jal
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12. Settings and maintenance
Preferences
Settings → Preferences — a small dialog with three pages:
Interface
| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| Date format | How every date in the program is written: EU dd/mm/yyyy, EU short, US mm/dd/yyyy, US short, or ISO yyyy-mm-dd. |
| Table row padding | How much air each table row keeps around its text: None (densest), Normal, Roomy. Rows always follow the font size; this is what is added on top. |
| Align rows by icons | Keep the space of an icon on rows that have none, so names line up. Switch it off to give that space back to the text. |
Blockchain
API keys for the blockchain explorers, and the dust threshold — all explained in chapter 8.
Import
Which of your accounts a statement belongs to, for the exports that name no account themselves: Trading 212 account, Revolut current account and Revolut savings account. Press … beside a row to pick the account. Those imports refuse to run until the account they need is set — see chapter 9.
Phone receipt inbox folder is the folder the phone app’s receipt files arrive in; an imported file
is moved into its done subfolder. It is needed only for
shop receipts.
Changes take effect when you press OK; Cancel discards them.
Language
Settings → Language switches between English and Russian.
JAL asks whether to translate the names of the built-in categories and peers as well — answer yes unless you have renamed them yourself. It then has to restart, and closes itself; start it again to see the new language.
Backups
Your entire ledger is one file. Losing it means typing everything again, so keep copies.
Ledger → Backup… asks where to save and writes a compressed .tgz archive containing the
database and a label with the date. It takes a second or two.
Ledger → Restore… reads such an archive back, replacing your current database. JAL checks that the file really is a JAL backup before touching anything, and closes itself afterwards — restart it to work with the restored data.
Restoring overwrites everything you have now. Make a backup of the current state first, even if you think you do not need it.
Copying jal.sqlite while JAL is closed is just as good a backup. What matters is that copies exist,
somewhere other than the computer JAL runs on, and recently.
A reasonable habit: back up after every session in which you entered a lot, and always before an upgrade or a big import.
Re-building the ledger
The balances and reports are read from a ledger JAL maintains as you work. Occasionally it has to be recomputed from scratch — after an upgrade that changes how something is booked, or if a figure looks impossible.
Ledger → Re-build ledger…:
- Full, from scratch — recompute everything. Safe; on a large database it can take a while.
- Since Last actual — from where JAL stopped last time. This is the default and is what happens automatically after every edit.
- Since Date — from a date you choose. Use it when you know when the trouble starts.
JAL remembers which of the three you chose last and offers it again next time.
Rebuilding never changes your operations: it only recomputes what is derived from them. If a figure is still wrong afterwards, the operations themselves are wrong.
Deleting everything
Ledger → Delete all data… wipes the database and starts over. JAL asks for confirmation, then marks the database for deletion and closes; the empty one is created the next time you start.
There is no undo. Make a backup first, even if you are sure.
Where JAL keeps things
| What | Where |
|---|---|
| Accounts, operations, prices, settings, window layout | jal.sqlite — one file |
| Which folder that file is in | shown in Help → About JAL |
| An override for that folder | jal.ini in your OS configuration folder (chapter 2) |
Column widths, window sizes, the last folder you saved a report to — all of it lives in the database too, so a restored backup comes back looking exactly as it did.
Upgrading JAL
pip install jal -U, as in chapter 2. If the new version needs a newer
database format, JAL converts yours at the next start and may offer to rebuild the ledger — accept.
Back up first. It costs ten seconds.
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