[GNC] Issue with reports when handling multiple account files...

[Jim DeLaHunt]

Hello, Federico:

On 2025-03-24 10:21, Federico Atristain via gnucash-user wrote:
> Hi!
>
> I am using GnuCash to handle 3 different accounting files.
>
> For each accounting file I have different reports that I save their
> configurations to run them every month, however it looks like the "saved
> configurations" of the reports are common to ALL the accounting files
> rather than belonging to ONLY the accounting file where I created them.

GnuCash intentionally makes saved custom report configurations common to 
all books in use by a given system user.  See the /GnuCash Manual/[1], 
Chapter 9. *Reports And Charts*, section 9.1. *Introduction*: "Click the 
Save Report Configuration or Save Report Configuration As... button. 
This will store your customized report options in a file below your home 
directory." The GnuCash Wiki article *Configuration Locations*[2] 
explains exactly where the report options are stored. I believe there is 
no way to change this in current GnuCash.

Thus, if you are using multiple GnuCash book files as the same user on 
your computer, then you should probably create separate report 
configurations for each book file. So for example, if you have "Book A" 
and "Book B", you should probably create "Monthly Report A" to use with 
Book A only, and "Monthly Report B" to use with Book B only. (I says 
"probably" because I don't do this myself, and I can't find 
documentation which addresses this use case. Even if the books have 
identical account trees, it might be necessary to have separate report 
configurations for each book, because I suspect each book uses unique 
internal numbers, rather than names, to identify accounts.)

> It also looks like the Online Banking setup is also common to all of them
> rather than exclusive to each accounting file.
Yes, that is how I expect GnuCash to behave, and for similar reasons.

> What happens is that even though I saved the account to show, etc., if I
> open another account file and go back to the first one it says that I have
> not selected an account yet for the report, etc.

What I think you are saying is that your GnuCash installation has 
separate book files "Book A" and "Book B", and separate reports for 
each, "Monthly Report A" and "Monthly Report B", and that when you:

 1. open Book A and save report configuration for "Monthly Report A",
 2. then close Book A,
 3. then open Book B and save report configuration for "Monthly Report B",
 4. then close Book B,
 5. then re-open Book A,

…then the report configuration for Book A will be disrupted.  This is 
surprising to me. It is not how I would expect GnuCash to behave. 
However, I don't use multiple books myself so I have no direct 
experience of this situation.

Maybe someone else uses multiple books and reports, and can comment from 
their experience.

> Is there a way to have them separate (i.e. reports per accounting file)?
These sort of requests are tracked in the GnuCash bug database, and our 
volunteer developers get to them when they have time and interest. This 
request is already in there. See Bug 797124 - /Request for Enhancement: 
Preferences and Saved Reports should be per-book not per-user/[3]/./

/
/

[1] <https://gnucash.org/viewdoc.phtml?rev=5&lang=C&doc=help>
[2] <https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Configuration_Locations>
[3] <https://bugs.gnucash.org/show_bug.cgi?id=797124>

Best regards,
      —Jim DeLaHunt