balance, bal, b
Show accounts and their balances.

_FLAGS

The balance command is hledger's most versatile command. Note, despite
the name, it is not always used for showing real-world account balances;
the more accounting-aware balancesheet and incomestatement may be more
convenient for that.

By default, it displays all accounts, and each account's change in
balance during the entire period of the journal. Balance changes are
calculated by adding up the postings in each account. You can limit the
postings matched, by a query, to see fewer accounts, changes over a
different time period, changes from only cleared transactions, etc.

If you include an account's complete history of postings in the report,
the balance change is equivalent to the account's current ending
balance. For a real-world account, typically you won't have all
transactions in the journal; instead you'll have all transactions after
a certain date, and an "opening balances" transaction setting the
correct starting balance on that date. Then the balance command will
show real-world account balances. In some cases the -H/--historical flag
is used to ensure this (more below).

The balance command can produce several styles of report:

Classic balance report

This is the original balance report, as found in Ledger. It usually
looks like this:

$ hledger balance
                 $-1  assets
                  $1    bank:saving
                 $-2    cash
                  $2  expenses
                  $1    food
                  $1    supplies
                 $-2  income
                 $-1    gifts
                 $-1    salary
                  $1  liabilities:debts
--------------------
                   0

By default, accounts are displayed hierarchically, with subaccounts
indented below their parent. At each level of the tree, accounts are
sorted by account code if any, then by account name. Or with
-S/--sort-amount, by their balance amount, largest first.

"Boring" accounts, which contain a single interesting subaccount and no
balance of their own, are elided into the following line for more
compact output. (Eg above, the "liabilities" account.) Use --no-elide to
prevent this.

Account balances are "inclusive" - they include the balances of any
subaccounts.

Accounts which have zero balance (and no non-zero subaccounts) are
omitted. Use -E/--empty to show them.

A final total is displayed by default; use -N/--no-total to suppress it,
eg:

$ hledger balance -p 2008/6 expenses --no-total
                  $2  expenses
                  $1    food
                  $1    supplies

Customising the classic balance report

You can customise the layout of classic balance reports with
--format FMT:

$ hledger balance --format "%20(account) %12(total)"
              assets          $-1
         bank:saving           $1
                cash          $-2
            expenses           $2
                food           $1
            supplies           $1
              income          $-2
               gifts          $-1
              salary          $-1
   liabilities:debts           $1
---------------------------------
                                0

The FMT format string (plus a newline) specifies the formatting applied
to each account/balance pair. It may contain any suitable text, with
data fields interpolated like so:

%[MIN][.MAX](FIELDNAME)

-   MIN pads with spaces to at least this width (optional)

-   MAX truncates at this width (optional)

-   FIELDNAME must be enclosed in parentheses, and can be one of:

    -   depth_spacer - a number of spaces equal to the account's depth,
        or if MIN is specified, MIN * depth spaces.
    -   account - the account's name
    -   total - the account's balance/posted total, right justified

Also, FMT can begin with an optional prefix to control how
multi-commodity amounts are rendered:

-   %_ - render on multiple lines, bottom-aligned (the default)
-   %^ - render on multiple lines, top-aligned
-   %, - render on one line, comma-separated

There are some quirks. Eg in one-line mode, %(depth_spacer) has no
effect, instead %(account) has indentation built in. Experimentation may
be needed to get pleasing results.

Some example formats:

-   %(total) - the account's total
-   %-20.20(account) - the account's name, left justified, padded to 20
    characters and clipped at 20 characters
-   %,%-50(account)  %25(total) - account name padded to 50 characters,
    total padded to 20 characters, with multiple commodities rendered on
    one line
-   %20(total)  %2(depth_spacer)%-(account) - the default format for the
    single-column balance report

Colour support

In terminal output, when colour is enabled, the balance command shows
negative amounts in red.

Flat mode

To see a flat list instead of the default hierarchical display, use
--flat. In this mode, accounts (unless depth-clipped) show their full
names and "exclusive" balance, excluding any subaccount balances. In
this mode, you can also use --drop N to omit the first few account name
components.

$ hledger balance -p 2008/6 expenses -N --flat --drop 1
                  $1  food
                  $1  supplies

Depth limited balance reports

With --depth N or depth:N or just -N, balance reports show accounts only
to the specified numeric depth. This is very useful to summarise a
complex set of accounts and get an overview.

