Model of report

[Phil Longstaff]

If you want to do any work on a requirements spec, set of use cases or workflow design, feel free.

My basic idea (concept borrowed from Financial Edge, an accounting package I worked with once) is that a report row layout can be defined.  This involves defining section headings, accounts and total lines.  This row layout can then be used to create a report along with column definitions.  As an example, a row layout for a balance sheet would involve an Assets section, a Liabilities section and an Equity section (possibly in different orders depending on country accounting requirements).  The Assets section would be the word Assets, a list of the assets accounts, then the Total Assets line.  By default, this would be driven by the current chart of accounts, but there would be options to reorder accounts or suppress certain accounts.  This could then be combined with a column definition for current value, a definition for 1 year ago today, and a 3rd column which is col1-col2 to provide the difference.  There would also be options for col1 as percentage
 of col2, or (col1-col2)/col2*100 to give percentage increase/decrease.

All of the info is there, and if we could define a better framework for reports, it wouldn't be too hard to generate very functional and attractive reports.

Phil




________________________________
From: Mike or Penny Novack <stepbystepfarm at mtdata.com>
To: Phil Longstaff <plongstaff at rogers.com>
Cc: Derek Atkins <warlord at MIT.EDU>; Norton <nortonfreire at globo.com>; gnucash-devel at gnucash.org
Sent: Wednesday, September 2, 2009 3:07:12 PM
Subject: Re: Model of report

Phil Longstaff wrote:

> At some point, I want to modify some of the reports (balance sheet/income statement especially) to allow multiple dates or time periods to be specified, resulting in multiple columns.  However, I'm busy with too much else right now.
> 
> Phil
>  
THAT would be welcome, Phil.

The only reason I have not done this (I'm a retired senior systems analyst) is that the board member who takes the data I supply out of GnuCash and uses that to prepare a financial statement in proper GAAP format as done for non-profits is that he told me not to bother --- the process involves adding footnotes for everything that needs an explanatory note as well as some stock text and he uses his favorite document processing app for that.

However, being able to prepare a "report" giving the current year an prior year in parallel (what is standard for a non-profit) would be handy.

The other side of that coin is that accounts would not necessarily match 1:1 and you need to give some thought what you plan doing in that situation.  The account might not have existed in the prior time period or might not still exist (no longer applicable -- would be cumbersome carrying on the report accounts that are obsolete and/or accounts that only rarely have activity always showing with zero balance).

Michale D Novack, FLMI