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 1twinkling in their father’s CRT.
Ledger-mode assists you in maintaining input files for Ledger, running reports and much more...
The Emacs lisp source for Ledger-mode is included with the source distribution of Ledger. It is entirely included in the lisp subdirectory. To use Ledger-mode, include the following in your Emacs initialization file (~/.emacs, ~/.emacs.d/init.el, or ~/.Aquamacs/Preferences.el).
(autoload 'ledger-mode "ledger-mode" "A major mode for Ledger" t) (add-to-list 'load-path (expand-file-name "/path/to/ledger/source/lisp/")) (add-to-list 'auto-mode-alist '("\\.ledger$" . ledger-mode))
This sets up Emacs to automatically recognize files that end with .ledger and start Ledger-mode. Nothing else should be required as long as the ledger command line utility is properly installed.
Load the demo file demo.ledger from the Ledger source test/input directory. The ledger will be loaded and font highlighted. At this point you could manually edit transactions and run Ledger from a convenient command line.
The biggest task of maintaining a ledger is ensuring that it matches the outside world. This process is called reconciliation (see Basics of Reconciliation) and can be quite onerous. Ledger-mode attempts to make it as painless as possible.
In the demo.ledger buffer type C-c C-r. If cursor is on an account, Ledger-mode will propose this account, or in the Minibuffer, will prompt for an account to reconcile. Hit RET if you are happy with proposed account, or enter ‘Checking’ as example. Emacs will then prompt for a target value. The target value is the amount you want the cleared transactions in the buffer to total. Normally this would be the ending value from your bank statement, or the latest value in your on-line transaction summary. Enter ‘1710’. Note that Ledger-mode assumes you are using ‘$’ (USD) as your default commodity, this can be easily changed in the customization variables. See Ledger-mode Customization.
You now see a list of uncleared transactions in a buffer below the demo.ledger buffer. Touching the SPC bar will mark a transaction as pending and display the current cleared (and pending) balance, along with the difference remaining to meet your target. Clear the first three transactions, and you will see the difference to target reach ‘$0’. End the reconciliation by typing C-c C-c. This saves the demo.ledger buffer and marks the transactions and finally cleared. Type q to close out the reconciliation buffer.
The real power of Ledger is in its reporting capabilities. Reports can be run and displayed in a separate Emacs buffer. In the demo.ledger buffer, type C-c C-o C-r. In the Minibuffer Emacs will prompt for a report name. There are a few built-in reports, and you can add any report you need See Adding and Editing Reports.
In the Minibuffer type ‘account’. When prompted for an account type ‘checking’. In a buffer named *Ledger Report*, you will see a Ledger register report. You can move around the buffer, with the point on a transaction, type RET. Ledger-mode will take you directly to that transaction in the demo.ledger buffer.
Another built-in report is the balance report. In the demo.ledger buffer, type C-c C-o C-r. When prompted for a report to run, type ‘bal’, and a balance report of all accounts will be shown.
Beyond the two ways of quickly adding transactions (see Quick Add) Ledger-mode assists you by providing robust TAB completion for payees and accounts. Ledger-mode will scan the existing buffer for payees and accounts. Included files are not currently included in the completion scan. Ledger-mode respects Emacs’s variables that govern TAB completion, see especially tab-always-indent.
To cycle between completions when hitting TAB multiple times, you can adjust the standard completion configuration like this:
(add-hook 'ledger-mode-hook (lambda () (setq-local tab-always-indent 'complete) (setq-local completion-cycle-threshold t) (setq-local ledger-complete-in-steps t)))
Ledger-mode will help you keep your amounts aligned. When indenting or completing, Ledger-mode will automatically place any amounts such that their last digit is aligned to the column specified by ledger-post-amount-alignment-column, which defaults to ‘52’. See Ledger Post Customization Group.
To prevent the automatic realignment of amounts, disable ledger-post-auto-align. See Ledger Post Customization Group.
