How to Modify gnuCash Reports

[Mike or Penny Novack]

On 9/29/2015 4:17 PM, Wm... wrote:
>> 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 will, however give the competing option. Back when I began using 
gnucash to keep organizational books I asked the more experienced 
accounting type (lawyer who was treasurer of a lawyer's NPO) whether I 
should create special reports from within  gnucash. After all, I was a 
very experienced programmer, and though never did LISP family languages 
for pay, could at least read any LISP dialect (scheme is a LISP 
dialect). He said, "Don't bother MIke. Just create the standard reports 
out of gnucash and export those and then we massage into the desired 
final form with a favorite editor. We would be adding fixed text and 
annotations in any case. That's how any experienced accountant would 
choose to work."

In other words, don't look at this from the point  of view of the major 
changes you would want, but consider ALL possibilities of editing you 
might need to get to the final "pretty printed" format. If you are going 
to need to use a full service editor in any case, might as well plan on 
using your favorite editor for all of it. Arguing that gnucash itself 
should contain the power of a full service editor ignores that users 
would then have to learn yet another editor.

Michael

PS: In other words, for this organization I produce the reports (from 
within gnucash) to contain all the DATA that would be needed for the 
various reporting that might be done, export those "raw" reports, and 
then use an editor to copy data into a document that gets edited into 
the final form for presentation to the board and for various 
governmental filings (who might NOT agree with each other how things to 
be grouped). For example, I need to know how much each independent 
contractor was paid for 1099-MISC purposes but the board doesn't want 
that level of detail in their quarterly report.