for (an account name in) a given journal entry:

       • the nearest alias declaration before/above the entry is applied first

       • the next alias before/above that will be be applied next, and so on

       • aliases defined after/below the entry do not affect it.

       This  gives  nearby  aliases  precedence  over  distant  ones,  and helps provide semantic
       stability - aliases will keep working the same way independent of which  files  are  being
       read and in which order.

       In case of trouble, adding --debug=6 to the command line will show which aliases are being
       applied when.

   Aliases and multiple files
       As explained at Directives and multiple files, alias directives do not  affect  parent  or
       sibling files.  Eg in this command,

              hledger -f a.aliases -f b.journal

       account  aliases  defined  in  a.aliases will not affect b.journal.  Including the aliases
       doesn't work either:

              include a.aliases

              2020-01-01  ; not affected by a.aliases
                foo  1
                bar

       This means that account aliases should usually be declared at the start of  your  top-most
       file, like this:

              alias foo=Foo
              alias bar=Bar

              2020-01-01  ; affected by aliases above
                foo  1
                bar

              include c.journal  ; also affected

   end aliases
       You  can  clear  (forget)  all  currently  defined aliases (seen in the journal so far, or
       defined on the command line) with this directive:

              end aliases

   Aliases can generate bad account names
       Be aware that account aliases can produce  malformed  account  names,  which  could  cause
       confusing  reports  or  invalid  print  output.   For example, you could erase all account
       names:

              2021-01-01
                a:aa     1
                b

              $ hledger print --alias '/.*/='
              2021-01-01
                                 1

       The above print output is not a valid journal.  Or you  could  insert  an  illegal  double
       space, causing print output that would give a different journal when reparsed:

              2021-01-01
                old    1
                other

              $ hledger print --alias old="new  USD" | hledger -f- print
              2021-01-01
                  new             USD 1
                  other

   Aliases and account types
       If  an account with a type declaration (see Declaring accounts > Account types) is renamed
       by an alias, normally the account type remains in effect.

       However, renaming in a way that reshapes the account tree (eg renaming parent accounts but
       not  their  children,  or  vice  versa)  could  prevent child accounts from inheriting the
       account type of their parents.

       Secondly, if an account's type is being inferred from its name, renaming it  by  an  alias
       could prevent or alter that.

       If  you  are  using  account  aliases  and the type: query is not matching accounts as you
       expect, try troubleshooting with the accounts command, eg something like:

              $ hledger accounts --alias assets=bassetts type:a

   Default parent account
       You can specify a parent account which will be prepended to all accounts within a  section
       of the journal.  Use the apply account and end apply account directives like so:

              apply account home

              2010/1/1
                  food    $10
                  cash

              end apply account

       which is equivalent to:

              2010/01/01
                  home:food           $10
                  home:cash          $-10

       If  end apply account is omitted, the effect lasts to the end of the file.  Included files
       are also affected, eg:

              apply account business
              include biz.journal
              end apply account
              apply account personal
              include personal.journal

       Prior to hledger 1.0, legacy account and end spellings were also supported.

       A default parent account also affects account directives.   It  does  not  affect  account
       names  being entered via hledger add or hledger-web.  If account aliases are present, they
       are applied after the default parent account.

   Periodic transactions
       Periodic transaction rules describe  transactions  that  recur.   They  allow  hledger  to
       generate  temporary  future  transactions  to  help with forecasting, so you don't have to
       write out each one in the journal, and it's easy to try out different forecasts.

       Periodic transactions can be a little tricky, so before you  use  them,  read  this  whole
       section - or at least these tips:

       1. Two  spaces  accidentally  added  or  omitted  will cause you trouble - read about this
          below.

       2. For troubleshooting, show the generated  transactions  with  hledger  print  --forecast
          tag:generated or hledger register --forecast tag:generated.

       3. Forecasted  transactions  will  begin  only after the last non-forecasted transaction's
          date.

       4. Forecasted transactions will end 6 months from today, by default.  See  below  for  the
          exact start/end rules.

       5. period  expressions can be tricky.  Their documentation needs improvement, but is worth
          studying.

       6. Some period expressions with a repeating interval must begin on a natural  boundary  of
          that interval.  Eg in weekly from DATE, DATE must be a monday.  ~ weekly from 2019/10/1
          (a tuesday) will give an error.

