[GNC-dev] [GNC] Transaction Report Sign Reverses

[Christopher Lam]

Hi David, I'd had a review of transaction-report and can attempt fix signs
for subtotals when sorting by 'account name'.
The difficult issue remains how to handle reversals when sorting by 'other
account name'. I think it's buggy and not sure how to handle it.
Try this patch to trep-engine.scm in a recent build.



On Mon, 12 Aug 2019 at 08:45, David T. <sunfish62 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Well, it seems odd to me that "Double" display (as Adrien noted)(thank
> you, Adrien!) is able to display the figures as the user prefers. It is
> also odd to me that the report knows to switch the values of the individual
> transactions, but is unable to remember that fact when it comes to the
> totals. That right there is the problem.
>
> As for the FAQ, it seems to me that there is a mistake in the example
> there: the GnuCash option is to change signs for Income *and* Expenses. But
> the example provided reverses Income but not Expenses. Were it to reverse
> both sets of accounts as the preference indicates, then the math should
> work out correctly ($100+10-20=$90). Or am I missing something here?
>
> Why is it not possible to perform the calculation for totals and then
> apply a display modifier so that the user sees numbers as they prefer?
>
> The current solution is a poor one.
> On 8/12/2019 11:12 AM, Christopher Lam wrote:
>
>
> https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/FAQ#Q:_Why_does_the_Transaction_Report_.27Sign_Reversal.27_setting_not_work_on_subtotals
>
> This issue could be fixed if the scenario addressed in this FAQ can be
> resolved. I don't really know how to handle that particular case.
>
> On Mon., 12 Aug. 2019, 13:02 David T. via gnucash-user, <
> gnucash-user at gnucash.org> wrote:
>
>> Hello,
>>
>> I am trying to create a YTD Capital Gains report, and am encountering a
>> problem with how the Transaction Report implements the Sign Reverses
>> setting.
>>
>> I recall some time back a discussion about the fact that the Sign
>> Reverses setting reverses signs in these reports in a confusing way.
>> There was some discussion about reversing the individual transactions
>> but not the totals. Although I do not recall the specifics of the
>> discussion, I am encountering the same situation now, where the
>> transactions themselves respect the user setting, but the totals do not.
>> To say this is confusing is an understatement.
>>
>> It seems to me that other financial applications must have encountered
>> the problem of displaying income to users as a positive value (since
>> that is how most of us view income!) while still finding a way to
>> display the correct accounting information.
>>
>> To display my YTD report of Capital Gains, I ran a Transaction Report
>> and selected the Income:Realized Gains accounts for the current year.
>> The result shows losses as positive numbers, and gains as negative. I
>> don't know about you, but my expectation is reversed from this. If I
>> change the Sign Reverses setting to Income and Expense, then the
>> transactions switch, but the totals do not. This result was the gist of
>> the discussion in an earlier thread. Bleah!
>>
>> Now, I know that I can copy the data, paste it into another program and
>> change all the settings to my heart's content, but I am looking for a
>> way to run a report in GnuCash that directly and unambiguously shows me
>> whether I have gained money (a positive) or lost it (a negative) over
>> the current year. Does anyone have suggestions?
>>
>> FWIW, I attempted to turn this report around and have a report that
>> lists transactions in the asset accounts, filtered by the
>> Income:Realized Gains accounts, but that seems to report only the Asset
>> account currency--in this case, the mutual fund or stock shares involved
>> on the Gain/Loss transaction. Unfortunately, that's not the actual
>> Gain/Loss value...
>>
>> It would be nice if the sign reverses setting could be fixed. Barring
>> that, does anyone have a workaround report setup that can give me a
>> sensible YTD Capital Gains total as described?
>>
>> David T.
>>
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