A crucial GNUCash feature that is missing, but easy to implement for budgets

Abhijit Kshirsagar abhijit86k at gmail.com
Mon Jan 16 11:33:12 EST 2017


Debian user here.
Was able to download and view the YTD report without any problems.
I don't have a proper budget yet - will setone up and report back.
Abhijit

P.s: Is there a public repo of gnucash reports anywhere?
~Abhijit



On 15 January 2017 at 21:16, David via gnucash-user
<gnucash-user at gnucash.org> wrote:
> Steven,
>
> I confirm everything you offer here. I have tried exactly the same steps, with exactly the same problems.
>
> It sure would be nice if the custom reports implementation and documentation were simple and accurate.
>
> David
>
>
>
> _____________________________________________
> From: Steven Miller <Smille89_K at hotmail.com>
> Sent: Mon Jan 16 04:50:58 GMT+05:00 2017
> To: Phil Longstaff <phil.longstaff at gmail.com>, Gnucash user list <gnucash-user at gnucash.org>
> Subject: Re: A crucial GNUCash feature that is missing, but easy to implement for budgets
>
>
> Phil,
>
>
> Bare with me on this...
>
> I went to my home directory. I cd into .gnucash. There was no config.user file so I just created one under the .gnucash directory. I also created the reports directory under .gnucash and dropped ytd-budget.scm into the reports directory ... In the config.user file I put:
>
>
> (load "/home/guardian/.gnucash/reports/ytd-budget.scm")
>
>
> When I launch gnucash then it doesn't pull up in the reporting menu [☹] .
>
>
> A couple of other things I tried:
>
> In the config.user file I tried
>
> (load (gnc-build-dotgnucash-path "ytd-budget.scm"))
>
> Then I put ytd-budget.scm directly under .gnucash (so that it was in the relative directory)
>
> It still didn't Show up in the reporting menus when I restarted GnuCash. My guess is it is some how not reading the config.user file under .gnucash directory in my home directory for some reason, but I could be wrong.
>
>
> Next I tried dropping it directly in the standard reports directory under /user/share/gnucash/scm/gnucash/report/standard-reports. When I tried to boot GnuCash now it won't open, it tries then dies. To see what was wrong I ran gnucash via command line with the following command:
>
> gnucash --debug --log gnc.scm=debug
>
>
> Below is the error I get when I run it this way
>
> ---------------------------
>
> The error I get before it crashes is In known file:
>
> ?: 2 [primitive-load-path "gnucash/report/standard-reports/budget-ytd" ...]
>
> In gnucash/report/standad-reports/budget-ytd.scm:
>
> 46: 1 [#<procdure 55f543479560 ()>]
>
> In unknown file:
>
> ?: 0 [#<syntax-transformer N_> "YTD Budget Report"]
>
>
> ERROR: In procedure #<syntax-transformer N_>:
>
> ERROR: Wrong type to apply: #<syntax-transformer N_>
>
> -----------------------------
> I next take the .scm file out of the standard-reports directory and GnuCash launches fine, but no ytd-budget [☹] . Do you know what is wrong? I am sure it is something simple, but I don't know what it could be.
>
> -Steven
>
> _____________________________________________
>
> From: gnucash-user <gnucash-user-bounces+smille89_k=hotmail.com at gnucash.org> on behalf of Phil Longstaff <phil.longstaff at gmail.com>
> Sent: Sunday, January 15, 2017 5:08 PM
> To: Gnucash user list
> Subject: Re: A crucial GNUCash feature that is missing, but easy to implement for budgets
>
> When you reply, please reply to the whole list.
>
> On ubuntu, you should be able to put the file into .gnucash/reports and
> modify .gnucash/config.user
>
> On Sun, Jan 15, 2017 at 5:07 PM, Steven Miller <Smille89_K at hotmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Thank you very much! Hopefully it is what I am looking for. I'll try it
>> out.
>>
>> I use GNU cash for Linux (ubuntu)... Will it still work?
>>
>> I've never loaded a custom report before.
>>
>>
>> -Steven
>>
>>
>>_____________________________________________
>
>> *From:* gnucash-user <gnucash-user-bounces+smille89_k=hotmail.com@
>> gnucash.org> on behalf of Phil Longstaff <phil.longstaff at gmail.com>
>> *Sent:* Sunday, January 15, 2017 10:19 AM
>> *To:* gnucash-user at gnucash.org
>> *Subject:* Re: A crucial GNUCash feature that is missing, but easy to
>> implement for budgets
>>
>> I do have a report that I created that might fit the bill. I've attached it
>> to this e-mail.
>>
>> Down the left hand side, you can select what accounts you want to see. For
>> columns, there are:
>> 1) current month
>> 2) YTD
>> 3) full year
>>
>> For each of these, there can be either just budget and actual, or variance
>> can also be displayed.
>>
>> I've sent this report before. Here it is again. On windows, I put it into
>> directory c:\users\phil\.gnucash\reports (I think I had to create that
>> directory) and then add this line to c:\users\phil\.gnucash\config.user:
>>
>> (load "c:\\Users\\Phil\\.gnucash\\reports\\ytd-budget.scm")
>>
>> Phil
>>
>>
>> On Sun, Jan 15, 2017 at 10:23 AM, Steven Miller <Smille89_K at hotmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>> > I am referring to YTD variances. There would be a couple of ways of
