Selecting Date Range to view

[Derek Atkins]

Nope, you assume wrong.  Note that there are two reports labeled Transaction
Report; the one in the Register Menu, and the one in the Main Menu.  I 
mean the
one in the Main Menu:

<Menu> -> Reports -> Transaction Report

-derek

Quoting Brandon Kuczenski <brandon at 301south.net>:

> On Mon, 15 Aug 2005, Derek Atkins wrote:
>
>> Did you try the "Transaction Report"?  It sounds like this is what 
>> you want. You'll just need to configure the settings for what you 
>> want.
>>
>> As for the P&L being "non-intuitively named", I should point out 
>> that it's been renamed to the Income Report in the next major 
>> release..  But also "Profit and Loss" is a fairly standard business 
>> report.
>>
>> -derek
>
>
> First, I'm assuming you mean "Account Report", since "Transaction 
> Report" only reports on the currently selected transaction (I suppose 
> this is another business-related feature, since it doesn't provide 
> any more information than simply viewing that transaction in the 
> register).
>
> Preparing an "Account Report" requires me to select the date range 
> for the account in advance before generating the report, and then 
> doesn't contain any more information than the register itself 
> contains, except for printing out net totals at the bottom.  It's an 
> awfully small payoff for a substantial amount of mousework.  Plus, it 
> still has the distracting, lifetime-accumulating "Balance" which I 
> still believe doesn't make sense for an income or expense account 
> when a date range is selected.
>
> In any case, it is way too much work, unless there is some feature to 
> globalize the "Date Range" selection -- what I would really like is 
> to see this information for a number of accounts, or for all of them, 
> without having to spend about a minute preparing each account 
> individually.
>
> So, I guess the proposed 'bug report' would be to change the way 
> 'balance' is calculated for income or expense accounts when a date 
> range is selected.  The proposed 'feature request' would be to offer 
> a global 'date range' setting in the main window.  The long-term 
> 'project' would be to write a new report template that would compile 
> a number of 'account reports' for a single user-specified date range 
> on a single report.  The accounts included would be selectable just 
> as they are for other main-window reports.
>
> Is there community interest or support for any of these?
>
> -Brandon
>
>
>>
>> Quoting Brandon Kuczenski <brandon at 301south.net>:
>>
>>> Hello, Gnucash community.  I switched over to Linux a few months 
>>> ago and have been using Gnucash as a replacement for Quicken 98.  
>>> Philosophically, I like it much better (particularly the 
>>> double-entry accounting).  I am currently using version 1.8.10 on a 
>>> Debian system.
>>>
>>> One feature that I feel is lacking is an analog to a Quicken 
>>> feature I used quite often: simply, the ability to display all the 
>>> transactions from certain or all accounts from a certain period as 
>>> an itemized list (Quicken's "Itemized Categories" report).  I have 
>>> not found any way to replicate this functionality in Gnucash.  The 
>>> closest I can get is a (non-intuitively named) 'profit and loss' 
>>> report over a specified date range, but that does not show 
>>> individual transactions, only their sums by-account.
>>>
>>> The next-closest feature is "View -> Select Transactions -> Date 
>>> Range" in each individual account window.  Though cumbersome, this 
>>> would be sufficient EXCEPT: I believe that for Income and Expense 
>>> accounts, when the Date Range is selected, the account's 'Balance' 
>>> should start at zero at the beginning of the range.  This doesn't 
>>> make sense for asset or bank accounts, but for income and expense 
>>> accounts I believe it does -- since they don't really have true 
>>> balances.
>>>
>>> After that change, I could easily see at-a-glance how much money I 
>>> spent from a certain account (c.f. Quicken 'category'), say, in 
>>> August of 1998. As it is now, I have to set the date range and 
>>> subtract the initial balance from the final balance myself.
>>>
>>> What do you think of that?  It seems like the coding change would 
>>> be near-trivial, though I haven't actually looked.  Does this seem 
>>> like a reportable 'bug'?
>>>
>>> As a possible extension, might it make sense to select a Viewable 
>>> Date Range that is universal to all accounts, rather than or in 
>>> addition to having a per-account viewable range?
>>>
>>> Thanks for your development efforts.  Without this program it would 
>>> not have been practical for me to switch from Windows.
>>>
>>> -Brandon
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> gnucash-user mailing list
>>> gnucash-user at gnucash.org
>>> https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>



-- 
       Derek Atkins, SB '93 MIT EE, SM '95 MIT Media Laboratory
       Member, MIT Student Information Processing Board  (SIPB)
       URL: http://web.mit.edu/warlord/    PP-ASEL-IA     N1NWH
       warlord at MIT.EDU                        PGP key available