simonmichael
Can the register report produce a per-account running total?
I am not sure but I think that register command is broken. Example journal:
$ cat demo-reg.journal
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
2019/01/10 Weekly train ticket
expenses:personal:train tickets $123.00
liabilities
I do not like this output, is it correct? The last column, those should be balances??
$ hledger -f demo-reg.journal reg
2019-01-01 Google home hub expenses:personal:electronics $90.00 $90.00
liabilities $-90.00 0
2019-01-02 Phone screen protector ex:pe:electronics:upgrades $10.00 $10.00
liabilities $-10.00 0
2019-01-02 Weekly train ticket ex:personal:train tickets $153.00 $153.00
liabilities $-153.00 0
2019-01-03 Flowers expenses:personal $30.00 $30.00
liabilities $-30.00 0
2019-01-10 Weekly train ticket ex:personal:train tickets $123.00 $123.00
liabilities $-123.00 0
Compare with output, when I filter for liabilities, this is better, isn't it?
$ hledger -f demo-reg.journal reg liabilities
2019-01-01 Google home hub liabilities $-90.00 $-90.00
2019-01-02 Phone screen protector liabilities $-10.00 $-100.00
2019-01-02 Weekly train ticket liabilities $-153.00 $-253.00
2019-01-03 Flowers liabilities $-30.00 $-283.00
2019-01-10 Weekly train ticket liabilities $-123.00 $-406.00
The same, with grep, balance is not updated, it is always 0:
$ hledger -f demo-reg.journal reg | grep "liabilities"
liabilities $-90.00 0
liabilities $-10.00 0
liabilities $-153.00 0
liabilities $-30.00 0
liabilities $-123.00 0
And again, for "tickets":
$ hledger -f demo-reg.journal reg tickets
2019-01-02 Weekly train ticket ex:personal:train tickets $153.00 $153.00
2019-01-10 Weekly train ticket ex:personal:train tickets $123.00 $276.00
$ hledger -f demo-reg.journal reg | grep "tickets"
2019-01-02 Weekly train ticket ex:personal:train tickets $153.00 $153.00
2019-01-10 Weekly train ticket ex:personal:train tickets $123.00 $123.00
This looks correct to me. The numbers on the right are the running total, and since you're not doing any filtering every transaction will balance out, and the running total will be 0 at the end of every transaction.
Perhaps you want to filter, as you did in the second example. Or perhaps you want to use the aregister command. If you let us know what you're trying to do, it might be more helpful. You might have more luck with these sorts of problems asking in the discussion areas https://hledger.org/support.html.
I would expect to see this (in that case I can use grep to have the same output like when I filter output in hledger):
2019-01-01 Google home hub expenses:personal:electronics $90.00 $90.00
liabilities $-90.00 $-90.00
2019-01-02 Phone screen protector ex:pe:electronics:upgrades $10.00 $10.00
liabilities $-10.00 $-100.00
2019-01-02 Weekly train ticket ex:personal:train tickets $153.00 $153.00
liabilities $-153.00 $-253.00
2019-01-03 Flowers expenses:personal $30.00 $30.00
liabilities $-30.00 $-283.00
2019-01-10 Weekly train ticket ex:personal:train tickets $123.00 $276.00
liabilities $-123.00 $-406.00
I am not an accountant and I accept I can miss something important. I checked output of ledger -f demo-reg.journal register and it produces the same output as hledger -f demo-reg.journal register.
I see, you want a per-account running total rather than an overall running total, is that correct? I don't think there's a way to do that currently, but a balance report will give you the overall per-account total. Is there a specific reason you need these numbers, or were you just surprised by the current behaviour?
I know I can use balance command... I do not need this register output. I just noticed this behavior, I was confused/surprised with the output and I reported it as I assumed it must be a bug...
It's the way PTA register reports have always worked. I understand your alternative mockup, but I must say I think it would be quite a bit more confusing to most people.
I can imagine a 3-columnar running totals including account-level balance as well as transaction-level totals. But I'm not very sure how intuitive it is.
2019-01-01 Google expenses:personal:electronics $90.00 $90.00 $90.00
liabilities $-90.00 0 $-90.00
2019-01-02 Phone ex:pe:electronics:upgrades $10.00 $10.00 $10.00
liabilities $-10.00 0 $-100.00
2019-01-02 Train ex:personal:train tickets $153.00 $154.00 $153.00
liabilities $-153.00 0 $-253.00
2019-01-03 Flowers expenses:personal $30.00 $30.00 $30.00
liabilities $-30.00 0 $-283.00
2019-01-10 Train ex:personal:train tickets $123.00 $276.00 $276.00
liabilities $-123.00 0 $-406.00
or even:
2019-01-01 Google expenses:personal:electronics $90.00 $90.00 $90.00
liabilities $-90.00 $-90.00 0
2019-01-02 Phone ex:pe:electronics:upgrades $10.00 $10.00 $10.00
liabilities $-10.00 $-100.00 0
2019-01-02 Train ex:personal:train tickets $153.00 $153.00 $154.00
liabilities $-153.00 $-253.00 0
2019-01-03 Flowers expenses:personal $30.00 $30.00 $30.00
liabilities $-30.00 $-283.00 0
2019-01-10 Train ex:personal:train tickets $123.00 $276.00 $276.00
liabilities $-123.00 $-406.00 0
or:
2019-01-01 Google expenses:personal:electronics $90.00 $90.00 $90.00
liabilities $-90.00 $-90.00 0
2019-01-02 Phone ex:pe:electronics:upgrades $10.00 $10.00 $10.00
liabilities $-100.00 $-10.00 0
2019-01-02 Train ex:personal:train tickets $153.00 $153.00 $154.00
liabilities $-253.00 $-153.00 0
2019-01-03 Flowers expenses:personal $30.00 $30.00 $30.00
liabilities $-283.00 $-30.00 0
2019-01-10 Train ex:personal:train tickets $276.00 $123.00 $276.00
liabilities $-406.00 $-123.00 0
