\input texinfo @c -*-texinfo-*- @setfilename ledger3.info @settitle Ledger: Command-Line Accounting @dircategory User Applications @copying Copyright (c) 2003-2010, John Wiegley. All rights reserved. Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met: - Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer. - Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution. - Neither the name of New Artisans LLC nor the names of its contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without specific prior written permission. THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS "AS IS" AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT OWNER OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE. @end copying @documentencoding UTF-8 @iftex @finalout @end iftex @titlepage @title Ledger: Command-Line Accounting @subtitle For Version 3.0 of Ledger @subtitle Draft Manual Time-stamp: <2011-10-05 22:09 (cpearls)> @author John Wiegley @end titlepage @direntry * Ledger3: (ledger). Command-Line Accounting @end direntry @contents @ifnottex @node Top, Copying, (dir), (dir) @top Overview Ledger is a command line accounting tool that provides double-entry accounting based on a text journal. It provides no bells or whistles, and returns the user to the days before user interfaces were even a twinkling in their father's CRT. @c @insertcopying @end ifnottex @menu * Copying:: * Introduction to Ledger:: * Ledger Tutorial :: * Principles of Accounting:: * Keeping a Journal:: * Command-line Syntax:: * Basic Reporting Commands:: * Budgeting and Forecasting:: * Value Expressions:: * Format Strings:: * Journal File Format:: * Extending with Python:: * Example Data File:: * Miscellaneous Notes:: @end menu @node Copying, Introduction to Ledger, Top, Top @chapter Copying @insertcopying @node Introduction to Ledger, Ledger Tutorial , Copying, Top @chapter Introduction to Ledger @menu * Fat-free Accounting:: * Building the Program:: * Getting Help:: @end menu @node Fat-free Accounting, Building the Program, Introduction to Ledger, Introduction to Ledger @section Fat-free Accounting Ledger is an accounting tool with the moxie to exist. It provides no bells or whistles, and returns the user to the days before user interfaces were even a twinkling in their father's CRT. What it does offer is a double-entry accounting journal with all the flexibility and muscle of its modern day cousins, without any of the fat. Think of it as the Bran Muffin of accounting tools. To use it, you need to start keeping a journal. This is the basis of all accounting, and if you haven't started yet, now is the time to learn. The little booklet that comes with your checkbook is a journal, so we'll describe double-entry accounting in terms of that. If you use another GUI accounting program like GNUCash, the vast majority of its functionality is geared towards helping you keep a journal. A checkbook journal records debits (subtractions, or withdrawals) and credits (additions, or deposits) with reference to a single account: the checking account. Where the money comes from, and where it goes to, are described in the payee field, where you write the person or company's name. The ultimate aim of keeping a checkbook journal is to know how much money is available to spend. That's really the aim of all journals. What computers add is the ability to walk through these postings, and tell you things about your spending habits; to let you devise budgets and get control over your spending; to squirrel away money into virtual savings account without having to physically move money around; etc. As you keep your journal, you are recording information about your life and habits, and sometimes that information can start telling you things you aren't aware of. Such is the aim of all good accounting tools. The next step up from a checkbook journal, is a journal that keeps track of all your accounts, not just checking. In such a journal, you record not only who gets paid---in the case of a debit---but where the money came from. In a checkbook journal, its assumed that all the money comes from your checking account. But in a general journal, you write posting two-lines: the source account and target account. @emph{There must always be a debit from at least one account for every credit made to another account}. This is what is meant by ``double-entry'' accounting: the journal must always balance to zero, with an equal number of debits and credits. For example, let's say you have a checking account and a brokerage account, and you can write checks from both of them. Rather than keep two checkbooks, you decide to use one journal for both. In this general journal you need to record a payment to Pacific Bell for your monthly phone bill, and a transfer (via check) from your brokerage account to your checking account. The Pacific Bell bill is $23.00, let's say, and you want to pay it from your checking account. In the general journal you need to say where the money came from, in addition to where it's going to. These transactions might look like this: @smallexample 9/29 Pacific Bell $23.00 $23.00 Checking $-23.00 0 9/30 Checking $100.00 $100.00 (123) Brokerage $-100.00 0 @end smallexample The posting must balance to $0: $23 went to Pacific Bell, $23 came from Checking. The next entry shows check number 123 written against your brokerage account, transfering money to your checking account. There is nothing left over to be accounted for, since the money has simply moved from one account to another in both cases. This is the basis of double-entry accounting: money never pops in or out of existence; it is always a posting from one account to another. Keeping a general journal is the same as keeping two separate journals: One for Pacific Bell and one for Checking. In that case, each time a payment is written into one, you write a corresponding withdrawal into the other. This makes it easier to write in a ``running balance'', since you don't have to look back at the last time the account was referenced---but it also means having a lot of journal books, if you deal with multiple accounts. Here is a good place for an aside on the use of the word `account'. Most private people consider an account to be something that holds money at an institution for them. Ledger uses a more general definition of the word. An account is anywhere money can go. Other finance programs use ``categories'', Ledger uses accounts. So, for example, if you buy some groceries at Trader Joe's then more groceries at Whole Foods Markets you might assign the transactions like this @smallexample 2011/03/15 Trader Joe's Expenses:Groceries $100.00 Assets:Checking 2011/03/15 Whole Food Market Expenses:Groceries $75.00 Assets:Checking @end smallexample In both cases the money goes to the ``Groceries'' account, even though the payees were different. You can set up your accounts in any way you choose. Enter the beauty of computerized accounting. The purpose of the Ledger program is to make general journal accounting simple, by keeping track of the balances for you. Your only job is to enter the postings. If an individual posting does not balance, Ledger displays an error and indicates the incorrect posting.@footnote{In some special cases, it automatically balances this transaction for you.} In summary, there are two aspects of Ledger use: updating the journal data file, and using the Ledger tool to view the summarized result of your transactions. And just for the sake of example---as a starting point for those who want to dive in head-first---here are the journal transactions from above, formatted as the Ledger program wishes to see them: @smallexample 2004/09/29 Pacific Bell Expenses:Pacific Bell $23.00 Assets:Checking @end smallexample The account balances and registers in this file, if saved as @file{ledger.dat}, could be reported using: @smallexample $ ledger -f ledger.dat balance $ ledger -f ledger.dat register checking $ ledger -f ledger.dat register Bell @end smallexample An important difference between Ledger and other finance packages is that journal will never alter your input file. You can create and edit that file in any way you prefer, but journal is only for analyzing the data, not for altering it. @node Building the Program, Getting Help, Fat-free Accounting, Introduction to Ledger @section Building the program Ledger is written in ANSI C++, and should compile on any platform. It depends on the GNU multiprecision integer library (libgmp), and the Perl regular expression library (libpcre). It was developed using GNU make and gcc 3.3, on a PowerBook running OS/X. To build and install once you have these libraries on your system, enter these commands: @smallexample ./configure && make install @end smallexample @node Getting Help, , Building the Program, Introduction to Ledger @section Getting help If you need help on how to use Ledger, or run into problems, you can join the Ledger mailing list at the following Web address: @smallexample http://groups.google.com/group/ledger-cli @end smallexample You can also find help at the @samp{#ledger} channel on the IRC server @samp{irc.freenode.net}. @node Ledger Tutorial , Principles of Accounting, Introduction to Ledger, Top @chapter Ledger Tutorial @menu * Start a Journal:: * Run Some Reports:: * Command Line Quick Reference:: @end menu @node Start a Journal, Run Some Reports, Ledger Tutorial , Ledger Tutorial @section Start a Journal File A journal is a record of your financial transactions and will be central to using Ledger. For now we just want to get a taste of what Ledger can do. An example journal is included with the source code distribution, called @file{drewr3.dat} (@pxref{Example Data File}). Copy it someplace convenient and open up a terminal window in that directory. If you would rather start with your own journal right away please skip to @xref{Keeping a Journal}. @node Run Some Reports, Command Line Quick Reference, Start a Journal, Ledger Tutorial @section Run a Few Reports @menu * Balance Report:: * Register Report:: * Cleared Report:: @end menu @node Balance Report, Register Report, Run Some Reports, Run Some Reports @subsection Balance Report To find the balances of all of your accounts, run this command: @smallexample ledger -f drewr3.dat balance @end smallexample Ledger will generate: @smallexample $ -3,804.00 Assets $ 1,396.00 Checking $ 30.00 Business $ -5,200.00 Savings $ -1,000.00 Equity:Opening Balances $ 6,654.00 Expenses $ 5,500.00 Auto $ 20.00 Books $ 300.00 Escrow $ 334.00 Food:Groceries $ 500.00 Interest:Mortgage $ -2,030.00 Income $ -2,000.00 Salary $ -30.00 Sales $ -63.60 Liabilities $ -20.00 MasterCard $ 200.00 Mortgage:Principal $ -243.60 Tithe -------------------- $ -243.60 @end smallexample @noindent Showing you the balance of all accounts. Options and search terms can pare this down to show only the accounts you want. A more useful report is to show only your Assets and Liabilities: @smallexample $ ledger -f drewr3.dat balance Assets Liabilities $ -3,804.00 Assets $ 1,396.00 Checking $ 30.00 Business $ -5,200.00 Savings $ -63.60 Liabilities $ -20.00 MasterCard $ 200.00 Mortgage:Principal $ -243.60 Tithe -------------------- $ -3,867.60 @end smallexample @node Register Report, Cleared Report, Balance Report, Run Some Reports @subsection Register Report To show all transactions and a running total: @smallexample ledger -f drewr3.dat register @end smallexample Ledger will generate: @smallexample 10-Dec-01 Checking balance Assets:Checking $ 1,000.00 $ 1,000.00 Equity:Opening Balances $ -1,000.00 0 10-Dec-20 Organic Co-op Expense:Food:Groceries $ 37.50 $ 37.50 Expense:Food:Groceries $ 37.50 $ 75.00 Expense:Food:Groceries $ 37.50 $ 112.50 Expense:Food:Groceries $ 37.50 $ 150.00 Expense:Food:Groceries $ 37.50 $ 187.50 Expense:Food:Groceries $ 37.50 $ 225.00 Assets:Checking $ -225.00 0 10-Dec-28 Acme Mortgage Lia:Mortgage:Principal $ 200.00 $ 200.00 Expe:Interest:Mortgage $ 500.00 $ 700.00 Expenses:Escrow $ 300.00 $ 1,000.00 Assets:Checking $ -1,000.00 0 11-Jan-02 Grocery Store Expense:Food:Groceries $ 65.00 $ 65.00 Assets:Checking $ -65.00 0 11-Jan-05 Employer Assets:Checking $ 2,000.00 $ 2,000.00 Income:Salary $ -2,000.00 0 (Liabilities:Tithe) $ -240.00 $ -240.00 11-Jan-14 Bank Assets:Savings $ 300.00 $ 60.00 Assets:Checking $ -300.00 $ -240.00 11-Jan-19 Grocery Store Expense:Food:Groceries $ 44.00 $ -196.00 Assets:Checking $ -44.00 $ -240.00 11-Jan-25 Bank Assets:Checking $ 5,500.00 $ 5,260.00 Assets:Savings $ -5,500.00 $ -240.00 11-Jan-25 Tom's Used Cars Expenses:Auto $ 5,500.00 $ 5,260.00 Assets:Checking $ -5,500.00 $ -240.00 11-Jan-27 Book Store Expenses:Books $ 20.00 $ -220.00 Liabilities:MasterCard $ -20.00 $ -240.00 11-Dec-01 Sale Asse:Checking:Business $ 30.00 $ -210.00 Income:Sales $ -30.00 $ -240.00 (Liabilities:Tithe) $ -3.60 $ -243.60 @end smallexample @noindent To limit this to a more useful subset, simply add the accounts you are are interested in seeing transactions for: @smallexample $ ledger -f drewr3.dat register Groceries 10-Dec-20 Organic Co-op Expense:Food:Groceries $ 37.50 $ 37.50 Expense:Food:Groceries $ 37.50 $ 75.00 Expense:Food:Groceries $ 37.50 $ 112.50 Expense:Food:Groceries $ 37.50 $ 150.00 Expense:Food:Groceries $ 37.50 $ 187.50 Expense:Food:Groceries $ 37.50 $ 225.00 11-Jan-02 Grocery Store Expense:Food:Groceries $ 65.00 $ 290.00 11-Jan-19 Grocery Store Expense:Food:Groceries $ 44.00 $ 334.00 @end smallexample @noindent Which matches the balance reported for the @samp{Groceries} account: @smallexample $ ledger -f drewr3.dat balance Groceries $ 334.00 Expenses:Food:Groceries @end smallexample @noindent If you would like to find transaction to only a certain payee use @samp{payee} or @@: @smallexample $ ledger -f drewr3.dat register payee "Organic" 10-Dec-20 Organic Co-op Expense:Food:Groceries $ 37.50 $ 37.50 Expense:Food:Groceries $ 37.50 $ 75.00 Expense:Food:Groceries $ 37.50 $ 112.50 Expense:Food:Groceries $ 37.50 $ 150.00 Expense:Food:Groceries $ 37.50 $ 187.50 Expense:Food:Groceries $ 37.50 $ 225.00 Assets:Checking $ -225.00 0 @end smallexample @node Cleared Report, , Register Report, Run Some Reports @subsection Cleared Report A very useful report is to show what your obligations are versus what expenditures have actually been recorded. It can take several days for a check to clear, but you should treat it as money spent. The @samp{cleared} report shows just that: @smallexample $ ledger -f drewr3.dat cleared $ -3,804.00 $ 775.00 Assets $ 1,396.00 $ 775.00 10-Dec-20 Checking $ 30.00 0 Business $ -5,200.00 0 Savings $ -1,000.00 $ -1,000.00 10-Dec-01 Equity:Opening Balances $ 6,654.00 $ 225.00 Expenses $ 5,500.00 0 Auto $ 20.00 0 Books $ 300.00 0 Escrow $ 334.00 $ 225.00 10-Dec-20 Food:Groceries $ 500.00 0 Interest:Mortgage $ -2,030.00 0 Income $ -2,000.00 0 Salary $ -30.00 0 Sales $ -63.60 0 Liabilities $ -20.00 0 MasterCard $ 200.00 0 Mortgage:Principal $ -243.60 0 Tithe ---------------- ---------------- --------- $ -243.60 0 @end smallexample @noindent The first column shows the outstanding balance, the second column show the ``cleared'' balance. @node Command Line Quick Reference, , Run Some Reports, Ledger Tutorial @section Command Line Quick Reference @menu * Reporting Commands Quick Reference:: * Basic Options Quick Reference:: * Report Filtering Quick Reference:: * Output Customization Quick Reference:: * Grouping Options:: * Commodity Reporting Quick Reference:: @end menu @node Reporting Commands Quick Reference, Basic Options Quick Reference, Command Line Quick Reference, Command Line Quick Reference @subsection Reporting Commands @multitable @columnfractions .2 .8 @item @strong{Report} @tab @strong{Description} @item @code{balance} @tab Show account balances @item @code{register} @tab Show all transactions with running total @item @code{print} @tab Print transaction in a ledger readable format @item @code{output} @tab Similar to print without included transactions @item @code{xml} @tab Produce XML output of the register command @item @code{emacs} @tab Produce emacs lisp output @item @code{equity} @tab Print account balances as transactions @item @code{prices} @tab Print price history for matching commodities @item @code{pricesdb} @tab Print price history for matching commodities in ledger readable format @item @code{xact} @tab Used to generate transactions based on previous postings @end multitable @node Basic Options Quick Reference, Report Filtering Quick Reference, Reporting Commands Quick Reference, Command Line Quick Reference @subsection Basic Options @multitable @columnfractions .1 .25 .65 @item @strong{Short} @tab @strong{Long} @tab @strong{Description} @item @code{-h} @tab @code{--help} @tab prints summary of all options @item @code{-v} @tab @code{--version} @tab prints version of ledger executable @item @code{-f FILE} @tab @code{--file FILE} @tab read @file{FILE} as a ledger file @item @code{-o FILE} @tab @code{--output FILE} @tab redirects output to @file{FILE} @item @code{-i FILE} @tab @code{--init-file FILE} @tab specify options file @item @tab @code{--cache FILE} @tab specify binary cache file @item @code{-a NAME} @tab @code{--account NAME} @tab specify default account name for QIF file postings @end multitable @node Report Filtering Quick Reference, Output Customization Quick Reference, Basic Options Quick Reference, Command Line Quick Reference @subsection Report Filtering @multitable @columnfractions .1 .25 .65 @item @strong{Short} @tab @strong{Long} @tab @strong{Description} @item @code{-c} @tab @code{--current} @tab Display transaction on or before the current date @item @code{-b DATE} @tab @code{--begin DATE} @tab Begin reports on or after @code{DATE} @item @code{-e DATE} @tab @code{--end DATE} @tab Limits end date od transactions for report @item @code{-p STR} @tab @code{--period} @tab Set report period to STR @item @code{ } @tab @code{--period-sort} @tab Sort postings within each period @item @code{-C} @tab @code{--cleared} @tab Display only cleared