[GNC] Expense Over Time report

[Dale Alspach]

Some accounting software, e.g., Quickbooks, use a virtual leaf  "Other" in
reports to remove any ambiguity when there are  transactions in a branch
account which are not in a leaf.  Thus a report for the situation L3 $100
transaction and L4 $500 transaction would display
L3
      L4 500
      L3 - Other 100

Dale

On Sat, Feb 20, 2021 at 8:04 AM D. via gnucash-user <
gnucash-user at gnucash.org> wrote:

> 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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