report config

[Michael Vrable]

On Tue, Aug 30, 2005 at 09:40:16PM -0700, Eric Angell wrote:
> I'm trying to build a report that will show me the total dollar
> amount that I've invested in my Roth IRA YTD, so I can easily
> figure out how much room I currently have between that total and
> the yearly cap.  Clearly I only want to count direct
> contributions in this total, not dividends or management fees.
[...]
> Any suggestions?  The only other report name that looks
> potentially applicable is the cash flow report, but that's not
> actually anything near like what I'm looking for.

I've used the cash flow report with quite a bit of success for exactly
this purpose; it's just a matter of getting the settings right.  (It
might be that I'm abusing the report, but it does seem to work.)

Open the cash flow report.  As accounts, select all the asset accounts
that make up your IRA.  Then, add in all the income and expense accounts
that you don't want counted as contributions--dividends and management
fees here.

The report should compute cash flowing between selected and non-selected
accounts.  It should ignore transactions entirely among selected
accounts.  This will only work though if you have all the
income/expenses related to your IRA in separate accounts from non-IRA
income/expenses.

--Michael Vrable