[GNC] Transaction Report Sign Reverses

[Christopher Lam]

https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/FAQ#Q:_Why_does_the_Transaction_Report_.27Sign_Reversal.27_setting_not_work_on_subtotals

This issue could be fixed if the scenario addressed in this FAQ can be
resolved. I don't really know how to handle that particular case.

On Mon., 12 Aug. 2019, 13:02 David T. via gnucash-user, <
gnucash-user at gnucash.org> wrote:

> Hello,
>
> I am trying to create a YTD Capital Gains report, and am encountering a
> problem with how the Transaction Report implements the Sign Reverses
> setting.
>
> I recall some time back a discussion about the fact that the Sign
> Reverses setting reverses signs in these reports in a confusing way.
> There was some discussion about reversing the individual transactions
> but not the totals. Although I do not recall the specifics of the
> discussion, I am encountering the same situation now, where the
> transactions themselves respect the user setting, but the totals do not.
> To say this is confusing is an understatement.
>
> It seems to me that other financial applications must have encountered
> the problem of displaying income to users as a positive value (since
> that is how most of us view income!) while still finding a way to
> display the correct accounting information.
>
> To display my YTD report of Capital Gains, I ran a Transaction Report
> and selected the Income:Realized Gains accounts for the current year.
> The result shows losses as positive numbers, and gains as negative. I
> don't know about you, but my expectation is reversed from this. If I
> change the Sign Reverses setting to Income and Expense, then the
> transactions switch, but the totals do not. This result was the gist of
> the discussion in an earlier thread. Bleah!
>
> Now, I know that I can copy the data, paste it into another program and
> change all the settings to my heart's content, but I am looking for a
> way to run a report in GnuCash that directly and unambiguously shows me
> whether I have gained money (a positive) or lost it (a negative) over
> the current year. Does anyone have suggestions?
>
> FWIW, I attempted to turn this report around and have a report that
> lists transactions in the asset accounts, filtered by the
> Income:Realized Gains accounts, but that seems to report only the Asset
> account currency--in this case, the mutual fund or stock shares involved
> on the Gain/Loss transaction. Unfortunately, that's not the actual
> Gain/Loss value...
>
> It would be nice if the sign reverses setting could be fixed. Barring
> that, does anyone have a workaround report setup that can give me a
> sensible YTD Capital Gains total as described?
>
> David T.
>
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