simonmichael
Is there a way to make register show only the final result for each transaction?
Hello!
When using the register command I find it oft annoying that register calculates the intermediate result for each posting in a transaction. Often there are balancing postings, one subtracts 100€ the other one adds it again. When I try to follow the amount over time, I have a lot of meaningless ups and downs. Here is a dumb example register.ledger illustrating the point:
2021-01-01 A
account:a 40 €
account:b -120 €
account:c 60 €
external
2021-02-01 B
account:a -50 €
account:b +600 €
account:c -560 €
external
2021-03-01 B
account:a 70 €
account:b -30 €
account:c 10 €
external
Assume I want to know how my account develops over time, but I don't care so much about the subpostings a, b, and c, so I can run the command hledger -f register.ledger reg account and get:
2021-01-01 A account:a 40 € 40 €
account:b -120 € -80 €
account:c 60 € -20 €
2021-02-01 B account:a -50 € -70 €
account:b 600 € 530 €
account:c -560 € -30 €
2021-03-01 B account:a 70 € 40 €
account:b -30 € 10 €
account:c 10 € 20 €
I find it very hard to review such an output in any meaningful way. I would much rather like to have something like:
2021-01-01 A account:a 40 €
account:b -120 €
account:c 60 € -20 €
2021-02-01 B account:a -50 €
account:b 600 €
account:c -560 € -30 €
2021-03-01 B account:a 70 €
account:b -30 €
account:c 10 € 20 €
I have tried hledger -f register.ledger reg account --depth 1 but that only results in:
2021-01-01 A account 40 € 40 €
account -120 € -80 €
account 60 € -20 €
2021-02-01 B account -50 € -70 €
account 600 € 530 €
account -560 € -30 €
2021-03-01 B account 70 € 40 €
account -30 € 10 €
account 10 € 20 €
while I was hoping it does something like:
2021-01-01 A account -20 € -20 €
2021-02-01 B account -10 € -30 €
2021-03-01 B account 50 € 20 €
I guess you get the point. Can anybody help me with this. What would be the hledger way to do what I am looking for?
If there is no good way to do it, please consider this a feature request for an option that either suppresses intermediate results or displays them in a faint color or so. Maybe one could define the color of the intermediate outputs and customize the output that way.
I am using hledger 47b5b6b.
aregister ? It shows one line per transaction.
$ hledger areg account
Transactions in account and subaccounts:
2021-01-01 A external -20 € -20 €
2021-02-01 B external -10 € -30 €
2021-03-01 B external 50 € 20 €
Thanks for the very fast reply. Sure, that works and solves the toy problem. I see I have made a poor translation into a toy example of what I really want to do. Assume the file reads like
2021-01-01 A
account 40 €
bccount -120 €
cccount 60 €
external
2021-02-01 B
account -50 €
bccount +600 €
cccount -560 €
external
2021-03-01 C
account 70 €
bccount -30 €
cccount 10 €
external
If I now run hledger -f register2.ledger areg "(account|bccount|cccount)" --depth 1 I get:
Transactions in account and subaccounts:
2021-01-01 A bccount, cccount, external 40 € 40 €
2021-02-01 B bccount, cccount, external -50 € -10 €
2021-03-01 C bccount, cccount, external 70 € 60 €
aregonly uses the first account. It does not work for me to combine several accounts.
With reg it reads:
2021-01-01 A account 40 € 40 €
bccount -120 € -80 €
cccount 60 € -20 €
2021-02-01 B account -50 € -70 €
bccount 600 € 530 €
cccount -560 € -30 €
2021-03-01 C account 70 € 40 €
bccount -30 € 10 €
cccount 10 € 20 €
Sorry @LaurenzWiskott2 but I'm still not clear on the exact goal. There is also chat which might work better ?
The closest I could get so far is with hledger -f register2.ledger bal "(account|bccount|cccount)" -M --transpose --historic
Ending balances (historical) in 2021Q1:
|| account bccount cccount |
============++===========================+=======
2021-01-31 || 40 € -120 € 60 € | -20 €
2021-02-28 || -10 € 480 € -500 € | -30 €
2021-03-31 || 60 € 450 € -490 € | 20 €
OK, I'll go to the chat.
Whenever I want a less detailed register report I use --daily in combination with depth limiting. This is lossy to some extent, but might be good enough for your use case?
https://hledger.org/support.html leads to
Resource not found 404
The requested resource could not be found.
