How to Modify gnuCash Reports

Mon Sep 28 07:43:36 EDT 2015

Many thanks Chris for the quick response.
The big issue I have is the format of the Income Statement (Profit and
Loss).
- Set headings of Revenue and Expense (black bold font) can't be
changed- All items of ' Income' are reported under Revenue yet the
business may have 'normal operations' and 'extraordinary operations' -
it is required by accounting Standards that the latter are separately
reported from the former so that (say) Rental from hiring out the
laundry basement owned by a Shoe Retailer is not mixed up with the
normal operations.  alternatively, the entity has two Profit Centres
that it wants to report for and can't with all Income items grouped
together and all Expenses grouped together.  
I want to be able to change the layout and would like permission (and
then help) to alter the .scm file as I am not a programmer, but an
Accountant who knows how and where the figures should be reported!
Many thanks to any tech people who can help.Michele
MICHELE HEMMINGS CPAAUSTRALIAE:    exclusivelystrata at iinet.net.auI:
   HTTP://WWW.EXCLUSIVELYSTRATANSW.COM.AU [1]
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----- Original Message -----
From: "Chris Good" 
To:"Michele Hemmings" , "GnuCash User Mailing List" 
Cc:"info at exclusivelystratansw.com.au" 
Sent:Mon, 28 Sep 2015 18:53:10 +1000
Subject:Re: How to Modify gnuCash Reports

On 27 Sep 2015, at 11:42 pm, Michele Hemmings  wrote:

  Hello Chris

First, I want to congratulate you and your team for producing gnuCash
software.
From my 10+ hours playing around with it, I find it quite good with
excellent Help guide and a lot of reports for small business.  There
are two things that I would like to ask for help with:

1. Reports - moving accounts around rather than just in Alpha order,

 You can specify an account code for each account name and I think
most reports allow you to sort on that 
                   - changing subheadings eg Revenue
and Expenses (when it is called Statement of Income & Expenditures)

 I don't think you can do that without modifying the report but that
probably isn't too hard - find the .scm file (I think) and give it a
go. 
                   - allowing for two types of income
for the business eg ' primary' profits and 'extraordinary' profits.
 That is standard financial reporting in most countries.

You can have as many different income accounts as you need - create
them as sub accounts under 'Income'. I'm not an accountant and cannot
remember if profit is an Income account... I think you may need to
provide more info in order for other people to help.

   2. Importing customers from .xls or .csv files and not just
Quicken books files.

I think you can do this but I don't know how.  
 and another which is more of a comment for improvement:
3. The pull down menu 'Business' is an unusual term for what it
contains, while ' Actions' implies to the first time user of entering
Sales, Purchasing goods (not to be confused with 'stocks or shares'),
but your Actions button is none of those things.
Why not call "Actions" >> "SET UP"?
Your 'Actions' is primarily about shares/Stocks yet it is where the
user adds New Accounts or sets Budgets.
I think the latter two activities are 'SET UP' things. Just as is
Adding Customers, Adding Suppliers/Creditors.
PS> the term 'Vendors' must be USA-specific as other countries usually
reserved that word for sellers of real estate, not goods to be resold
as in a shop.  We call a Supplier of goods, just that: Supplier or if
we buy on credit, a Creditor.

Interesting thoughts...
That's how it is currently. Once you've done it a few times it won't
be a problem, but patches always welcome. If you cannot program, and
this is important to you, then raise it as an enhancement request
GnuCash bug See the FAQ http://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/FAQ [3]   
4. what does 'gnu' stand for?  
  From memory: Gnu's not Unix. Try google - too much history for me to
go into.

If I cannot make the reports suit an entity with two different sources
of revenue as above, then I won't be able to use your system,
unfortunately.

Looking forward to hearing from you.

Michele Hemmings CPA
Australia

Hi Michele, 
 Welcome to GnuCash. I've answered as I can above. 
 I'm forwarding your email to the GnuCash user email group as
questions like this should go to them as 1. There are many more
knowledgeable people than me who may be able to help you 2. Other
people will learn from answers to your questions 3. You will probably
get more timely answers from the group than me. 
 If you're not already a member of the email group, you can subscribe
at http://www.gnucash.org [4] by clicking on the Mailing Lists link. 
 Regards, 
 Chris Good   

Links:
------
[1] http://mail.iinet.net.au/HTTP://WWW.EXCLUSIVELYSTRATANSW.COM.AU/
[2] mailto:exclusivelystrata at iinet.net.au
[3] http://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/FAQ
[4] http://www.gnucash.org