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

[R Losey]

On Sun, May 18, 2025 at 9:37 AM Michael or Penny Novack <
stepbystepfarm at comcast.net> 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
>

Having come from a Quicken background, where reports work "out of the box",
the reports in GnuCash have been difficult.

I know that I have gaps in my understanding of accounting and bookkeeping.
I have had very little problems using GnuCash's double-entry method.

But you are correct in that I am lacking knowledge in some of the report
areas - I don't think that is a lack of knowledge of double-entry
accounting, however.

Just did some searching using "double entry accounting reports" and all
that is returned is the very basic information about what double-entry
accounting is, with nothing about reporting.

-- 
_________________________________
Richard Losey
rlosey at gmail.com
Micah 6:8