Sorry, my mistake. I meant https://hledger.org/discuss.html .
I think you want a register report, with one line per transaction, but spanning multiple accounts. For that I agree with @Xitian9's suggestion, eg how about this ?:
$ hledger reg "(account|bccount|cccount)" -0 -D
2021-01-01 ... -20 € -20 €
2021-02-01 ... -10 € -30 €
2021-03-01 ... 50 € 20 €
Thanks for this suggestions.
Whenever I want a less detailed register report I use
--dailyin combination with depth limiting. This is lossy to some extent, but might be good enough for your use case?
Yes, this would work for the first example. But for the second, hledger -f register2.ledger reg "(account|bccount|cccount)" --daily --depth 1 results in
2021-01-01 account 40 € 40 €
bccount -120 € -80 €
cccount 60 € -20 €
2021-02-01 account -50 € -70 €
bccount 600 € 530 €
cccount -560 € -30 €
2021-03-01 account 70 € 40 €
bccount -30 € 10 €
cccount 10 € 20 €
as before. I think the point is that the accounts I want to combine are not within one branch.
Sorry, my mistake. I meant https://hledger.org/discuss.html .
I think you want a register report, with one line per transaction, but spanning multiple accounts. For that I agree with @Xitian9's suggestion, eg how about this ?:
$ hledger reg "(account|bccount|cccount)" -0 -D 2021-01-01 ... -20 € -20 € 2021-02-01 ... -10 € -30 € 2021-03-01 ... 50 € 20 €
Yes, that looks like a solution that might work. I only tried --depth 1, which didn't work. It didn't occur to me to use depth zero. I will see how far I'll get with that. Thank you two for your great and quick help. Fantastic.
PS: Still, I think an option to create a printout with all postings with values in the first column but only with the final result of each transaction in the second column would be useful.
I agree that a register variant like
2021-01-01 A account:a 40 €
account:b -120 €
account:c 60 € -20 €
2021-02-01 B account:a -50 €
account:b 600 €
account:c -560 € -30 €
2021-03-01 B account:a 70 €
account:b -30 €
account:c 10 € 20 €
could be more readable sometimes. At other times, you do want to see the per-posting running totals. So we should ask ourselves, is it sufficiently useful to justify further complicating the CLI ? What UI (flag) would you propose ?
Also, we should consider how that will look with multiple commodities in play.
I agree that a
registervariant like2021-01-01 A account:a 40 € account:b -120 € account:c 60 € -20 € 2021-02-01 B account:a -50 € account:b 600 € account:c -560 € -30 € 2021-03-01 B account:a 70 € account:b -30 € account:c 10 € 20 €could be more readable sometimes. At other times, you do want to see the per-posting running totals. So we should ask ourselves, is it sufficiently useful to justify further complicating the CLI ? What UI (flag) would you propose ?
I think a big advantage of this solution is that you get much more information but still have a good overview. In particular I miss the the comments (A, B, B in this example) and account names. Just ... is not very informative.
Which flag would I propose? Let me think! I was thinking of --total or -T, like for the balance command. One could also think that this option would not reduce the second column but add a third column with the total result of each transaction. One could even have this as the default always, like
2021-01-01 account 40 € 40 €
bccount -120 € -80 €
cccount 60 € -20 € -20 €
2021-02-01 account -50 € -70 €
bccount 600 € 530 €
cccount -560 € -30 € -30 €
2021-03-01 account 70 € 40 €
bccount -30 € 10 €
cccount 10 € 20 € 20 €
... or printing it boldface would already be quite some help, I think.
2021-01-01 account 40 € 40 € bccount -120 € -80 € cccount 60 € -20 € 2021-02-01 account -50 € -70 € bccount 600 € 530 € cccount -560 € -30 € 2021-03-01 account 70 € 40 € bccount -30 € 10 € cccount 10 € 20 €
2021-01-01 account 40 € 40 €
bccount -120 € -80 €
cccount 60 € **-20 €**
2021-02-01 account -50 € -70 €
bccount 600 € 530 €
cccount -560 € **-30 €**
2021-03-01 account 70 € 40 €
bccount -30 € 10 €
cccount 10 € **20 €**
Well, that doesn't display well here either way, but you know what I mean, I guess.
... and/or having an option to just print the last line of each transaction. That would give a nice compact overview.
(I know that areg shows just one line per transaction, but it does not allow to process several accounts as a group.)