[GNC] FINANCIAL STATEMENT COLUMNS

[Mike or Penny Novack]

On 4/11/2018 10:13 AM, tino mateka wrote:
> Hi
>
> How do I put my financials for different months in different columns under one aggregated financial statement.
>
> Tinotenda Mateka
>
Well I can describe how I do it.

Not different months in my case, but consecutive years, because that is 
how non-profits usually present their annual statements. I have gnucash 
produce the (raw) reports for the two periods and export those << well 
actually I produce just the reports for the currently ending period and 
export those because I did the previous ones last time.

I then bring this data into a document using my favorite editor. I 
remove extraneous data (detail levels kept for historical reasons or 
needed to prepare governmental filings but of no interest to the board), 
realign for differences in what accounts present in the two periods, 
pretty print changing fonts, font sizes, etc., and add any necessary 
annotations to explain anything unusual. Also add any fixed text 
describing principles used << for example, what was the amount the 
organization chose to be the minimum amount for fixed assets, 
depreciation schedule, etc. ---- the boards would know these things but 
non-profit financial reports are supposed to be open to the public so 
explanations in order >>

For the interim reports (quarterly for the organizations I keep books) 
not two side by side, just the current quarter, but the same general 
method.

Asking the accounting package to incorporate the full power of a general 
purpose editor is silly, unnecessary, since good editors already exist. 
And this is the opinion of somebody like myself who used to make my 
living designing/writing financial system software. A few hundred 
thousand lines of code in my day, and since able to at least read LISP, 
would have been a short learning curve to have written custom reports in 
Scheme.


Michael D Novack