       7. Other period expressions with an interval are automatically expanded to cover  a  whole
          number  of  that  interval.   (This  is  done  to  improve reports, but it also affects
          periodic transactions.  Yes, it's a bit inconsistent with the above.) Eg: ~ every  10th
          day  of  month  from  2020/01,  which  is  equivalent to ~ every 10th day of month from
          2020/01/01, will be adjusted to start on 2019/12/10.

       Periodic transaction rules also have a second meaning: they  are  used  to  define  budget
       goals, shown in budget reports.

   Periodic rule syntax
       A periodic transaction rule looks like a normal journal entry, with the date replaced by a
       tilde (~) followed by a period expression (mnemonic: ~ looks like a recurring sine wave.):

              ~ monthly
                  expenses:rent          $2000
                  assets:bank:checking

       There is an additional constraint on the period expression: the start date must fall on  a
       natural  boundary  of  the  interval.  Eg monthly from 2018/1/1 is valid, but monthly from
       2018/1/15 is not.

       Partial or relative dates (M/D, D, tomorrow, last week) in the period expression can  work
       (useful or not).  They will be relative to today's date, unless a Y default year directive
       is in effect, in which case they will be relative to Y/1/1.

   Two spaces between period expression and description!
       If the period expression is followed by a transaction description, these must be separated
       by  two or more spaces.  This helps hledger know where the period expression ends, so that
       descriptions can not accidentally alter their meaning, as in this example:

              ; 2 or more spaces needed here, so the period is not understood as "every 2 months in 2020"
              ;               ||
              ;               vv
              ~ every 2 months  in 2020, we will review
                  assets:bank:checking   $1500
                  income:acme inc

       So,

       • Do write two spaces between your period expression and your transaction description,  if
         any.

       • Don't accidentally write two spaces in the middle of your period expression.

   Forecasting with periodic transactions
       The  --forecast  flag activates any periodic transaction rules in the journal.  These will
       generate temporary additional transactions, usually recurring and  in  the  future,  which
       will appear in all reports.  hledger print --forecast is a good way to see them.

       This  can  be  useful  for estimating balances into the future, perhaps experimenting with
       different scenarios.

       It  could  also  be  useful  for  scripted  data  entry:  you  could  describe   recurring
       transactions, and every so often copy the output of print --forecast into the journal.

       The   generated   transactions  will  have  an  extra  tag,  like  generated-transaction:~
       PERIODICEXPR, indicating which periodic rule generated them.  There  is  also  a  similar,
       hidden   tag,   named  _generated-transaction:,  which  you  can  use  to  reliably  match
       transactions generated "just now" (rather than printed in the past).

       The forecast transactions are generated within a forecast period, which is independent  of
       the  report  period.   (Forecast period sets the bounds for generated transactions, report
       period controls which transactions are reported.) The forecast period begins on:

       • the start date provided within --forecast's argument, if any

       • otherwise, the later of

         • the report start date, if specified (with -b/-p/date:)

         • the day after the latest ordinary transaction in the journal, if any

       • otherwise today.

       It ends on:

       • the end date provided within --forecast's argument, if any

       • otherwise, the report end date, if specified (with -e/-p/date:)

       • otherwise 180 days (6 months) from today.

       Note, this means that  ordinary  transactions  will  suppress  periodic  transactions,  by
       default;  the  periodic  transactions  will  not  start  until  after  the  last  ordinary
       transaction.  This is usually convenient, but you can get around it in two ways:

       • If you need to record some transactions in the future, make them  periodic  transactions
         (with  a  single  occurrence, eg: ~ YYYY-MM-DD) rather than ordinary transactions.  That
         way they won't suppress other periodic transactions.

       • Or give --forecast a period expression argument.  A forecast period specified  this  way
         can overlap ordinary transactions, and need not be in the future.  Some things to note:

         • You must use = between flag and argument; a space won't work.

         • The period expression can specify the forecast period's start date, end date, or both.
           See also Report start & end date.

         • The  period  expression  should  not  specify  a  report  interval.   (Each   periodic
           transaction rule specifies its own interval.)

       Some examples: --forecast=202001-202004, --forecast=jan-, --forecast=2021.

   Budgeting with periodic transactions
       With  the  --budget  flag,  currently  supported  by  the  balance  command, each periodic
       transaction rule declares recurring budget goals for the specified accounts.  Eg the first
       example  above  declares  a goal of spending $2000 on rent (and also, a goal of depositing
       $2000 into checking) every month.  Goals and actual performance can then  be  compared  in
       budget reports.

