HLEDGER-UI(1)

NAME

hledger-ui - robust, friendly plain text accounting (TUI version)

SYNOPSIS

hledger-ui [OPTS] [QUERYARGS]
hledger ui -- [OPTS] [QUERYARGS]

DESCRIPTION

This manual is for hledger's terminal interface, version 1.31. See also the hledger manual for common concepts and file formats.

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

hledger-ui is hledger's terminal interface, providing an efficient full-window text UI for viewing accounts and transactions, and some limited data entry capability. It is easier than hledger's command-line interface, and sometimes quicker and more convenient than the web interface.

Like hledger, it reads from (and appends to) a journal file specified by the LEDGER_FILE environment variable (defaulting to $HOME/.hledger.journal); or you can specify files with -f options. It can also read timeclock files, timedot files, or any CSV/SSV/TSV file with a date field. (See hledger(1) -> Input for details.)

Unlike hledger, hledger-ui hides all future-dated transactions by default. They can be revealed, along with any rule-generated periodic transactions, by pressing the F key (or starting with --forecast) to enable "forecast mode".

OPTIONS

Any QUERYARGS are interpreted as a hledger search query which filters the data.

hledger-ui provides the following options:

-w --watch
    watch for data and date changes and reload automatically

--theme=default|terminal|greenterm
    use this custom display theme

--menu
    start in the menu screen

--cash
    start in the cash accounts screen

--bs
    start in the balance sheet accounts screen

--is
    start in the income statement accounts screen

--all
    start in the all accounts screen

--register=ACCTREGEX
    start in the (first) matched account's register screen

--change
    show period balances (changes) at startup instead of historical balances

-l --flat
    show accounts as a flat list (default)

-t --tree
    show accounts as a tree

hledger-ui also supports many of hledger's general options (and the hledger manual's command line tips also apply here):

  General help options

-h --help
    show general or COMMAND help

--man
    show general or COMMAND user manual with man

--info
    show general or COMMAND user manual with info

--version
    show general or ADDONCMD version

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

  General input options

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

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

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

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

--anon
    anonymize accounts and payees

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

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

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

  General reporting options

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

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

-D --daily
    multiperiod/multicolumn report by day

-W --weekly
    multiperiod/multicolumn report by week

-M --monthly
    multiperiod/multicolumn report by month

-Q --quarterly
    multiperiod/multicolumn report by quarter

-Y --yearly
    multiperiod/multicolumn report by year

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

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

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

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

-P --pending
    include only pending postings/txns

-C --cleared
    include only cleared postings/txns

-R --real
    include only non-virtual postings

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

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

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

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

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

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

--infer-equity
    infer conversion equity postings from costs

--infer-costs
    infer costs from conversion equity postings

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Some reporting options can also be written as query arguments.

MOUSE

In most modern terminals, you can navigate through the screens with a mouse or touchpad:

•   Use mouse wheel or trackpad to scroll up and down

•   Click on list items to go deeper

•   Click on the left margin (column 0) to go back.

KEYS

Keyboard gives more control.

? shows a help dialog listing all keys. (Some of these also appear in the quick help at the bottom of each screen.) Press ? again (or ESCAPE, or LEFT, or q) to close it. The following keys work on most screens:

The cursor keys navigate: RIGHT or ENTER goes deeper, LEFT returns to the previous screen, UP/DOWN/PGUP/PGDN/HOME/END move up and down through lists. Emacs-style (CTRL-p/CTRL-n/CTRL-f/CTRL-b) and VI-style (k,j,l,h) movement keys are also supported. A tip: movement speed is limited by your keyboard repeat rate, to move faster you may want to adjust it. (If you're on a mac, the karabiner app is one way to do that.)

With shift pressed, the cursor keys adjust the report period, limiting the transactions to be shown (by default, all are shown). SHIFT-DOWN/UP steps downward and upward through these standard report period durations: year, quarter, month, week, day. Then, SHIFT-LEFT/RIGHT moves to the previous/next period. T sets the report period to today. With the -w/--watch option, when viewing a "current" period (the current day, week, month, quarter, or year), the period will move automatically to track the current date. To set a non-standard period, you can use / and a date: query.

