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

Vincent Dawans dawansv at gmail.com
Wed Oct 26 17:24:51 EDT 2022


[Ooops I think I messed up my reply to/cc mix, so trying again -- still new
to this mailing list thing]

Thank you Adrien. I would expect a running balance starting with the first
transaction amount and ending with the last transaction as sorted. As if
you were putting a list of transactions in Excel and simply creating a
running balance by adding the previous line's running balance+current line.
In fact right now that's what I do as a workaround and it works fine, so
it's not even a big problem, just one thing I have been thinking about how
to fix best. See attached "TR sorted by date with expected running
balance.png" where I have added an example in red.

I agree it might possibly be an odd case, essentially needed when combining
a series of transactions from several accounts filtered in various ways.
But that is sort of the point of the transaction report. It is pretty
flexible in that way, combining all sorts of transactions from various
places, with the filtering not only by accounts but all sorts of things, in
fact there is an entire filter section in the settings, you can even use
regular expressions, etc.

As far as implementation, yes it might not be trivial based on how the
report engine is designed since essentially this is data calculated within
the report, not available outside of it. But I don't know enough to judge
on how difficult it would be to implement. From a UI perspective, making
sure the users don't get both concepts mixed up is another challenge for
sure, so as you say it may even be less clear
when chosen as an option.


On Wed, Oct 26, 2022 at 12:55 PM Adrien Monteleone <
adrien.monteleone at lusfiber.net> wrote:

> Perhaps a clarification as you mentioned would be best and easiest for now.
>
> I'd dare ask, if you're sorting primarily by date, with multiple
> accounts selected, what do you want the running balance to be? Just
> those accounts? (is that even useful?) Or the entire Book?
>
> Any of those could get quite messy in code, and may even be less clear
> when chosen as an option.
>
> Personally, I don't use the option at all, but if I did, I wouldn't
> expect anything other than by-account to work or make sense.
>
> Regards,
> Adrien
>
> On 10/26/22 2:42 PM, Vincent Dawans wrote:
> > 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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