$ hledger balance -N -1
                 $-1  assets
                  $2  expenses
                 $-2  income
                  $1  liabilities

Flat-mode balance reports, which normally show exclusive balances, show
inclusive balances at the depth limit.

Percentages

With -% or --percent, balance reports show each account's value
expressed as a percentage of the column's total. This is useful to get
an overview of the relative sizes of account balances. For example to
obtain an overview of expenses:

$ hledger balance expenses -%
             100.0 %  expenses
              50.0 %    food
              50.0 %    supplies
--------------------
             100.0 %

Note that --tree does not have an effect on -%. The percentages are
always relative to the total sum of each column, they are never relative
to the parent account.

Since the percentages are relative to the columns sum, it is usually not
useful to calculate percentages if the signs of the amounts are mixed.
Although the results are technically correct, they are most likely
useless. Especially in a balance report that sums up to zero (eg
hledger balance -B) all percentage values will be zero.

This flag does not work if the report contains any mixed commodity
accounts. If there are mixed commodity accounts in the report be sure to
use -V or -B to coerce the report into using a single commodity.

Multicolumn balance report

Multicolumn or tabular balance reports are a very useful hledger
feature, and usually the preferred style. They share many of the above
features, but they show the report as a table, with columns representing
time periods. This mode is activated by providing a reporting interval.

There are three types of multicolumn balance report, showing different
information:

1.  By default: each column shows the sum of postings in that period, ie
    the account's change of balance in that period. This is useful eg
    for a monthly income statement:

    $ hledger balance --quarterly income expenses -E
    Balance changes in 2008:

                       ||  2008q1  2008q2  2008q3  2008q4 
    ===================++=================================
     expenses:food     ||       0      $1       0       0 
     expenses:supplies ||       0      $1       0       0 
     income:gifts      ||       0     $-1       0       0 
     income:salary     ||     $-1       0       0       0 
    -------------------++---------------------------------
                       ||     $-1      $1       0       0 

2.  With --cumulative: each column shows the ending balance for that
    period, accumulating the changes across periods, starting from 0 at
    the report start date:

    $ hledger balance --quarterly income expenses -E --cumulative
    Ending balances (cumulative) in 2008:

                       ||  2008/03/31  2008/06/30  2008/09/30  2008/12/31 
    ===================++=================================================
     expenses:food     ||           0          $1          $1          $1 
     expenses:supplies ||           0          $1          $1          $1 
     income:gifts      ||           0         $-1         $-1         $-1 
     income:salary     ||         $-1         $-1         $-1         $-1 
    -------------------++-------------------------------------------------
                       ||         $-1           0           0           0 

3.  With --historical/-H: each column shows the actual historical ending
    balance for that period, accumulating the changes across periods,
    starting from the actual balance at the report start date. This is
    useful eg for a multi-period balance sheet, and when you are showing
    only the data after a certain start date:

    $ hledger balance ^assets ^liabilities --quarterly --historical --begin 2008/4/1
    Ending balances (historical) in 2008/04/01-2008/12/31:

                          ||  2008/06/30  2008/09/30  2008/12/31 
    ======================++=====================================
     assets:bank:checking ||          $1          $1           0 
     assets:bank:saving   ||          $1          $1          $1 
     assets:cash          ||         $-2         $-2         $-2 
     liabilities:debts    ||           0           0          $1 
    ----------------------++-------------------------------------
                          ||           0           0           0 

Note that --cumulative or --historical/-H disable --row-total/-T, since
summing end balances generally does not make sense.

Multicolumn balance reports display accounts in flat mode by default; to
see the hierarchy, use --tree.

With a reporting interval (like --quarterly above), the report start/end
dates will be adjusted if necessary so that they encompass the displayed
report periods. This is so that the first and last periods will be
"full" and comparable to the others.

The -E/--empty flag does two things in multicolumn balance reports:
first, the report will show all columns within the specified report
period (without -E, leading and trailing columns with all zeroes are not
shown). Second, all accounts which existed at the report start date will
be considered, not just the ones with activity during the report period
(use -E to include low-activity accounts which would otherwise would be
omitted).

The -T/--row-total flag adds an additional column showing the total for
each row.

The -A/--average flag adds a column showing the average value in each
row.

