Beancount INquiry

A CLI tool to INject parameters into Beancount queries specified in your ledger

Usage

Beancount INquiry will inject parameters into query directives specified in your ledger file using pythons .format function, and so uses the same syntax. Here is an example query directive with two parameters:

2025-01-01 query "balance" "SELECT date, account, sum(number) as total WHERE account ~ '{}' AND date >= {} ORDER BY account"

And then pass in the ledger, the name of the query, and the list of parameters

bean-inquiry ledger.beancount balance Assets 2014-05-01

You can also use indexed placeholders:

2025-01-01 query "balance" "SELECT date, {0}, sum(number) as total WHERE {0} ~ '{1}' AND date >= {2} ORDER BY {0}"
...
bean-inquiry ledger.beancount balance account Assets:Bank 2025-05-01

And named placeholders, with parameter keys separated with a colon:

2025-01-01 query "balance" "SELECT date, {select}, sum(number) as total WHERE {select} ~ '{account}' AND date >= {date} ORDER BY {select}"
...
bean-inquiry ledger.beancount balance select:account account:Assets:Bank date:2025-05-01

See the --help for more options

bean-inquiry --help

Installation

There are two different versions of Beancunt INquiry, the CLI tool and the script, the main difference being that the CLI tool can run stand-alone and has beanquery as a dependency, and the script does not have dependencies but needs bean-query installed on your system and in your PATH. Also currently the script can only run query directives that are on a single line in your ledger, whereas the CLI tool can run query directives that traverse multiple lines.

CLI

Pipx (recommended)

Install using pipx from PyPi

pipx install bean-inquiry
bean-inquiry --help

Build from source using pipx

Clone this repository and install systemwide using pipx:

git clone https://github.com/aleyoscar/beancount-inquiry.git
cd beancount-inquiry
pipx install .
bean-inquiry --help

Run using poetry

Clone this repository and run using poetry

git clone https://github.com/aleyoscar/beancount-inquiry.git
cd beancount-inquiry
poetry install
poetry run bean-inquiry

Script

Does not need beanquery, but does need the bean-query executable installed on your system and in your PATH. Simply download bean-inquiry.py or clone this repository and run the script bean-inquiry.py in the root project folder:

python bean-inquiry.py --help

Dependencies

This project uses beancount to parse the ledger and beanquery for running the queries.