postings @item @code{-U} @tab @code{--uncleared} @tab Display only uncleared postings @item @code{-R} @tab @code{--real} @tab Display only real postings @item @code{-L} @tab @code{--actual} @tab Displays only actual postings, not automated @item @code{-r} @tab @code{--related} @tab Display related postings @item @code{} @tab @code{--budget} @tab Display how close your postings meet your budget @item @code{} @tab @code{--add-budget} @tab Shows unbudgeted postings @item @code{} @tab @code{--unbedgeted} @tab Shows only unbudgeted postings @item @code{} @tab @code{--forecast} @tab Project balances into the future @item @code{-l EXPR} @tab @code{--limit EXPR} @tab Limits postings in calculations @item @code{-t EXPR} @tab @code{--amount} @tab Change value expression reported in register report @item @code{-T EXPR} @tab @code{--total} @tab Change the value expression used for ``totals'' column in register and balance reports @end multitable @node Output Customization Quick Reference, Grouping Options, Report Filtering Quick Reference, Command Line Quick Reference @subsection Output Customization @multitable @columnfractions .15 .4 .45 @item @strong{Short} @tab @strong{Long} @tab @strong{Description} @item @code{-n} @tab @code{--collapse} @tab Collapse transactions with multiple postings @item @code{-s} @tab @code{--subtotal} @tab Report register as a single subtotal @item @code{-P} @tab @code{--by-payee} @tab Report subtotals by payee @item @code{-x} @tab @code{--comm-as-payee} @tab Change the payee of every posting to be the commodity used in that posting @item @code{-E} @tab @code{--empty} @tab Include empty accounts in report @item @code{-W} @tab @code{--weekly} @tab Report posting totals by week @item @code{-Y} @tab @code{--yearly} @tab Report posting totals by year @item @code{} @tab @code{--dow} @tab report Posting totals by day of week @item @code{-S EXPR} @tab @code{--sort EXPR} @tab Sorts a report using @code{EXPR} @item @code{-w} @tab @code{--wide} @tab Assume 132 columns instead of 80 @item @code{} @tab @code{--head N} @tab Report the first N postings @item @code{} @tab @code{--tail N} @tab Report the last N postings @item @code{} @tab @code{--pager prog} @tab Direct output @code{prog} pager program @item @code{-A} @tab @code{--average} @tab Reports average posting value @item @code{-D} @tab @code{--deviation} @tab Reports each posting deviation from the average @item @code{-%} @tab @code{--percentage} @tab Show subtotals in the balance report as percentages @item @code{} @tab @code{--totals} @tab Include running total in the @code{xml} report @item @code{-j} @tab @code{--amount-data} @tab Show only date and value column @item @code{-J} @tab @code{--total-data} @tab Show only dates and totals @item @code{-d EXPR} @tab @code{--display EXPR} @tab Limit only the display of certain postings @item @code{-y STR} @tab @code{--date-format STR} @tab Change the basic date format used in reports @item @code{-F STR} @tab @code{--format STR} @tab Set reporting format @item @code{} @tab @code{--balance-format STR} @tab @item @code{} @tab @code{--register-format STR} @tab @item @code{} @tab @code{--print-format STR} @tab @item @code{-j register} @tab @code{--plot-amount-format STR} @tab @item @code{-J register} @tab @code{--plot-total-format STR} @tab @item @code{} @tab @code{--equity-format STR} @tab @item @code{} @tab @code{--prices-format STR} @tab @item @code{-w register} @tab @code{--wide-register-format STR} @tab @end multitable @node Grouping Options, Commodity Reporting Quick Reference, Output Customization Quick Reference, Command Line Quick Reference @subsection Grouping Options @multitable @columnfractions .1 .25 .65 @item @strong{Short} @tab @strong{Long} @tab @strong{Description} @item @code{-P} @tab @code{--by-payee} @tab Group postings by common payee names @item @code{-D} @tab @code{--daily} @tab Group postings by day @item @code{-W} @tab @code{--weekly} @tab Group postings by week @item @code{-M} @tab @code{--Monthly} @tab Group postings by month @item @code{} @tab @code{--quarterly} @tab Group postings by quarter @item @code{-Y} @tab @code{--yearly} @tab Group postings by year @item @code{-dow} @tab @code{} @tab Group by day of weeks @item @code{-s} @tab @code{--subtotal} @tab Group posting together, similar to balance report @end multitable @node Commodity Reporting Quick Reference, , Grouping Options, Command Line Quick Reference @subsection Commodity Reporting @multitable @columnfractions .1 .25 .65 @item @strong{Short} @tab @strong{Long} @tab @strong{Description} @item @code{} @tab @code{--price-db FILE} @tab Use @file{FILE} for retrieving downloaded commodity prices @item @code{-L MINS} @tab @code{--price-exp MINS} @tab Set expected freshness of prices in minutes @item @code{-Q} @tab @code{--download} @tab Download quotes using @code{getquote} @item @code{-O} @tab @code{--quantity} @tab Report commodity totals without conversion @item @code{-B} @tab @code{--basis} @tab Report cost basis @item @code{-V} @tab @code{--market} @tab Report last known market value @item @code{-G} @tab @code{--gain} @tab Report net gain loss for commodities that have a price history @end multitable @node Principles of Accounting, Keeping a Journal, Ledger Tutorial , Top @chapter Principles of Accounting with Ledger @menu * Accounting with Ledger:: * Stating where money goes:: * Assets and Liabilities:: * Typical queries:: * Commodities and Currencies:: * Accounts and Inventories:: * Understanding Equity:: * Dealing with Petty Cash:: * Working with multiple funds and accounts:: @end menu @node Accounting with Ledger, Stating where money goes, Principles of Accounting, Principles of Accounting @section Accounting with Ledger Accounting is simply tracking your money. It can range from nothing, and just waiting for automatic overdraft protection to kick in, or not, to a full blown double entry accounting system. Ledger accomplishes the latter. With ledger you can handle your personal finances or you businesses. Double-entry accounting scales. @node Stating where money goes, Assets and Liabilities, Accounting with Ledger, Principles of Accounting @section Stating where money goes Accountants will talk of ``credits'' and ``debits'', but the meaning is often different from the layman's understanding. To avoid confusion, Ledger uses only subtractions and additions, although the underlying intent is the same as standard accounting principles. Recall that every posting will involve two or more accounts. Money is transferred from one or more accounts to one or more other accounts. To record the posting, an amount is @emph{subtracted} from the source accounts, and @emph{added} to the target accounts. In order to write a Ledger transaction correctly, you must determine where the money comes from and where it goes to. For example, when you are paid a salary, you must add money to your bank account and also subtract it from an income account: @smallexample 9/29 My Employer Assets:Checking $500.00 Income:Salary $-500.00 @end smallexample Why is the Income a negative figure? When you look at the balance totals for your ledger, you may be surprised to see that Expenses are a positive figure, and Income is a negative figure. It may take some getting used to, but to properly use a general ledger you must think in terms of how money moves. Rather than Ledger ``fixing'' the minus signs, let's understand why they are there. When you earn money, the money has to come from somewhere. Let's call that somewhere ``society''. In order for society to give you an income, you must take money away (withdraw) from society in order to put it into (make a payment to) your bank. When you then spend that money, it leaves your bank account (a withdrawal) and goes back to society (a payment). This is why Income will appear negative---it reflects the money you have drawn from society---and why Expenses will be positive---it is the amount you've given back. These additions and subtractions will always cancel each other out in the end, because you don't have the ability to create new money: it must always come from somewhere, and in the end must always leave. This is the beginning of economy, after which the explanation gets terribly difficult. Based on that explanation, here's another way to look at your balance report: every negative figure means that that account or person or place has less money now than when you started your ledger; and every positive figure means that that account or person or place has more money now than when you started your ledger. Make sense? @node Assets and Liabilities, Typical queries, Stating where money goes, Principles of Accounting @section Assets and Liabilities Assets are money that you have, and Liabilities are money that you owe. ``Liabilities'' is just a more inclusive name for Debts. An Asset is typically increased by transferring money from an Income account, such as when you get paid. Here is a typical transaction: @smallexample 2004/09/29 My Employer Assets:Checking $500.00 Income:Salary @end smallexample Money, here, comes from an Income account belonging to ``My Employer'', and is transferred to your checking account. The money is now yours, which makes it an Asset. Liabilities track money owed to others. This can happen when you borrow money to buy something, or if you owe someone money. Here is an example of increasing a MasterCard liability by spending money with it: @smallexample 2004/09/30 Restaurant Expenses:Dining $25.00 Liabilities:MasterCard @end smallexample The Dining account balance now shows $25 spent on Dining, and a corresponding $25 owed on the MasterCard---and therefore shown as $-25.00. The MasterCard liability shows up as negative because it offsets the value of your assets. The combined total of your Assets and Liabilities is your net worth. So to see your current net worth, use this command: @example ledger balance ^assets ^liabilities @end example Relatedly, your Income accounts show up negative, because they transfer money @emph{from} an account in order to increase your assets. Your Expenses show up positive because that is where the money went to. The combined total of Income and Expenses is your cash flow. A positive cash flow means you are spending more than you make, since income is always a negative figure. To see your current cash flow, use this command: @example ledger balance ^income ^expenses @end example Another common question to ask of your expenses is: How much do I spend each month on X? Ledger provides a simple way of displaying monthly totals for any account. Here is an example that summarizes your monthly automobile expenses: @example ledger -M register expenses:auto @end example This assumes, of course, that you use account names like @samp{Expenses:Auto:Gas} and @samp{Expenses:Auto:Repair}. @menu * Tracking reimbursable expenses:: @end menu @node Tracking reimbursable expenses, , Assets and Liabilities, Assets and Liabilities @subsection Tracking reimbursable expenses Sometimes you will want to spend money on behalf of someone else, which will eventually get repaid. Since the money is still ``yours'', it is really an asset. And since the expenditure was for someone else, you don't want it contaminating your Expenses reports. You will need to keep an account for tracking reimbursements. This is fairly easy to do in ledger. When spending the money, spend it @emph{to} your Assets:Reimbursements, using a different account for each person or business that you spend money for. For example: @smallexample 2004/09/29 Circuit City Assets:Reimbursements:Company XYZ $100.00 Liabilities:MasterCard @end smallexample This shows $100.00 spent on a MasterCard at Circuit City, with the expense was made on behalf of Company XYZ. Later, when Company XYZ pays the amount back, the money will transfer from that reimbursement account back to a regular asset account: @smallexample 2004/09/29 Company XYZ Assets:Checking $100.00 Assets:Reimbursements:Company XYZ @end smallexample This deposits the money owed from Company XYZ into a checking account, presumably because they paid the amount back with a check. But what to do if you run your own business, and you want to keep track of expenses made on your own behalf, while still tracking everything in a single ledger file? This is more complex, because you need to track two separate things: 1) The fact that the money should be reimbursed to you, and 2) What the expense account was, so that you can later determine where your company is spending its money. This kind of posting is best handled with mirrored postings in two different files, one for your personal accounts, and one for your company accounts. But keeping them in one file involves the same kinds of postings, so those are what is shown here. First, the personal transaction, which shows the need for reimbursement: @smallexample 2004/09/29 Circuit City Assets:Reimbursements:Company XYZ $100.00 Liabilities:MasterCard @end smallexample This is the same as above, except that you own Company XYZ, and are keeping track of its expenses in the same ledger file. This transaction should be immediately followed by an equivalent transaction, which shows the kind of expense, and also notes the fact that $100.00 is now payable to you: @smallexample 2004/09/29 Circuit City Company XYZ:Expenses:Computer:Software $100.00 Company XYZ:Accounts Payable:Your Name @end smallexample This second transaction shows that Company XYZ has just spent $100.00 on software, and that this $100.00 came from Your Name, which must be paid back. These two transactions can also be merged, to make things a little clearer. Note that all amounts must be specified now: @smallexample 2004/09/29 Circuit City Assets:Reimbursements:Company XYZ $100.00 Liabilities:MasterCard $-100.00 Company XYZ:Expenses:Computer:Software $100.00 Company XYZ:Accounts Payable:Your Name $-100.00 @end smallexample To ``pay back'' the reimbursement, just reverse the order of everything, except this time drawing the money from a company asset, paying it to accounts payable, and then drawing it again from the reimbursement account, and paying it to your personal asset account. It's easier shown than said: @smallexample 2004/10/15 Company XYZ Assets:Checking $100.00 Assets:Reimbursements:Company XYZ $-100.00 Company XYZ:Accounts Payable:Your Name $100.00 Company XYZ:Assets:Checking $-100.00 @end smallexample And now the reimbursements account is paid off, accounts payable is paid off, and $100.00 has been effectively transferred from the company's checking account to your personal checking account. The money simply ``waited''---in both @samp{Assets:Reimbursements:Company XYZ}, and @samp{Company XYZ:Accounts Payable:Your Name}---until such time as it could be paid off. The value of tracking expenses from both sides like that is that you do not contaminate your personal expense report with expenses made on behalf of others, while at the same time making it possible to generate accurate reports of your company's expenditures. It is more verbose than just paying for things with your personal assets, but it gives you a very accurate information trail. The advantage to keep these doubled transactions together is that they always stay in sync. The advantage to keeping them apart is that it clarifies the transfer's point of view. To keep the postings in separate files, just separate the two transactions that were joined above. For example, for both the expense and the pay-back shown above, the following four transactions would be created. Two in your personal ledger file: @smallexample 2004/09/29 Circuit City Assets:Reimbursements:Company XYZ $100.00 Liabilities:MasterCard $-100.00 2004/10/15 Company XYZ Assets:Checking $100.00 Assets:Reimbursements:Company XYZ $-100.00 @end smallexample And two in your company ledger file: @smallexample !account Company XYZ 2004/09/29 Circuit City Expenses:Computer:Software $100.00 Accounts Payable:Your Name $-100.00 2004/10/15 Company XYZ Accounts Payable:Your Name $100.00 Assets:Checking $-100.00 !end @end smallexample (Note: The @samp{!account} above means that all accounts mentioned in the file are children of that account. In this case it means that all activity in the file relates to Company XYZ). After creating these transactions, you will always know that $100.00 was spent using your MasterCard on behalf of Company XYZ, and that Company XYZ spent the money on computer software and paid it back about two weeks later. @node Typical queries, Commodities and Currencies, Assets and Liabilities, Principles of Accounting @section Typical queries A query such as the following shows all expenses since last October, sorted by total: @example ledger -b "last oct" -s -S T bal ^expenses @end example From left to right the options mean: Show transactions since October, 2003; show all sub-accounts; sort by the absolute value of the total; and report the balance for all expenses. @menu * Reporting monthly expenses:: * Visualizing with Gnuplot:: @end menu @node Reporting monthly expenses, Visualizing with Gnuplot, Typical queries, Typical queries @subsection Reporting monthly expenses The following query makes it easy to see monthly expenses, with each month's expenses sorted by the amount: @example ledger -M --period-sort t reg ^expenses @end example Now, you might wonder where the money came from to pay for these things. To see that report, add @option{-r}, which shows the ``related account'' postings: @example ledger -M --period-sort t -r reg ^expenses @end example But maybe this prints too much information. You might just want to see how much you're spending with your MasterCard. That kind of query requires the use of a display predicate, since the postings calculated must match @samp{^expenses}, while the postings displayed must match @samp{mastercard}. The command would be: @example ledger -M -r -d /mastercard/ reg ^expenses @end example This query says: Report monthly subtotals; report the ``related account'' postings; display