[GNC] Understanding Transaction Report options

Adrien Monteleone adrien.monteleone at lusfiber.net
Fri Jan 10 16:39:06 EST 2020


First off, your approach is backwards. Why are you selecting the asset/liability accounts when what you want is a report on the expense account?

Just select Expenses:Telephone as the account and leave the filtering blank unless you want a subset of the expense account that only shares splits with the filtered accounts.

Also, when filtering, be mindful there is an include/exclude option. The wrong one will of course, not get you what you want.

For the first set of options, you selected to report on the asset/liability accounts, then filtered by the same accounts. That won’t get you anything unless you had transfers between them. I’ve never used the Filter tab, but my guess is you just told it to report on the asset/liability accounts, then give you only transfers between them, then further refined that to only include transaction with splits to Expenses:Telephone. Since more than likely your payments on your card accounts or your cash advances won’t include splits for Expenses:Telephone, the report came back empty.

I’d have to test the second route, but my suspicion is that the cause is similar. Don’t use the Filter tab unless you want to *further* restrict a filter from the Accounts tab.

Bottom line - run a report for the account you want, not the *other* accounts and then filtering by what you want - just report on it directly.

If you have some transactions that involve Expenses:Telephone that don’t include splits from the desired asset/liability accounts, *then* you might choose to use the Accounts tab filter option. (or if you only want to see how much of :Telephone you paid by VISA for example)

Regards,
Adrien

p.s. - to start a new thread, simply send a message to the list address. I see you are using Nabble. I don’t so I’m not certain, but my guess would be there is a ’new’ button somewhere on the website page. Though, your post is pertinent to the topic. It is okay to keep it going in such a case.



> On Jan 10, 2020 w2d10, at 3:16 PM, brb <msi1 at earthlink.net> wrote:
> 
> I have top level accounts Banks and Credit Cards.  Under Banks I have
> sub-accounts Checking and Money Fund.  Under Credit Cards I have
> sub-accounts Discover, Master Card, and Visa.
> 
> I may pay phone charges from any of these sub-accounts, recording the
> entries under the Transfer account Expenses:Telephone.
> 
> At year end I want a transaction report on Expenses:Telephone.  I do the
> following:
> 
> - Select the Accounts tab, then Reports>Transaction Report
> - Click Edit report options in the Transaction Report tab
> - On the Account tab, Expand the Bank and Credit Card accounts and use
> Ctrl^Click to select the Checking, Money Fund, Discover, Master Card, and
> Visa sub-accounts.  Select Filter Type> Include Transaction... and select
> the Bank and Credit Card sub-accounts again in the Filter by box.
> - On the Filter tab, enter :Telephone in the Account Name Filter
> - On the General tab I select Start and End of Previous Year, as I am
> reporting on 2019.
> 
> The report returns no data, as shown below:
> 
> -----
> 
> Telephone Transaction Report:
> 
> No accounts selected
> 
> This report requires accounts to be selected in the report options.
> 
> Edit report options
> 
> Display / Account Code : Enabled
> Display / Other Account Name : Enabled
> Accounts / Filter By... : RMBT Checking, RMBT Money Fund, Discover, Master
> Card, Visa
> Accounts / Accounts : RMBT Checking, RMBT Money Fund, Discover, Master Card,
> Visa
> Accounts / Filter Type : include
> General / End Date : relative . end-prev-year
> General / Report name : Telephone Transaction Report
> General / Start Date : relative . start-prev-year
> Filter / Account Name Filter : :Telephone
> 
> -----
> 
> I can obtain the data I want in a round-about way by turning off
> Account>Filter Type and Filter> Account Name and sorting on Other Account
> Name.  Expenses:Telephone will subtotal in the report that covers all
> transactions for the year.  The report parameters are:
> 
> Display / Account Code : Enabled
> Display / Other Account Name : Enabled
> Display / Use Full Other Account Name : Enabled
> Sorting / Secondary Key : none
> Sorting / Primary Key : corresponding-acc-name
> Accounts / Accounts : RMBT Checking, RMBT Money Fund, Discover, Master Card,
> Visa
> General / End Date : relative . end-prev-year
> General / Report name : Telephone Transaction Report
> General / Start Date : relative . start-prev-year
> 
> If I add the Filter>Account Name ':Telephone" to this report, I get no data.
> 
> What am I doing wrong?




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