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

Andrew Sackville-West andrew at swclan.homelinux.org
Tue Jun 29 21:17:55 EDT 2010


On Tue, Jun 29, 2010 at 08:41:09PM -0400, Mike Leone wrote:
> On 6/29/2010 6:47 PM, Andrew Sackville-West had this to say:
> >/me holds nose and jumps in
> 
> Oh, it's nowhere near that bad. :-)
> 
> >
> >>All I said that was using a programming language to design a custom
> >>report was not the best solution, and expecting "normal" (read:
> >>non-technical) end users to learn one, in order to customize a report,
> >>is not realistic.
> >
> >extending the functionality of a program to provide new features
> >*requires* at some point, some kind of programming.
> 
> Not by the end user. And no, clicking options on an interface screen
> does not count as programming done by the end user.

there is clearly some kind of disconnect here. As gnucash is currently
designed, adding a new report to the system is essentially (for all
practical, non-programmer purposes) adding a feature to the
program. This requires programming.

> 
> I'm lucky; I have no investments to report, nor use GnuCash for
> business, etc. The only report I sometimes want to look at is an
> expense report, listing only specific expenses, in a specific time
> period, with sub-totals. I don't want income on it, as that's not
> what I need the report to tell me.

a report with just expenses is easy to obtain. You merely have to set
the options to adjust the default setup of one of the existing reports
to get exactly what you want. 

> 
> And I can sort of get that from the expense reports. Sort of,
> because I have no interest (and don't want) a piechart or barchart;
> all I want is a table of just the expenses I want, for the time
> periods I want).

right. I'm not talking about a bar chart or a pie chart. I mean a
simple text display of expense accounts with amounts for a particular
time period.


> As I say, I can get that (sort of - I can't seem to
> turn off that bar chart, even when I  but that's not
> insurmountable). 

you don't have to "turn off" the bar chart. simply don't run the
barchart report.

> Even that isn't as simple as it could be, but that
> will improve in time, I'm sure. Nor do I want the Income and Expense
> report, as I don't want or need the Income on that report.

so, just turn off the income accounts!

> So I just
> ignore the parts I don't need. It would be nice to not have it on
> there at all, but as I say, it's not insurmountable.
> 
> But my situation is probably not typical.

to my reading, your situation seems pretty typical, with just the
exception that you are not setting up the report the way you need it
to be.  If I completely mis-understand, please forgive me. 

Here are instructions to get a selection of expenses only in a text
based report for a specific time period:

1. Click Reports -> Income & Expense -> Income Statement

wait for report to run. notice that it isn't quite what you want...

2. click Options on the toolbar

in the options dialog that pops up:

3. Select Accounts tab
4. scroll the list of accounts until you see your income accounts
5. using the control key to deselect only specific accounts, click to
deselect all the income accounts leaving the expense accounts all
highlighted
6. again, using the control key, deselect any expense accounts you
don't want to see. 
7. Select the "General" tab
8. give the report a name in the "Report Name:" box. The reason for
this will be clear soon. 
9. Using the Start Date and End Date widgets, select the date range
you want to see. 
10. Click Apply or OK and review the results. 
11. repeat 2-10 until you are happy with the report
12. click the "Add Report" button on the tool bar. This will only be
available if you changed the report name in step 8 above. 

now depending on the version of gnucash you are using, the new
"custom" report, with the settings you've specified will be available
in the Reports -> Custom Reports menu either immediately, or on the
next restart of gnucash.

This method effectively creates a "saved report" that you can rerun
whenever you like using the parameters as set up when you saved it. 

hope this helps

A
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