expense cash-flow report

[Larry Siden]

On Wed, 2004-06-09 at 19:29, Derek Atkins wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> Larry Siden <lsiden at comcast.net> writes:
> 
> > I generated an expense cash-flow report.  However, I wanted to customize
> > it so that:
> 
> I don't understand what you mean by "expense cash-flow report"...
> Could you please explain what you mean?  The "cash flow" report is
> showing how much money is entering/leaving a set of accounts.
>From the menu: Reports/Income and Expense/Cash Flow
> 
> > * It would not distinguish between inflows and outflows, but combine
> > them.  Inflows would be positive numbers and outflows negative.
> 
> But that's what it IS doing..  Are you saying that if you have $10
> going into an account and then $10 coming out that you want it to
> display $0?

Exactly.  

The reason that I would like this is because, for example, when I go out
to dinner with a friend and pay for the tab with my credit card, I will
credit my cc account, say, $40 and debit Expenses:Dining.  Then my
friend gives me $20 cash for his share and I debit Cash with $20 and
credit Expenses:Dining.  If that were my only night out for the month, I
would like the report to show a single line for Expenses:Dining - $20
instead of two lines: an outflow of $40 under "Money ... comes from" and
an inflow of $20 under "Money ... goes to" as it does now.

> 
> > * It would show expenses only.
> 
> Uhh, then you don't want a cash-flow report.  Or I'm not understanding
> what you're trying to achieve.

You are right, Derek.  What I really want is a true "Expenses" report,
not Cash Flow.  The reason I said "Cash Flow" is because this is the
closest one I could find, so I selected it as my starting point.

> 
> > * One might be able to customize it in order to limit the report to
> > certain expenses.
> 
> You can already do that...

Really?  When I select the "Options" toolbar button, a box comes up with
two tabs: "Accounts" and "General".  "Accounts" allows one to select the
group of accounts for which funds in and out will be reported as an
aggregate, not the individual accounts that serve as the sources and
destinations of the funds.

> 
> > * It might be capable of averaging weekly/monthly/quarterly, etc.
> 
> This would be a good addition to the existing report.

Yes, and I would expect that it is quite easy to accomplish, even for me
with my total lack of experience with Scheme.  Might be the perfect
intro project for me.

> 
> > I looked at cash-flow.scm but realized I have too high a learning curve
> 
> Uh, go spend a day reading the scheme manual at
> http://www.swiss.ai.mit.edu/ and you'll understan 90% of what you need
> to do..

Thanks.  I'll see if I have time.