Ledger

Install ledger with sudo dnf install ledger
The fundamental unit of a ledger journal is a transaction
To create a transaction, specify source and destination accounts, as follows
```
  2023/05/24 * Transaction description
      Transaction destination  $amount
      Transaction source  $-amount
```
- Note the double-space between the account name and the amount

So, for example, to record a $35.24 purchase at Target, paid by one's Citibank Mastercard

  2023/05/24 * Stuff from Target
      Expenses:Target  $35.24
      Liabilities:Citibank:Mastercard  $-35.24

Ledger is smart enough to figure out the debit amount if the remainder of the transaction is unambiguous

  2023/05/24 * Stuff from Target
      Expenses:Target  $35.24
      Liabilities:Citibank:Mastercard

To create an initial balance, just create a transaction from a special account

  2023/05/24 * Opening Balance
      Assets:Checking  $10000
      Assets:Savings  $50000
      Liabilities:Citibank Credit Card  $-400
      Special:Opening Balance

Ledger transactions can be in one of two states: pending or cleared
- A cleared transaction has an asterisk, as above
- A pending transaction replaces the asterisk with !:
```
    2023/05/24 ! Pending expense
        Expenses:Whatever $amount
        Liabilities:Credit Card
```
- A good practice is to make all transactions pending at first, and then set them to cleared once you've reconciled them with your bank statements
To check the balance of an account: ledger balance -f <ledger file> <account>
- Note: Ledger uses hierarchical accounts, delimited by :, so, for example, Expenses:Groceries:Walmart and Expenses:Auto:Valvoline are both subaccounts of Expenses
- So to check the balance of the Expenses account: ledger balance -f <ledger file> Expenses
- One can also use PCREs instead of account names in order to produce a balance for multiple accounts
- To check the balance for a particular time period: ledger balance -f <ledger file> -b <begin date> -e <end date> <account>
  - -b specifies all transactions that occur on or after the specified begin date
  - -e specifies all transactions that occur before the specified end date — in practice this means that you'll want to set -e to be one day past the last day of your report
- To list only pending items, append --pending
- To list only cleared items, append --cleared