Multiple postings with dates

[Peter Sagerson]

For some time, I've been using posting dates to spread certain expenses over multiple months. For example, this could apply to a quarterly or annual donation or subscription, or paying for a year's worth of insurance in advance. A transaction might look something like this:

2026-01-10 Stuff
assets:checking $-90
expenses:stuff $30 ; date:2026-02-10
expenses:stuff $30 ; date:2026-03-10
expenses:stuff $30 ; date:2026-04-10

It's essentially a shortcut to avoid moving dollars into another asset account and then adding monthly transactions to realize the expenses. This passes strict checking, makes incomestatement reports less spiky, and generally seems to work fine. The register command is mostly happy with it, although oddly it only picks up the description on the first posting:

> hledger -f test.journal register expenses:stuff
2026-02-10 Stuff expenses:stuff $30 $30
2026-03-10 expenses:stuff $30 $60
2026-04-10 expenses:stuff $30 $90

hledger-ui, however, seems quite befuddled by this construction: the expense account lists a single item on the earliest posting date (not the parent date) for the full transaction value.

Am I just off the map in terms of abusing posting dates, or is there a bug or two in here?

Thanks,
Peter

[Simon Michael]

Hi Peter,

On Sat, Jul 11, 2026, at 00:33, Peter Sagerson wrote:
> This passes strict checking, makes incomestatement reports less spiky,
> and generally seems to work fine. The register command is mostly happy
> with it, although oddly it only picks up the description on the first
> posting:

It avoids repeating the description for additional postings in the same transaction. This came from Ledger; it helps indicate transactions in the register report. If there's an intervening transaction, hledger does properly repeat the description once:

2026-02-10 Stuff expenses:stuff $30 $30

2026-02-15 other expenses:other $1 $31
2026-03-10 Stuff expenses:stuff $30 $61
2026-04-10 expenses:stuff $30 $91

> hledger-ui, however, seems quite befuddled by this construction: the
> expense account lists a single item on the earliest posting date (not
> the parent date) for the full transaction value.

hledger-ui's register screen intentionally shows full transactions, not individual postings, on each line; it's like hledger's `aregister` report, not `register`.

So I think no bugs here, it's working as expected.