(Mac users: SHIFT-DOWN/UP keys do not work by default in Terminal, as of MacOS Monterey. You can configure them as follows: open Terminal, press CMD-comma to open preferences, click Profiles, select your current terminal profile on the left, click Keyboard on the right, click + and add this for Shift-Down: \033[1;2B, click + and add this for Shift-Up: \033[1;2A. Press the Escape key to enter the \033 part, you can't type it directly.)

/ lets you set a general filter query limiting the data shown, using the same query terms as in hledger and hledger-web. While editing the query, you can use CTRL-a/e/d/k, BS, cursor keys; press ENTER to set it, or ESCAPEto cancel. There are also keys for quickly adjusting some common filters like account depth and transaction status (see below). BACKSPACE or DELETE removes all filters, showing all transactions.

As mentioned above, by default hledger-ui hides future transactions - both ordinary transactions recorded in the journal, and periodic transactions generated by rule. F toggles forecast mode, in which future/forecasted transactions are shown.

ESCAPE resets the UI state and jumps back to the top screen, restoring the app's initial state at startup. Or, it cancels minibuffer data entry or the help dialog.

CTRL-l redraws the screen and centers the selection if possible (selections near the top won't be centered, since we don't scroll above the top).

g reloads from the data file(s) and updates the current screen and any previous screens. (With large files, this could cause a noticeable pause.)

I toggles balance assertion checking. Disabling balance assertions temporarily can be useful for troubleshooting.

a runs command-line hledger's add command, and reloads the updated file. This allows some basic data entry.

A is like a, but runs the hledger-iadd tool, which provides a terminal interface. This key will be available if hledger-iadd is installed in $path.

E runs $HLEDGER_UI_EDITOR, or $EDITOR, or a default (emacsclient -a "" -nw) on the journal file. With some editors (emacs, vi), the cursor will be positioned at the current transaction when invoked from the register and transaction screens, and at the error location (if possible) when invoked from the error screen.

B toggles cost mode, showing amounts in their cost's commodity (like toggling the -B/--cost flag).

V toggles value mode, showing amounts' current market value in their default valuation commodity (like toggling the -V/--market flag). Note, "current market value" means the value on the report end date if specified, otherwise today. To see the value on another date, you can temporarily set that as the report end date. Eg: to see a transaction as it was valued on july 30, go to the accounts or register screen, press /, and add date:-7/30 to the query.

At most one of cost or value mode can be active at once.

There's not yet any visual reminder when cost or value mode is active; for now pressing b b v should reliably reset to normal mode.

q quits the application.

Additional screen-specific keys are described below.

SCREENS

At startup, hledger-ui shows a menu screen by default. From here you can navigate to other screens using the cursor keys: UP/DOWN to select, RIGHT to move to the selected screen, LEFT to return to the previous screen. Or you can use ESC to return directly to the top menu screen.

You can also use a command line flag to specific a different startup screen (--cs, --bs, --is, --all, or --register=ACCT).

  Menu

This is the top-most screen. From here you can navigate to several screens listing accounts of various types. Note some of these may not show anything until you have configured account types.

  Cash accounts

This screen shows "cash" (ie, liquid asset) accounts (like hledger balancesheet type:c). It always shows balances (historical ending balances on the date shown in the title line).

  Balance sheet accounts

This screen shows asset, liability and equity accounts (like hledger balancesheetequity). It always shows balances.

  Income statement accounts

This screen shows revenue and expense accounts (like hledger incomestatement). It always shows changes (balance changes in the period shown in the title line).

  All accounts

This screen shows all accounts in your journal (unless filtered by a query; like hledger balance). It shows balances by default; you can toggle showing changes with the H key.

  Register

This screen shows the transactions affecting a particular account. Each line represents one transaction, and shows:

•   the other account(s) involved, in abbreviated form. (If there are both real and virtual postings, it shows only the accounts affected by real postings.)

•   the overall change to the current account's balance; positive for an inflow to this account, negative for an outflow.

•   the running total after the transaction. With the H key you can toggle between

    •   the period total, which is from just the transactions displayed

    •   or the historical total, which includes any undisplayed transactions before the start of the report period (and matching the filter query if any). This will be the running historical balance (what you would see on a bank's website, eg) if not disturbed by a query.

