path: root/doc/L3-Journal.texi

@c -*-texinfo-*-

@node Keeping a Journal, Most Basic Entry, 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::            
* Commodities::                 
* Structuring Your Accounts::   
* Transaction Notes and Tags::  
* File Format::                 
* Archiving Previous Years ::   
* Ledger Tutorial ::            
@end menu

@node Most Basic Entry, 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}) for details and suggestions regarding
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 Commodities, Structuring Your Accounts, Most Basic Entry, Keeping a Journal
@section Commodities

LEDGER is agnostic when it comes to how you value your accounts.
Dollars, Euros, Pounds, Francs, etc. are just ``commodities''.  Holdings
in stocks, bonds, mutual funds and other financial instrument can be
label using whatever is convenient for you (stock ticker symbols are
suggested for publicly traded assets).@footnote{you can track ANYTHING,
even time. As long as it cannot be created or destroyed inside your
accounting system.}

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 has
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  50.00 Euros
    Assets:Checking  $-66.00

2011/09/24  Dinner in Munich
    Expenses:Business:Travel  35.00 Euro
    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 Euros was spent on Dinner in Munich.


@node Structuring Your Accounts, Transaction Notes and Tags , 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: Expenses, Assets,
Income, Liabilities and Equity.  Briefly, you can think of these as places money goes,
places money sits, places money comes from and money you owe.

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.

@node Transaction Notes and Tags, File Format, Structuring Your Accounts, Keeping a Journal
@section 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
   ldeger 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.



@node File Format, Command-line Syntax ,Transaction Notes and Tags, Keeping a Journal
@section File format

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:

@example
DATE[=EDATE] [*|!] [(CODE)] DESC
@end example

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:

@example
  ACCOUNT  AMOUNT  [; NOTE]
@end example

The @samp{ACCOUNT} may be surrounded by parentheses if it is a virtual
postings, or square brackets if it is a virtual postings 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]}.

@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.

@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:
@example
P DATE SYMBOL PRICE
@end example

@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:
@example
N SYMBOL
@end example

@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:
@example
D $1,000.00
@end example

@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:
@example
C 1.00 Kb = 1024 bytes
@end example

@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 , , ,Keeping a Journal
@section Archiving Previous Years

@node Ledger Tutorial , , ,Keeping a Journal
@section Ledger Tutorial