[GNC] Opening Balance on Reports

[Adrien Monteleone]

Paul,

The Transaction Report has some aggregation and sorting features in the Options > Sorting tab, and you can refine the view in Options > Display. You might play with those till you find something close to what you are looking for.

Optionally, export or copy/paste your report to a spreadsheet and manipulate from there.

Another option is the Vendor Report (if you’ve set the counter-party up that way) You would get a ‘balance forward’ and then each transaction since then for whatever period you are reporting for. Of course, this requires use of the business features for all associated transactions.

An alternative to manually ‘closing’ the account (and then reversing that) would be to report just for the current desired period (say 2019), then move the resulting report to a spreadsheet and add the balance forward manually there. If you need the balance calculated, just run a separate report for the beginning of your book to 12/31/18 and take the bottom line grand total to your spreadsheet.

The Vendor Report is likely what you are looking for, but again, that would require a different workflow than manual transactions. It may or may not be worth it to you to refactor that transaction history accordingly, or else just switch to that for 2020.


Regards,
Adrien

> On Jan 2, 2020 w1d2, at 1:45 PM, Paul Kroitor <paul at kroitor.ca> wrote:
> 
> Hello, and happy New Year to all of you using whatever the name is for the calendar that just started the year 2020!
> 
> I am trying to produce an annual statement for a counter-party with whom we have a current account. It's set up in GnuCash as a liability account, as generally the balance is in their favour.
> 
> In 2018, which was the first year the account was open, it was easy: I made a simple report - a modified Transaction Report - that listed all the transactions, and a total. But for 2019, I am having a problem creating it, because it should start with the opening balance (the total at the end of the 2018 report) and then run forward from there. The only way I can see to have the prior balance is to include all historical transactions (or as per the Ps. below).
> 
> In Quicken (for example), a register report will always have an "Opening Balance" line which will be the total of all the transactions prior to the start date of the report. But I cannot find any way to achieve the same result in GnuCash. Am I missing something?
> 
> Thanks as always for all thoughts,
> Paul
> 
> [PS: I know I could move the total liability to somewhere else on Dec 31st, and then move it back on Jan 1st - a sort of a manual book closing, but for a liability rather than income / expenses - but these seems tedious and error-prone. However, I'll use this work-around if there's no way to achieve it programmatically.]