only related postings whose account matches @samp{mastercard}, and base the calculation on postings matching @samp{^expenses}. This works just as well for report the overall total, too: @example ledger -s -r -d /mastercard/ reg ^expenses @end example The @option{-s} option subtotals all postings, just as @option{-M} subtotaled by the month. The running total in both cases is off, however, since a display expression is being used. @node Visualizing with Gnuplot, , Reporting monthly expenses, Typical queries @subsection Visualizing with Gnuplot If you have @command{Gnuplot} installed, you can graph any of the above register reports. The script to do this is included in the ledger distribution, and is named @file{scripts/report}. Install @file{report} anywhere along your @env{PATH}, and then use @command{report} instead of @command{ledger} when doing a register report. The only thing to keep in mind is that you must specify @option{-j} or @option{-J} to indicate whether Gnuplot should plot the amount, or the running total. For example, this command plots total monthly expenses made on your MasterCard. @example report -j -M -r -d /mastercard/ reg ^expenses @end example The @command{report} script is a very simple Bourne shell script, that passes a set of scripted commands to Gnuplot. Feel free to modify the script to your liking, since you may prefer histograms to line plots, for example. @menu * Typical plots:: @end menu @node Typical plots, , Visualizing with Gnuplot, Visualizing with Gnuplot @subsubsection Typical plots Here are some useful plots: @smallexample report -j -M reg ^expenses # monthly expenses report -J reg checking # checking account balance report -J reg ^income ^expenses # cash flow report # net worth report, ignoring non-$ postings report -J -l "Ua>=@{\$0.01@}" reg ^assets ^liab # net worth report starting last February. the use of a display # predicate (-d) is needed, otherwise the balance will start at # zero, and thus the y-axis will not reflect the true balance report -J -l "Ua>=@{\$0.01@}" -d "d>=[last feb]" reg ^assets ^liab @end smallexample The last report uses both a calculation predicate (@option{-l}) and a display predicate (@option{-d}). The calculation predicates limits the report to postings whose amount is greater than $1 (which can only happen if the posting amount is in dollars). The display predicate limits the transactions @emph{displayed} to just those since last February, even those transactions from before then will be computed as part of the balance. @node Commodities and Currencies, Accounts and Inventories, Typical queries, Principles of Accounting @section Commodities and Currencies Ledger makes no assumptions about the commodities you use; it only requires that you specify a commodity. The commodity may be any non-numeric string that does not contain a period, comma, forward slash or at-sign. It may appear before or after the amount, although it is assumed that symbols appearing before the amount refer to currencies, while non-joined symbols appearing after the amount refer to commodities. Here are some valid currency and commodity specifiers: @example $20.00 ; currency: twenty US dollars 40 AAPL ; commodity: 40 shares of Apple stock 60 DM ; currency: 60 Deutsch Mark £50 ; currency: 50 British pounds 50 EUR ; currency: 50 Euros (or use appropriate symbol) @end example Ledger will examine the first use of any commodity to determine how that commodity should be printed on reports. It pays attention to whether the name of commodity was separated from the amount, whether it came before or after, the precision used in specifying the amount, whether thousand marks were used, etc. This is done so that printing the commodity looks the same as the way you use it. An account may contain multiple commodities, in which case it will have separate totals for each. For example, if your brokerage account contains both cash, gold, and several stock quantities, the balance might look like: @smallexample $200.00 100.00 AU AAPL 40 BORL 100 FEQTX 50 Assets:Brokerage @end smallexample This balance report shows how much of each commodity is in your brokerage account. Sometimes, you will want to know the current street value of your balance, and not the commodity totals. For this to happen, you must specify what the current price is for each commodity. The price can be any commodity, in which case the balance will be computed in terms of that commodity. The usual way to specify prices is with a price history file, which might look like this: @smallexample P 2004/06/21 02:18:01 FEQTX $22.49 P 2004/06/21 02:18:01 BORL $6.20 P 2004/06/21 02:18:02 AAPL $32.91 P 2004/06/21 02:18:02 AU $400.00 @end smallexample Specify the price history to use with the @option{--price-db} option, with the @option{-V} option to report in terms of current market value: @example ledger --price-db prices.db -V balance brokerage @end example The balance for your brokerage account will be reported in US dollars, since the prices database uses that currency. @smallexample $40880.00 Assets:Brokerage @end smallexample You can convert from any commodity to any other commodity. Let's say you had $5000 in your checking account, and for whatever reason you wanted to know many ounces of gold that would buy, in terms of the current price of gold: @example ledger -T "@{1 AU@}*(O/P@{1 AU@})" balance checking @end example Although the total expression appears complex, it is simply saying that the reported total should be in multiples of AU units, where the quantity is the account total divided by the price of one AU. Without the initial multiplication, the reported total would still use the dollars commodity, since multiplying or dividing amounts always keeps the left value's commodity. The result of this command might be: @smallexample 14.01 AU Assets:Checking @end smallexample @menu * Commodity Price Histories:: * Commodity equivalencies:: @end menu @node Commodity Price Histories, Commodity equivalencies, Commodities and Currencies, Commodities and Currencies @subsection Commodity price histories Whenever a commodity is purchased using a different commodity (such as a share of common stock using dollars), it establishes a price for that commodity on that day. It is also possible, by recording price details in a ledger file, to specify other prices for commodities at any given time. Such price transactions might look like those below: @smallexample P 2004/06/21 02:17:58 TWCUX $27.76 P 2004/06/21 02:17:59 AGTHX $25.41 P 2004/06/21 02:18:00 OPTFX $39.31 P 2004/06/21 02:18:01 FEQTX $22.49 P 2004/06/21 02:18:02 AAPL $32.91 @end smallexample By default, ledger will not consider commodity prices when generating its various reports. It will always report balances in terms of the commodity total, rather than the current value of those commodities. To enable pricing reports, use one of the commodity reporting options. @node Commodity equivalencies, , Commodity Price Histories, Commodities and Currencies @subsection Commodity equivalencies Sometimes a commodity has several forms which are all equivalent. An example of this is time. Whether tracked in terms of minutes, hours or days, it should be possible to convert between the various forms. Doing this requires the use of commodity equivalencies. For example, you might have the following two postings, one which transfers an hour of time into a @samp{Billable} account, and another which decreases the same account by ten minutes. The resulting report will indicate that fifty minutes remain: @smallexample 2005/10/01 Work done for company Billable:Client 1h Project:XYZ 2005/10/02 Return ten minutes to the project Project:XYZ 10m Billable:Client @end smallexample Reporting the balance for this ledger file produces: @smallexample 50.0m Billable:Client -50.0m Project:XYZ @end smallexample This example works because ledger already knows how to handle seconds, minutes and hours, as part of its time tracking support. Defining other equivalencies is simple. The following is an example that creates data equivalencies, helpful for tracking bytes, kilobytes, megabytes, and more: @smallexample C 1.00 Kb = 1024 b C 1.00 Mb = 1024 Kb C 1.00 Gb = 1024 Mb C 1.00 Tb = 1024 Gb @end smallexample Each of these definitions correlates a commodity (such as @samp{Kb}) and a default precision, with a certain quantity of another commodity. In the above example, kilobytes are reporetd with two decimal places of precision and each kilobyte is equal to 1024 bytes. Equivalency chains can be as long as desired. Whenever a commodity would report as a decimal amount (less than @samp{1.00}), the next smallest commodity is used. If a commodity could be reported in terms of a higher commodity without resulting to a partial fraction, then the larger commodity is used. @node Accounts and Inventories, Understanding Equity, Commodities and Currencies, Principles of Accounting @section Accounts and Inventories Since Ledger's accounts and commodity system is so flexible, you can have accounts that don't really exist, and use commodities that no one else recognizes. For example, let's say you are buying and selling various items in EverQuest, and want to keep track of them using a ledger. Just add items of whatever quantity you wish into your EverQuest account: @smallexample 9/29 Get some stuff at the Inn Places:Black's Tavern -3 Apples Places:Black's Tavern -5 Steaks EverQuest:Inventory @end smallexample Now your EverQuest:Inventory has 3 apples and 5 steaks in it. The amounts are negative, because you are taking @emph{from} Black's Tavern in order to add to your Inventory account. Note that you don't have to use @samp{Places:Black's Tavern} as the source account. You could use @samp{EverQuest:System} to represent the fact that you acquired them online. The only purpose for choosing one kind of source account over another is for generate more informative reports later on. The more you know, the better analysis you can perform. If you later sell some of these items to another player, the transaction would look like: @smallexample 10/2 Sturm Brightblade EverQuest:Inventory -2 Steaks EverQuest:Inventory 15 Gold @end smallexample Now you've turned 2 steaks into 15 gold, courtesy of your customer, Sturm Brightblade. @node Understanding Equity, Dealing with Petty Cash, Accounts and Inventories, Principles of Accounting @section Understanding Equity The most confusing transaction in any ledger will be your equity account--- because starting balances can't come out of nowhere. When you first start your ledger, you will likely already have money in some of your accounts. Let's say there's $100 in your checking account; then add a transaction to your ledger to reflect this amount. Where will money come from? The answer: your equity. @smallexample 10/2 Opening Balance Assets:Checking $100.00 Equity:Opening Balances @end smallexample But what is equity? You may have heard of equity when people talked about house mortgages, as ``the part of the house that you own''. Basically, equity is like the value of something. If you own a car worth $5000, then you have $5000 in equity in that car. In order to turn that car (a commodity) into a cash flow, or a credit to your bank account, you will have to debit the equity by selling it. When you start a ledger, you are probably already worth something. Your net worth is your current equity. By transferring the money in the ledger from your equity to your bank accounts, you are crediting the ledger account based on your prior equity. That is why, when you look at the balance report, you will see a large negative number for Equity that never changes: Because that is what you were worth (what you debited from yourself in order to start the ledger) before the money started moving around. If the total positive value of your assets is greater than the absolute value of your starting equity, it means you are making money. Clear as mud? Keep thinking about it. Until you figure it out, put @samp{-Equity} at the end of your balance command, to remove the confusing figure from the total. @node Dealing with Petty Cash, Working with multiple funds and accounts, Understanding Equity, Principles of Accounting @section Dealing with Petty Cash Something that stops many people from keeping a ledger at all is the insanity of tracking small cash expenses. They rarely generate a receipt, and there are often a lot of small postings, rather than a few large ones, as with checks. One solution is: don't bother. Move your spending to a debit card, but in general ignore cash. Once you withdraw it from the ATM, mark it as already spent to an @samp{Expenses:Cash} category: @smallexample 2004/03/15 ATM Expenses:Cash $100.00 Assets:Checking @end smallexample If at some point you make a large cash expense that you want to track, just ``move'' the amount of the expense from @samp{Expenses:Cash} into the target account: @smallexample 2004/03/20 Somebody Expenses:Food $65.00 Expenses:Cash @end smallexample This way, you can still track large cash expenses, while ignoring all of the smaller ones. @node Working with multiple funds and accounts, , Dealing with Petty Cash, Principles of Accounting @section Working with multiple funds and accounts There are situations when the accounts you're tracking are different between your clients and the financial institutions where money is kept. An example of this is working as the treasurer for a religious institution. From the secular point of view, you might be working with three different accounts: @itemize @item Checking @item Savings @item Credit Card @end itemize From a religious point of view, the community expects to divide its resources into multiple ``funds'', from which it makes purchases or reserves resources for later: @itemize @item School fund @item Building fund @item Community fund @end itemize The problem with this kind of setup is that when you spend money, it comes from two or more places at once: the account and the fund. And yet, the correlation of amounts between funds and accounts is rarely one-to-one. What if the school fund has @samp{$500.00}, but @samp{$400.00} of that comes from Checking, and @samp{$100.00} from Savings? Traditional finance packages require that the money reside in only one place. But there are really two ``views'' of the data: from the account point of view and from the fund point of view -- yet both sets should reflect the same overall expenses and cash flow. It's simply where the money resides that differs. This situation can be handled one of two ways. The first is using virtual postings to represent the fact that money is moving to and from two kind of accounts at the same time: @smallexample 2004/03/20 Contributions Assets:Checking $500.00 Income:Donations 2004/03/25 Distribution of donations [Funds:School] $300.00 [Funds:Building] $200.00 [Assets:Checking] $-500.00 @end smallexample The use of square brackets in the second transaction ensures that the virtual postings balance to zero. Now money can be spent directly from a fund at the same time as money is drawn from a physical account: @smallexample 2004/03/25 Payment for books (paid from Checking) Expenses:Books $100.00 Assets:Checking $-100.00 (Funds:School) $-100.00 @end smallexample When reports are generated, by default they'll appear in terms of the funds. In this case, you will likely want to mask out your @samp{Assets} account, because otherwise the balance won't make much sense: @example ledger bal -^Assets @end example If the @option{--real} option is used, the report will be in terms of the real accounts: @example ledger --real bal @end example If more asset accounts are needed as the source of a posting, just list them as you would normally, for example: @smallexample 2004/03/25 Payment for books (paid from Checking) Expenses:Books $100.00 Assets:Checking $-50.00 Liabilities:Credit Card $-50.00 (Funds:School) $-100.00 @end smallexample The second way of tracking funds is to use transaction codes. In this respect the codes become like virtual accounts that embrace the entire set of postings. Basically, we are associating a transaction with a fund by setting its code. Here are two transactions that desposit money into, and spend money from, the @samp{Funds:School} fund: @smallexample 2004/03/25 (Funds:School) Donations Assets:Checking $100.00 Income:Donations 2004/04/25 (Funds:School) Payment for books Expenses:Books $50.00 Assets:Checking @end smallexample Note how the accounts now relate only to the real accounts, and any balance or registers reports will reflect this. That the transactions relate to a particular fund is kept only in the code. How does this become a fund report? By using the @option{--code-as-payee} option, you can generate a register report where the payee for each posting shows the code. Alone, this is not terribly interesting; but when combined with the @option{--by-payee} option, you will now see account subtotals for any postings related to a specific fund. So, to see the current monetary balances of all funds, the command would be: @smallexample ledger --code-as-payee -P reg ^Assets @end smallexample Or to see a particular funds expenses, the @samp{School} fund in this case: @smallexample ledger --code-as-payee -P reg ^Expenses -- School @end smallexample Both approaches yield different kinds of flexibility, depending on how you prefer to think of your funds: as virtual accounts, or as tags associated with particular transactions. Your own tastes will decide which is best for your situation. @node Keeping a Journal, Command-line Syntax, Principles of Accounting, Top @chapter Keeping a Journal The most important part of accounting is keeping a good journal. If you have a good journal, tools can be written to work whatever mathematical tricks you need to better understand your spending patterns. Without a good journal, no tool, however smart, can help you. The Ledger program aims at making journal transactions as simple as possible. Since it is a command-line tool, it does not provide a user interface for keeping a journal. If you like, you may use GnuCash to maintain your journal, in which case Ledger will read GnuCash's data files directly. In that case, read the GnuCash manual now, and skip to the next chapter. If you are not using GnuCash, but a text editor to maintain your journal, read on. Ledger has been designed to make data transactions as simple as possible, by keeping the journal format easy, and also by automagically determining as much information as possible based on the nature of your transactions. For example, you do not need to tell Ledger about the accounts you use. Any time Ledger sees a posting involving an account it knows nothing about, it will create it@footnote{This also means if you misspell an account it will end up getting counted separately from what you intended. The provided Emacs major mode provides for automatically filling in account names.