Baffled by reports (and some guessed solutions)

[Derek Atkins]

Hi,

Quoting Ross Boylan <RossBoylan at stanfordalumni.org>:

> 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).

Have you tried the "Income Statement"?  This is what used to be called
the Profit and Loss report.  It was renamed to be more "accountant
friendly" but it's really the same thing.  You might want to try it.

> 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.

Yep, the Cash flow doesn't show indirect transactions like this..  (see 
below).

> 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.

Try the "Income Statement" report.

> 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.

The "Budget" report has to do with..... Tada!  Budgets.  It's not cryptic
at all!

> 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.

I'm not sure..

>  b) does selecting a high-level account select all lower-level
>  accounts under it?

Only if you turn on "select subaccounts"

>  c) Do the settings for "account display depth" and "always show
>  subaccounts" refer to the selection widget, the reports that are
>  generated, or both?

The 'depth' is for the report.  The "always show subacounts" is
both.

>  d) What are the defaults?

Varies from report to report..

>  e) How does "select default" differ from "default"?  (oh.. just
>  realized the latter might mean "set defaults using current
>  selections).

Yep.

>  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.]

Please see previous discussions about the Cash Flow report.  You assumed
incorrectly.

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

Like all things, the "Default" button means return the report to the
hard-coded defaults.

> 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.

Reference?  Please use http://cvs.gnucash.org/docs/HEAD/ as the leader
for the reference...

> 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?).

*BING!*  Yes, the Cash Flow report shows the Cash Flow into and out of
the reports you select.

> 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.

depends on your selctions.

> Ross Boylan

-derek

> Please remember to CC this list on all your replies.
> You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.

-- 
       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