[GNC] Account report

[Tommy Trussell]

On Tue, Dec 8, 2020 at 9:47 PM David Long <davidvernonlong at hotmail.com>
wrote:

> Hi, how can I select just the last few months for an "Account Report". I
> am getting the whole history of the account from the first ever
> transaction?  I can use the "Transaction Report", instead and select which
> account and periods I want, but then I do not see the opening and closing
> balance.
>
> I am using the accounts to control the member's accounts of a sailing club
> and wanted to use this report to produce member's statements.
>

Here's what I do for a small religious organization, which might work for
your sailing club.

I have a separate account for each person (actually two accounts in some
cases because we keep track of "in kind" contributions, too) and give them
a statement for the previous year.

I created a transaction report, and selected the account(s) as necessary
for a particular person.

I set the date ranges to "Start of previous year" and "End of previous
year." Obviously you could use "...Previous Quarter" or specific dates as
needed.

I also added appropriate subtotals on the Sorting tab.

Then I used the Report Name field to put the person's name at the top. (It
could also say Quarterly Contributions or 2019 Contributions or whatever.)

After I got the report to display the information I wanted for that
particular contributor, I saved the report using the Save Report
Configuration button and renamed it generically, something like "Individual
Contribution Report."

Then when it's time to create individual statements, I open Reports -->
Saved Report Configurations and choose the report I saved. One person's
report is ready to go, so I print it.

For each additional person, I change the report name and the account(s) it
points to, and print. I repeat the process for each contributor.

For the very small religious organization, the process doesn't take very
long. The organization sends acknowledgement letters for designated gifts,
but only sends annual giving reports to folks who have given more than some
particular amount, I think $200.

If your sailing club has more than a couple of dozen members, you might
save some time in the long run by creating a transaction report containing
data for the entire club, and exporting that data to a spreadsheet or
database and use the data to generate a form letter for each person using
something like LibreOffice's mail merge feature. Or LibreOffice Base's
report writer, if you can puzzle it out.

(Unfortunately LibreOffice's mail merge feature is unnecessarily fidgety. I
use it every year to send out detailed renewal contracts for another
organization. I keep detailed notes on how to make my contracts and letters
work because it took me a long time to figure it out, years ago, and that
particular feature has not really improved over time. That's one thing
that, last time I used it, decades ago, Microsoft Word handled much more
easily. But I was determined to support Open Source software.)



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