New Report to End All Reports

[John Ralls]

> On May 18, 2016, at 7:03 AM, Aaron Laws <dartme18 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> On Tue, May 17, 2016 at 5:22 PM, John Ralls <jralls at ceridwen.us <mailto:jralls at ceridwen.us>> wrote: 
> The Balance Sheet report shows you net worth. You probably didn't recognize it because the accounting word for it is "equity". Recall that the accounting equation is Assets = Liabilities + Equity*, so by associativity Equity = Assets - Liabilities.
> 
> 
> When we say Assets = Liabilities + Equity, it means All Assets = All Liabilities + All Equity. This works if I include all (non-$0) assets, liabilities and equity, and do so when there are no revenues nor expenses (just after closing the books). At any other time, or in any other way, that equation doesn't hold, and even in that specific case, it's not the information I'm seeking.
> 
> Attached is a small sample (hopefully it comes through okay). When I get a balance sheet only selecting the current assets and liabilities, the resulting report looks like this: http://i.imgur.com/uW0uE5R.png <http://i.imgur.com/uW0uE5R.png> which shows $0 for equity (because I didn't select any equity accounts).
> 
> In this case, since my checking account has $15, and credit card has $12, I would like to see that my net current assets are $3. This purposefully leaves out the fixed asset which makes the net worth much higher.
> 
> I'm not convinced that this should be a separate report in gnucash; it seems like an ad-hoc, one-off report to satisfy a curiosity of mine, much like report requests from other users. How is the suggestion for a flexible, general report taken? Maybe it should be called a report builder?
> 
> <example.gnucash>


OK.

One report to rule them all doesn't seem feasible to me, but a report builder that's more user-friendly than what we have now--write Scheme code or use SQL--would be a great improvement and one we've discussed here before.

Regards,
John Ralls