Baffled by reports (and some guessed solutions)

[Ross Boylan]

I just upgraded to gnucash 2.0.1-2 on Debian, and am having trouble
getting expense reports.  I do not recall having this problem before.
Some of the accounts seem to be left out.

My goal is to get all expenses for each subaccount in expenses for the
calendar year.

I think I finally figured out how to get the values I wanted.  For a
cashflow report I selected the Assets and Liabilities accounts and
then checked "include subaccounts".  This seems to produce the values
I need.  Some of them were being missed because some expense
categories were "paid" by creating a liability (accounts payable).

This is rather indirect, because it's not really a cashflow report I
want (I think); I just want the total expenses.  

The rest of what follows was written before I figured the above out.
Aside from hoping my remaining confusions might be cleared up, I hope
this might be useful in future development:
------------------------------------------------------------

I've been using Reports | Income and Expense | Cash Flow.  It does
not, for example, show the item for the account 
   Expenses:Medical Expenses:Rx,
though it does show items for doctor and nurse.  I've
tried selecting by hand, selecting by hitting the default button, and
selecting by hitting select all.  I've fiddled with the subaccount and
depth options.  I've tried check and repair on the account.  Nothing
works.

Perhaps this is a reflection of the indirect nature of payments I've
made related to this account.  While some of the other accounts
reflect checks written, all these items were "paid" for by incurring a
liability in an account payable.

I would say cash flow is not really what I'm looking for: I just want
total expenses by expense category.  This sounds as if the first
choice, Reports | Income and Expenses | Budget is what I need.
However, this gets me a page that says I need to customize the report,
and no matter what I do that's all I see.  My guess was that this
feature relates to the new budgeting facility, which I'm not using.

Other reports produce graphical displays; I need numbers.

In general, I've found the interface somewhat cryptic, and the
documentation missing or unhelpful.  Here are some specifics, in hopes
they may help future development.

1. As mentioned, the intent of the reports is not always clear from
the name.  I would have guessed that "budget" was what I wanted, not
cash flow, but that doesn't seem to have worked out.

2. The meaning of the customization tab for accounts are hard to make out.
  a) The account selection widget shows items with white, grey, and
  dark backgrounds.  Initially I thought the dark meant selected
  (which I still do), but I started wondering if the grey meant
  selected and white meant not selected, which might explain why some
  accounts were missing.
  b) does selecting a high-level account select all lower-level
  accounts under it?
  c) Do the settings for "account display depth" and "always show
  subaccounts" refer to the selection widget, the reports that are
  generated, or both?
  d) What are the defaults?
  e) How does "select default" differ from "default"?  (oh.. just
  realized the latter might mean "set defaults using current
  selections).
  f) clicking the help button produces a short message that answers
  none of these questions.
[In all above, I assumed I was selecting expense accounts to get a
report on.  That seems not to be the actual significance of this tab,
which identifies accounts for which flows in/out will be analyzed.]

3. The meaning of default for the "General" customization tab is
similarly unclear.

4. The general help that comes with the program contains a reference
to a chapter on reports, but doesn't seem to have such a chapter.

5. Interpretation of the resulting reports is also unclear.  The page
begins with a section entitled "Selected Accounts" with links to those
accounts.  This list differs from the accounts actually shown below
(oh... maybe cash flow reports flows in and out of the "selected
accounts" at the top?).  I thought maybe clicking on one of these
account links would produce another report, but it seems to go to a
register.  In the case of an aggregate level account, the register
doesn't include the subaccounts (maybe what one of those options above
affects?).

6. The graphical reports are also cryptic.  "Expense Barchart" shows
dates at the bottom.  How do they relate to the bars?  For example,
the first bar has 01/01/2006 under it.  Then there's an unlabelled
bar, then 03/01/2006.  I'm guessing the first bar is the month of Jan,
the second for Feb, etc.  However, initially I missed the blank label,
and thought the periods were maybe 1/1 - 3/1, being unsure of whether
the dates referred to the start or end, whether the first bar included
expenses before 1/1/2006.  By the way, it's a pretty nice graph apart
from that.

Ross Boylan