[GNC] The meaning of Running Balance in Transaction Report: bug or enhancement request?

Vincent Dawans dawansv at gmail.com
Wed Oct 26 15:42:53 EDT 2022


Hello. Seeking some feedback on this particular question.

The transaction report has a "Running Balance" option in the display
settings. Also by default the transaction report sorts and groups
transactions by account. In that context, the "Running Balance" option
shows the running balance within each underlying account, even adding a
first line showing the starting balance preceding whatever date period is
selected. So that works quite well. See attached screenshot TR sorted by
account.png for an example.

However, the transaction report can be sorted other ways under the general
settings. Another way is to use the date as the primary sort in which case
it will sort all transactions by date regardless of account, so mixing all
the accounts, as in a ledger. This can be useful for some other purposes.
However in that context the running balance information for each
transaction remains the same as in the previous report. It's the running
balance of that transaction in the underlying account (not the report
itself). See attached screenshot TR sorted by date.png for an example.
Compare the running balance numbers with the previous report: they are the
same for each transaction but they don't function as a running balance of
transactions as displayed in the report itself.

There is a bug about this listed in
https://bugs.gnucash.org/show_bug.cgi?id=765920 but oddly enough it's
really old (version 2.6) with very little activity and no recent one
(except for a comment I posted). Possibly because this is not really a bug
but simply a confusion in the term "running balance"?

So I am trying to figure out what is the best way to report this since that
big report is definitely not going anywhere. Possibly a first quick fix
would be to clarify what "running balance" means right now? So I am
thinking about creating a bug report just about adding some text next to
the option explaining that it is the running balance for the underlying
account, not the report itself, and the option should probably not be used
unless the report is sorted by account. That would be a quick fix and at
least would remove the confusion.

Then I would open an enhancement request for something that doesn't seem to
exist right now: A running balance for the report itself, useful when
mixing several accounts with all transactions sorted by date (in as my
second example).

Does that make sense or am I missing something and that second feature
actually already exists but I am not seeing it?
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