[GNC] Trying to get report with total when account has sub-accounts

[Adrien Monteleone]

Why not use the Budget Report? It rolls up sub accounts, and shows a 
variance if you like.

I'm pretty certain you can restrict the accounts reported on as well to 
reduce clutter.

Another option is to use the P&L/Income Statement, select just the 
expense accounts you want. There is an option for the Parent amount to 
include the Child amounts or not. You can also report them separate and 
still get a Grand Total which rolls up the Parent and the children if 
you like.

-----
Finally, I'd advise to keep *all* parents as placeholders only if 
possible. Create another child account to hold the transactions 
currently residing there. But this is a personal preference.

I went through various refactors of my food/dining accounts as I crafted 
them to better show me *why* not just *where* I was spending money.

So I've gone full nerd and done the following:

Entertainment:Dining
--Alcohol
--Breakfast
--Lunch
--Dinner
--Snacks

Food:To-Go
--Breakfast
--Lunch
--Dinner
--Snacks

I also track gratuities separately 'cause I can get carried away some 
times and I want to know if that's why my food dollars are disappearing 
so fast.

Gratuities
--Other
--Dining
--Entertainment
--To-Go

That Alcohol category is just for out in restaurants when I'm dining. I 
have a separate "Entertainment:Sympinein" for when I'm just out for 
drinks with friends; and "Groceries:Alcohol" for packaged stuff from the 
grocery store!

I'm by no means suggesting anyone go this crazy, but it helped me get a 
fast handle on money that seemed to disappear into the ether. I've since 
turned that info into budgeting for each. And you don't even want to see 
my 'Grocery' account tree! (I use it for balanced food planning too, 
which also helped me cut my Dining budget drastically and zero To-Go 
entirely.)

Regards,
Adrien

On 1/11/22 6:59 AM, Robert Stocker wrote:
> To update my budget projections, monthly I run a transaction report to show
> what I've spent on 2 expense accounts over the past 12 months. One of the
> expense accounts has a sub-account. Let's call them Groceries and Dining
> Out, where Dining Out has sub-account Delivery Charges.
> 
> I cannot figure out how to get GnuCash to roll up the Dining Out expenses
> and the Delivery Charges expenses to give me a total for all of Dining Out,
> so I wind up having to add these numbers by hand. I saw the "subtotal
> table" option and thought I'd finally found what I needed, but that just
> re-creates the same subtotals I get on the main part of the report in a
> smaller format.
> 
> What am I missing? Happy to provide further details and/or clarification if
> needed. Thanks!
> 
> (If it matters, I'm running GnuCash build Flathub 4.9-1 on Ubuntu 21.10.)