[GNC] Some questions about reports

[Michael or Penny Novack]

On 4/6/2022 8:15 AM, Chris Green wrote:

Since I was producing reports for a number of non-profits I will break 
your several questions apart. I will be mainly describing solution sin 
terms of how I did it, not necessarily all remaining within gnucash. But 
since ONE of your questions is specifically about "saving" previous 
reports my methods directly relate to that. But first a bit of 
terminology to avoid confusion --- saving a report (the options it was 
run with) and saving the results of running that report (the report 
produced by running with those options. In other words, sort of 
"program" vs "data".
> I use GnuCash for our (very small) church's accounts and find it works
> very well.
>
> However I do have issues with the reports, especially at year end for
> auditing.
>
> The auditor wants a report which looks pretty much like the profit and
> loss report but with the underlying bank account balances at the bottom.
> Is there any simple way to get this?  ... or if getting it all on one
> report isn't easy (I'm not going to learn Scheme just to do this!)
> then is there a report which will provide the basic bank account
> balances, e.g.:-
>
>      Bank account at start of year               xxxx.xx
>      Less excess of expenses over income         yyyy.yy
>
>      Bank account at 31st December YYYY          zzzz.zz

Yes, I have seen this format presented (and the person who took over as 
Treasurer with one of my organizations does this -- also showing 
quarters side by side)

This is combining some balance sheet items along with the revenue 
statement. Thus when I was presenting to the board a revenue statement 
for some period I would ALSO be handing out the balance sheet reports 
for start of period and ed of period. If I were asked to produce the 
report (the results) in the format requested by your accountant I would 
run those balance sheet and the income statement for the dates involved. 
I would then EXPORT those raw reports.

I would then open a "document" under the control of my favorite editor 
with a suitable name (to distinguish it from the previous and next). I 
would copy into this the statement of revenues. I would copy below that 
the bank account parts of the balance sheets and between them copy the 
line that was net gain or loss. I would also (because under the control 
of a full service editor) do things like add annotation for any unusual 
items. Take a look at your line "Less excess of expenses over income 
yyyy.yy" --- you'd want this to read differently if that period you had 
an "excess of income over expenses".

And I would do it this way even though a retired professional fluent in 
a half dozen or so computer languages, and though never paid to write in 
LISP, I can read it reasonably well and so would only take me a week or 
so to get up to speed in SCHEME (a LISP dialect). I would NOT want to 
have "being treasurer" of an organization dependent on being able to 
program in some computer language.

> Also, is it possible to show -ve amounts in 'accountant' format? I.e.
> as a value in brackets  £(1234.56).
Maybe that's an option within gnucash among your choices for how to 
display negatives. Please note that there isn't ONE "accountant 
standard". For example, I would be expected to show consecutive periods 
side by side (this quarter vs previous quarter, this year vs previous 
year, etc.
>
> Finally, is there a way to get all reports to show all items in the
> particular accounts?  It always takes me ages to find the settings for
> the accounting period and, as I keep each year separately, all I ever
> want to do is show everything that's in the particular set of
> accounts.  (I can think of nothing worse than having to change the
> reporting dates every time I want to look at last year's accounts
> instead of this years)
>
Remember, I described exporting before editing. If you SAVED all those 
exports suitably named (and your edited version that you showed to your 
board, gave to the accountant, etc.) you still have them. Just look for 
them in the directory (file folder) where you put them. If the name 
includes the date will be easy to find the right one, No need to rerun 
them in gnucash  or keep them as open tabs!

Michael D Novack

-- 
There is no possibility of social justice on a dead planet except the equality of the grave.