GnuCash on the Command Line

GnuCash has a command-line interface for use in scripts or for performing quick tasks without launching the graphic interface. Note that

To see the options for the current version use the command gnucash-cli --help. At version 4.11 this produces the following:

bin/gnucash-cli [options] [datafile] - GnuCash, accounting for personal and small business finance:

Common Options:
  -h [ --help ]          Show this help message
  -v [ --version ]       Show GnuCash version
  --debug                Enable debugging mode: provide deep detail in the
                         logs.
                         This is equivalent to: --log "=info" --log "qof=info"
                         --log "gnc=info"
  --extra                Enable extra/development/debugging features.
  --log arg              Log level overrides, of the form
                         "modulename={debug,info,warn,crit,error}"
                         Examples: "--log qof=debug" or "--log
                         gnc.backend.file.sx=info"
                         This can be invoked multiple times.
  --paths                Show paths
  --logto arg            File to log into; defaults to "/tmp/gnucash.trace" on most Unix,
                         "%LOCALAPPDATA%\Temp\gnucash.trace.XXXXXX.log", where XXXXXX is 
                         replaced with random characters, on Microsoft Windows, and
                         "$TMPDIR/gnucash.trace" on macOS;
                         use "stderr" or "stdout" to write to the terminal or any file path to
                         override the default.

Price Quotes Retrieval Options:
  -Q [ --quotes ] arg    Execute price quote related commands. Currently only
                         one command is supported.

                           info: Show Finance::Quote version and exposed quote
                                 sources.

                           get: Fetch current quotes for all foreign currencies
                                and stocks in the given GnuCash datafile.

                          dump: Fetch current quotes for specified currencies
                                 or stocks from a specified namespace and print
                                 the results to the console.
                                 This must be followed with a source and one or
                                 more symbols, unless the source is "currency"
                                 in which case it must be followed with two or
                                 more symbols, the first of which is the
                                 currency in which exchange rates for the rest
                                 will be quoted.
  --namespace arg        Regular expression determining which namespace
                         commodities will be retrieved for

  -V [ --verbose ]       When using the dump command list all of the parameters
                         Finance::Quote returns for the symbol instead of the
                         ones that Gnucash requires.

Report Generation Options:
  -R [ --report ] arg    Execute report related commands. The following
                         commands are supported.

                           list: Lists available reports.
                           show: Describe the options modified in the named
                                 report. A datafile may be specified to
                                 describe some saved options.
                           run: Run the named report in the given GnuCash
                                datafile.

  --name arg             Name of the report to run

  --export-type arg      Specify export type

  --output-file arg      Output file for report

The datafile can be either a normal file path or a URI. The URI format is scheme://[[username[:password]@]hostname[:port]]/path where scheme is one of file, mysql, or postgres. mysql and postgres require the hostname including the username and password. The port is needed only if different from the IETF well known ones for the scheme; the path for those two schemes will be the database name supplied when you created the database.