[GNC] Business Income Statement: manipulating Cost of Goods sold (Eric Chapman)

[Chris Skudder]

I'd suggest *NUMBERING* the expense accounts - the field is called 
"Account Code."
Get to it by editing the account, in the account tab.
Number the accounts in the sequence in which you want to see them.
Most often, accounts are numbered in "layers", corresponding to parent + 
subaccount relationships, like:
     5000 COGS
         5100 COGS, parts
         5200 COGS, labor

I believe the income stmt will then sort + display accounts in the order 
or their number or acct code. But there may be preference(s) which need 
to be set for the sort to use number instead of name. Maybe somebody 
else knows that better than I do.

HTH,
Chris

------------------------------------------------------------------------
*From:* gnucash-user-request at gnucash.org
*Sent:* Friday, December 8, 2023 at 2:57 PM
*To:* gnucash-user at gnucash.org
*Subject:* gnucash-user Digest, Vol 249, Issue 24
> Today's Topics: 1. Business Income Statement: manipulating Cost of 
> Goods sold (Eric Chapman) 
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 
> Message: 1 Date: Fri, 8 Dec 2023 14:57:25 -0500 From: Eric Chapman 
> <gnucashlist at etchapman.com> To: GNUcash User List 
> <gnucash-user at gnucash.org> Subject: [GNC] Business Income Statement: 
> manipulating Cost of Goods sold Message-ID: 
> <e6a3bcf2-bd47-45af-b0cb-9e94fd227e28 at etchapman.com> Content-Type: 
> text/plain; charset="utf-8"; Format="flowed" (Note 1: I hope the 
> mailing list presents this with fixed-width characters. If it does 
> not, but sample below of a tax form will not appear as I intended it 
> to.) (Note 2: The three attached screenshots might help you understand 
> my question. I hope they are small enough to come through.) In GnuCash 
> 5.4 I have a Chart of Accounts / Account Tree that reflects Schedule F 
> of Form 1040 for reporting of farm business. I use the business 
> feature "Accounts Payable." Here is how part of it looks: 1a Sales of 
> purchased livestock and other resale items???????????????? $xxxx.xx 
> <-- my sales of resale items account 1b Cost or other basis or 
> purchased livestock or other items reported on line 1a??? xxx.xx <-- I 
> have 3 Cost of Goods Sold (COGS) accounts that are to be here (should 
> be income account with debit balance [negative]) 1c Subtract line 1b 
> from line 1a $xxxx.xx My problem: In the Chart of Accounts / Account 
> Tree I set up the COGS accounts as "income" accounts. As such, in v. 
> 5.4 the COGS accounts were not on the drop down list of "expenses" to 
> debit when recording purchases. So I changed the tick mark for them 
> and called them expenses. They worked fine. But now when I print a 
> report, the COGS accounts are listed down in the expense section of 
> the Income Statement, not up under "1a" as they should be (and as they 
> are "parented" an "begotten" in the Chart of Accounts / Account Tree). 
> These are the workarounds I see: (1) Change the 3 COGS accounts back 
> to having the "Expense" attribute before printing reports. (2) Debit 
> all COGS items into inventory accounts and later make journal entries 
> (transactions) from that inventory account to the COGS accounts. I 
> realize this is normal (maybe desirable, but since I'm using all of 
> those COGS items immediately, I thought I'd save time and not use 
> inventory accounts. What I'd like: The ability for the accounts called 
> "Expenses" but used for COGS to be debitable when entering "Bills" 
> (invoices issued to me by vendors). Are there better ways to do what I 
> want to do, or an option to tweak GnuCash so that I can debit those 
> accounts as I want to? Advice, anyone? Thank you very much!