[GNC] Gnucash Reports - Comparative Income Statement

[Bill Dika]

michael d novack

Thanks for the reply. I agree with everything you said but I am not looking
for presentation Financial Statements. I am looking to make quick year to
year comparisons with the reporting facility in Gnucash. Having ten years
of financial data, I would like to make quick comparisons of YTD (year to
date) of this year with last year (for various years), without exporting
and massaging the presentation.

But I think Adrien is on to something (see below).

adrien monteleone

Thanks for the replies.

the new (experimental) multi-column Income Statement in v3.8. That will get
> your two periods lined up neatly.


This is what I am looking for. Thank you. The "Options" dialog is a little
off (to get an income comparison of the two years being January 1, 2018 to
December 31, 2019, I must put in a start date of January 1, 2018
(intuitive) but to get the correct income for 2019 I need to put in an end
date of January 1, 2020 (not intuitive to me)). I do not need a variance
column. Also, I am not sure how to get a YTD (year to date) comparison of
this year to YTD for the same period last year (if you know how to get this
from this dialog, I would be appreciate hearing it). In any case I now have
something to work with and look forward to this coming out of experimental
status.

Thanks to all.

Bill Dika

On Mon, Jan 6, 2020 at 9:46 AM Michael or Penny Novack <
stepbystepfarm at comcast.net> wrote:

> On 1/5/2020 1:46 PM, Bill Dika wrote:
> > What would it cost for someone to create a comparative income statement
> report comparing this period to the corresponding period last year?
> >
> > I am willing to pay if it is not too much. The report could be included
> in Gnucash and released under the GPL v3 or later.
> > If this is not the correct list to ask for this, please direct me to
> where I might find someone willing to prepare this.
> > Thanks.
> >
> > Bill Dika
> > _______________________________________________
>
>
> It is the right place to ask, but let me first give the advice I
> received when I first took over as treasurer for a 501(c)3 << it is
> NORMAL for the "Statement of Revenue and Expenses"* of a non-profit to
> be presented that way, at least the annual one >>
>
> At the time a recently retired very senior systems analyst, able to at
> least read LISP (scheme is a LISP dialect) I asked the lawyer/accountant
> if I should code those special reports. He said "Don't bother Mike. Just
> run the raw reports, export them, and then bring that data in under
> control of your favorite full power editor. It's what any experienced
> accountant would choose to do. That's because you will STILL have
> editing to do" << add fixed text, add notations, deal with accounts not
> entirely corresponding in the two periods, deal with "pretty printing",
> etc. >> In other words, because STILL going to be doing editing, might
> as well do that in one place, and where you have the power of a real
> editor.
>
> Try looking at the annual statements of a non-profit or two and you will
> quickly see that this is what must have been done. That the report
> presented matches everything else (fonts, etc.) and not the direct
> output of some accounting software.
>
> Understand?  I am the sort of person who could have done this coding,
> but following this advice chose not to.,
>
> Michael D Novack
>
> * The "Income Statement" report -- that's what a non-profit calls the
> "Profit and Loss" statement (in gnucash, "Income Statement". But the
> same in parallel is wanted for the Balance Statement.
>
>
>
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