}. If you use a commodity that is new to Ledger, it will create that commodity, and determine its display characteristics (placement of the symbol before or after the amount, display precision, etc) based on how you used the commodity in the posting. @menu * Most Basic Entry:: * Currency and Commodities:: * Structuring Your Accounts:: * Advanced Transactions:: * File Format:: * Archiving Previous Years :: @end menu @node Most Basic Entry, Currency and Commodities, Keeping a Journal, Keeping a Journal @section The Most Basic Entry Here is the Pacific Bell example from above, given as a Ledger posting, with the additional of a check number: @smallexample 9/29 (1023) Pacific Bell Expenses:Utilities:Phone $23.00 Assets:Checking $-23.00 @end smallexample As you can see, it is very similar to what would be written on paper, minus the computed balance totals, and adding in account names that work better with Ledger's scheme of things. In fact, since Ledger is smart about many things, you don't need to specify the balanced amount, if it is the same as the first line: @smallexample 9/29 (1023) Pacific Bell Expenses:Utilities:Phone $23.00 Assets:Checking @end smallexample For this transaction, Ledger will figure out that $-23.00 must come from @samp{Assets:Checking} in order to balance the transaction. Also note the structure of the account entries. There is an implied hierarchy established by separating with colons (see @pxref{Structuring Your Accounts}). @strong{The format is very flexible and it isn't necessary that you indent and space out things exactly as shown. The only requirements are that the start of the transaction (the date typically) is at the beginning of the first line of the transaction, and the accounts are indented by at least one space. If you omit the leading spaces in the account lines Ledger will not count the transaction and will not give an error. There must be at least two spaces, or a tab, between the amount and the account. If you do not have adequate separation between the amount and the account Ledger will give an error and stop calculating} @node Currency and Commodities, Structuring Your Accounts, Most Basic Entry, Keeping a Journal @section Currency and Commodities Ledger is agnostic when it comes to how you value your accounts. Dollars, Euros, Pounds, Francs, Shares etc. are just ``commodities''. Holdings in stocks, bonds, mutual funds and other financial instruments can be labelled using whatever is convenient for you (stock ticker symbols are suggested for publicly traded assets).@footnote{you can track ANYTHING, even time or distance travelled. As long as it cannot be created or destroyed inside your accounting system.} For the rest of this manual, we will only use the word ``commodities'' when refering to the units on a transaction value. This is fundamentally different than many common accounting packages, which assume the same currency throughout all of your accounts. This means if you typically operate in Euros, but travel to the US and have some expenses, you would have to do the currency conversion BEFORE you made the entry into your financial system. With ledger this is not required. In the same journal you can have entries in any or all commodities you actually hold. You can use the reporting capabilities to convert all commodities to a single commodity for reporting purposes without ever changing the underlying entry. For example, the following entries reflect transaction made for a business trip to Europe from the US: @smallexample 2011/09/23 Cash in Munich Assets:Cash E50.00 Assets:Checking $-66.00 2011/09/24 Dinner in Munich Expenses:Business:Travel E35.00 Assets:Cash @end smallexample This says that $66.00 came out of checking and turned into 50 Euros. The implied exchange rate was $1.32. Then 35.00 Euros was spent on Dinner in Munich. Running a ledger balance report shows: @smallexample $ ledger -f example.dat bal $-66.00 E15.00 Assets E15.00 Cash $-66.00 Checking E35.00 Expenses:Business:Travel -------------------- $-66.00 E50.00 @end smallexample The top two lines show my current assets as $-66.00 in checking (in this very short example I didn't establish opening an opening balance for the checking account) and E15.00. After spending on dinner i have E15.00 in my wallet. The bottom line balances to zero, but is shown in two lines since we haven't told ledger to convert commodities. @node Structuring Your Accounts, Advanced Transactions, Currency and Commodities, Keeping a Journal @section Structuring your Accounts There really are no requirements for how you do this, but to preserve your sanity we suggest some very basic structure to your accounting system. At the highest level you have five sorts of accounts: @enumerate @item Expenses: where money goes @item Assets: where money sits @item Income: where moeny comes from @item Liabilities: money you owe @item Equity: the real value of your property. @end enumerate Starting the structure off this way will make it simpler for you to get answers to the questions you really need to ask about your finances. Beneath these top level accounts you can have any level of detail you desire. For example, if you want to keep specific track of how much you spend on burgers and fries, you could have the following: @smallexample Expenses:Food:Hamburgers and Fries @end smallexample @node Advanced Transactions, File Format, Structuring Your Accounts, Keeping a Journal @section Advanced Transactions @menu * Transaction Notes and Tags:: * Multiple Account Transactions:: * Virtual Transactions:: * Automatic Transactions:: * Periodic Transactions:: * Recording Commodity Lot Prices:: * Commodity Pricing Problem:: @end menu @node Transaction Notes and Tags, Multiple Account Transactions, Advanced Transactions, Advanced Transactions @subsection Transaction Notes and Tags Ledger 3.0 supports entry and transaction ``notes'', which may contain new metadata and tag markers. Here's an example: @smallexample 2004/05/27 (100) Credit card company ; This is an entry note! ; Sample: Value Liabilities:MasterCard $20.00 ; This is a transaction note! ; Sample: Another Value ; :MyTag: Assets:Bank:Checking ; :AnotherTag: @end smallexample An indented paragraph starting with `;' is parsed as a persistent note for its preceding category. These notes will get printed back to you with the ``print'' command. They are accessible to value expressions using the ``note'' variable. Further, any occurrence of ``:foo:'' in a note will cause a metadata tag for "foo" to be registered for that entry. You can then search for such transactions using: @smallexample ledger reg %foo ledger reg tag foo @end smallexample Also, if any word in the note ends (but does not start) with a colon, the remainder of that line will be taken to be the metadata value for that tag. That is: @smallexample ; :foo:bar:baz: <-- These are three tags ; name: value <-- this is a tag with a value @end smallexample Tags with value can be searched for just like tags. In addition, you can further limit your tag search by looking for only those tags that have specific values: @smallexample ledger reg %name=value ledger reg tag name=value @end smallexample The group-by and sort functions also support tags: @smallexample ledger --group-by "tag('foo')" bal @end smallexample Will produce a balance summary of all transanction with tag `foo' group by transactions wiht the same value for `foo'. @smallexample ledger reg --sort "tag('foo')" %foo @end smallexample Produces a register view with the transaction have tag `foo' sorted by the tags value. Comments that occur before an entry, or which starts at column zero, are always ignored and are neither searched nor printed back. If a posting comment is a date (with brackets), it modifies the date for that posting: @smallexample 2010/02/01 Sample Assets:Bank $400.00 Income:Check $-400.00 ; [2010/01/01] @end smallexample You can use metadata to override the payee field for individual postings within a transaction: (source) @smallexample 2010/06/17 Sample Assets:Bank $400.00 Income:Check1 $-100.00 ; Payee: Person One Income:Check2 $-100.00 ; Payee: Person Two Income:Check3 $-100.00 ; Payee: Person Three Income:Check4 $-100.00 ; Payee: Person Four @end smallexample Metadata are normally strings, but you can create metadata of other types: @smallexample 2010/06/17 Sample Assets:Bank $400.00 Income:Check1 $-100.00 ; Date:: [2010/09/01] ; Amount:: $100.00 @end smallexample (Note that this Date tag is not the same as the posting date.) There are now tag/pop directives, to apply metadata to a range of transactions (and their postings). For example, if you wanted a conceptual "page" of transactions relating to business trip to Chicago, you could do this: @smallexample tag Location: Chicago tag Purpose: Business ... transactions go here pop pop @end smallexample It would be as if you'd applied "; Location: Chicago", etc., to every transaction. @node Multiple Account Transactions, Virtual Transactions, Transaction Notes and Tags, Advanced Transactions @subsection Multiple Account Transactions Often times a transaction needs to be split across several accounts. This is trivially simple in a Ledger journal: @smallexample 2011/09/15 * Deposit Acme Bytepumps Monthly Paycheck Income:Taxable:Acme Bytepumps Inc. $-2500.00 Assets:Brokerage:Checking $175.00 Assets:Investments:401K Deferred $250.00 Expenses:Tax:Medicare $36.25 Expenses:Tax:Federal Tax $200.00 Expenses:Tax:State Tax $20.00 Expenses:Insurance:Life $18.75 Assets:Credit Union:Joint Checking @end smallexample This is an example of a paycheck entry. THe money comes OUT of your income account, and is spent into several other accounts. The last line doesn't require an amount, as ledger will automatically balance the transaction (it will be $1800 into the Joint Checking account) @node Virtual Transactions, Automatic Transactions, Multiple Account Transactions, Advanced Transactions @subsection Virtual Transactions A virtual posting is when you, in your mind, see money as moving to a certain place, when in reality that money has not moved at all. There are several scenarios in which this type of tracking comes in handy, and each of them will be discussed in detail. To enter a virtual posting, surround the account name in parentheses. This form of usage does not need to balance. However, if you want to ensure the virtual posting balances with other virtual postings in the same transaction, use square brackets. For example: @smallexample 10/2 Paycheck Assets:Checking $1000.00 Income:Salary $-1000.00 (Debt:Alimony) $200.00 @end smallexample In this example, after receiving a paycheck an alimony debt is increased---even though no money has moved around yet. @smallexample 10/2 Paycheck Assets:Checking $1000.00 Income:Salary $-1000.00 [Savings:Trip] $200.00 [Assets:Checking] $-200.00 @end smallexample In this example, $200 has been deducted from checking toward savings for a trip. It will appear as though the money has been moved from the account into @samp{Savings:Trip}, although no money has actually moved anywhere. When balances are displayed, virtual postings will be factored in. To view balances without any virtual balances factored in, using the @option{-R} flag, for ``reality''. @node Automatic Transactions, Periodic Transactions, Virtual Transactions, Advanced Transactions @subsection Automatic Transactions As a Bahá'í, I need to compute Huqúqu'lláh whenever I acquire assets. It is similar to tithing for Jews and Christians, or to Zakát for Muslims. The exact details of computing Huqúqu'lláh are somewhat complex, but if you have further interest, please consult the Web. Ledger makes this otherwise difficult law very easy. Just set up an automated posting at the top of your ledger file: @smallexample ; This automated transaction will compute Huqúqu'lláh based on this ; journal's postings. Any that match will affect the ; Liabilities:Huququ'llah account by 19% of the value of that posting. = /^(?:Income:|Expenses:(?:Business|Rent$|Furnishings|Taxes|Insurance))/ (Liabilities:Huququ'llah) 0.19 @end smallexample This automated posting works by looking at each posting in the ledger file. If any match the given value expression, 19% of the posting's value is applied to the @samp{Liabilities:Huququ'llah} account. So, if $1000 is earned from @samp{Income:Salary}, $190 is added to @samp{Liabilities:Huqúqu'lláh}; if $1000 is spent on Rent, $190 is subtracted. The ultimate balance of Huqúqu'lláh reflects how much is owed in order to fulfill one's obligation to Huqúqu'lláh. When ready to pay, just write a check to cover the amount shown in @samp{Liabilities:Huququ'llah}. That transaction would look like: @smallexample 2003/01/01 (101) Baha'i Huqúqu'lláh Trust Liabilities:Huququ'llah $1,000.00 Assets:Checking @end smallexample That's it. To see how much Huqúq is currently owed based on your ledger transactions, use: @smallexample ledger balance Liabilities:Huquq @end smallexample This works fine, but omits one aspect of the law: that Huquq is only due once the liability exceeds the value of 19 mithqáls of gold (which is roughly 2.22 ounces). So what we want is for the liability to appear in the balance report only when it exceeds the present day value of 2.22 ounces of gold. This can be accomplished using the command: @smallexample ledger -Q -t "/Liab.*Huquq/?(a/P@{2.22 AU@}<=@{-1.0@}&a):a" -s bal liab @end smallexample With this command, the current price for gold is downloaded, and the Huqúqu'lláh is reported only if its value exceeds that of 2.22 ounces of gold. If you wish the liability to be reflected in the parent subtotal either way, use this instead: @smallexample ledger -Q -T "/Liab.*Huquq/?(O/P@{2.22 AU@}<=@{-1.0@}&O):O" -s bal liab @end smallexample In some cases, you may wish to refer to the account of whichever posting matched your automated transaction's value expression. To do this, use the special account name @samp{$account}: @smallexample = /^Some:Long:Account:Name/ [$account] -0.10 [Savings] 0.10 @end smallexample This example causes 10% of the matching account's total to be deferred to the @samp{Savings} account---as a balanced virtual posting, which may be excluded from reports by using @option{--real}. Automated transactions can use the full range of value expressions in their predicate. If you wanted to specify a transaction only occur to certain accounts that meet cetain value criteria you could specify: @smallexample = /Employees:.*:Payroll$/ and expr (amount >= $1000 and amount < $10000) Expenses:Tax 0.27 @end smallexample In this case, @samp{amount} is tied to the amount of the posting being tested. But, wait! There's more! In the short example above we calculated the taxes due for income within a certain bracket. But in reality this calculation is more difficult. There are different rate for difference marginal incomes and those taxes are not easily descirbe by a simple multiplicative coefficient. Automated transaction can use value expressions in there posting to determine the ammounts. So to expand the example above for a three tax bracket system we could enter: @smallexample = /Employees:.*:Payroll$/ and expr (amount < $10000.00) (Expenses:Tax) 0.1 = /Employees:.*:Payroll$/ and expr (amount > $10000.00 and amount < $100000.00 ) (Expenses:Tax) ($1000.00 + .15 * (amount - $10000.00)) = /Employees:.