Here's an example of all three:

$ hledger balance -Q income expenses --tree -ETA
Balance changes in 2008:

            ||  2008q1  2008q2  2008q3  2008q4    Total  Average 
============++===================================================
 expenses   ||       0      $2       0       0       $2       $1 
   food     ||       0      $1       0       0       $1        0 
   supplies ||       0      $1       0       0       $1        0 
 income     ||     $-1     $-1       0       0      $-2      $-1 
   gifts    ||       0     $-1       0       0      $-1        0 
   salary   ||     $-1       0       0       0      $-1        0 
------------++---------------------------------------------------
            ||     $-1      $1       0       0        0        0 

(Average is rounded to the dollar here since all journal amounts are)

The --transpose flag can be used to exchange the rows and columns of a
multicolumn report.

When showing multicommodity amounts, multicolumn balance reports will
elide any amounts which have more than two commodities, since otherwise
columns could get very wide. The --no-elide flag disables this. Hiding
totals with the -N/--no-total flag can also help reduce the width of
multicommodity reports.

When the report is still too wide, a good workaround is to pipe it into
less -RS (-R for colour, -S to chop long lines). Eg:
hledger bal -D --color=yes | less -RS.

Budget report

With --budget, extra columns are displayed showing budget goals for each
account and period, if any. Budget goals are defined by periodic
transactions. This is very useful for comparing planned and actual
income, expenses, time usage, etc. --budget is most often combined with
a report interval.

For example, you can take average monthly expenses in the common expense
categories to construct a minimal monthly budget:

;; Budget
~ monthly
  income  $2000
  expenses:food    $400
  expenses:bus     $50
  expenses:movies  $30
  assets:bank:checking

;; Two months worth of expenses
2017-11-01
  income  $1950
  expenses:food    $396
  expenses:bus     $49
  expenses:movies  $30
  expenses:supplies  $20
  assets:bank:checking

2017-12-01
  income  $2100
  expenses:food    $412
  expenses:bus     $53
  expenses:gifts   $100
  assets:bank:checking

You can now see a monthly budget report:

$ hledger balance -M --budget
Budget performance in 2017/11/01-2017/12/31:

                      ||                      Nov                       Dec 
======================++====================================================
 assets               || $-2445 [  99% of $-2480]  $-2665 [ 107% of $-2480] 
 assets:bank          || $-2445 [  99% of $-2480]  $-2665 [ 107% of $-2480] 
 assets:bank:checking || $-2445 [  99% of $-2480]  $-2665 [ 107% of $-2480] 
 expenses             ||   $495 [ 103% of   $480]    $565 [ 118% of   $480] 
 expenses:bus         ||    $49 [  98% of    $50]     $53 [ 106% of    $50] 
 expenses:food        ||   $396 [  99% of   $400]    $412 [ 103% of   $400] 
 expenses:movies      ||    $30 [ 100% of    $30]       0 [   0% of    $30] 
 income               ||  $1950 [  98% of  $2000]   $2100 [ 105% of  $2000] 
----------------------++----------------------------------------------------
                      ||      0 [              0]       0 [              0] 

This is different from a normal balance report in several ways:

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

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

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

-   Amounts always include all subaccounts, budgeted or unbudgeted, even
    in flat mode.

This means that the numbers displayed will not always add up! Eg above,
the expenses actual amount includes the gifts and supplies transactions,
but the expenses:gifts and expenses:supplies accounts are not shown, as
they have no budget amounts declared.

This can be confusing. When you need to make things clearer, use the
-E/--empty flag, which will reveal all accounts including unbudgeted
ones, giving the full picture. Eg:

$ hledger balance -M --budget --empty
Budget performance in 2017/11/01-2017/12/31:

                      ||                      Nov                       Dec 
======================++====================================================
 assets               || $-2445 [  99% of $-2480]  $-2665 [ 107% of $-2480] 
 assets:bank          || $-2445 [  99% of $-2480]  $-2665 [ 107% of $-2480] 
 assets:bank:checking || $-2445 [  99% of $-2480]  $-2665 [ 107% of $-2480] 
 expenses             ||   $495 [ 103% of   $480]    $565 [ 118% of   $480] 
 expenses:bus         ||    $49 [  98% of    $50]     $53 [ 106% of    $50] 
 expenses:food        ||   $396 [  99% of   $400]    $412 [ 103% of   $400] 
 expenses:gifts       ||      0                      $100                   
 expenses:movies      ||    $30 [ 100% of    $30]       0 [   0% of    $30] 
 expenses:supplies    ||    $20                         0                   
 income               ||  $1950 [  98% of  $2000]   $2100 [ 105% of  $2000] 
----------------------++----------------------------------------------------
                      ||      0 [              0]       0 [              0] 

