#plaintextaccounting — Public Fediverse posts

A #hledger alias directive's effect ends at the file end because an alias is quite impactful.

hledger journals are supposed to keep working, and have the same meaning, no matter how you compose them, eg if you combine them with include or multiple -f's.

An account declaration having global effect is relatively harmless,
but an alias having global effect could break or subtly change your reports.

That's why hledger does this differently from Ledger.

#plaintextaccounting

Cleaning up years of inconsistent #plaintextaccounting entries, especially for those tricky investment transactions, can be a serious project. Best to divide and conquer, eg by commodity/account/year. Another division I've found useful is "theory vs editing" - first figuring out the right journal entry, then applying that style across all files. The first task requires thinking/discussion/docs. The second is more mechanical, and the right tools, and disciplined consistent data, can help a lot.