*:Payroll$/ and expr (amount > $100000.00) (Expenses:Tax) ($13500.00 + .20 * (amount-$100000.00)) @end smallexample @node Periodic Transactions, Recording Commodity Lot Prices, Automatic Transactions, Advanced Transactions @subsection Periodic Transactions A periodic transaction starts with a ~ followed by a period expression. Periodic transactions are used for budgeting and forecasting only, they have no effect withouth the @samp{--budget} option specified. See @ref{Budgeting and Forecasting} for examples and details. @node Recording Commodity Lot Prices, Commodity Pricing Problem, Periodic Transactions, Advanced Transactions @subsection Recording Commodity Lot Prices If you are tracking investments it is often necessary to keep track of specific purchases of a commodity bought at difference prices. These specific purchases are referred to as ``lots''. Tracking lots using ledger requires some additional info in the journal as well as additional command-line options when generating reports. Say you want to record purchase of two separate lots of ACME, then sell some shares. The correct way to do this is: @smallexample 2010-09-01 * Buy 2 shares of ACME @@ $100 Assets:Broker 2 ACME @@ $100.00 Assets:Cash 2010-09-10 * Buy 2 share of ACME @@ $110 Assets:Broker 2 ACME @@ $110.00 Assets:Cash 2011-09-20 * Sell 2 shares of ACME @@ $150 Assets:Broker -1 ACME @{$100.00@} @@ $150.00 Assets:Broker -1 ACME @{$200.00@} @@ $150.00 Assets:Cash @end smallexample To report which lots of commodities you hold, use the @samp{--lot-prices} option. For example, after buying the 2 shares at $100 and 1 at $200 it would show you: @smallexample $ ledger balance --lot-prices Assets:Broker until 2011-09-15 2 ACME @{$100.00@} 1 ACME @{$200.00@} Assets:Broker @end smallexample @noindent without the @samp{--lot-prices} option you would only see the total number of shares you held: @smallexample $ ledger balance Assets:Broker until 2011-09-15 3 ACME Assets:Broker @end smallexample @noindent and after the sale on @samp{2011-09-20} it would show you: @smallexample $ ledger balance --lot-prices Assets:Broker 1 ACME @{$100.00@} Assets:Broker @end smallexample @node Commodity Pricing Problem, , Recording Commodity Lot Prices, Advanced Transactions @subsection Commodity Valuation [THIS SUBSECTION COULD BELONG IN REPORTING SECTION, OR MAYBE EVEN SPLIT BETWEEN THE TWO] Often you will be more interested in the value of your entire holdings, in your preferred currency. It might be nice to know you hold 10,000 shares of PENNY, but you are more interested in whether or not that is worth $1000.00 or $10,000.00. However, the current day value of a commodity can mean different things to different people, depending on the accounts involved, the commodities, the nature of the transactions, etc. When you specify @samp{-V}, or @samp{-X COMM}, you are requesting that some or all of the commodities be valuated as of today (or whatever @samp{--now} is set to). But what does such a valuation mean? This meaning is governed by the presence of a @samp{VALUE} metadata property, whose content is an expression used to compute that value. If no VALUE property is specified, each posting is assumed to have a default, as if you'd specified a global, automated transaction as follows: @smallexample = expr true ; VALUE:: market(amount, date, exchange) @end smallexample This definition emulates the present day behavior of -V and -X (in the case of -X, the requested commodity is passed via the string 'exchange' above). One thing many people have wanted to do is to fixate the valuation of old European currencies in terms of the Euro after a certain date: @smallexample = expr commodity == "DM" ; VALUE:: date < [Jun 2008] ? market(amount, date, exchange) : 1.44 EUR @end smallexample This says: If --now is some old date, use market prices as they were at that time; but if --now is past June 2008, use a fixed price for converting Deutsch Mark to Euro. Or how about never re-valuating commodities used in Expenses, since they cannot have a different future value: @smallexample = /^Expenses:/ ; VALUE:: market(amount, post.date, exchange) @end smallexample This says the future valuation is the same as the valuation at the time of posting. post.date equals the posting's date, while just 'date' is the value of --now (defaults to today). Or how about valuating miles based on a reimbursement rate during a specific time period: @smallexample = expr commodity == "miles" and date >= [2007] and date < [2008] ; VALUE:: market($1.05, date, exchange) @end smallexample In this case, miles driven in 2007 will always be valuated at $1.05 each. If you use -X EUR to expressly request all amounts in Euro, Ledger shall convert $1.05 to Euro by whatever means are appropriate for dollars. Note that you can have a valuation expression specific to a particular posting or transaction, by overriding these general defaults using specific metadata: @smallexample 2010-12-26 Example Expenses:Food $20 ; Just to be silly, always valuate *these* $20 as 30 DM, no matter what ; the user asks for with -V or -X ; VALUE:: 30 DM Assets:Cash @end smallexample This example demonstrates that your VALUE expression should be as symbolic as possible, using terms like 'amount' and 'date', rather than specific amounts and dates. Also, you should pass the amount along to the function 'market' so it can be further revalued if the user has asked for a specific currency. Or, if it better suits your accounting, you can be less symbolic, which allows you to report most everything in EUR if you use -X EUR, except for certain accounts or postings which should always be valuated in another currency. For example: @smallexample = /^Assets:Brokerage:CAD$/ ; Always report the value of commodities in this account in ; terms of present day dollars, despite what was asked for ; on the command-line VALUE:: market(amount, date, '$') @end smallexample I think this scheme, of using predicated value expressions which can be generalized in automated transactions, and made specific via transaction and posting-based metadata, provides sufficient flexibility to express most of the use cases which have occurred on this topic. Ledger presently has no way of handling such things as FIFO and LIFO. If you specify an unadorned commodity name, like AAPL, it will balance against itself. If --lots are not being displayed, then it will appear to balance against any lot of AAPL. If you specify an adorned commodity, like AAPL @{$10.00@}, it will also balance against itself, and against any AAPL if --lots is not specified. But if you do specify --lot-prices, for example, then it will balance against that specific price for AAPL. I may, for the sake of reporting *only*, be able to implement some sort of guessing strategy, based on the order in which transactions appear in the data file... But I'll have to think about this a lot more, and it would be a 3.1 thing. @smallexample > b) I don't see how this VALUE property can differentiate between -V > and -B. Does this imply that you want to get rid of the -B option and > simply let users define what VALUE they get with -V? If so, I think > this would be a bad idea... I really like the ability to see different > valuation methods using command line options (i.e. -B for cost basis > and -V for market value). (Incidentally, while I initially liked your > example of using the posting date for Expenses, I later realized that > I sometimes use -V to see what my expenses (in a foreign currency) > would have been if I bought everything at today's exchange rate.) @end smallexample -V and -B are entirely unrelated. Perhaps I could support a BASIS property setting, for customizing -B in the same way VALUE customizes -V... @smallexample > c) I never fully understood what -X does exactly but afaik -X is a > special version of -V. However, I believe that -X should _only_ do > conversion. This would allow -X to be combined with other options, > such as -X and -V. Example: let's say I bought 10 shares for 10.00 > GBP and they are now worth 15.00. Because my main assets are in EUR, > I want to see what those shares are worth in EUR. Since I'm > conservative I want to see the cost basis, i.e. I want to use -B and > -X EUR together. (This actually works today but I'm told this is an > accident and won't work in all cases.) @end smallexample -V asks for the present day value of all commodities, and lets Ledger pick the target commodity based on its own hueristics. -X is the same as -V, except that it overrides those hueristics and forces the target commodity. (Although, as you've seen, the VALUE property could now countermand that). There are reasons why -X can't be applied to any report. Mainly it has to do with rounding. For example, let's say I have 10 postings that each trade 1 DM, and the value of 1 DM is 0.001 EUR. If I add all 10 DM and then apply -X, I get 0.01 EUR. But if I apply -X to each 1 DM and *then* total them, I get 0.00 EUR. This becomes very important to Ledger because -X is applied to totals, not just to individual amounts. I'm going to have to use some magic internally to avoid this problem with the VALUE property (in most, but not all, cases). And so, -X gets applied after, when the posting-origin of the commodities has been lost -- required information if a basis cost calculation is to be deferred. The alternative would involve ever-growing lists of individual amounts, which would slow many parts of Ledger from O(N) to O(N^2). Plus, it still wouldn't solve the rounding problem. > Ledger presently has no way of handling such things as FIFO and LIFO. Yeah, I know... but I think it's a feature that ledger should eventually get (obviously not for 3.0). @smallexample > If you specify an adorned commodity, like AAPL @{$10.00@}, it will also > balance against itself, and against any AAPL if --lots is not specified. > But if you do specify --lot-prices, for example, then it will balance > against that specific price for AAPL. > > I may, for the sake of reporting *only*, be able to implement some sort > of guessing strategy, based on the order in which transactions appear in > the data file... @end smallexample Why for reporting only? It seems to me that ledger has all the information to do FIFO and LIFO properly (i.e. to remove the right commodities from the list). Let's take this example: @smallexample 2011-01-01 * Buy AAA Assets:Shares 5 AAA @ 10.00 EUR Assets:Cash 2011-01-03 * Buy AAA Assets:Shares 2 AAA @ 10.00 EUR Assets:Cash 2011-01-11 * Buy AAA Assets:Shares 5 AAA @ 12.00 EUR Assets:Cash 2011-01-21 * Buy AAA Assets:Shares 5 AAA @ 13.00 EUR Assets:Cash @end smallexample So we end up with (ledger --lots): @smallexample 5 AAA @{10.00 EUR@} [2011/01/01] 2 AAA @{10.00 EUR@} [2011/01/03] 5 AAA @{12.00 EUR@} [2011/01/11] 5 AAA @{13.00 EUR@} [2011/01/21] Assets:Shares @end smallexample So if I sell 6 shares now, according to FIFO, I would do: @smallexample 2011-02-01 * Sell AAA Assets:Shares -5 AAA @{10.00 EUR@} [2011/01/01] @ 13.50 EUR Assets:Shares -1 AAA @{10.00 EUR@} [2011/01/03] @ 13.50 EUR Assets:Cash @end smallexample ledger --lots: @smallexample 1 AAA @{10.00 EUR@} [2011/01/03] 5 AAA @{12.00 EUR@} [2011/01/11] 5 AAA @{13.00 EUR@} [2011/01/21] Assets:Shares @end smallexample According to LIFO, I would do this instead: @smallexample 2011-02-01 * Sell AAA Assets:Shares -5 AAA @{13.00 EUR@} [2011/01/21] @ 13.50 EUR Assets:Shares -1 AAA @{12.00 EUR@} [2011/01/11] @ 13.50 EUR Assets:Cash @end smallexample In other words, you can manually do FIFO and LIFO with ledger already. However, it would be great if ledger would make this easier, e.g. that you could specify: @smallexample 2011-02-01 * Sell AAA Assets:Shares -6 AAA @{FIFO@} @ 13.50 EUR Assets:Cash @end smallexample and ledger would iterate through all AAA commodities and take out the right ones (after all, it knows the date and price). The only thing I don't think is possible with ledger at the moment is average cost. I'm also not sure how --lot-dates should behave for average cost. @smallexample > There are reasons why -X can't be applied to any report. Mainly it has > to do with rounding. For example, let's say I have 10 postings that > each trade 1 DM, and the value of 1 DM is 0.001 EUR. If I add all > 10 DM and then apply -X, I get 0.01 EUR. But if I apply -X to each > 1 DM and *then* total them, I get 0.00 EUR. @end smallexample Thanks for the explanation... what I was thinking of is that ledger would just produce a report according to -V or -B or whatever and *then* convert it with -X. I use a shell script to do this for now: @smallexample GBP2EUR="117/100" eurgbp=$(ledger -f $FILE -p "until $YEAR-$NEXT_MONTH-01" -B bal "^assets" "^liabilities" | egrep " (EUR|GBP)$" | tail -n 2) eur=$(echo "$eurgbp" | grep "EUR" | sed 's/ EUR//') gbp=$(echo "$eurgbp" | grep "GBP" | sed 's/ GBP//') eur=$(echo "$eur" | sed 's/\..*//') gbp=$(echo "$gbp" | sed 's/\..*//') gbpineur=$(($gbp*$GBP2EUR)) echo " " $(($eur + $gbpineur)) " EUR Total" @end smallexample I'm kinda surprised that you no longer think it's a good idea to split -X from -V. Last time I brought this up on IRC, you thought it was a good idea: @smallexample 10:44 < johnw> I think having -H, in addition to -X, may make what you want to see both natural and simple 10:45 < johnw> you'd use -H for income/expense accounts, and -X for assets/liabilities 10:45 < johnw> -H = historical values 10:45 < johnw> -X = current exchange values 10:45 < tbm> so what's the difference between -X and -V again? 10:45 < johnw> -V is an automated version of -X 10:45 < johnw> it tries to figure out what the reported commodity should be 10:45 < johnw> we may then need an automated version of -H, to complete the reflection 10:46 < johnw> btw, this is just an inside-out version of my "final" feature :) 10:46 < tbm> why not change the meaning of -X to _only do conversion_? And then you could combine -X with -B, -V or -H 10:46 < johnw> instead of having it be syntactic, we're moving the semantic difference to a difference in options 10:46 < johnw> oh HMM 10:46 < johnw> -X with -B, -V and -I 10:46 < johnw> (and -O, incidentally) 10:46 < johnw> O = amount, B = cost, V = market value, I = price 10:47 < johnw> that's really an excellent suggestion 10:48 < johnw> i'd still need a flag to mean "historical" vs "current" 10:48 < johnw> as well as "target commodity" (-X) @end smallexample @node File Format, Archiving Previous Years , Advanced Transactions, Keeping a Journal @section File Format for Users The ledger file format is quite simple, but also very flexible. It supports many options, though typically the user can ignore most of them. They are summarized below. The initial character of each line determines what the line means, and how it should be interpreted. Allowable initial characters are: @table @code @item NUMBER A line beginning with a number denotes a transaction. It may be followed by any number of lines, each beginning with whitespace, to denote the transaction's account postings. The format of the first line is: @smallexample DATE[=EDATE] [*|!] [(CODE)] DESC @end smallexample If @samp{*} appears after the date (with optional effective date), it indicates the transaction is ``cleared'', which can mean whatever the user wants it to mean. If @samp{!} appears after the date, it indicates d the transaction is ``pending''; i.e., tentatively cleared from the user's point of view, but not yet actually cleared. If a @samp{CODE} appears in parentheses, it may be used to indicate a check number, or the type of the posting. Following these is the payee, or a description of the posting. The format of each following posting is: @smallexample ACCOUNT AMOUNT [; NOTE] @end smallexample The @samp{ACCOUNT} may be surrounded by parentheses if it is a virtual posting, or square brackets if it is a virtual posting that must balance. The @samp{AMOUNT} can be followed by a per-unit posting cost, by specifying @samp{@@ AMOUNT}, or a complete posting cost with @samp{@@@@ AMOUNT}. Lastly, the @samp{NOTE} may specify an actual and/or effective date for the posting by using the syntax @samp{[ACTUAL_DATE]} or @samp{[=EFFECTIVE_DATE]} or @samp{[ACTUAL_DATE=EFFECTIVE_DATE]}.(See @pxref{Virtual Transactions}) @item = An automated transaction. A value expression must appear after the equal sign. After this initial line there should be a set of one or more postings, just as if it were normal transaction. If the amounts of the postings have no commodity, they will be applied as modifiers to whichever real posting is matched by the value expression(See @pxref{Automatic Transactions}). @item ~ A period transaction. A period expression must appear after the tilde. After this initial line there should be a set of one or more postings, just as if it were normal transaction. @item ! A line beginning with an exclamation mark denotes a command directive. It must be immediately followed by the command word. The supported commands are: @table @samp @item !include Include the stated journal file. @item !account The account name is given is taken to be the parent of all postings that follow, until @samp{!end} is seen. @item !end Ends an account block. @end table @item ; A line beginning with a colon indicates a comment, and is ignored. Comments will not be returned in a ``print'' response. @item indented ; If the semi colon is indented and occurs inside a transaction, it is parsed as a persistent note for its preceding category. These notes or tags can be used to augment to reporting and filtering capabilities of Ledger. @item Y If a line begins with a capital Y, it denotes the year used for all subsequent transactions that give a date without a year. The year should appear immediately after the Y, for example: @samp{Y2004}. This is useful at the beginning of a file, to specify the year for that file. If all transactions specify a year, however, this command has no effect. @item P Specifies a historical price for a commodity. These are usually found in a pricing history file (see the @option{-Q} option). The syntax is: @smallexample P DATE SYMBOL PRICE @end smallexample @item N SYMBOL Indicates that pricing information is to be ignored for a given symbol, nor will quotes ever be downloaded for that symbol. Useful with a home currency, such as the dollar ($). It is recommended that these pricing options be set in the price database file, which defaults to @file{~/.pricedb}. The syntax for this command is: @smallexample N SYMBOL @end smallexample @item D AMOUNT Specifies the default commodity to use, by specifying an amount in the expected format. The @command{transaction} command will use this commodity as the default when none other can be determined. This command may be used multiple times, to set the default flags for different commodities; whichever is seen last is used as the default commodity. For example, to set US dollars as the default commodity, while also setting the thousands flag and decimal flag for that commodity, use: @smallexample D $1,000.00 @end smallexample @item C AMOUNT1 = AMOUNT2 Specifies a commodity conversion, where the first amount is given to be equivalent to the second amount. The first amount should use the decimal precision desired during reporting: @smallexample C 1.00 Kb = 1024 bytes @end smallexample @item i, o, b, h These four relate to timeclock support, which permits Ledger to read timelog files. See the timeclock's documentation for more info on the syntax of its timelog files. @end table @node Archiving Previous Years , , File Format, Keeping a Journal @section Archiving Previous Years After a while, your journal can get to be pretty large. While this will not slow down Ledger---it's designed