RFP: Generic Comparison Report

Sat Feb 10 14:57:06 EST 2018

If you're going to the trouble, it might be nice to enable subtotals 
within a report.  We use a report that shows all the income each year 
from about 20-30 vendors.  It would be nice to show subtotals by vendor 
as well as the grand total for the year.

I know - I'm trying to piggyback on someone else's question and you 
work.  I hope that's OK.

Dennis

On 2/10/2018 11:52, Adrien Monteleone wrote:
> David,
>
> As I noted in another thread, I'm interested in tackling this. I have a few
> other ideas I want to try as well. (multi-step Income Statement and
> Analytic/Activity style Income Statement)
>
> Chris, thanks for the link. I'll take a look at Grid also.
>
> While it is good to have a 'flexible and cover many use cases' report, most
> people aren't going to be thinking in those terms. Users are more likely
> going to want a Balance Sheet and then want it to be multi-column, or an
> Income Statement and then see each month or quarter. So there should be
> default reports with those names that do this. Ideally, those current
> reports should be modified to include the new options rather than creating
> separate new reports. (less clutter in the report menus the better)
>
> I'm in the middle of Mardi Gras festivities at the moment, but I'll dive in
> on Wednesday.
>
> Regards,
> Adrien
>
> On Sat, Feb 10, 2018 at 1:32 AM, David T. via gnucash-devel <
> gnucash-devel at gnucash.org> wrote:
>
>> Chris,
>>
>> I think that users would like to know what is happening on this front.
>> Users are very interested in these developments, and there are far more
>> readers on users, who may have additional suggestions for use-cases and
>> features. Given the fact that there are current threads on the user list
>> that ask this very question, it seems to me unhelpful to split this off to
>> the devel list, where those users will not learn of this.
>>
>> For what it’s worth, I have yet to see or use the new transaction report,
>> since my system hates both me and custom reports. I doubt most normal users
>> are aware of the new version of the report and its features, for the same
>> reasons.
>>
>> David
>>
>>> On Feb 10, 2018, at 11:24 AM, Christopher Lam <christopher.lck at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>> Hi D
>>>
>>> Wish to move to devel, technical and policy details abound.
>>>
>>> There's already work done to enable periodic subtotals comparison. This
>> feature has been named "Subtotal Summary Grid". This is done by reusing and
>> augmenting the (most excellent) transaction report's grouping and
>> subtotals. I'm not sure whether this allows 100% coverage of users'
>> requirements for periodic comparison, but I suspect it would.
>>> For example, setting accounts = expense accounts (+ children),
>> primary-key = account, secondary-key = date, secondary-subtotals = monthly,
>> subtotal-summary-grid = enabled -> will provide a nice 2D grid whereby
>> Y-axis = accounts, X-axis = monthly expense subtotals. This feature will
>> reuse the subtotals already generated within the transaction report,
>> therefore any errors in subtotals are not from my code. Example at
>> https://imgur.com/a/unDAD <https://imgur.com/a/unDAD>
>>> Unfortunately it was completed after string and feature-freeze for
>> upcoming 3.0 -- I'm afraid that inclusion into 3.0 isn't guaranteed yet.
>> Although, as I have notified devs, if this feature is renamed "Grid", it
>> could be written into 3.0. The translated string "Grid" already exists.
>>> If you wish to experiment, the code is currently available at
>> https://github.com/Gnucash/gnucash/pull/266/commits/
>> 4d2ee75b4fa138c0534ae739089d4df70d6d4117 <https://github.com/Gnucash/
>> gnucash/pull/266/commits/4d2ee75b4fa138c0534ae739089d4df70d6d4117> -
>> (note, this commit link isn't permanent).
>>> C
>>>
>>> On 10/02/18 13:35, D via gnucash-user wrote:
>>>> Hello,
>>>>
>>>> I want to raise a discussion here about the creation of a generic
>> comparison report.
>>>> I would preface this discussion by saying that, although I am a long
>> time user of Gnucash, I have repeatedly demonstrated my utter inability to
>> generate useful code for the project, so any ultimate action on the results
>> of this discussion would have to be applied by someone else.
>>>> As we have seen recently, and as I have seen repeatedly over the years,
>> one of the more common requests for reporting is to be able to see numbers
>> from different time periods in order to evaluate a financial situation.
>>>> As far as I can tell, other than the multi column report, nothing of
>> the sort exists in Gnucash. I started thinking that it might be good to
>> begin the process of detailing what features might go into such a report in
>> order to make it generally useful, with the idea of perhaps stirring up
>> someone's interest in creating such a report.
>>>> Some initial ideas include:
>>>>
>>>> * Definable periods. Should be able to set the unit period, with
>> options for common units (month, quarter, year).
>>>> * Definable numbers of periods.
>>>> * Definable accounts, but with some common groupings (Assets,
>> Liabilities, Investments... Are there others?)
>>>> * Perhaps the option to use another report as a template? I have no
>> idea how that might work, but the fact that folks seem to want side by side
>> balance sheets suggests this to me.
>>>> Does anyone else think this would be helpful? Is it a reasonable idea?
>> Is it something that someone in the community with Scheme skills is
>> interested in pursuing? Are there other elements that would make this a
>> better idea? Are there elements that are absurdly difficult or impossible?
>>>> Cheers,
>>>> David
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