Report running balances / date mismatch

[Shane Litherland]

Hi again,

just noticed something when running a txn report, and choosing to show
running balances:
I seems that the way the report calculates/sorts the balances is
independent of the way the items are chosen to be sorted. In my example,
I have sorted by date, but where there are multiple txns on the same
date, the running balance shown doesn't necessarily match the running
balance that it would be if calculated on the order of entries shown.
The running balance total is right, but it appears quite confusing the
way the report shows it.

e.g. (with txn details removed for simplicity/security; note on 30/9/10
two txns of same amount are for internal carry-fwd / acct tfr , not some
mistake txn!):

       Date
      Debit
      Credit
     Balance
01/07/2010



           $132.00
          -$132.00
30/09/2010



         $2,622.18
          -$132.00
30/09/2010
         $2,622.18



         $2,490.18
30/11/2010



           $132.00
          -$264.00
07/12/2010



         $3,177.00
        -$3,441.00
31/05/2011



           $132.00
        -$3,573.00
30/06/2011



            $16.74
        -$3,588.64
30/06/2011
             $1.10



        -$3,571.90
Grand Total
   
   
        -$3,588.64

If you grab a calculator, and do the sums, try switching the order of
entries on the same date and you will get the figure shown in running
balance and total.

I have tried sorting the report by ''exact time', with the same result
as above.

I have sorted the report by 'register order' and it comes out correctly:


       Date
      Debit
      Credit
     Balance
01/07/2010



           $132.00
          -$132.00
30/09/2010
         $2,622.18



         $2,490.18
30/09/2010



         $2,622.18
          -$132.00
30/11/2010



           $132.00
          -$264.00
07/12/2010



         $3,177.00
        -$3,441.00
31/05/2011



           $132.00
        -$3,573.00
30/06/2011
             $1.10



        -$3,571.90
30/06/2011



            $16.74
        -$3,588.64
Grand Total
   
   
        -$3,588.64

So it seems that running balance is calculated for report(s) based on
register order, and is not altered by sorting the rest of a report by
another criterion?

Could there also be an issue in the account(register) being reported on
- why does sorting on date or exact time in the report, give a different
order to what is shown in the register? - I did check the sort settings
on the register - either 'standard' or 'date' resulted in the same order
of txns, as shown in the second example above. Is the register not
noticing date/time information for entries that the reports are
noticing?

I did note on another forum comments/suggestions for improving gnucash
by allowing accounts/registers to be sorted better by exact date/time..
so maybe there's already something known about what is going on in this
situation.

Regards,
Shane.
PS hope the examples view OK, wanted plain text but email program
insisted I paste them in as a text-table :-/