       See also: Budgeting and Forecasting.

   Auto postings
       "Automated  postings"  or "auto postings" are extra postings which get added automatically
       to transactions which match certain queries, defined by "auto posting rules", when you use
       the --auto flag.

       An auto posting rule looks a bit like a transaction:

              = QUERY
                  ACCOUNT  AMOUNT
                  ...
                  ACCOUNT  [AMOUNT]

       except  the  first  line  is an equals sign (mnemonic: = suggests matching), followed by a
       query (which matches existing postings), and each "posting" line describes a posting to be
       generated, and the posting amounts can be:

       • a normal amount with a commodity symbol, eg $2.  This will be used as-is.

       • a number, eg 2.  The commodity symbol (if any) from the matched posting will be added to
         this.

       • a numeric multiplier, eg *2 (a star followed by a  number  N).   The  matched  posting's
         amount (and total price, if any) will be multiplied by N.

       • a  multiplier  with  a  commodity  symbol, eg *$2 (a star, number N, and symbol S).  The
         matched posting's amount will be multiplied by N,  and  its  commodity  symbol  will  be
         replaced with S.

       Any  query  term  containing spaces must be enclosed in single or double quotes, as on the
       command line.  Eg, note the quotes around the second query term below:

              = expenses:groceries 'expenses:dining out'
                  (budget:funds:dining out)                 *-1

       Some examples:

              ; every time I buy food, schedule a dollar donation
              = expenses:food
                  (liabilities:charity)   $-1

              ; when I buy a gift, also deduct that amount from a budget envelope subaccount
              = expenses:gifts
                  assets:checking:gifts  *-1
                  assets:checking         *1

              2017/12/1
                expenses:food    $10
                assets:checking

              2017/12/14
                expenses:gifts   $20
                assets:checking

              $ hledger print --auto
              2017-12-01
                  expenses:food              $10
                  assets:checking
                  (liabilities:charity)      $-1

              2017-12-14
                  expenses:gifts             $20
                  assets:checking
                  assets:checking:gifts     -$20
                  assets:checking            $20

   Auto postings and multiple files
       An auto posting rule can affect any transaction in the current file, or in any parent file
       or  child file.  Note, currently it will not affect sibling files (when multiple -f/--file
       are used - see #1212).

   Auto postings and dates
       A posting date (or secondary date) in  the  matched  posting,  or  (taking  precedence)  a
       posting date in the auto posting rule itself, will also be used in the generated posting.

   Auto postings and transaction balancing / inferred amounts / balance assertions
       Currently, auto postings are added:

       • after missing amounts are inferred, and transactions are checked for balancedness,

       • but before balance assertions are checked.

       Note  this means that journal entries must be balanced both before and after auto postings
       are added.  This changed in hledger 1.12+; see #893 for background.

       This also means that you cannot have more than one  auto-posting  with  a  missing  amount
       applied to a given transaction, as it will be unable to infer amounts.

   Auto posting tags
       Automated postings will have some extra tags:

       • generated-posting:=  QUERY  -  shows this was generated by an auto posting rule, and the
         query

       • _generated-posting:= QUERY - a hidden tag, which does not appear  in  hledger's  output.
         This  can  be  used to match postings generated "just now", rather than generated in the
         past and saved to the journal.

       Also, any transaction that has been changed by auto posting rules  will  have  these  tags
       added:

       • modified: - this transaction was modified

       • _modified:  -  a  hidden tag not appearing in the comment; this transaction was modified
         "just now".

CSV FORMAT

       How hledger reads CSV data, and the CSV rules file format.

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

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

       We describe each CSV file's format with a corresponding rules file.  By  default  this  is
       named  like the CSV file with a .rules extension added.  Eg when reading FILE.csv, hledger
       also looks for FILE.csv.rules in the same  directory  as  FILE.csv.   You  can  specify  a
       different  rules file with the --rules-file option.  If a rules file is not found, hledger
       will create a sample rules file, which you'll need to adjust.

