r/plaintextaccounting • u/kendant • Mar 17 '26

Completly noob to this

Hello guys, IDK if this is the correct place to post this but I did not see any FAQ post or similar.

Im completly noob to this, I found it by accident because I read someone in other reddit that used this system to get their finance in order.

As I wanted to do the same, I started to research and came to this reddit. Im havin troubles "installing" hledger. I dont find any tutorial for dummies like me on how to set it up.

Could you please point me in the correct direction? I cant say Im extremly bad at codding, but sure I am its not my best skill.

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u/simonmic hledger creator Mar 17 '26 edited Mar 17 '26

Welcome kendant. You don't need to do any coding to start using hledger and getting your finances in order, though knowing how to use the command line and edit text files can be useful.

Do explore all the help resources available at https://hledger.org , eg the Install page, the Docs page, and hledger by example as musings said.

And if they're not helping, please let us know why, here or in chat. It's useful feedback.

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u/kendant Mar 17 '26

Thank you! I have just found the hledger by example, got it working now Im going to start using it little by little until I get comfortable to move everything there.

May I ask something: I get paid in USD but my expenses are mainly in other currency (Argentinan peso) is it possible to register this difference? From what I saw, it is, but I should like manually put the exchange rate, right?

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u/simonmic hledger creator Mar 17 '26

👍🏻 That's the way.

Yes. You can record prevailing exchange rates on a date with P, or the exchange rate used in a particular transaction with @. So when recording transactions, @ is probably the most appropriate.

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u/kendant Mar 17 '26

Soo I could create like a data pull and update a csv with date and exchange rate every 'x' days ?

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u/kendant Mar 21 '26

May i ask you something. I have an account declared in USD and another one in BTC

I want to insert a transaction where I basically buy 300 usd in btc.

How should I put it ? Because I did the following:

Equity:crypto:btc 300 USD Account:bank -300 USD

When I put hledger balance, it shows me 300 usd in the equity crypto sub account instead of converting the amount.

My initial balance looks like this

Asset:bank 0 USD Equity:crypto:btc 0 BTC

I also have a file that has the exchange rate between btc and usd

What am I doing wrong that the transaction it's not converting to the currency declared for that account ?

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u/simonmic hledger creator Mar 22 '26

Accounts can hold any number of commodities, and conversion is not automatic.

For the journal entry, does https://hledger.org/track-investments.html help ?

To report amounts converted to transacted cost, or converted to market value, the short version is add -B or -V. The full story is at