GNU Emacs Calculator, aka ‘Calc’, is a very powerful Reverse Polish Notation calculator built into all recent version of Emacs. Ledger-mode makes it easy to calculate values for amount by integrating Calc. With the point anywhere in the same line as a posting, typing C-c C-b will bring up the Calc buffer, and push the current amount for the posting onto the top of the Calc stack. Perform any calculations you need to arrive at the final value, then type y to yank the value at the top of stack back into the ledger buffer. Note: Calc does not directly support commas as decimal separators. Ledger-mode will translate values from decimal-comma format to decimal-period format for use in Calc, but it cannot intercept the value being yanked from the Calc stack, so decimal-comma users will have to manually replace the period with a comma.
Ledger considers transaction or posting to be in one of three states: uncleared, cleared, and pending. For calculation Ledger ignores these states unless specifically instructed to use them. Ledger-mode assigns some additional meaning to the states:
- Uncleared. No state. This is equivalent to sticking a check in the mail. It has been obligated, but not been cashed by the recipient. It could also apply to credit/debit card transactions that have not been cleared into your account balance. You bank may call these transactions pending, but Ledger-mode uses a slightly different meaning.
- Pending. Ledger-mode’s reconciliation function see pending transactions as an intermediate step in reconciling an account. When doing a reconciliation (see Reconciliation), marking a transaction as pending means that you have seen the transaction finally recorded by the recipient, but you have not completely reconciled the account.
- Cleared. The transaction has been completely recognized by all parties to the transaction.
Typing C-c C-c, depending where is the point, will clear the complete transaction, or an individual posting. This places an asterisk ‘*’ prior to the payee for the complete transaction, or prior to the account for an individual posting. When point is inside a transaction, specifically on an individual posting, you can still clear the complete transaction by typing C-c C-e.
When editing a transaction, liberal use of the TAB key can keep the transaction well formatted. If you want to have Ledger-mode cleanup the formatting of a transaction you can use ‘Align Transaction’ or ‘Align Region’ from the menu bar.
The menu item ‘Clean-up Buffer’ sorts all transactions in the buffer by date, removes extraneous empty lines and aligns every transaction.
Along with normal buffer editing methods to delete text, Ledger-mode provides an easy way to delete the transaction under point: C-c C-d. The advantage to using this method is that the complete transaction operation is in the undo buffer.
As you operating on the Ledger files, they may become disorganized. For the most part, Ledger doesn’t care, but our human brains prefer a bit of order. Sorting the transactions in a buffer into chronological order can help bring order to chaos. Either using ‘Sort Region’ menu entry or typing C-c C-s will sort all of the transactions in a region by date. Ledger-mode isn’t particularly smart about handling dates and it simply sorts the transactions using the string at the beginning of the transaction. So, you should use the preferred ISO 8601 standard date format ‘YYYY/MM/DD’ which easily sorts.
Note, there is a menu entry ‘Sort Buffer’ to sort the entire buffer. Special transactions like automated transaction, will be moved in the sorting process and may not function correctly afterwards. For this reason there is no key sequence.
You can limit the allowed sort region by using embedded Ledger-mode markup within your ledger. For example:
<<< information to not sort >>>
; Ledger-mode: Start sort
<<< transactions to sort >>>
; Ledger-mode: End sort
<<< information to not sort >>>
You can use menu entries ‘Mark Sort Beginning’ to insert start and ‘Mark Sort End’ to insert end markers. These functions will automatically delete old markers and put new marker at point.
Often you will want to run Ledger register reports just to look at a specific set of transactions. If you don’t need the running total calculation handled by Ledger, Ledger-mode provides a rapid way of narrowing what is displayed in the buffer in a way that is simpler than the Ledger register command.
Based on the Emacs Occur mode by Alexey Veretennikov, Ledger-occur hides all transactions that do not meet a specific regular expression. The regular expression can match on any part of the transaction. If you want to find all transactions whose amount ends in ‘.37’, you can do that (I don’t know why, but hey, whatever ever floats you aerostat).
Using C-c C-f or the ‘Narrow to Regex’ menu entry, enter a regular expression in the Minibuffer. Ledger-mode will hide all other transactions. For details of the regular expression syntax, see your Emacs documentation. A few examples using the demo.ledger are given here:
‘Groceries’
Show only transactions that have a posting to the ‘Groceries’ account.
‘^2011/01’
Show only transactions occurring in January of 2011.
‘^2011/.*/25’
Show only transactions occurring on the 25th of the month in 2011.