       This file contains rules describing the CSV data (header line, fields layout, date  format
       etc.),  and  how to construct hledger journal entries (transactions) from it.  Often there
       will also be a list of conditional rules for  categorising  transactions  based  on  their
       descriptions.   Here's an overview of the CSV rules; these are described more fully below,
       after the examples:

       skip                         skip one or more header lines or matched CSV
                                    records
       fields list                  name  CSV  fields,  assign  them  to hledger
                                    fields
       field assignment             assign a value to one  hledger  field,  with
                                    interpolation
       Field names                  hledger field names, used in the fields list
                                    and field assignments
       separator                    a custom field separator
       if block                     apply some rules to CSV records  matched  by
                                    patterns
       if table                     apply  some  rules to CSV records matched by
                                    patterns, alternate syntax
       end                          skip the remaining CSV records
       date-format                  how to parse dates in CSV records
       decimal-mark                 the decimal mark used  in  CSV  amounts,  if
                                    ambiguous
       newest-first                 disambiguate  record order when there's only
                                    one date
       include                      inline another CSV rules file
       balance-type                 choose which type of balance assignments  to
                                    use

       Note,  for  best  error  messages  when  reading  CSV files, use a .csv, .tsv or .ssv file
       extension or file prefix - see File Extension below.

       There's an introductory Convert CSV files tutorial on hledger.org.

   Examples
       Here are some sample hledger CSV rules files.  See also the full collection at:
       https://github.com/simonmichael/hledger/tree/master/examples/csv

   Basic
       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

       Default account names are chosen, since we didn't set them.

   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.

   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:

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

   skip
              skip N

       The word "skip" followed by a number (or no number, meaning 1)  tells  hledger  to  ignore
       this  many  non-empty  lines  preceding  the  CSV  data.   (Empty/blank  lines are skipped
       automatically.) You'll need this whenever your CSV data contains header lines.

       It also has a second purpose: it can be used  inside  if  blocks  to  ignore  certain  CSV
       records (described below).

   fields list
              fields FIELDNAME1, FIELDNAME2, ...

       A fields list (the word "fields" followed by comma-separated field names) is the quick way
       to assign CSV field values to hledger fields.  (The other way is  field  assignments,  see
       below.) A fields list does does two things:

       1. It  names  the  CSV  fields.   This  is  optional,  but  can  be  convenient  later for
          interpolating them.

       2. Whenever you use a standard hledger field  name  (defined  below),  the  CSV  value  is
          assigned to that part of the hledger 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

       Tips:

       • The  fields  list  always  use  commas,  even  if  your  CSV data uses another separator
         character.

       • Currently 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).

       • If the CSV contains column headings, it's a good idea to use these,  suitably  modified,
         as the basis for your field names (eg lower-cased, with underscores instead of spaces).

       • If  some  heading  names  match  standard  hledger fields, but you don't want to set the
         hledger fields directly, alter those names, eg by appending an underscore.

       • Fields you don't care about can be given a dummy name (eg: _ ), or no name.

   field assignment
              HLEDGERFIELDNAME 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 (%CSVFIELDNAME).

       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
       Here are the standard hledger field (and pseudo-field) names,  which  you  can  use  in  a
       fields list and in field assignments.  For more about the transaction parts they refer to,
       see Transactions.

   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.

       Tips:

       • 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, and in conditional blocks.

       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
       amountN  sets  the amount of the Nth posting, and causes that posting to be generated.  By
       assigning to amount1, amount2, ...  etc.  you can generate up to 99 postings.

       amountN-in and amountN-out can be used instead, if the CSV uses separate fields for debits
       and  credits  (inflows  and  outflows).   hledger  assumes  both  of  these CSV fields are
       unsigned, and will automatically negate  the  "-out"  value.   If  they  are  signed,  see
       "Setting amounts" below.

       amount,  or amount-in and amount-out are a legacy mode, to keep pre-hledger-1.17 CSV rules
       files working (and for occasional convenience).  They are suitable  only  for  two-posting
       transactions;  they  set both posting 1's and posting 2's amount.  Posting 2's amount will
       be negated, and also converted to cost if there's a transaction price.

       If you have an existing rules file using the unnumbered form, you might want  to  use  the
       numbered  form  in certain conditional blocks, without having to update and retest all the
       old rules.  To facilitate this, posting 1 ignores amount/amount-in/amount-out  if  any  of
       amount1/amount1-in/amount1-out  are  assigned,  and  posting  2  ignores  them  if  any of
       amount2/amount2-in/amount2-out are assigned, avoiding conflicts.

   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.

