While reporting the totals for all accounts can be useful, most often
you will want to check the balance of a specific account or accounts.
To do this, put one or more account names after the balance command.
Since these names are really regular expressions, you can use partial
names if you wish:

@example
ledger bal checking
@end example

Reports:

@smallexample
           $1,480.00  Assets:Bank:Checking
@end smallexample

Any number of names may be used:

@example
ledger bal checking broker liab
@end example

Reports:

@smallexample
           $1,480.00  Assets:Bank:Checking
             50 AAPL  Assets:Brokerage
              $-2.00  Liabilities
@end smallexample

In this case no grand total is reported, because you are asking for
specific account balances.

For those comfortable with regular expressions, any Perl regexp is
allowed:

@example
ledger bal ^assets.*checking ^liab
@end example

Reports:

@smallexample
           $1,480.00  Assets:Bank:Checking
              $-2.00  Liabilities:Taxes
@end smallexample