Getting started

Associated directory: 01-getting-started

I assume that you want to keep track of your finances with hledger. You have read hledger basics tutorial and hledger accounting concepts, and you know the difference between "assets", "liabilities", "equity", "income" and "expenses".

However, it is hard to begin: which accounts one should create and maintain? How to deal with multiple years and multiple banks? What if you later decide to change something?

Let's get started with an empty journal.

Look into 01-getting-started, where you will find a completely empty journal for the current year (at the time of writing - 2017) and a couple of export scripts. Check that the current year is properly reflected at the top of ./export/export.hs:

--
-- Range of years to report. You would typically want all the years you have data for.
--
defaultFirstYear   = 2017 :: Int
defaultCurrentYear = 2017

What is this export.sh thing?

Script export.sh is a one-liner that invokes export/export.hs, where the real magic lies. That file uses shake - build system written in Haskell - to automate all conversion and report generation tasks. Entire contents of export/export.hs is build rules with small amount of customizeable information at the top -- like current year and list of reports you want to generate.

Shake was chosen mainly for its ability to handle complex dependencies easily.

Lets run it!

Now run ./export.sh, and a bunch of files would be generated in ./export:

export
├── 2017-all.journal           - a list of all transactions for the year, to simplify review
│                                and double-checking
├── 2017-balance-sheet.txt     - balance sheet for the end of the year, showing your assets
│                                and liabilities
├── 2017-cash-flow.txt         - cash flow report for the year
├── 2017-income-expenses.txt   - income and expense report for the year
└── export.hs                  - Shake build script that describes how these reports
                                 are generated

General idea is to keep these files under version control so that whenever you want to change anything in your setup it would be easy to see what exactly was affected by asking version control system for diffs versus the previously saved version of these reports.

As you can see, your current journal is empty and reports reflect this - they would show that various totals are zero and pretty much nothing else. Commit all of them into the version control system of your choice.

Next steps

Now it is time to get some data in.