Transactions affecting this account's subaccounts will be included in the register if the accounts screen is in tree mode, or if it's in list mode but this account has subaccounts which are not shown due to a depth limit. In other words, the register always shows the transactions contributing to the balance shown on the accounts screen. Tree mode/list mode can be toggled with t here also.

U toggles filtering by unmarked status, showing or hiding unmarked transactions. Similarly, P toggles pending transactions, and C toggles cleared transactions. (By default, transactions with all statuses are shown; if you activate one or two status filters, only those transactions are shown; and if you activate all three, the filter is removed.)

R toggles real mode, in which virtual postings are ignored.

z toggles nonzero mode, in which only transactions posting a nonzero change are shown (hledger-ui shows zero items by default, unlike command-line hledger).

Press RIGHT to view the selected transaction in detail.

  Transaction

This screen shows a single transaction, as a general journal entry, similar to hledger's print command and journal format (hledger_journal(5)).

The transaction's date(s) and any cleared flag, transaction code, description, comments, along with all of its account postings are shown. Simple transactions have two postings, but there can be more (or in certain cases, fewer).

UP and DOWN will step through all transactions listed in the previous account register screen. In the title bar, the numbers in parentheses show your position within that account register. They will vary depending on which account register you came from (remember most transactions appear in multiple account registers). The #N number preceding them is the transaction's position within the complete unfiltered journal, which is a more stable id (at least until the next reload).

On this screen (and the register screen), the E key will open your text editor with the cursor positioned at the current transaction if possible.

This screen has a limitation with showing file updates: it will not show them until you exit and re-enter it. So eg to see the effect of using the E key, currently you must: - press E, edit and save the file, then exit the editor, returning to hledger-ui - press g to reload the file (or use -w/--watch mode) - press LEFT then RIGHT to exit and re-enter the transaction screen.

  Error

This screen will appear if there is a problem, such as a parse error, when you press g to reload. Once you have fixed the problem, press g again to reload and resume normal operation. (Or, you can press escape to cancel the reload attempt.)

TIPS

  Watch mode

One of hledger-ui's best features is the auto-reloading -w/--watch mode. With this flag, it will update the display automatically whenever changes are saved to the data files.

This is very useful when reconciling. A good workflow is to have your bank's online register open in a browser window, for reference; the journal file open in an editor window; and hledger-ui in watch mode in a terminal window, eg:

    $ hledger-ui --watch --register checking -C

As you mark things cleared in the editor, you can see the effect immediately without having to context switch. This leaves more mental bandwidth for your accounting. Of course you can still interact with hledger-ui when needed, eg to toggle cleared mode, or to explore the history.

There are currently some limitations with --watch:

It may not work correctly for you, depending on platform or system configuration. (Eg #836.)

At least on mac, there can be a slow build-up of CPU usage over time, until the program is restarted (or, suspending and restarting with CTRL-z fg may be enough).

It will not detect file changes made by certain editors, such as Jetbrains IDEs or gedit, or on certain less common filesystems. (To work around, press g to reload manually, or try #1617's fs.inotify.max_user_watches workaround and let us know.)

If you are viewing files mounted from another machine, the system clocks on both machines should be roughly in agreement.

  Debug output

You can add --debug[=N] to the command line to log debug output. This will be logged to the file hledger-ui.log in the current directory. N ranges from 1 (least output, the default) to 9 (maximum output).

ENVIRONMENT

COLUMNS The screen width to use. Default: the full terminal width.

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

BUGS

We welcome bug reports in the hledger issue tracker (shortcut: http://bugs.hledger.org), or on the #hledger chat or hledger mail list (https://hledger.org/support).

Some known issues:

-f- doesn't work (hledger-ui can't read from stdin).

If you press g with large files, there could be a noticeable pause.

The Transaction screen does not update from file changes until you exit and re-endter it (see SCREENS > Transaction above).

--watch is not yet fully robust on all platforms (see Watch mode above).

AUTHORS
Simon Michael <simon@joyful.com> and contributors.
See http://hledger.org/CREDITS.html

COPYRIGHT
Copyright 2007-2023 Simon Michael and contributors.

LICENSE
Released under GNU GPL v3 or later.

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