to process journals very quickly---things can start to feel ``messy''; and it's a universal complaint that when finances feel messy, people avoid them. Thus, archiving the data from previous years into their own files can offer a sense of completion, and freedom from the past. But how to best accomplish this with the ledger program? There are two commands that make it very simple: @command{print}, and @command{equity}. Let's take an example file, with data ranging from year 2000 until 2004. We want to archive years 2000 and 2001 to their own file, leaving just 2003 and 2004 in the current file. So, use @command{print} to output all the earlier transactions to a file called @file{ledger-old.dat}: @smallexample ledger -f ledger.dat -b 2000 -e 2001 print > ledger-old.dat @end smallexample To delete older data from the current ledger file, use @command{print} again, this time specifying year 2002 as the starting date: @smallexample ledger -f ledger.dat -b 2002 print > x mv x ledger.dat @end smallexample However, now the current file contains @emph{only} postings from 2002 onward, which will not yield accurate present-day balances, because the net income from previous years is no longer being tallied. To compensate for this, we must append an equity report for the old ledger at the beginning of the new one: @smallexample ledger -f ledger-old.dat equity > equity.dat cat equity.dat ledger.dat > x mv x ledger.dat rm equity.dat @end smallexample Now the balances reported from @file{ledger.dat} are identical to what they were before the data was split. How often should you split your ledger? You never need to, if you don't want to. Even eighty years of data will not slow down ledger much---and that's just using present day hardware! Or, you can keep the previous and current year in one file, and each year before that in its own file. It's really up to you, and how you want to organize your finances. For those who also keep an accurate paper trail, it might be useful to archive the older years to their own files, then burn those files to a CD to keep with the paper records---along with any electronic statements received during the year. In the arena of organization, just keep in mind this maxim: Do whatever keeps you doing it. @node Command-line Syntax, Basic Reporting Commands, Keeping a Journal, Top @chapter Command-line Syntax @menu * Basic Usage:: * Detailed Options Description:: * Period Expressions:: @end menu @node Basic Usage, Detailed Options Description, Command-line Syntax, Command-line Syntax @section Basic Usage This chapter describes Ledger's features and options. You may wish to survey this to get an overview before diving in to the @ref{Ledger Tutorial} and more detailed examples that follow. Ledger has a very simple command-line interface, named---enticingly enough---@command{ledger}. It supports a few reporting commands, and a large number of options for refining the output from those commands. The basic syntax of any ledger command is: @smallexample ledger [OPTIONS...] COMMAND [ARGS...] @end smallexample After the command word there may appear any number of arguments. For most commands, these arguments are regular expressions that cause the output to relate only to postings matching those regular expressions. For the @command{transaction} command, the arguments have a special meaning, described below. The regular expressions arguments always match the account name that a posting refers to. To match on the payee of the transaction instead, precede the regular expression with @samp{payee} or @@. For example, the following balance command reports account totals for rent, food and movies, but only those whose payee matches Freddie: @smallexample ledger bal rent food movies payee freddie @end smallexample @noindent or @smallexample ledger bal rent food movies @@freddie @end smallexample There are many, many command options available with the @command{ledger} command, and it takes a while to master them. However, none of them are required to use the basic reporting commands. @node Detailed Options Description, Period Expressions, Basic Usage, Command-line Syntax @section Detailed Option Description With all of the reports, command-line options are useful to modify the output generated. The basic form for most commands is: @smallexample ledger [OPTIONS] COMMAND [REGEXPS...] [-- [REGEXPS...]] @end smallexample The @var{OPTIONS} and @var{REGEXPS} expressions are both optional. You could just use @samp{ledger balance}, without any options---which prints a summary of all accounts. But for more specific reporting, or to change the appearance of the output, options are needed. @subsection Basic options These are the most basic command options. Most likely, the user will want to set them using environment variables (see @ref{Environment Variables}), instead of using actual command-line options: @option{--help} (@option{-h}) prints a summary of all the options, and what they are used for. This can be a handy way to remember which options do what. This help screen is also printed if ledger is run without a command. @option{--version} (@option{-v}) prints the current version of ledger and exits. This is useful for sending bug reports, to let the author know which version of ledger you are using. @option{--file FILE} (@option{-f FILE}) reads FILE as a ledger file. This command may be used multiple times. Typically, the environment variable @env{Ledger_FILE} is set, rather than using this command-line option. @option{--output FILE} (@option{-o FILE}) redirects output from any command to @var{FILE}. By default, all output goes to standard output. @option{--init-file FILE} (@option{-i FILE}) causes FILE to be read by ledger before any other ledger file. This file may not contain any postings, but it may contain option settings. To specify options in the init file, use the same syntax as the command-line, but put each option on it's own line. Here's an example init file: @smallexample --price-db ~/finance/.pricedb --cache /tmp/ledger-cache ; ~/.ledgerrc ends here @end smallexample Option settings on the command-line or in the environment always take precedence over settings in the init file. @option{--cache FILE} identifies FILE as the default binary cache file. That is, if the ledger files to be read are specified using the environment variable @env{Ledger_FILE}, then whenever a command is finished a binary copy will be written to the specified cache, to speed up the loading time of subsequent queries. This filename can also be given using the environment variable @env{Ledger_CACHE}, or by putting the option into your init file. The @option{--no-cache} option causes Ledger to always ignore the binary cache. @option{--account NAME} (@option{-a NAME}) specifies the default account which QIF file postings are assumed to relate to. @subsection Report filtering These options change which postings affect the outcome of a report, in ways other than just using regular expressions: @option{--current}(@option{-c}) displays only transactions occurring on or before the current date. @option{--begin DATE} (@option{-b DATE}) constrains the report to transactions on or after @var{DATE}. Only transactions after that date will be calculated, which means that the running total in the balance report will always start at zero with the first matching transaction. (Note: This is different from using @option{--display} to constrain what is displayed). @option{--end DATE} (@option{-e DATE}) constrains the report so that transactions on or after @var{DATE} are not considered. The ending date is inclusive. @option{--period STR} (@option{-p STR}) sets the reporting period to @var{STR}. This will subtotal all matching transactions within each period separately, making it easy to see weekly, monthly, quarterly, etc., posting totals. A period string can even specify the beginning and end of the report range, using simple terms like ``last june'' or ``next month''. For more using period expressions, see @ref{Period Expressions}. @option{--period-sort EXPR} sorts the postings within each reporting period using the value expression @var{EXPR}. This is most often useful when reporting monthly expenses, in order to view the highest expense categories at the top of each month: @smallexample ledger -M --period-sort -At reg ^Expenses @end smallexample @option{--cleared} (@option{-C}) displays only postings whose transaction has been marked ``cleared'' (by placing an asterix to the right of the date). @option{--uncleared} (@option{-U}) displays only postings whose transaction has not been marked ``cleared'' (i.e., if there is no asterix to the right of the date). @option{--real} (@option{-R}) displays only real postings, not virtual. (A virtual posting is indicated by surrounding the account name with parentheses or brackets; see @ref{Virtual Transactions} for more information). @option{--actual} (@option{-L}) displays only actual postings, and not those created due to automated postings. @option{--related} (@option{-r}) displays postings that are related to whichever postings would otherwise have matched the filtering criteria. In the register report, this shows where money went to, or the account it came from. In the balance report, it shows all the accounts affected by transactions having a related posting. For example, if a file had this transaction: @smallexample 2004/03/20 Safeway Expenses:Food $65.00 Expenses:Cash $20.00 Assets:Checking $-85.00 @end smallexample And the register command was: @smallexample ledger -r register food @end smallexample The following would be output, showing the postings related to the posting that matched: @smallexample 2004/03/20 Safeway Expenses:Cash $-20.00 $-20.00 Assets:Checking $85.00 $65.00 @end smallexample @option{--budget} is useful for displaying how close your postings meet your budget. @option{--add-budget} also shows unbudgeted postings, while @option{--unbudgeted} shows only those. @option{--forecast} is a related option that projects your budget into the future, showing how it will affect future balances. @xref{Budgeting and Forecasting}. @option{--limit EXPR} (@option{-l EXPR}) limits which postings take part in the calculations of a report. @option{--amount EXPR} (@option{-t EXPR}) changes the value expression used to calculate the ``value'' column in the @command{register} report, the amount used to calculate account totals in the @command{balance} report, and the values printed in the @command{equity} report. @xref{Value Expressions}. @option{--total EXPR} (@option{-T EXPR}) sets the value expression used for the ``totals'' column in the @command{register} and @command{balance} reports. @menu * Search Terms:: * Output Customization:: * Commodity Reporting:: * Environment Variables:: @end menu @node Search Terms, Output Customization, Detailed Options Description, Detailed Options Description @subsection Search Terms Valid Ledger invocations look like: @smallexample ledger [OPTIONS] @end smallexample Where @samp{COMMAND} is any command verb (@pxref{Basic Reporting Commands}), @samp{OPTIONS} can occur anywhere, and @samp{SEARCH-TERM} is one or more of the following: @smallexample word search for any account containing 'word' TERM and TERM boolean AND between terms TERM or TERM boolean OR between terms not TERM invert the meaning of the term payee word search for any payee containing 'word' @@word shorthand for 'payee word' desc word alternate for 'payee word' note word search for any note containing 'word' &word shorthand for 'note word' tag word search for any metadata tag containing 'word' tag word=value search for any metadata tag containing 'word' whose value contains 'value' %word shorthand for 'tag word' %word=value shorthand for 'tag word=value' meta word alternate for 'tag word' meta word=value alternate for 'tag word=value' expr 'EXPR' apply the given value expression as a predicate '=EXPR' shorthand for 'expr EXPR' \( TERMS \) group terms; useful if using and/or/not @end smallexample So, to list all transaction that charged to ``ffod'' but not ``dining'' for any payee other than ``chang'' the following three commands would be equivalent: @smallexample ledger reg food not dining @@chang ledger reg food and not dining and not payee chang ledger reg food not dining expr 'payee =~ /chang/' @end smallexample @node Output Customization, Commodity Reporting, Search Terms, Detailed Options Description @subsection Output Customization These options affect only the output, but not which postings are used to create it: @option{--collapse} (@option{-n}) causes transactions in a @command{register} report with multiple postings to be collapsed into a single, subtotaled transaction. @option{--subtotal} (@option{-s}) causes all transactions in a @command{register} report to be collapsed into a single, subtotaled transaction. @option{--by-payee} (@option{-P}) reports subtotals by payee. @option{--comm-as-payee} (@option{-x}) changes the payee of every posting to be the commodity used in that posting. This can be useful when combined with other options, such as @option{-s}. @option{--empty} (@option{-E}) includes even empty accounts in the @command{balance} report. @option{--weekly} (@option{-W}) reports posting totals by the week. The week begins on whichever day of the week begins the month containing that posting. To set a specific begin date, use a period string, such as @samp{weekly from DATE}. @option{--monthly} (@option{-M}) reports posting totals by month; @option{--yearly} (@option{-Y}) reports posting totals by year. For more complex period, using the @option{--period} option described above. @option{--dow} reports postings totals for each day of the week. This is an easy way to see if weekend spending is more than on weekdays. @option{--sort EXPR} (@option{-S EXPR}) sorts a report by comparing the values determined using the value expression @var{EXPR}. For example, using @option{-S -UT} in the balance report will sort account balances from greatest to least, using the absolute value of the total. For more on how to use value expressions, see @ref{Value Expressions}. @option{--wide} (@option{-w}) causes the default @command{register} report to assume 132 columns instead of 80. @option{--head} causes only the first N transactions to be printed. This is different from using the command-line utility @command{head}, which would limit to the first N postings. @option{--tail} outputs only the last N transactions. Both options may be used simultaneously. If a negative amount is given, it will invert the meaning of the flag (instead of the first five transactions being printed, for example, it would print all but the first five). @option{--pager} tells Ledger to pass its output to the given pager program---very useful when the output is especially long. This behavior can be made the default by setting the @env{Ledger_PAGER} environment variable. @option{--average} (@option{-A}) reports the average posting value. @option{--deviation} (@option{-D}) reports each posting's deviation from the average. It is only meaningful in the @command{register} and @command{prices} reports. @option{--percentage} (@option{-%}) shows account subtotals in the @command{balance} report as percentages of the parent account. @option{--totals} include running total information in the @command{xml} report. @option{--amount-data} (@option{-j}) changes the @command{register} report so that it outputs nothing but the date and the value column, and the latter without commodities. This is only meaningful if the report uses a single commodity. This data can then be fed to other programs, which could plot the date, analyze it, etc. @option{--total-data} (@option{-J}) changes the @command{register} report so that it outputs nothing but the date and totals column, without commodities. @option{--display EXPR} (@option{-d EXPR}) limits which postings or accounts or actually displayed in a report. They might still be calculated, and be part of the running total of a register report, for example, but they will not be displayed. This is useful for seeing last month's checking postings, against a running balance which includes all posting values: @smallexample ledger -d "d>=[last month]" reg checking @end smallexample The output from this command is very different from the following, whose running total includes only postings from the last month onward: @smallexample ledger -p "last month" reg checking @end smallexample Which is more useful depends on what you're looking to know: the total amount for the reporting range (@option{-p}), or simply a display restricted to the reporting range (using @option{-d}). @option{--date-format STR} (@option{-y STR}) changes the basic date format used by reports. The default uses a date like 2004/08/01, which represents the default date format of @samp{%Y/%m/%d}. To change the way dates are printed in general, the easiest way is to put @option{--date-format FORMAT} in the Ledger initialization file @file{~/.ledgerrc} (or the file referred to by @env{Ledger_INIT}). @option{--format STR} (@option{-F STR}) sets the reporting format for whatever report ledger is about to make. @xref{Format Strings}. There are also specific format commands for each report type: @itemize @item @option{--balance-format STR} @item @option{--register-format STR} @item @option{--print-format STR} @item @option{--plot-amount-format STR} (-j @command{register}) @item @option{--plot-total-format STR} (-J @command{register}) @item @option{--equity-format STR} @item @option{--prices-format STR} @item @option{--wide-register-format STR} (-w @command{register}) @end itemize @node Commodity Reporting, Environment Variables, Output Customization, Detailed Options Description @subsection Commodity Reporting These options affect how commodity values are displayed: @option{--price-db FILE} sets the file that is used for recording downloaded commodity prices. It is always read on startup, to determine historical prices. Other settings