Average users *need* custom reports

[Tommy Trussell]

On Wed, Jun 30, 2010 at 6:14 PM,  <cognitive.libertarian+ml at gmail.com> wrote:
> If someone needs to know the sum of expenses from 5 different (but
> similar) expense accounts, from March 17th, 2006 to May 3rd, 2009,
> where the funds are drawn from only one particular credit card, and
> perhaps only counting transactions with a particular substring in the
> subject -- how can you possibly expect the report to be "supplied" by
> gnucash?  Obviously a custom report is the only option.

If none of the existing reports are customizable enough to get the
data you are looking for, try the Find feature in GnuCash to search
for the transactions you want, and then use the Account Report on the
results to compile the data into a report. While the search results
tab is open, you can sort and filter the results by several different
criteria before you create the Account Report. This process is not
perfect, but I've found it quite useful for ad hoc reporting. OH and
remember any of the reports can be exported to HTML and most of those
can be opened or copied and pasted directly into OpenOffice for
further formatting.

> In MS Money,
> creating a report that specific is *trivial*.  Just a few check boxes.

That sounds pretty cool. Especially the trivial part. Maybe the
publisher of MS Money will let the world have the code for doing that
since they don't sell the program anymore?

(I'm thinking that's NOT very likely.)

> GC native users may not know what they're missing, but the one factor
> that will drive experienced users of proprietary tools from GC back to
> their original proprietary tool is the custom reporting inability.

I came from Quicken, and it would take a lot to push me back to a
barrage of advertisements and implied threat of holding my data
hostage for the next "upgrade fee."

But I think my requirements fall squarely within the stated goals of
GnuCash, and I find I have gotten a lot of software for the money
differential. There is a lot I still haven't used in the program and
so far it has been completely reliable.

Because GnuCash is open, folks who have an "itch" for a feature can
scratch it by providing that feature themselves, and everyone can
benefit. And if people are not able to get it to do what they need,
they haven't lost anything but their time.

PLUS I think one of the big problems we are having is documentation.
It's not always clear to inexperienced users what the existing reports
are for. The existing documentation does no more than list them
without any descriptions, and maybe some of the customization issues
could be improved just by describing how they're used.

I think if we wrote out specific use-cases, we could find a procedure
for squeezing the data for most of those cases from the existing
reports plus the Find feature. Maybe we could also develop a more
"elegant" suggestion for future reports. Many of these are tasks a
non-programmer could perform. Why don't we put some of that on the
wiki and work it out together.