   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.

   if block
              if MATCHER
               RULE

              if
              MATCHER
              MATCHER
              MATCHER
               RULE
               RULE

       Conditional blocks ("if blocks") are a block of rules that are applied only to CSV records
       which match certain patterns.  They are often used for customising account names based  on
       transaction descriptions.

   Matching the whole record
       Each MATCHER can be a record matcher, which looks like this:

              REGEX

       REGEX is a case-insensitive regular expression that tries to match anywhere within the CSV
       record.  It is a POSIX ERE (extended regular  expression)  that  also  supports  GNU  word
       boundaries  (\b, \B, \<, \>), and nothing else.  If you have trouble, be sure to check our
       doc: https://hledger.org/hledger.html#regular-expressions

       Important note: the record that is matched is not the original  record,  but  a  synthetic
       one,  with  any enclosing double quotes (but not enclosing whitespace) removed, and always
       comma-separated (which means that a field containing a comma will appear like two fields).
       Eg,  if  the  original record is 2020-01-01; "Acme, Inc.";  1,000, the REGEX will actually
       see 2020-01-01,Acme, Inc.,  1,000).

   Matching individual fields
       Or, MATCHER can be a field matcher, like this:

              %CSVFIELD REGEX

       which matches just the content of a particular CSV field.   CSVFIELD  is  a  percent  sign
       followed by the field's name or column number, like %date or %1.

   Combining matchers
       A  single matcher can be written on the same line as the "if"; or multiple matchers can be
       written on the following lines, non-indented.  Multiple matchers are OR'd (any one of them
       can  match),  unless  one  begins  with  an  & symbol, in which case it is AND'ed with the
       previous matcher.

              if
              MATCHER
              & MATCHER
               RULE

   Rules applied on successful match
       After the patterns there should be one or more rules to apply, all indented  by  at  least
       one space.  Three kinds of rule are allowed in conditional blocks:

       • field assignments (to set a hledger field)

       • skip (to skip the matched CSV record)

       • end (to skip all remaining CSV records).

       Examples:

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

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

   if table
              if,CSVFIELDNAME1,CSVFIELDNAME2,...,CSVFIELDNAMEn
              MATCHER1,VALUE11,VALUE12,...,VALUE1n
              MATCHER2,VALUE21,VALUE22,...,VALUE2n
              MATCHER3,VALUE31,VALUE32,...,VALUE3n
              <empty line>

       Conditional  tables ("if tables") are a different syntax to specify field assignments that
       will be applied only to CSV records which match certain patterns.

       MATCHER could be either field  or  record  matcher,  as  described  above.   When  MATCHER
       matches, values from that row would be assigned to the CSV fields named on the if line, in
       the same order.

       Therefore if table is exactly equivalent to a sequence of of if blocks:

              if MATCHER1
                CSVFIELDNAME1 VALUE11
                CSVFIELDNAME2 VALUE12
                ...
                CSVFIELDNAMEn VALUE1n

              if MATCHER2
                CSVFIELDNAME1 VALUE21
                CSVFIELDNAME2 VALUE22
                ...
                CSVFIELDNAMEn VALUE2n

              if MATCHER3
                CSVFIELDNAME1 VALUE31
                CSVFIELDNAME2 VALUE32
                ...
                CSVFIELDNAMEn VALUE3n

       Each line starting with MATCHER should contain enough (possibly empty) values for all  the
       listed fields.

       Rules  would  be  checked  and applied in the order they are listed in the table and, like
       with if blocks, later rules (in the same or another table) or if blocks could override the
       effect of any rule.

       Instead  of ',' you can use a variety of other non-alphanumeric characters as a separator.
       First character after if is taken to be the separator for the rest of the  table.   It  is
       the responsibility of the user to ensure that separator does not occur inside MATCHERs and
       values - there is no way to escape separator.

       Example:

              if,account2,comment
              atm transaction fee,expenses:business:banking,deductible? check it
              %description groceries,expenses:groceries,
              2020/01/12.*Plumbing LLC,expenses:house:upkeep,emergency plumbing call-out

   end
       This rule can be used inside if blocks (only), to make hledger stop reading this CSV  file
       and move on to the next input file, or to command execution.  Eg:

              # ignore everything following the first empty record
              if ,,,,
               end

   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 date parsing pattern, which 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

       For the supported strptime syntax, see:
       https://hackage.haskell.org/package/time/docs/Data-Time-Format.html#v:formatTime

       Note that although you can parse date-times which include a time zone, that time  zone  is
       ignored;  it  will  not  change the date that is parsed.  This means when reading CSV data
       with times not in your local time zone, dates can be "off by one".

