Custom Reports and Backup

[Colin Scott]

I have been giving this some thought.  One of the major reasons that
different sets of books will require their own tailor-made set of reports
is that the account list for a report must explicitly mention each
account to be included, and the accounts list in the report definition
will thus differ between different sets of books.

It seems to me that this part of the problem relates to the need to be
able to say "include in the list Account-X and all it's child accounts".
At the moment, one must list the entire tree beneath Account-X.  How much
simpler it would had the list  a bit of syntax to say "this account and
all its children" - implying that the set of children would be evaluated
when the report is run rather than when it is defined.  This would not
only address the issue of report tailoring, but would also address a
matter I raised some months ago, that if one creates a report, and then
adds a new account, then that new account will be omitted from the report
until the report is re-specified.

And to extend that concept a little, a bit of syntax that said "EXclude
this account and all its children" (which might be applied to a specific
child within a generically included tree),  similarly to be evaluated at
report run-time, would add even more flexibility - and one could then
probably generate pretty much universal reports, the only features now
necessarily tied to the set of books in use being the report title and
company name.

Colin