Writing custom reports for Customers

[Matt Kowske]

I will have to look more into utilizing the SQL database -- sounds like
it could work pretty well.

As far s the CoA goes I played around with the structure you have and it
seems to work pretty well, although of course there is the downside that
I have to maintain many more accounts now. Shouldn't be too bad by
leveraging the CSV import functionality and utilizing the "hidden
account" option when a property is sold.

That said, I do still think a feature that would allow this would be
very useful. Thanks for the suggestions.

On 12/13/2014 03:08 AM, Wm wrote:
> Fri, 12 Dec 2014 18:03:17 <548B8245.1030301 at cmail.nu>  Matt Kowske
> <jmk at cmail.nu>
>
>> I am trying to use GnuCash to do accounting for a real estate investment
>> LLC. I have found that there is a limitation in that you can't create
>> "classes" like you can in Quickbooks
>
> I am unfamiliar with QB, in any event it is best not to presume people
> know about application A when asking questions about application B.
>
>> but some people have found clever
>> workarounds for htis on the web. One posted here:
>>
>> http://gnucash.uservoice.com/forums/101223-feature-request/suggestions/1
>> 543027-transaction-classifications
>> (near the bottom)
>
> An interesting thread that I wasn't aware of, thank you, it gives me
> some use cases to work with in my current area of interest (non-profit
> fund accounting) which may seem orthogonal but isn't.
>
>> ... is to setup individual properties as Customers and individual
>> expenses as Vendors. This way you can "tag" expenses to certain
>> properties. This seems to work pretty well, except the reporting on
>> Customers is lacking for this type of use for it. I would need to
>> produce a P&L report for each "customer" or property and don't see any
>> way to do that currently.
>>
>> So, finally, to my question -- before I spend hours learning how to
>> write a customer GnuCash report, could someone more experienced tell me
>> if this would be even possible? A report just like the "Income
>> Statement" already in the program but narrowed down to only a particular
>> customer?
>
> OK, first the bad news.  Unless you are already familiar with the
> language used to write most of gnc's reports you don't want to start
> there.
>
> Second, depending on the number of entities (in your case properties)
> there is no reason why you can't structure your CoA thus:
>
> PropertyA-Assets
> PropertyA-Income
> PropertyA-Expenses
> PropertyA-Liabilities
>
> PropertyB-Assets
> PropertyB-Income
> PropertyB-Expenses
> PropertyB-Liabilities
>
> you'd then use the existing reports and select PropertyA or PropertyB
> in the Accounts section.  That is unlikely to be attractive if you
> have hundreds of properties and you get in and out of investment
> situations on a frequent (say more often than monthly) basis.
>
> Third, if you choose to use one of the SQL capable storage methods you
> have the full power of SQL reporting which more people understand and
> will be able to help you with.
>