‘auto’
Show only transactions with payees or accounts or comments containing. ‘auto’
‘harley$’
Show only transactions with any line ending with ‘harley’.
To show back all transactions simply invoke ‘Narrow to Regex’ or C-c C-f again.
If you’ve edited some transactions after narrowing such that they would no longer match the regular expression, you can refresh the narrowed view using C-c C-g.
Even in this relatively modern era, financial transactions do not happen instantaneously, unless you are paying cash. When you swipe your debit card the money may take several days to actually come out of your account, or a check may take several days to clear. That is the root of the difference between obligating funds and expending funds. Obligation says you have agreed to pay it, the expenditure doesn’t happen until the money actually leaves your account. Or in the case of receiving payment, you have an account receivable until the money has actually made it to you.
After an account has been reconciled you have verified that all the transactions in that account have been correctly recorded and all parties agree.
To start reconciling an account you must have a target, both the transactions that you know about and the transactions the bank knows about. You can get this from a monthly statement, or from checking your on-line transaction history. It also helps immensely to know the final cleared balance you are aiming for.
Use menu ‘Reconcile Account’ or keyboard shortcut C-c C-r to start reconciliation.
If cursor is on an account, Ledger-mode will propose this account, or in the Minibuffer, will prompt for an account to reconcile. Hit RET if you are happy with proposed account, or enter ‘Checking’ as example. Ledger-mode is not particular about what you enter for the account. You can leave it blank and *Reconcile* buffer will show you all uncleared transactions.
After you enter the account enter the target amount. It is helpful to enter an amount with a commodity. You can also leave it blank, you will be able to clear transactions but not benefit from balance calculations. It assumes initially that you are using ‘$’ (USD) as your default commodity. If you are working in a different currency you can change the default in variable ledger-reconcile-default-commodity to whatever you need. If you work in multiple commodities simply enter the commoditized amount (for example ‘340 VSDX’, for 340 shares of VSDX).
Ledger-mode reconcile cannot currently reconcile accounts that have multiple commodities, such as brokerage accounts. You may use reconciliation mode to clear transactions, but balance calculations will not display the complete list of commodities.
The *Reconcile* buffer will show all the uncleared transactions that meet the criteria set in the regex. By default uncleared transactions are shown in red. When you have verified that a transaction has been correctly and completely recorded by the opposing party, mark the transaction as pending using the SPC bar. Continue this process until you agree with the opposing party and the difference from your target is zero.
If you find errors during reconciliation. You can visit the transaction under point in the *Reconcile* buffer by hitting the RET key. This will take you to the transaction in the Ledger buffer. When you have finished editing the transaction, saving the buffer will automatically return you to the *Reconcile* buffer and you can mark the transaction if appropriate.
Once you have marked all transactions as pending and the cleared balance is correct. Finish the reconciliation by typing C-c C-c. This marks all pending transactions as cleared and saves the ledger buffer.
Type q to close out the reconciliation buffer. If variable ledger-reconcile-finish-force-quit is set, the reconciliation buffer will be killed automatically after C-c C-c.
While reconciling, you may find new transactions that need to be entered into your ledger. Simply type a to bring up the quick add for the ledger buffer.
Typing d will delete the transaction under point in the *Reconcile* buffer from the ledger buffer.
You can conveniently switch the account being reconciled by typing g, and entering a new account to reconcile. This simply restarts the reconcile process. Any transactions that were marked pending in the ledger buffer are left in that state when the account is switched.
If for some reason during reconciliation your target amount changes, type t and enter the new target value.
The real power behind Ledger is in its amazing reporting capability. Ledger-mode provides easy facility to run reports directly from Emacs. It has four reports built-in and facilities for adding custom reports.
Typing C-c C-o C-r or using menu ‘Run Report’ prompts for the name of a saved report. The built-in reports are:
bal
Produce a balance reports of all accounts.
reg
Produce a register report of all transactions.
payee
Prompt for a payee, then produce a register report of all transactions involving that payee.
account
Prompt for an account, then produce a register report of all transactions involving that account.
While viewing reports you can easily switch back and forth between the ledger buffer and the *Ledger Report* buffer. In *Ledger Report* buffer, typing RET will take you to that transaction in the ledger buffer. While in the ledger buffer C-c C-o C-g returns you to the *Ledger Report* buffer.
