Difficulty reporting split transactions filtered by description?

[Greg Skelhorn]

On 28/01/2016 7:56 AM, Greg Skelhorn wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I would like to make a report showing a total of one part of a split transaction. I am new to Gnucash and may be missing something obvious. I am working with payroll transactions and want to make a report per employee.
>
> I enter the transactions as a split in the checking account. The split involves four expense accounts and seven liabilities plus the checking account. The employee name is in the transaction description and each split have the employee name and pay period in the memo field.
>
> Can I make a report that produces a summary total for each part of the payroll split transactions per employee? I think if I could have the Cash Flow report run over only the transactions for a single employee I would have it. I see how to filter for a period but no way to filter by description.
>
> I've tried using Edit | Find for filter based on employee name and account expense:wages then filter by date. This shows the transactions I would like to report on.
>   
> For example, to generate a total gross wages report I tried using Edit | Find to filter transactions using Description contains employee name and accounts set to expenses:wages but the search results includes all parts of the split.
>
> I have the feeling I'm missing something obvious.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Greg

I thought the Transaction Report might help but it doesn't seem to work 
as I thought. With the sorting primary key set to Account Name and the 
secondary key set to Description the transactions I am interested are 
displayed and sorted but there is only one total for each account. The 
toggle for the secondary subtotal total looks like it in "on" but is 
disabled. Is there a way to enable the secondary subtotals?

Thanks,

Greg