   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.

   newest-first
       hledger  always  sorts  the generated transactions by date.  Transactions on the same date
       should appear in the same order as their CSV records, as hledger can  usually  auto-detect
       whether  the  CSV's  normal  order  is  oldest  first  or newest first.  But if all of the
       following are true:

       • the CSV might sometimes contain just one day of data (all records having the same date)

       • the CSV records are normally in reverse chronological order (newest at the top)

       • and you care about preserving the order of same-day transactions

       then, you should add the newest-first rule as a hint.  Eg:

              # tell hledger explicitly that the CSV is normally newest first
              newest-first

   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

   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

   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
       hledger accepts CSV conforming to RFC 4180.  When CSV values are enclosed in quotes, note:

       • they must be double quotes (not single quotes)

       • spaces outside the quotes are not allowed

   File Extension
       To  help  hledger identify the format and show the right error messages, CSV/SSV/TSV files
       should normally be named with a .csv, .ssv or .tsv filename extension.  Or, the file  path
       should be prefixed with csv:, ssv: or tsv:.  Eg:

              $ hledger -f foo.ssv print

       or:

              $ cat foo | hledger -f ssv:- foo

       You  can  override  the  file  extension with a separator rule if needed.  See also: Input
       files in the hledger manual.

   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.

   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 -> sidebar -> real world setups

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

   Setting amounts
       Some tips on using the amount-setting rules discussed above.

       Here are the ways to set a posting's amount:

       1. If the CSV has a single amount field:
       Assign (via a fields list or a field assignment) to amountN.  This sets the Nth  posting's
       amount.  N is usually 1 or 2 but can go up to 99.

       2. If the CSV has separate amount fields for debit & credit (in & out):
           a. If both fields are unsigned:
           Assign  to  amountN-in  and amountN-out.  This sets posting N's amount to whichever of
           these has a non-zero value, and negates the "-out" value.

           b. If either field is signed (can contain a minus sign):
           Use a conditional rule to flip the sign (of non-empty values).  Since  hledger  always
           negates  amountN-out,  if  it was already negative, we must undo that by negating once
           more (but only if the field is non-empty):

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

           c. If both fields, or neither field, can contain a non-zero value:
           hledger normally expects exactly one of the fields to have a non-zero value.  Eg,  the
           amountN-in/amountN-out rules would reject value pairs like these:

                  "",  ""
                  "0", "0"
                  "1", "none"

           So,  use  smarter conditional rules to set the amount from the appropriate field.  Eg,
           these rules would make it use only the value containing non-zero digits, handling  the
           above:

                  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:
       Assign to amount (or to amount-in and amount-out).  (This is the legacy numberless syntax,
       which sets amount1 and amount2 and converts amount2 to cost.)

       4. If the CSV has the balance instead of the transaction amount:
       Assign to balanceN, which sets posting N's amount indirectly  via  a  balance  assignment.
       (Old syntax: balance, equivalent to balance1.)

           • If hledger guesses the wrong default account name:
           When  setting  the  amount  via balance assertion, hledger may guess the wrong default
           account name.  So, set the account name explicitly, eg:

                    fields date, description, balance1
                    account1 assets:checking

   Amount signs
       There is some special handling for amount signs, to simplify parsing and sign-flipping:

       • 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 "".

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

              2020-01-01,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

              2020-01-01 foo
                  expenses:unknown         $123.00
                  income:unknown          $-123.00

       If the currency is provided as a separate CSV field:

              2020-01-01,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

              2020-01-01 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

              2020-01-01 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 %CSVFIELDNAME references), or a default

       • generate a synthetic hledger transaction 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.

TIMECLOCK FORMAT

       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).

              i 2015/03/30 09:00:00 some:account name  optional description after two spaces
              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 two spaces
                  (some:account name)         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 FORMAT

       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:

              2021-08-04
              hom:errands          .... ....
              fos:hledger:timedot  ..         ; docs
              per:admin:finance

       hledger reads this as three time transactions on this day, with each  dot  representing  a
       quarter-hour spent:

              $ hledger -f a.timedot print   # .timedot file extension activates the timedot reader
              2021-08-04 *
                  (hom:errands)            2.00

              2021-08-04 *
                  (fos:hledger:timedot)    0.50

              2021-08-04 *
                  (per:admin:finance)      0

       A day entry begins with a date line:

       • a non-indented simple date (Y-M-D, Y/M/D, or Y.M.D).