By default Ledger-mode will refresh the report buffer when the ledger buffer is saved. If you want to rerun the report at another time C-c C-o C-a. This is useful if you have other programs altering your ledger file outside of Emacs.
If you type a report name that Ledger-mode doesn’t recognize it will prompt you for a ledger command line to run. That command is automatically saved with the name given and you can re-run it at any time.
There are two ways to edit the command line for a report. The first is to provide a prefix argument to the run-report command. For example, type M-1 C-c C-o C-r. This will prompt you for the report name, then present the report command line to be edited. When you hit RET, the report will be run, but it will not be permanently saved. If you want to save it, type S in the *Ledger Report* buffer you will have the option to give it a new name, or overwrite the old report.
Deleting reports is accomplished by typing C-c C-o C-e or using ‘Edit Report’ menu in the ledger buffer, or typing e in the *Ledger Report* buffer. This takes you to the Emacs customization window for the Ledger Reports variables. Use the widgets to delete the report you want removed.
Typing C-c C-o C-s will prompt for a name and save the current report.
It is sometimes convenient to leave room to customize a report without saving the command line every time. For example running a register report for a specific account entered at runtime by the user. The built-in report account does exactly that, using a variable expansion to prompt the user for the account to use. There are four variables that can be expanded to run a report:
ledger-file
Returns the file to be operated on.
payee
Prompts for a payee.
account
Prompt for an account.
tagname
Prompt for a meta-data tag name.
tagvalue
Prompt for a meta-data tag value.
month
Return the current month.
You can use these expansion values in your ledger report commands. For example, if you wanted to specify a register report the displayed transactions from a user-determined account with a particular meta-data tag value, you specify the following command line:
ledger -f %(ledger-file) reg %(account) \ --limit \"tag('my-tag') =~/%(value)/\"
Note how the double-quotes are escaped with back-slashes.
Additionally, if you want a report showing a particular month and be able to easily change that month, you can specify a period using the %(month) specifier like this:
ledger -f %(ledger-file) balance --period %(month) ^Income ^Expenses
When you do this, you can use M-p or M-n to re-open the same report with the previous or next month.
Often, banks show their on-line transaction histories with the most recent transaction at the top. Ledger itself cannot do a sensible ledger report in reverse chronological order, if you sort on reverse date the calculation will also run in the opposite direction. If you want to compare a ledger register report to a bank report with the most recent transactions at the top, type R in the *Ledger Report* buffer and it will reverse the order of the transactions and maintain the proper mathematical sense.
The Ledger program provides for automating transactions but these transaction aren’t real, they only exist inside a ledger session and are not reflected in the actual data file. Many transactions are very repetitive, but may vary slightly in the date they occur on, or the amount. Some transactions are weekly, monthly, quarterly or annually. Ledger mode provides a way to schedule upcoming transaction with a flexible scheduler that allows you to specify the transactions in a separate ledger file and calculate the upcoming occurrences of those transactions. You can then copy the transactions into your live data file.
The format for specifying transactions is identical to Ledger’s file format with the exception of the date field. The data field is modified by surrounding it with brackets and using wild cards and special characters to specify when the transactions should appear.
Some transactions occur every relative to the day of the week rather than the date of the month. For example, many people are paid every two weeks without regard to the day of the month. Other events may occur on specific days regardless of the date. For example the following transactions creates a transaction every other Thursday:
[2014/11/27+2Th] Paycheck Income:Job $1000.00 Assets:Checking
It is necessary to specify a starting date in order for this type of recurrence relation to be specified. The day names are two character codes that default to Mo, Tu, We, Th, Fr, Sa, Su, for Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday respectively. You can change the codes to something more convenient for your locale by customizing the ledger ledger-schedule-week-days. They must be two characters long.
Ledger-mode has several options available for configuration. All options can be configured through the Emacs customization menus, or specified in your Emacs initialization file. The complete list of options is shown below. To change the option using the Emacs customization menu, simply choose customize in the Options menu and look for Ledger under the data options. Alternatively you can choose ‘Customize Specific Group’ and enter ‘Ledger’ as the group.