Baffled by reports (and some guessed solutions)

[Ross Boylan]

On Sun, Sep 24, 2006 at 09:01:34PM -0400, Derek Atkins wrote:
> 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.

That looks like exactly what I need.

Maybe "Income and Expense Statement" would be clearer to the
non-accountant.

...

> >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!

This confused me for 2 reasons: I was looking for the name of a
particular kind of report, and, finding nothing that looked quite
right, grasped at this.  Second, I'm used to Managing Your Money, in
which going into the "Budget" menu item at various points also gets
you the material I was looking for (i.e., how your expenses are
distributed across your budget categories, which is MYM-speak for what
are "expense accounts" in gnucash).

The "cashflow" report made me wonder exactly what flows were being
counted.  I think I understand now.

> 
> >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..

I think the dark background is selected, the grey and white is just
alternating lines.

> 
> > 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.

This variation in meaning is a bit confusing.

> 
> > 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.
Maybe "set default" and "get default" or "reset defaults to display"
would be clearer (yeah, I know, the last is long for a button.  But
perhaps it could be help when you hover over the button).

...

> >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.

There are many default related operations; "default" alone isn't much
of a clue.  Defaults can be set or used.  Defaults may be for a
session, a user, or all users (in addition to having various scopes,
e.g., all reports, just this one, all reports of this type).
Sometimes there are "factory" defaults and user-settable defaults.
Sometimes you can reset the "factory" defaults (that is, change their
values).

> 
> >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...
This was from the program menu, Help | Tutorial and Concepts Guide.
Section 4.7.5 says, in a note section, "More details on the reports
will be presented in the Report chapter."  There is no such chapter.

I see Help | Contents gets you something different; section 3.4 there
talks about reports.  The version I have seems a little behind the
program, since 3.4.1.3 doesn't include "Income Statement" or "Budget
Report".

> 
> -derek
> 

Thanks for your really fast and helpful response.

One of the reasons I've held off going to gnucash for my own stuff is
that it lacked budgeting.  I'm glad to see it's been added.  Thanks to
everyone who worked on it.

Ross

P.S. Gnucash 2.0 also looks a lot better, thanks to Gtk2 I assume.
The previous version's fonts were not only a bit ugly (as configured
on my system), but it had a very annoying way of opening up the
register so that all the characters in the numbers were not visible
without scrolling.

Final question: When entering a split transaction, I've always wanted
an "assign balance to this split" shortcut.  Is there such a thing?