Options Reference

Global options configure how Beancount parses and validates your file.

Usage:

option "key" "value"

Essential Options

title

The title of your ledger, used in reports.

option "title" "My Personal Finances"

operating_currency

Defines the currencies that are “yours”. This affects how reports aggregate numbers. You can specify this multiple times.

option "operating_currency" "USD"
option "operating_currency" "EUR"

Parsing & Accuracy

tolerance

Sets the inferred tolerance for balancing transactions. Defaults to 0.005 for most currencies.

option "tolerance" "0.01"

account_rounding

Automatically inserts a rounding posting to an Equity account if a transaction is off by a tiny amount (due to currency conversion).

option "account_rounding" "Equity:Rounding"

Classification

documents

A list of directories where Beancount should look for external documents (PDFs) to link to transactions.

option "documents" "/home/user/finances/docs"

account_previous_balances

Beancount can calculate the balance of an account before the first transaction based on open date.

option "account_previous_balances" "Opening-Balances"

Formatting

render_commas

Whether to render numbers with thousands separators in reports (TRUE/FALSE).

option "render_commas" "TRUE"

plugin_processing_mode

“default” or “raw”. Determines when plugins run. usually “default”.

option "plugin_processing_mode" "default"

Root Account Naming (Localization)

You can rename the five standard root accounts to suit your language or preference.

name_assets, name_liabilities, name_equity, name_income, name_expenses

Override the default names.

option "name_assets"      "Actifs"
option "name_liabilities" "Passifs"
option "name_equity"      "Capitaux"
option "name_income"      "Revenus"
option "name_expenses"    "Depenses"