How to make a "custom" expense report [was Re: Report customization nightmare]

[Geert Janssens]

People,

I would really like to close this discussion. I believe everything there is to 
say has been said.

Summary:
1. In general: the term custom report is confusing.
- It is used to indicate a report written in scheme that was not distributed 
as part of the GnuCash project and has to be installed separately.
- It is also used to refer to a standard GnuCash report which has its options 
set differently from the standard configuration. Such a custom report can be 
generated from within GnuCash itself and be saved under Reports -> Custom for 
later reuse.
- And lastly it is sometimes also used to refer to standard GnuCash report, 
but with a custom layout (a modified stylesheet).

2. The reports distributed with GnuCash by default cover a large part of what 
one wants to be reported. Many customization questions are the result of a 
lack of documentation on how the reports can be customized to fit a particular 
need.

3. There are certainly corner cases that aren't covered by the standard 
reports. Here are some options to deal with this:
- You can find a report that can be configured to come close and live with the 
imperfections; optionally post-process the report in another tool.
- You can also learn scheme and write the report you need. You are also 
cordially invited to share your work with other GnuCash users, either by 
having the report included in GnuCash by default, or by publishing it 
somewhere and explain how it can be installed.
- If coding isn't your thing, you can find someone willing to do it for you. 
This will require some form of negotiation for a price or for willingness to 
spend time (yes, even free work has to be negotiated in the form of how do you 
get the other party interested in doing it).

4. Changing the layout of reports is currently very limited. There are gradual 
improvements coming up in the future 2.4 release. Depending on how much you 
wish to change the layout, this may require knowledge of html and css.

5. Particularly regarding the request for an expense summary.
a. The current Income Statement report comes very close to the goal of 
displaying only expenses, but not 100%. With proper option configuration, you 
will only still have the superfluous profit/loss line at the bottom.
b. There is an alternative way to get to the goal using the transaction 
report, removing all display options, except for Totals.
c. The Income Statement was never written with this specific goal in mind, so 
for developers it's a case of "works as designed"
d. From a user's perspective, it would be great if the report could be 
slightly tweaked to achieve the goal anyway, so essentially there is an 
enhancement request on behalf of the users.

For your information, I have written this enhancement request. You can read it 
and comment on it here:
https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=623381
Please continue any discussion on this particular issue there.

I hope we can now focus on other discussions.

Geert