You can roll over unspent budgets to next period with --cumulative:

$ hledger balance -M --budget --cumulative
Budget performance in 2017/11/01-2017/12/31:

                      ||                      Nov                       Dec 
======================++====================================================
 assets               || $-2445 [  99% of $-2480]  $-5110 [ 103% of $-4960] 
 assets:bank          || $-2445 [  99% of $-2480]  $-5110 [ 103% of $-4960] 
 assets:bank:checking || $-2445 [  99% of $-2480]  $-5110 [ 103% of $-4960] 
 expenses             ||   $495 [ 103% of   $480]   $1060 [ 110% of   $960] 
 expenses:bus         ||    $49 [  98% of    $50]    $102 [ 102% of   $100] 
 expenses:food        ||   $396 [  99% of   $400]    $808 [ 101% of   $800] 
 expenses:movies      ||    $30 [ 100% of    $30]     $30 [  50% of    $60] 
 income               ||  $1950 [  98% of  $2000]   $4050 [ 101% of  $4000] 
----------------------++----------------------------------------------------
                      ||      0 [              0]       0 [              0] 

For more examples, see Budgeting and Forecasting.

Nested budgets

You can add budgets to any account in your account hierarchy. If you
have budgets on both parent account and some of its children, then
budget(s) of the child account(s) would be added to the budget of their
parent, much like account balances behave.

In the most simple case this means that once you add a budget to any
account, all its parents would have budget as well.

To illustrate this, consider the following budget:

~ monthly from 2019/01
    expenses:personal             $1,000.00
    expenses:personal:electronics    $100.00
    liabilities

With this, monthly budget for electronics is defined to be $100 and
budget for personal expenses is an additional $1000, which implicitly
means that budget for both expenses:personal and expenses is $1100.

Transactions in expenses:personal:electronics will be counted both
towards its $100 budget and $1100 of expenses:personal , and
transactions in any other subaccount of expenses:personal would be
counted towards only towards the budget of expenses:personal.

For example, let's consider these transactions:

~ monthly from 2019/01
    expenses:personal             $1,000.00
    expenses:personal:electronics    $100.00
    liabilities

2019/01/01 Google home hub
    expenses:personal:electronics          $90.00
    liabilities                           $-90.00

2019/01/02 Phone screen protector
    expenses:personal:electronics:upgrades          $10.00
    liabilities

2019/01/02 Weekly train ticket
    expenses:personal:train tickets       $153.00
    liabilities

2019/01/03 Flowers
    expenses:personal          $30.00
    liabilities

As you can see, we have transactions in
expenses:personal:electronics:upgrades and
expenses:personal:train tickets, and since both of these accounts are
without explicitly defined budget, these transactions would be counted
towards budgets of expenses:personal:electronics and expenses:personal
accordingly:

$ hledger balance --budget -M
Budget performance in 2019/01:

                               ||                           Jan 
===============================++===============================
 expenses                      ||  $283.00 [  26% of  $1100.00] 
 expenses:personal             ||  $283.00 [  26% of  $1100.00] 
 expenses:personal:electronics ||  $100.00 [ 100% of   $100.00] 
 liabilities                   || $-283.00 [  26% of $-1100.00] 
-------------------------------++-------------------------------
                               ||        0 [                 0] 

And with --empty, we can get a better picture of budget allocation and
consumption:

$ hledger balance --budget -M --empty
Budget performance in 2019/01:

                                        ||                           Jan 
========================================++===============================
 expenses                               ||  $283.00 [  26% of  $1100.00] 
 expenses:personal                      ||  $283.00 [  26% of  $1100.00] 
 expenses:personal:electronics          ||  $100.00 [ 100% of   $100.00] 
 expenses:personal:electronics:upgrades ||   $10.00                      
 expenses:personal:train tickets        ||  $153.00                      
 liabilities                            || $-283.00 [  26% of $-1100.00] 
----------------------------------------++-------------------------------
                                        ||        0 [                 0] 

Output format

This command also supports the output destination and output format
options The output formats supported are txt, csv, (multicolumn
non-budget reports only) html, and (experimental) json.
