[GNC] Expense Over Time report

[D.]

Geoff, 

That was an excellent answer, and explains clearly a big reason why users should strive to limit their transactions to leaf nodes in the account hierarchy. (My own books include numerous violations of this premise, BTW) Gnucash has always allowed users to put transactions in intermediate level accounts, which some in the community have felt was Not Good, although I've been a little more equivocal about it. I'm not sure, but there may be an outstanding bug request on the behavior.

I *do* think Gord's final question is an interesting one. It might be useful to conduct some tests to see the interaction between account selection and level setting in the various reports that use that method of grouping, and then update the docs with information. 

Best, 
David T.



-------- Original Message --------
From: Geoff <cleanoutmyshed at gmail.com>
Sent: Fri Feb 19 18:37:21 EST 2021
To: gnu Gord <gnucashgord at gmail.com>, gnucash-user at gnucash.org
Subject: Re: [GNC] Expense Over Time report

Hi Gord

It appears that L3 is both a parent of L4 and has transactions worth 
$100 itself.

Thus reporting on L3 is ambiguous - do you want only its transactions 
($100), or its transactions plus the sum of its children ($100 + $500 = 
$600)?

I suggest that you only record transactions against the lowest level 
children accounts in your hierarchy (the "leaves" and not the "branches").

Hope this helps.

Regards

Geoff
=====

On 20/02/2021 10:07 am, gnu Gord wrote:
> I'm trying to understand this report and it just isn't working the way I
> expect.
> Below is a screenshot of my test chart of accounts, for reference.
> I have one expense of $100 in account L3 and one expense of $500 in account
> L4
> 
> If I ask for an Expense Over Time report and select L3 and* "Show Accounts
> until Level" 3*, I get $600 in the report. If I select *"Show Accounts
> until level" 4*, I get $100
> If I select 2 or 1 in the "Show Account until level" I get nothing, which
> is OK.
> If I select 5 or 6 I get the same output as 4.
> 
> This is not the way I expected it to work.
> I'm not really clear what the "Show Accounts until level" option is used
> for. If I can select the account I want to be included/excluded in the
> report why do I need to also specify the level?
> 
> Version: 4.4
> Build ID: 4.4+(2020-12-28)
> 
> 
> [image: image.png]
> 
> 
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