[GNC] Simple report(s) wanted

[Michael or Penny Novack]

On 1/21/2025 6:02 AM, Chris Green wrote:
> I need to present our PCC/Church accounts to the PCC (Parochial Church
> Council) three or four times a year.  Every time I do this I struggle
> to find a report which simply shows the bank balance at the start of
> the period, where money came in from, where money went out to and the
> resulting final balance in the bank account.
>
> Am I missing something obvious or is there really no way of showing
> this?  It's what the layman (i.e. members of the PCC) want to see.

Yes, you are missing the obvious. The USUAL report the board of an 
organization wants to see uses data from Balance Sheet (at start of 
period), Balance Sheet (at end of period), and "Income Statement" for 
the period (aka "Profit and Loss" --- An organization will usually title 
this report "Statement of Revenues and Expenses")

Probably best to run these reports, export them, and then use your 
favorite editor to prepare the "pretty printed" report that the Board 
wants to see. The level of detail the board will want is usually far 
less than might be being kept in the CoA (detail perhaps needed for 
gov't filings) but this editing best done outside of gnucash. Easier and 
giving you the opportunity to annotate. You would get the bank balance 
at start from the Balance Sheets and the where money came from and where 
went from the Statement of Revenues and Expenses. Note that you MIGHT 
sometimes want to show more from the Balance Sheet than bank balance 
(say because of a cash flow emergency, a member lent the organization a 
thousand -- the board would want to see that liability)

> Further to this I also always get bitten by having to select the
> 'start of year' and 'end of year' almost every time I run a report,
> these dates seem to get reset frequently.
THOSE reports will always be run for specific dates so do not worry 
about what dates by default. You will always be using Edit=>Report 
options=General to specify the date(s) for THIS running.
>
> Also, it seems like every time I ask for a report, it tells me 'no
> accounts selected' and I have to go through the same old rigmarole
> that I have done many, many times before of selecting all accounts.
> Surely the default should be to include all accounts and also surely
> the setting should be remembered.

Well I don't know the default for your version of gnucash but for THESE 
reports you want "all" accounts*. IF you leave these reports open (do 
not close tab) should stay the way you set them via Edit=>Report 
options. If you CLOSE the report will be back to defaults next time you 
run. Remember, with gnucash you first run a report default and THEN use 
Edit=>Report options for THIS run of the report.

Michael D Novack

* For the Balance Sheet "all accounts: means all standing accounts 
(asset, liability, equity) plus a virtual account representing the net 
of all income and expense accounts since last "close the books" (if 
any). For the Income statement means all accounts of type income or expense.