>> going
>> > about it. The easiest and first thing to do would be to have the YTD
>> > variances show up at the bottom of each month in the "budget report" for
>> > the specified period (at the bottom you would have totals for actual
>> > expenses, budgeted expenses, and the variance. These totals would
>> reflect
>> > YTD. The only values that would change dynamically would be the actual
>> and
>> > variance totals as the budget values are set in the budget itself. This
>> > would give you an overall YTD or running total of how you was doing on a
>> > month to month basis, which honestly, I don't know how anyone could
>> track a
>> > budget effectively without doing this). Having this all in one view (the
>> > budget report) would extremely useful and would increase the value of the
>> > budget report enormously.
>> >
>> >
>> > The next thing that could be done could be to extend the above feature to
>> > have YTD for each account (you could think of them as viewing the
>> accounts
>> > as categories in this context), but my original inquiry was for the
>> feature
>> > described in the first paragraph. If all that was implemented was what
>> is
>> > described in the first paragraph then I would be happy. Anything further
>> > would be bonus feature [😊] .
>> >
>> >
>> > -Steven
>> >
>> >
>> >_____________________________________________
>
>> > From: gnucash-user <gnucash-user-bounces+smille89_k=hotmail.com@
>> > gnucash.org> on behalf of Adrien Monteleone <adrien.monteleone at gmail.com
>> >
>> > Sent: Sunday, January 15, 2017 5:31 AM
>> > To: gnucash-user at gnucash.org
>> > Subject: Re: A crucial GNUCash feature that is missing, but easy to
>> > implement for budgets
>> >
>> > Are you asking for just the variance for that month, or a separate
>> > year-to-date variance column?
>> >
>> > From what I see, the individual monthly variances are already there. And
>> > yes, a YTD variance would be VERY helpful.
>> >
>> >
>> > > On Jan 14, 2017, at 6:27 PM, gnucash-user-request at gnucash.org wrote:
>> > >
>> > > From: Steven Miller <Smille89_K at hotmail.com <mailto:
>> > Smille89_K at hotmail.com>>
>> > > Subject: A crucial GNUCash feature that is missing, but easy to
>> > implement for budgets
>> > > Date: January 14, 2017 at 6:27:17 PM CST
>> > > To: "gnucash-user at gnucash.org <mailto:gnucash-user at gnucash.org
>> <gnucash-user at gnucash.org>>" <
>> > gnucash-user at gnucash.org <mailto:gnucash-user at gnucash.org
>> <gnucash-user at gnucash.org>>>
>> > >
>> > >
>> > > All,
>> > >
>> > > I started using GnuCash recently and I love it! I got a handful of my
>> > friends hooked on it also. Despite all the features and good things
>> about
>> > it, there is one super simple feature missing that I have to have to make
>> > it effective for me.
>> > >
>> > > The feature I need is on the budget report. I really need to be able
>> to
>> > see the month totals for the difference/variance (actual - budget)
>> columns
>> > for each month. I realize this feature is available for the end of
>> > year/budget period, but it would be much more useful to have a checkbox
>> in
>> > the options that allows you to also see the totals for each month rolled
>> up
>> > in this view.
>> > > The feature seems like for someone that understood the code it would
>> > essentially take only a couple of hours to implement (honestly, I think
>> > somebody could just take a sum of the difference column, actual -
>> budgeted,
>> > and have this displayed at the bottom of each month, and thus keep a
>> > running total of where you were at. I was using excel sheets before and
>> I
>> > was able to do this with sum formulas and adding and subtracting math :).
>> > >
>> > > It is difficult to do budgeting unless you can accurately track where
>> > you are currently at. I know I could hack it and beat around the issue
>> by
>> > having my budget only display a single month, but this becomes really
>> > cumbersome when needing to also see the entire period.
>> > >
>> > > I really don't want to have to back to using excel sheets as GnuCash
>> > beats Excel in almost every area, but I do need this basic utility to
>> > effectively budget. Is there anyone that is willing to put this feature
>> in
>> > or that can tell me how to do it so that I can possibly put it in?
>> > >
>> > > Thanks,
>> > > Steven
>> >
>> >_____________________________________________
>
>> > gnucash-user mailing list
>> > gnucash-user at gnucash.org
>> > https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user
>> > -----
>> > Please remember to CC this list on all your replies.
>> > You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
>> >
>> >_____________________________________________
>
>> > gnucash-user mailing list
>> > gnucash-user at gnucash.org
>> > https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user
>> > -----
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>> > You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
>> >
>>
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