can be placed in this file manually, to prevent downloading quotes for a specific, for example. This is done by adding a line like the following: @smallexample ; Don't download quotes for the dollar, or timelog values N $ N h @end smallexample @option{--price-exp MINS} (@option{-L MINS}) sets the expected freshness of price quotes, in minutes. That is, if the last known quote for any commodity is older than this value---and if @option{--download} is being used---then the Internet will be consulted again for a newer price. Otherwise, the old price is still considered to be fresh enough. @option{--download} (@option{-Q}) causes quotes to be automagically downloaded, as needed, by running a script named @command{getquote} and expecting that script to return a value understood by ledger. A sample implementation of a @command{getquote} script, implemented in Perl, is provided in the distribution. Downloaded quote price are then appended to the price database, usually specified using the environment variable @env{Ledger_PRICE_DB}. There are several different ways that ledger can report the totals it displays. The most flexible way to adjust them is by using value expressions, and the @option{-t} and @option{-T} options. However, there are also several ``default'' reports, which will satisfy most users basic reporting needs: @table @code @item -O, --quantity Reports commodity totals (this is the default) @item -B, --basis Reports the cost basis for all postings. @item -V, --market Reports the last known market value for all commodities. @item -G --gain Reports the net gain/loss for all commodities in the report that have a price history. @end table @node Environment Variables, , Commodity Reporting, Detailed Options Description @subsection Environment variables Every option to ledger may be set using an environment variable. If an option has a long name such @option{--this-option}, setting the environment variable @env{Ledger_THIS_OPTION} will have the same affect as specifying that option on the command-line. Options on the command-line always take precedence over environment variable settings, however. Note that you may also permanently specify option values by placing option settings in the file @file{~/.ledgerrc}, for example: @smallexample --cache /tmp/.mycache --pager /bin/cat @end smallexample @node Period Expressions, , Detailed Options Description, Command-line Syntax @section Period Expressions A period expression indicates a span of time, or a reporting interval, or both. The full syntax is: @smallexample [INTERVAL] [BEGIN] [END] @end smallexample The optional @var{INTERVAL} part may be any one of: @smallexample every day every week every monthly every quarter every year every N days # N is any integer every N weeks every N months every N quarters every N years daily weekly biweekly monthly bimonthly quarterly yearly @end smallexample After the interval, a begin time, end time, both or neither may be specified. As for the begin time, it can be either of: @smallexample from since @end smallexample The end time can be either of: @smallexample to until @end smallexample Where @var{SPEC} can be any of: @smallexample 2004 2004/10 2004/10/1 10/1 october oct this week # or day, month, quarter, year next week last week @end smallexample The beginning and ending can be given at the same time, if it spans a single period. In that case, just use @var{SPEC} by itself. In that case, the period @samp{oct}, for example, will cover all the days in october. The possible forms are: @smallexample in @end smallexample Here are a few examples of period expressions: @smallexample monthly monthly in 2004 weekly from oct weekly from last month from sep to oct from 10/1 to 10/5 monthly until 2005 from apr until nov last oct weekly last august @end smallexample @node Basic Reporting Commands, Budgeting and Forecasting, Command-line Syntax, Top @chapter Basic Reporting Commands @menu * balance:: * register:: * print:: * output:: * xml:: * emacs:: * equity:: * prices:: * xact:: @end menu @node balance, register, Basic Reporting Commands, Basic Reporting Commands @section balance The @command{balance} command reports the current balance of all accounts. It accepts a list of optional regexps, which confine the balance report to the matching accounts. If an account contains multiple types of commodities, each commodity's total is reported separately. @node register, print, balance, Basic Reporting Commands @section register The @command{register} command displays all the postings occurring in a single account, line by line. The account regexp must be specified as the only argument to this command. If any regexps occur after the required account name, the register will contain only those postings that match. Very useful for hunting down a particular posting. The output from @command{register} is very close to what a typical checkbook, or single-account ledger, would look like. It also shows a running balance. The final running balance of any register should always be the same as the current balance of that account. If you have Gnuplot installed, you may plot the amount or running total of any register by using the script @file{report}, which is included in the Ledger distribution. The only requirement is that you add either @option{-j} or @option{-J} to your register command, in order to plot either the amount or total column, respectively. @node print, output, register, Basic Reporting Commands @section print The @command{print} command prints out ledger transactions in a textual format that can be parsed by Ledger. They will be properly formatted, and output in the most economic form possible. The ``print'' command also takes a list of optional regexps, which will cause only those postings which match in some way to be printed. The @command{print} command can be a handy way to clean up a ledger file whose formatting has gotten out of hand. @node output, xml, print, Basic Reporting Commands @section output The @command{output} command is very similar to the @command{print} command, except that it attempts to replicate the specified ledger file exactly. The format of the command is: @smallexample ledger -f FILENAME output FILENAME @end smallexample Where @file{FILENAME} is the name of the ledger file to output. The reason for specifying this command is that only transactions contained within that file will be output, and not an included transactions (as can happen with the @command{print} command). @node xml, emacs, output, Basic Reporting Commands @section xml The @command{xml} command outputs results similar to what @command{print} and @command{register} display, but as an XML form. This data can then be read in and processed. Use the @option{--totals} option to include the running total with each posting. @node emacs, equity, xml, Basic Reporting Commands @section emacs The @command{emacs} command outputs results in a form that can be read directly by Emacs Lisp. The format of the sexp is: @smallexample ((BEG-POS CLEARED DATE CODE PAYEE (ACCOUNT AMOUNT)...) ; list of postings ...) ; list of transactions @end smallexample @node equity, prices, emacs, Basic Reporting Commands @section equity The @command{equity} command prints out accounts balances as if they were transactions. This makes it easy to establish the starting balances for an account, such as when @ref{Archiving Previous Years}. @node prices, xact, equity, Basic Reporting Commands @section prices The @command{prices} command displays the price history for matching commodities. The @option{-A} flag is useful with this report, to display the running average price, or @option{-D} to show each price's deviation from that average. There is also a @command{pricesdb} command which outputs the same information as @command{prices}, but does in a format that can be parsed by Ledger. @node xact, , prices, Basic Reporting Commands @section xact The @command{xact} commands simplifies the creation of new transactions. It works on the principle that 80% of all postings are variants of earlier postings. Here's how it works: Say you currently have this posting in your ledger file: @smallexample 2004/03/15 * Viva Italiano Expenses:Food $12.45 Expenses:Tips $2.55 Liabilities:MasterCard $-15.00 @end smallexample Now it's @samp{2004/4/9}, and you've just eating at @samp{Viva Italiano} again. The exact amounts are different, but the overall form is the same. With the @command{xact} command you can type: @smallexample ledger xact 2004/4/9 viva food 11 tips 2.50 @end smallexample This produces the following output: @smallexample 2004/04/09 Viva Italiano Expenses:Food $11.00 Expenses:Tips $2.50 Liabilities:MasterCard $-13.50 @end smallexample It works by finding a past posting matching the regular expression @samp{viva}, and assuming that any accounts or amounts specified will be similar to that earlier posting. If Ledger does not succeed in generating a new transaction, an error is printed and the exit code is set to @samp{1}. There is a shell script in the distribution's @file{scripts} directory called @file{xact}, which simplifies the task of adding a new transaction to your ledger. It launches @command{vi} to confirm that the transaction looks appropriate. Here are a few more examples of the @command{xact} command, assuming the above journal transaction: @smallexample ledger xact 4/9 viva 11.50 ledger xact 4/9 viva 11.50 checking # (from `checking') ledger xact 4/9 viva food 11.50 tips 8 ledger xact 4/9 viva food 11.50 tips 8 cash ledger xact 4/9 viva food $11.50 tips $8 cash ledger xact 4/9 viva dining "DM 11.50" @end smallexample @menu * Budgeting and Forecasting:: @end menu @node Budgeting and Forecasting, Value Expressions, Basic Reporting Commands, Top @chapter Budgeting and Forecasting @menu * Budgeting:: * Forecasting:: @end menu @node Budgeting, Forecasting, Budgeting and Forecasting, Budgeting and Forecasting @section Budgeting Keeping a budget allows you to pay closer attention to your income and expenses, by reporting how far your actual financial activity is from your expectations. To start keeping a budget, put some periodic transactions (@pxref{Periodic Transactions}) at the top of your ledger file. A period transaction is almost identical to a regular transaction, except that it begins with a tilde and has a period expression in place of a payee. For example: @smallexample ~ Monthly Expenses:Rent $500.00 Expenses:Food $450.00 Expenses:Auto:Gas $120.00 Expenses:Insurance $150.00 Expenses:Phone $125.00 Expenses:Utilities $100.00 Expenses:Movies $50.00 Expenses $200.00 ; all other expenses Assets ~ Yearly Expenses:Auto:Repair $500.00 Assets @end smallexample These two period transactions give the usual monthly expenses, as well as one typical yearly expense. For help on finding out what your average monthly expense is for any category, use a command like: @example ledger -p "this year" --monthly --average --subtotal balance ^expenses @end example The reported totals are the current year's average for each account. Once these period transactions are defined, creating a budget report is as easy as adding @option{--budget} to the command-line. For example, a typical monthly expense report would be: @example ledger --monthly register ^expenses @end example To see the same report balanced against your budget, use: @example ledger --budget --monthly register ^expenses @end example A budget report includes only those accounts that appear in the budget. To see all expenses balanced against the budget, use @option{--add-budget}. You can even see only the unbudgeted expenses using @option{--unbudgeted}: @example ledger --unbudgeted --monthly register ^expenses @end example You can also use these flags with the @command{balance} command. @node Forecasting, , Budgeting, Budgeting and Forecasting @section Forecasting Sometimes it's useful to know what your finances will look like in the future, such as determining when an account will reach zero. Ledger makes this easy to do, using the same period transactions as are used for budgeting. An example forecast report can be generated with: @example ledger --forecast "T>@{\$-500.00@}" register ^assets ^liabilities @end example This report continues outputting postings until the running total is greater than $-500.00. A final posting is always output, to show you what the total afterwards would be. Forecasting can also be used with the balance report, but by date only, and not against the running total: @example ledger --forecast "d<[2010]" bal ^assets ^liabilities @end example @node Value Expressions, Format Strings, Budgeting and Forecasting, Top @chapter Value Expressions Value expressions are an expression language used by Ledger to calculate values used by the program for many different purposes: @enumerate @item The values displayed in reports @item For predicates (where truth is anything non-zero), to determine which postings are calculated (@option{-l}) or displayed (@option{-d}). @item For sorting criteria, to yield the sort key. @item In the matching criteria used by automated postings. @end enumerate Value expressions support most simple math and logic operators, in addition to a set of one letter functions and variables. A function's argument is whatever follows it. The following is a display predicate that I use with the @command{balance} command: @smallexample ledger -d /^Liabilities/?T<0:UT>100 balance @end smallexample The effect is that account totals are displayed only if: 1) A Liabilities account has a total less than zero; or 2) the absolute value of the account's total exceeds 100 units of whatever commodity contains. If it contains multiple commodities, only one of them must exceed 100 units. Display predicates are also very handy with register reports, to constrain which transactions are printed. For example, the following command shows only transactions from the beginning of the current month, while still calculating the running balance based on all transactions: @smallexample ledger -d "d>[this month]" register checking @end smallexample This advantage to this command's complexity is that it prints the running total in terms of all transactions in the register. The following, simpler command is similar, but totals only the displayed postings: @smallexample ledger -b "this month" register checking @end smallexample @menu * Variables:: @end menu @node Variables, , Value Expressions, Value Expressions @section Variables Below are the one letter variables available in any value expression. For the register and print commands, these variables relate to individual postings, and sometimes the account affected by a posting. For the balance command, these variables relate to accounts---often with a subtle difference in meaning. The use of each variable for both is specified. @table @code @item t This maps to whatever the user specified with @option{-t}. In a register report, @option{-t} changes the value column; in a balance report, it has no meaning by default. If @option{-t} was not specified, the current report style's value expression is used. @item T This maps to whatever the user specified with @option{-T}. In a register report, @option{-T} changes the totals column; in a balance report, this is the value given for each account. If @option{-T} was not specified, the current report style's value expression is used. @item m This is always the present moment/date. @end table @subsection Posting/account details @table @code @item d A posting's date, as the number of seconds past the epoch. This is always ``today'' for an account. @item a The posting's amount; the balance of an account, without considering children. @item b The cost of a posting; the cost of an account, without its children. @item v The market value of a posting, or an account without its children. @item g The net gain (market value minus cost basis), for a posting or an account without its children. It is the same as @samp{v-b}. @item l The depth (``level'') of an account. If an account has one parent, it's depth is one. @item n The index of a posting, or the count of postings affecting an account. @item X 1 if a posting's transaction has been cleared, 0 otherwise. @item R 1 if a posting is not virtual, 0 otherwise. @item Z 1 if a posting is not automated, 0 otherwise. @end table @subsection Calculated totals @table @code @item O The total of all postings seen so far, or the total of an account and all its children. @item N The total count of postings affecting an account and all its children. @item B The total cost of all postings seen so far; the total cost of an account and all its children. @item V The market value of all postings seen so far, or of an account and all its children. @item G The total net gain (market value minus cost basis), for a series of postings, or an account and its children. It is the same as @samp{V-B}. @end table @section Functions The available one letter functions are: @table @code @item - Negates the argument. @item U The absolute (unsigned) value of the argument. @item S Strips the commodity from the argument. @item A The arithmetic mean of the argument; @samp{Ax} is the same as @samp{x/n}. @item P The present market value of the argument. The syntax @samp{P(x,d)} is supported, which yields the market value at time @samp{d}. If no date is given, then the current moment is used. @end table @section Operators The binary and ternary operators, in order of precedence, are: @enumerate @item @samp{* /} @item @samp{+ -} @item @samp{! < > =} @item @samp{& | ?:} @end enumerate @section Complex expressions More complicated expressions are possible using: @table @code @item NUM A plain integer represents a commodity-less amount. @item @{AMOUNT@} An amount in braces can be any kind of amount supported by ledger, with or without a commodity. Use this for decimal values. @item /REGEXP/ @item W/REGEXP/ A regular expression that matches against an account's full name. If a posting, this will match against the account affected