       Optionally this can be followed on the same line by

       • a common transaction description for this day

       • a common transaction comment for this day, after a semicolon (;).

       After  the  date  line  are  zero  or  more  optionally-indented  time  transaction lines,
       consisting of:

       • an account name - any word or phrase, usually a hledger-style account name.

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

       • a timedot amount - dots representing quarter hours, or a number representing hours.

       • an optional comment beginning with semicolon.  This is ignored.

       In more detail, timedot amounts can be:

       • dots:  zero  or  more period characters, each representing one quarter-hour.  Spaces are
         ignored and can be used for grouping.  Eg: .... ..

       • a number, representing hours.  Eg: 1.5

       • a number immediately followed by a unit symbol s, m, h, d, w,  mo,  or  y,  representing
         seconds,  minutes,  hours,  days weeks, months or years.  Eg 1.5h or 90m.  The following
         equivalencies are assumed:
       60s = 1m, 60m = 1h, 24h = 1d, 7d = 1w, 30d = 1mo, 365d =  1y.   (This  unit  will  not  be
       visible in the generated transaction amount, which is always in hours.)

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

       • Lines beginning with # or ;, and blank lines, are ignored.

       • Lines not ending with a double-space and amount are parsed  as  transactions  with  zero
         amount.  (Most hledger reports hide these by default; add -E to see them.)

       • One  or more stars (*) followed by a space, at the start of a line, is ignored.  So date
         lines or time transaction lines can also be Org-mode headlines.

       • All Org-mode headlines before the first date line are ignored.

       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
              ** 2020-01-01
              *** adm:time  .
              *** adm:finance  .

              * 2020 Work Diary
              ** Q1
              *** 2020-02-29
              **** 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.

COMMON TASKS

       Here are some quick examples of how to  do  some  basic  tasks  with  hledger.   For  more
       details,  see  the  reference  section  below,  the hledger_journal(5) manual, or the more
       extensive docs at https://hledger.org.

   Getting help
              $ hledger                 # show available commands
              $ hledger --help          # show common options
              $ hledger CMD --help      # show common and command options, and command help
              $ hledger help            # show available manuals/topics
              $ hledger help hledger    # show hledger manual as info/man/text (auto-chosen)
              $ hledger help journal --man  # show the journal manual as a man page
              $ hledger help --help     # show more detailed help for the help command

       Find more docs, chat, mail list, reddit, issue tracker:  https://hledger.org/support.html-
       feedback

   Constructing command lines
       hledger has an extensive and powerful command line interface.  We strive to keep it simple
       and ergonomic, but you may run into one of the confusing real world details  described  in
       OPTIONS, below.  If that happens, here are some tips that may help:

       • command-specific  options must go after the command (it's fine to put all options there)
         (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 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.   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 2020.journal
              $ echo "export LEDGER_FILE=$HOME/finance/2020.journal" >> ~/.bashrc
              $ source ~/.bashrc
              $ hledger stats
              Main file                : /Users/simon/finance/2020.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 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:

                2020-01-01 * 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/2020.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 [2020-02-07]: 2020-01-01
                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): .
                2020-01-01 * 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 [2020-01-01]: .

       If you're using version control, this could be a good time to commit the journal.  Eg:

              $ git commit -m 'initial balances' 2020.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:

              2020/1/10 * gift received
                assets:cash   $20
                income:gifts

              2020.1.12 * farmers market
                expenses:food    $13
                assets:cash

              2020-01-15 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:

                  2020-01-16 * 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 2020-01-15 and paycheck

       If you're using version control, this can be another good time to commit:

              $ git commit -m 'txns' 2020.journal

   Reporting
       Here are some basic reports.

