Marking mortgage payments as an expense

[David Overton]

On Thu, Jan 30, 2003 at 08:38:43PM -0600, Matthew Vanecek wrote:
> On Thu, 2003-01-30 at 09:19, Dale Alspach wrote:
> > I think you are right. A statement of cash flows is supposed to
> > catch every transaction that affects accounts considered "cash",
> > generally bank and cash accounts. If it does not show liability
> > changes from cash transactions it is broken.
> > 
> > 
> 
> The Cash Flow works as advertised, in 1.7.8 (or current CVS, anyhow). 
> However, the dialog, and the display are a little confusing.  When you
> open the Options dialog, all the selected accounts are *excluded* from
> the cash flow report.  Therefore, to include an account, you need to
> de-select it.  Also, if you have "Always show sub-accounts" checked, the
> accounts below selected top-level accounts will *not* be shown.
> 
> The labels are backward, is all.  There is currently a string freeze to
> allow for translations, but perhaps after 1.8.0 is relesed, we can get a
> change in.

The "labels" are not what bothered me.  They are the right way around
IMHO.  Although perhaps a more detailed explanation of how a cash flow
report works and what it's supposed to show could be included somewhere.
Something like Derek Atkins description would be good.

But IMHO, the defaults are not sensible.  The default selected accounts
should not include any liabilities and they should probably not include
any asset accounts other than "cash" and "bank" accounts.  As they are
at the moment, the default settings don't show you anything you couldn't
get from the profit and loss report.

BTW, I'd like to thank whoever implemented this report.  It's something
that's been missing for a long time and makes GnuCash much more useful
(for me at least).  My suggestions are not meant as criticism, just
trying to improve usability.


David