by the posting. @item //REGEXP/ @item p/REGEXP/ A regular expression that matches against a transaction's payee name. @item ///REGEXP/ @item w/REGEXP/ A regular expression that matches against an account's base name. If a posting, this will match against the account affected by the posting. @item c/REGEXP/ A regular expression that matches against the transaction code (the text that occurs between parentheses before the payee name). @item e/REGEXP/ A regular expression that matches against a posting's note, or comment field. @item (EXPR) A sub-expression is nested in parenthesis. This can be useful passing more complicated arguments to functions, or for overriding the natural precedence order of operators. @item [DATE] Useful specifying a date in plain terms. For example, you could say @samp{[2004/06/01]}. @end table @node Format Strings, Journal File Format, Value Expressions, Top @chapter Format Strings Format strings may be used to change the output format of reports. They are specified by passing a formatting string to the @option{--format} (@option{-F}) option. Within that string, constructs are allowed which make it possible to display the various parts of an account or posting in custom ways. Within a format strings, a substitution is specified using a percent character (@samp{%}). The basic format of all substitutions is: @smallexample %[-][MIN WIDTH][.MAX WIDTH]EXPR @end smallexample If the optional minus sign (@samp{-}) follows the percent character, whatever is substituted will be left justified. The default is right justified. If a minimum width is given next, the substituted text will be at least that wide, perhaps wider. If a period and a maximum width is given, the substituted text will never be wider than this, and will be truncated to fit. Here are some examples: @smallexample %-P a transaction's payee, left justified %20P The same, right justified, at least 20 chars wide %.20P The same, no more than 20 chars wide %-.20P Left justified, maximum twenty chars wide @end smallexample The expression following the format constraints can be a single letter, or an expression enclosed in parentheses or brackets. The allowable expressions are: @table @code @item % Inserts a percent sign. @item t Inserts the results of the value expression specified by @option{-t}. If @option{-t} was not specified, the current report style's value expression is used. @item T Inserts the results of the value expression specified by @option{-T}. If @option{-T} was not specified, the current report style's value expression is used. @item | Inserts a single space. This is useful if a width is specified, for inserting a certain number of spaces. @item _ Inserts a space for each level of an account's depth. That is, if an account has two parents, this construct will insert two spaces. If a minimum width is specified, that much space is inserted for each level of depth. Thus @samp{%5_}, for an account with four parents, will insert twenty spaces. @item (EXPR) Inserts the amount resulting from the value expression given in parentheses. To insert five times the total value of an account, for example, one could say @samp{%12(5*O)}. Note: It's important to put the five first in that expression, so that the commodity doesn't get stripped from the total. @item [DATEFMT] Inserts the result of formatting a posting's date with a date format string, exactly like those supported by @code{strftime}. For example: @samp{%[%Y/%m/%d %H:%M:%S]}. @item S Insert the pathname of the file from which the transaction's data was read. @item B Inserts the beginning character position of that transaction within the file. @item b Inserts the beginning line of that transaction within the file. @item E Inserts the ending character position of that transaction within the file. @item e Inserts the ending line of that transaction within the file. @item D By default, this is the same as @samp{%[%Y/%m%/d]}. The date format used can be changed at any time with the @option{-y} flag, however. Using @samp{%D} gives the user more control over the way dates are output. @item d This is the same as the @samp{%D} option, unless the transaction has an effective date, in which case it prints @samp{[ACTUAL_DATE=EFFECTIVE_DATE]}. @item X If a posting has been cleared, this inserts @samp{*} followed by a space; otherwise nothing is inserted. @item Y This is the same as @samp{%X}, except that it only displays a state character if all of the member postings have the same state. @item C Inserts the checking number for a transaction, in parentheses, followed by a space; if none was specified, nothing is inserted. @item P Inserts the payee related to a posting. @item a Inserts the optimal short name for an account. This is normally used in balance reports. It prints a parent account's name if that name has not been printed yet, otherwise it just prints the account's name. @item A Inserts the full name of an account. @item W This is the same as @samp{%A}, except that it first displays the posting's state @emph{if the transaction's posting states are not all the same}, followed by the full account name. This is offered as a printing optimization, so that combined with @samp{%Y}, only the minimum amount of state detail is printed. @item o Inserts the ``optimized'' form of a posting's amount. This is used by the print report. In some cases, this inserts nothing; in others, it inserts the posting amount and its cost. It's use is not recommend unless you are modifying the print report. @item n Inserts the note associated with a posting, preceded by two spaces and a semi-colon, if it exists. Thus, no none becomes an empty string, while the note @samp{foo} is substituted as @samp{ ; foo}. @item N Inserts the note associated with a posting, if one exists. @item / The @samp{%/} construct is special. It separates a format string between what is printed for the first posting of a transaction, and what is printed for all subsequent postings. If not used, the same format string is used for all postings. @end table @node Journal File Format, Extending with Python, Format Strings, Top @chapter Journal File Format for Developers This chapter offers a complete description of the journal data format, suitable for implementors in other languages to follow. For users, the chapter on keeping a journal is less extensive, but more typical of common usage (@pxref{Keeping a Journal}). Data is collected in the form of @dfn{transactions} which occur in one or more @dfn{journal files}. Each transaction, in turn, is made up of one or more @dfn{postings}, which describe how @dfn{amounts} flow from one @dfn{account} to another. Here is an example of the simplest of journal files: @smallexample 2010/05/31 Just an example Expenses:Some:Account $100.00 Income:Another:Account @end smallexample In this example, there is a transaction date, a payee, or description of the transaction, and two postings. The postings show movement of one hundred dollars from an account within the Income hierarchy, to the specified expense account. The name and meaning of these accounts in arbitrary, with no preferences implied, although you will find it useful to follow standard accounting practice (@pxref{Principles of Accounting}). Since an amount is missing from the second posting, it is assumed to be the inverse of the first. This guarantee the cardinal rule of double-entry accounting: the sum of every transaction must balance to zero, or it is in error. Whenever Ledger encounters a @dfn{null posting} in a transaction, it uses it to balance the remainder. It is also typical---though not enforced---to think of the first posting as the destination, and the final as the source. Thus, the amount of the first posting is typically positive. Consider: @smallexample 2010/05/31 An income transaction Assets:Checking $1,000.00 Income:Salary 2010/05/31 An expense transaction Expenses:Dining $100.00 Assets:Checking @end smallexample @emph{Note:} It is important to note that there must be at least two spaces between the end of the post and the beginning of the amount (including and commdity designator). @section Specifying amounts The heart of a journal is the amounts it records, and this fact is reflected in the diversity of amount expressions allowed. All of them are covered here, though it must be said that sometimes, there are multiple ways to achieve a desired result. @subsection Integer amounts In the simplest form, bare decimal numbers are accepted: @smallexample 2010/05/31 An income transaction Assets:Checking 1000.00 Income:Salary @end smallexample Such amounts may only use an optional period for a decimal point. These are referred to as @dfn{integer amounts} or @dfn{uncommoditized amounts}. In most ways they are similar to @dfn{commoditized amounts}, but for one signficant difference: They always display in reports with @dfn{full precision}. More on this in a moment. For now, a word must be said about how Ledger stores numbers. Every number parsed by Ledger is stored internally as an infinite-precision rational value. Floating-point math is never used, as it cannot be trusted to maintain precision of values. So, in the case of @samp{1000.00} above, the internal value is @samp{100000/100}. While rational numbers are great at not losing precision, the question arises: How should they be displayed? A number like @samp{100000/100} is no problem, since it represents a clean decimal fraction. But what about when the number @samp{1/1} is divided by three? How should one print @samp{1/3}, an infinitely repeating decimal? Ledger gets around this problem by rendering rationals into decimal at the last possible moment, and only for display. As such, some rounding must, at times, occur. If this rounding would affect the calculation of a running total, special accommodation postings are generated to make you aware it has happened. In practice, it happens rarely, but even then it does not reflect adjustment of the @emph{internal amount}, only the displayed amount. What has still not been answered is how Ledger rounds values. Should @samp{1/3} be printed as @samp{0.33} or @samp{0.33333}? For commoditized amounts, the number of decimal places is decided by observing how each commodity is used; but in the case of integer amounts, an arbitrary factor must be chosen. Initially, this factor is six. Thus, @samp{1/3} is printed back as @samp{0.333333}. Further, this rounding factor becomes associated with each particular value, and is carried through mathematical operations. For example, if that particular number were multiplied by itself, the decimal precision of the result would be twelve. Addition and subtraction do not affect precision. Since each integer amount retains its own display precision, this is called @dfn{full precision}, as opposed to commoditized amounts, which always look to their commodity to know what precision they should round to, and so use @dfn{commodity precision}. @subsection Commoditized amounts A @dfn{commoditized amount} is an integer amount which has an associated commodity. This commodity can appear before or after the amount, and may or may not be separated from it by a space. Most characters are allowed in a commodity name, except for the following: @itemize @item Any kind of whitespace @item Numerical digits @item Punctuation: @samp{.,;:?!} @item Mathematical and logical operators: @samp{-+*/^&|=} @item Bracketing characters: @samp{<>[]()}@{@} @item The at symbol: @samp{@@} @end itemize And yet, any of these may appear in a commodity name if it is surrounded by double quotes, for example: @smallexample 100 "EUN+133" @end smallexample If a @dfn{quoted commodity} is found, it is displayed in quotes as well, to avoid any confusion as to which part is the amount, and which part is the commodity. Another feature of commoditized amounts is that they are reported back in the same form as parsed. If you specify dollar amounts using @samp{$100}, they will print the same; likewise with @samp{100 $} or @samp{$100.000}. You may even use decimal commas, such as @samp{$100,00}, or thousand-marks, as in @samp{$10,000.00}. These display characteristics become associated with the commodity, with the result being that all amounts of the same commodity are reported consistently. Where this is most noticeable is the @dfn{display precision}, which is determined by the most precise value seen for a given commodity. In most cases. Ledger makes a distinction by @dfn{observed amounts} and unobserved amounts. An observed amount is critiqued by Ledger to determine how amounts using that commodity should be displayed; unobserved amounts are significant in their value only---no matter how they are specified, it does not change how other amounts in that commodity will be displayed. An example of this is found in cost expressions, covered next. @section Posting costs You have seen how to specify either a commoditized or an integer amount for a posting. But what if the amount you paid for something was in one commodity, and the amount received was another? There are two main ways to express this: @smallexample 2010/05/31 Farmer's Market Assets:My Larder 100 apples Assets:Checking $20.00 @end smallexample In this example, you have paid twenty dollars for one hundred apples. The cost to you is twenty cents per apple, and Ledger calculates this implied cost for you. You can also make the cost explicit using a @dfn{cost amount}: @smallexample 2010/05/31 Farmer's Market Assets:My Larder 100 apples @@ $0.200000 Assets:Checking @end smallexample Here the @dfn{per-unit cost} is given explicitly in the form of a cost amount; and since cost amount are @emph{unobserved}, the use of six decimal places has no effect on how dollar amounts are displayed in the final report. You can also specify the @dfn{total cost}: @smallexample 2010/05/31 Farmer's Market Assets:My Larder 100 apples @@@@ $20 Assets:Checking @end smallexample These three forms have identical meaning. In most cases the first is preferred, but the second two are necessary when more than two postings are involved: @smallexample 2010/05/31 Farmer's Market Assets:My Larder 100 apples @@ $0.200000 Assets:My Larder 100 pineapples @@ $0.33 Assets:My Larder 100 "crab apples" @@ $0.04 Assets:Checking @end smallexample Here the implied cost is @samp{$57.00}, which is entered into the null posting automatically so that the transaction balances. @subsection Primary commodities In every transaction involving more than one commodity, there is always one which is the @dfn{primary commodity}. This commodity should be thought of as the exchange commodity, or the commodity used to buy and sells units of the other commodity. In the fruit examples above, dollars are the primary commodity. This is decided by Ledger on the placement of the commodity in the transaction: @smallexample 2010/05/31 Sample Transaction Expenses 100 secondary Assets 50 primary 2010/05/31 Sample Transaction Expenses 100 secondary @@ 0.5 primary Assets 2010/05/31 Sample Transaction Expenses 100 secondary @@@@ 50 primary Assets @end smallexample The only case where knowledge of primary versus secondary comes into play is in reports that use the @option{-V} or @option{-B} options. With these, only primary commodities are shown. If a transaction uses only one commodity, this commodity is also considered a primary. In fact, when Ledger goes about ensures that all transactions balance to zero, it only ever asks this of primary commodities. @node Extending with Python, Example Data File, Journal File Format, Top @chapter Extending with Python @node Example Data File, Miscellaneous Notes, Extending with Python, Top @appendix Example Journal File: drewr.dat The following journal file is included with the source distribution of ledger. It is called @file{drewr.dat} and exhibits many ledger features, include automatic and virtual transactions, @smallexample ; -*- ledger -*- = /^Income/ (Liabilities:Tithe) 0.12 ~ Monthly Assets:Checking $500.00 Income:Salary 2003/12/01 * Checking balance Assets:Checking $1,000.00 Equity:Opening Balances 2003/12/20 Organic Co-op Expenses:Food:Groceries $ 37.50 ; [=2004/01/01] Expenses:Food:Groceries $ 37.50 ; [=2004/02/01] Expenses:Food:Groceries $ 37.50 ; [=2004/03/01] Expenses:Food:Groceries $ 37.50 ; [=2004/04/01] Expenses:Food:Groceries $ 37.50 ; [=2004/05/01] Expenses:Food:Groceries $ 37.50 ; [=2004/06/01] Assets:Checking $ -225.00 2003/12/28=2004/01/01 Acme Mortgage Liabilities:Mortgage:Principal $ 200.00 Expenses:Interest:Mortgage $ 500.00 Expenses:Escrow $ 300.00 Assets:Checking $ -1000.00 2004/01/02 Grocery Store Expenses:Food:Groceries $ 65.00 Assets:Checking 2004/01/05 Employer Assets:Checking $ 2000.00 Income:Salary 2004/01/14 Bank ; Regular monthly savings transfer Assets:Savings $ 300.00 Assets:Checking 2004/01/19 Grocery Store Expenses:Food:Groceries $ 44.00 Assets:Checking 2004/01/25 Bank ; Transfer to cover car purchase Assets:Checking $ 5,500.00 Assets:Savings ; :nobudget: 2004/01/25 Tom's Used Cars Expenses:Auto $ 5,500.00 ; :nobudget: Assets:Checking 2004/01/27 Book Store Expenses:Books $20.00 Liabilities:MasterCard 2004/02/01 Sale Assets:Checking:Business $ 30.00 Income:Sales @end smallexample @node Miscellaneous Notes, , Example Data File, Top @appendix Miscellaneous Notes Various notes from the discussion list that I haven't incorporated in to the main body of the documentation. @menu * Cookbook:: @end menu @node Cookbook, , Miscellaneous Notes, Miscellaneous Notes @section Cookbook @subsection Invoking Ledger @smallexample ledger --group-by "tag('trip')" bal legder reg --sort "tag('foo')" %foo ledger cleared VWCU NFCU Tithe Misentry ledger register Joint --uncleared ledger register Checking --sort d -d 'd>[2011/04/01]' until 2011/05/25 @end smallexample @subsection Ledger Files @smallexample = /^Income:Taxable/ (Liabilities:Tithe Owed) -0.1 = /Noah/ (Liabilities:Tithe Owed) -0.1 = /Jonah/ (Liabilities:Tithe Owed) -0.1 = /Tithe/ (Liabilities:Tithe Owed) -1.0 @end smallexample @bye