[GNC] Understanding Transaction Report options

Adrien Monteleone adrien.monteleone at lusfiber.net
Fri Oct 18 01:00:13 EDT 2019


> On Oct 17, 2019 w42d290, at 10:53 PM, George Riner <GeorgeRiner at mycogeo.com> wrote:
> 
> Yup.  I am a Quicken data-convert. And all those accounts at 'top level' are what I got. I did not start 'fresh' with GnuCash from the outset with the GnuCash way of organizing accounts.

Interesting that a data import created all of those accounts as top-level.

I’d say that is probably a bug.

> 
> But, accounts all have a property of 'account type' that pretty much seems like workable 'top-level' categorization. Why not use that property elsewhere in the app? (I'm not a business user, so perhaps those account types come into play more for business users?)

Maybe we’re talking past each other here.

‘Account Type’ is where you assign if the account is one of those main types. (Assets, Liabilities, Equity, Expenses, Income) The other types are just more specific versions of those 5 that GnuCash has a few extra functions for if you use them. (like credit card accounts) The app also uses this type assignment to determine what the informal column labels are. (rather than debit/credit)

But while that assignment needs to be done, there’s nothing stopping you from placing any account anywhere in the tree. (as you’ve discovered)

It is possible for example, to put an asset account as a child of Liabilities if you so desire. (not sure why you’d do that, but you can)

The usual practice is to make asset accounts as children (nested if necessary) of the top-level account called ‘Assets’, etc.

This makes organization and reporting much more sane.
> 
> Thanks for the tip about hiding accounts.  I think I'll give that a try.  Because the Quicken-data convert went back so far in time, there's a lot of accounts that I'll be hiding.  I just hope I can find the 'show hidden accounts' box when I need to.
> 

It’s in View > Filter By... > Other.  That setting is not ’sticky’ however, and will be reset when you close GnuCash and launch the next time. So you can see them again, but they won’t stay in your way. Note, there are also other useful filters there. (like showing/hiding zero balance accounts and accounts that have no transactions in them)

Regards,
Adrien



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