[GNC] totals for a parent account and all its children

[G R Hewitt]

I think the best thing to do is to try all the reports, press all the
buttons, pull all the levers and see what happens, this is how I learn to
do things
and it is rather fun to see what you can do with it. Gnucash is not a hand
holding program, you have to use your brain - as Michael Novak oft states,
it is
a pen and ink on paper electronic equivalent. It's strength is in its
simplicity, it does accounts but is not an auto-pilot do-it-all-for-you
program, and I hope
it never evolves into one of those other programs that present you with a
screen that looks like the bridge of the Starship Enterprise, blinding you
with a multitude of colours, pie-charts, line graphs and flashing bits and
pieces warning of financial doom.
I welcome the sober presentation of my accounts in table format that i can
directly enter and change without the need for pop-up transaction panes,
or any of the other paraphernalia that haunts the latest shiny shiny.
Long may it continue.

On Sun, 18 May 2025 at 20:55, sunfish62--- via gnucash-user <
gnucash-user at gnucash.org> wrote:

> Your points regarding account selection are valid.
>
> I believe that one or two of the default reports are structured to use
> "All Asset Accounts" for example (don't ask me which ones; I don't recall
> at this moment). It might be possible for someone with Scheme skills (not
> me!) to examine those reports to see how they are constructed, and build
> out an alternative report that behaves as you wish.
>
> David T. ​
>
> On May 18, 2025, 8:28 PM, at 8:28 PM, David Warren <david at warren1.net>
> wrote:
> >I certainly agree you shouldn't use gnucash (or any other double entry
> >bookkeeping system) without spending appropriate hours to learn
> >double-entry bookkeeping.
> >I also certainly agree that gnucash provides a *rich *set of reporting
> >tools, and that it is incumbent on the user (one can now use an LLM to
> >help!) to understand the types of things one might want to use a report
> >to
> >do, and there are lots of good reasons to set up and then *save
> >*reports
> >that will then be used repeatedly for circumstances the user
> >understands.
> >
> >Having said that, the sole method gnucash appears to allow for *account
> >selection *on saved reports is the user must *manually *select the
> >accounts
> >one wants included in such reports.  If the user ever creates/adds a
> >single
> >new account, that account will *not *be included in a saved report, at
> >least in my experience.  It would be completely *reasonable* for
> >gnucash to
> >also allow users to specify some *logic *for which accounts should be
> >included in saved reports.  Complex logic would probably be quite
> >difficult
> >to program, but logic as simple as checkboxes to include/exclude ALL
> >{income, expense, asset and/or liability} accounts, I am confident to
> >say
> >would be *highly *utilized and appreciated by the gnucash user
> >community.
> >
> >On Sun, May 18, 2025 at 10:39 AM Michael or Penny Novack via
> >gnucash-user <
> >gnucash-user at gnucash.org> wrote:
> >
> >> > It would be very helpful if (and maybe there already is) there was
> >a
> >> > place that would say what would be the usual or common options for
> >the
> >> > reports.  For example, I think the transaction report should
> >include
> >> > all the expense accounts.
> >> >
> >> > Just a bit of guidance would be incredibly helpful.
> >> >
> >> > I'm sure that there are other reports that would be helpful, but I
> >> > don't know if I should select everything, or just the asset
> >accounts,
> >> > or the income accounts, or.... (and so on).
> >>
> >> Misunderstanding. Gnucash is a TOOL for partially automating double
> >> entry bookkeeping. In terms of how such systems are called, "general
> >> ledger"
> >>
> >> Take ANY Tool, say a hammer. The manual for a hammer might tell you
> >what
> >> it is for (drive nails) and how to properly use it (grip, etc.). Out
> >of
> >> scope for the hammer manual to teach you "what is a nail used for?"
> >"why
> >> would I want to use a nail" etc.
> >>
> >> What you are needing is something along the lines of "what is double
> >> entry bookkeeping?" describing things like what are the usual
> >reports,
> >> how are they formatted, etc. Things that  are NOT specific to
> >gnucash.
> >> In other words, if we are talking about a report such as "Profit and
> >> Loss", what it looks like, what's included in it, etc. that is
> >> independent of how the double entry "general ledger" is kept. Thus
> >the
> >> report ends up looking the same (same data in it) whether produced by
> >> gnucash or manually during the process of "closing the books" the
> >books
> >> being pen and ink on paper (as it was when I learned ~65 years ago).
> >>
> >> Sorry, gnucash makes the work of double entry bookkeeping easier, but
> >> you still have to learn about double entry bookkeeping.
> >>
> >> Michael D Novack
> >>
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