Custom Reports

[Mike or Penny Novack]

Colin Scott wrote:

>>How do I delete the first "Chart of Accounts" custom report, or
>>permanently edit the custom report?
>>    
>>
>
>The short answer is you can't.
>
>The slightly longer answer is that you need to make your changes, and
>then save the report with a new name - eg, "Chart of Accounts (V2)" - and
>then work from there. .......
>  
>
>You, as so many, have stumbled on the single biggest weakness in the
>reporting system, if not of gnucash itself.  All of this has been known
>since I started using gnucash well over a year ago, but apparently it is
>considered a lower priority than adding new features.
>
>If it sounds churlish to criticise a free product so roundly, then so be
>it - although I make these remarks more in sorrow than in anger.  However,
>I find it hard to understand the priorities of the team (who have
>otherwise produced a remarkable, and remarkably useful, product) to leave
>untouched such glaringly awful design - let alone the glaring bugs
>therein! -  whilst adding features that whilst possibly nice do not have
>nearly the same impact on the product's overall utility.
>
>  
>
MAYBE --- I don't use the saving of reports so perhaps I don't fully 
understand the problem. But I suspect this MIGHT be more of a matter of 
not understanding what to save. See, a report typically has a number of 
"constant" changes that you want compared to the off the shelf report 
and a number of "variable" changes which will be different every time 
you run the report (the accounts and their contents, the dates, etc.).

Might be easier if we took an example from one of the user questions 
"How do I create an "Monthly Expense Report"? As I told this user, would 
want to start with the "Income Statement", exclude all income accounts, 
change the report title, decide on the level of nesting, the style for 
subtotaling, etc. and then set the start and stop date. Of those 
changes, all but the dates would be "fixed" (you want saved) but the 
dates will be different every time the report was run.

Assuming I wanted this and wanted to "save it" I would first create a 
directory (folder) for "Monthly Expense Reports". I would bring up the 
saved report, change the dates to the current month, and then export the 
report* to the folder (renaming it there, say with something like month 
and year in the name). I would not want to save that date change as the 
next time running the report the dates would be different.

Like I said, I have little experience saving reports so don't know if 
this would work (would it Colin?). But if it did I wouldn't be 
considering anything missing from the "save" facility in terms of THIS 
report. It's the "changes applicable to every run" that need to be 
saved, not the changes specific to any particular run.

Now about that other matter, priorities with volunteer staffed free 
software projects. I used to make my living designing software. Then I 
could recommend what should get priority to be worked (I was a very 
senior analyst sort) on and/or that I would prefer working on BUT it was 
a "management call" what got the actual priority. This is a very 
different situation. Even if the team agrees that it would be nice for 
this or that to receive priority it can't be done unless somebody wants 
to tackle that particular bit of work. There is a very big difference 
between agreement that "somebody should do" and having, even within that 
group in agreement, somebody willing to take on that task.

Michael D Novack, FLMI



* Note --- this would still be a "rough" report with some extraneous 
lines associated with income. If needing "pretty" output would then use 
an editor application to do that. When I asked our accountants "should I 
code custom reports to do that editing?" was told "don't bother, we 
accountants all have our preferred editors".