       Show all transactions:

              $ hledger print
              2020-01-01 * opening balances
                  assets:bank:checking                      $1000
                  assets:bank:savings                       $2000
                  assets:cash                                $100
                  liabilities:creditcard                     $-50
                  equity:opening/closing balances          $-3050

              2020-01-10 * gift received
                  assets:cash              $20
                  income:gifts

              2020-01-12 * farmers market
                  expenses:food             $13
                  assets:cash

              2020-01-15 * paycheck
                  income:salary
                  assets:bank:checking           $1000

              2020-01-16 * 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 --flat -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 --flat -2
              Balance Sheet 2020-01-16

                                      || 2020-01-16
              ========================++============
               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 2020-01-01-2020-01-16

                             || 2020-01-01-2020-01-16
              ===============++=======================
               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
              2020-01-01 opening balances     assets:cash                   $100          $100
              2020-01-10 gift received        assets:cash                    $20          $120
              2020-01-12 farmers market       assets:cash                   $-13          $107
              2020-01-16 adjust cash          assets:cash                    $-2          $105

       Show weekly posting counts as a bar chart:

              $ hledger activity -W
              2019-12-30 *****
              2020-01-06 ****
              2020-01-13 ****

   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.

LIMITATIONS

       The need to precede add-on command options with -- when invoked from hledger is awkward.

       When input data contains non-ascii characters, a suitable system locale must be configured
       (or there will be an unhelpful error).  Eg on POSIX, set LANG to something other than C.

       In a Microsoft Windows CMD window, non-ascii characters and colours are not supported.

       On Windows, non-ascii characters may not display correctly when running a hledger built in
       CMD in MSYS/CYGWIN, or vice-versa.

       In a Cygwin/MSYS/Mintty window, the tab key is not supported in hledger add.

       Not all of Ledger's journal file syntax is supported.  See file format differences.

       On large data files, hledger is slower and uses more memory than Ledger.

TROUBLESHOOTING

       Here are some issues you might encounter when you run hledger (and remember you  can  also
       seek help from the IRC channel, mail list or bug tracker):

       Successfully installed, but "No command 'hledger' found"
       stack  and  cabal install binaries into a special directory, which should be added to your
       PATH environment variable.  Eg on unix-like systems, that is ~/.local/bin and ~/.cabal/bin
       respectively.

       I set a custom LEDGER_FILE, but hledger is still using the default file
       LEDGER_FILE should be a real environment variable, not just a shell variable.  The command
       env | grep  LEDGER_FILE  should  show  it.   You  may  need  to  use  export.   Here's  an
       explanation.

       Getting  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 to have a UTF-8-aware
       locale  configured in the environment, otherwise they will fail with these kinds of errors
       when they encounter non-ascii characters.

       To fix it, set the LANG environment variable to some locale  which  supports  UTF-8.   The
       locale you choose must be installed on your system.

       Here's an example of setting LANG temporarily, on Ubuntu GNU/Linux:

              $ file my.journal
              my.journal: UTF-8 Unicode text         # the file is UTF8-encoded
              $ echo $LANG
              C                                      # LANG is set to the default locale, which does not support UTF8
              $ locale -a                            # which locales are installed ?
              C
              en_US.utf8                             # here's a UTF8-aware one we can use
              POSIX
              $ LANG=en_US.utf8 hledger -f my.journal print   # ensure it is used for this command

       If available, C.UTF-8 will also work.  If your preferred locale isn't listed by locale -a,
       you might need to install it.  Eg on Ubuntu/Debian:

              $ apt-get install language-pack-fr
              $ locale -a
              C
              en_US.utf8
              fr_BE.utf8
              fr_CA.utf8
              fr_CH.utf8
              fr_FR.utf8
              fr_LU.utf8
              POSIX
              $ LANG=fr_FR.utf8 hledger -f my.journal print

       Here's how you could set it permanently, if you use a bash shell:

              $ echo "export LANG=en_US.utf8" >>~/.bash_profile
              $ bash --login

       Exact spelling and capitalisation may be important.  Note the difference on MacOS  (UTF-8,
       not  utf8).   Some  platforms  (eg  ubuntu) allow variant spellings, but others (eg macos)
       require it to be exact:

              $ locale -a | grep -iE en_us.*utf
              en_US.UTF-8
              $ LANG=en_US.UTF-8 hledger -f my.journal print

REPORTING BUGS

       Report bugs at http://bugs.hledger.org (or on the #hledger IRC  channel  or  hledger  mail
       list)

AUTHORS

       Simon Michael <simon@joyful.com> and contributors

COPYRIGHT

       Copyright (C) 2007-2020 Simon Michael.
       Released under GNU GPL v3 or later.

SEE ALSO

       hledger(1), hledger-ui(1), hledger-web(1), ledger(1)