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

[Mike Leone]

On 6/29/2010 9:17 PM, Andrew Sackville-West had this to say:
> 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.

The disconnect is that my position is that creating a new, custom report 
should not require programming by the end user. ("programming" meaning 
using a programming language like guile, etc, that must be studied and 
mastered).

> 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.

Tried it; can't get it the way I want. Granted, I didn't spend a whole 
lot of time on it.

Perhaps you can tell me how not to show a piechart or bar chart, when 
customizing those specific expense reports? It would be a help.

> 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...

<snip>

> 10. Click Apply or OK and review the results.

It says "Total revenue: $0" as the first line, and "Net Loss for the 
period" as the last line. And how do I not remove these unnecessary 
lines, which I don't want in my report, since it has no bearing on what 
I am looking for from this report? (I only want a table of expenses, 
with totals. Not Income. Not Net Profit or Loss.)

That's what I'm talking about - I can sort of get what I want, if I 
ignore the parts I don't want (such as the "Total revenue" and "Net 
Loss" lines); I only want to know the totals of just the expenses I 
want. I'm not looking for a real P&L statement; just a table of specific 
expenses. (Ideally, with totals per month, but that's for another day)