On 4/6/2022 8:15 AM, Chris Green wrote:
Since I was producing reports for a number of non-profits I will break
your several questions apart. I will be mainly describing solution sin
terms of how I did it, not necessarily all remaining within gnucash. But
since ONE of your questions is specifically about "saving" previous
reports my methods directly relate to that. But first a bit of
terminology to avoid confusion --- saving a report (the options it was
run with) and saving the results of running that report (the report
produced by running with those options. In other words, sort of
"program" vs "data".
I use GnuCash for our (very small) church's accounts and find it works
very well.
However I do have issues with the reports, especially at year end for
auditing.
The auditor wants a report which looks pretty much like the profit and
loss report but with the underlying bank account balances at the bottom.
Is there any simple way to get this? ... or if getting it all on one
report isn't easy (I'm not going to learn Scheme just to do this!)
then is there a report which will provide the basic bank account
balances, e.g.:-
Bank account at start of year xxxx.xx
Less excess of expenses over income yyyy.yy
Bank account at 31st December YYYY zzzz.zz
Yes, I have seen this format presented (and the person who took over as
Treasurer with one of my organizations does this -- also showing
quarters side by side)
This is combining some balance sheet items along with the revenue
statement. Thus when I was presenting to the board a revenue statement
for some period I would ALSO be handing out the balance sheet reports
for start of period and ed of period. If I were asked to produce the
report (the results) in the format requested by your accountant I would
run those balance sheet and the income statement for the dates involved.
I would then EXPORT those raw reports.
I would then open a "document" under the control of my favorite editor
with a suitable name (to distinguish it from the previous and next). I
would copy into this the statement of revenues. I would copy below that
the bank account parts of the balance sheets and between them copy the
line that was net gain or loss. I would also (because under the control
of a full service editor) do things like add annotation for any unusual
items. Take a look at your line "Less excess of expenses over income
yyyy.yy" --- you'd want this to read differently if that period you had
an "excess of income over expenses".
And I would do it this way even though a retired professional fluent in
a half dozen or so computer languages, and though never paid to write in
LISP, I can read it reasonably well and so would only take me a week or
so to get up to speed in SCHEME (a LISP dialect). I would NOT want to
have "being treasurer" of an organization dependent on being able to
program in some computer language.
Also, is it possible to show -ve amounts in 'accountant' format? I.e.
as a value in brackets £(1234.56).
Maybe that's an option within gnucash among your choices for how to
display negatives. Please note that there isn't ONE "accountant
standard". For example, I would be expected to show consecutive periods
side by side (this quarter vs previous quarter, this year vs previous
year, etc.
Finally, is there a way to get all reports to show all items in the
particular accounts? It always takes me ages to find the settings for
the accounting period and, as I keep each year separately, all I ever
want to do is show everything that's in the particular set of
accounts. (I can think of nothing worse than having to change the
reporting dates every time I want to look at last year's accounts
instead of this years)
Remember, I described exporting before editing. If you SAVED all those
exports suitably named (and your edited version that you showed to your
board, gave to the accountant, etc.) you still have them. Just look for
them in the directory (file folder) where you put them. If the name
includes the date will be easy to find the right one, No need to rerun
them in gnucash or keep them as open tabs!
Michael D Novack
--
There is no possibility of social justice on a dead planet except the equality
of the grave.
_______________________________________________
gnucash-user mailing list
gnucash-user@gnucash.org
To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe:
https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user
If you are using Nabble or Gmane, please see
https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Mailing_Lists for more information.
-----
Please remember to CC this list on all your replies.
You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
