I think one of the developers here mentioned that there is a lot of duplication in the reports arena. I concur. At first it was very confusing as to which was the "correct" one. Finally figured out none where -- according to the in house SME (pronounced "smee" and standing for Subject Matter Expert) and needed to roll my own. Of which, I only have the Balance Sheet sorta working like she wants it.
Following some email exchange via the bug reporting system regarding the Transaction report module, I agree that it has too many options already and requires a near programmer to figure out which options need to be set what way to get something close to desirable. Please note that I'm not a smee in this arena and, with my project manager hat on, my wife barely qualifies. There are others on this mailing list better qualified who will have differing opinions. However, here are my thoughts: 1. A transaction report (however it is organized) should always show the split amount. I propose that the Amount (None, Single, Double) option be removed and the report always produces the Amount in two columns Debit to the left and Credit to the right. 2. The Multi-line versus Single-line option may add confusion. If one wants to group the splits in a transaction together, then the report should be organized that way. When one picks the multi-line option, the report becomes hard to read and understand especially as the other splits are not included in the totals. I suggest that Single-line be the reporting style and the multi-line (meaning -- as best I can determine -- multi-splits) removed. These are just two of many simplifications that could be made to help guide the end-user into the reports they need rather than letting them create a report that is useless to them and anybody else. Along those lines, I see this code needing to generate the following types of reports: A. Transaction Journal -- this one lists the transactions within the date range in date order and keeps all the splits together on the report. A printed version of the General Ledger screen (in multi-split mode). B. Reconciliation Report -- rather than have the user pick the accounts, a first pass should show the Dates within Accounts for which there were reconciliations done (with the date range selected). Let the user select one or more of these to be reported, but each selection becomes its own report or page. Usually show the transactions reconciled on that date (by account and in date order) optionally followed by the transactions not yet reconciled within that account. C. Account Details -- here the user should pick the account(s) for which the detailed transaction should be shown for the date range selected. There may be a couple more variants, but if we start thinking about what a bookkeeper/accountant needs we can reduce the number of options available and thus remove complexity from the reports (at least this particular one). As a software engineer, I love to gold plate things. As a project manager, I realize that gold plates rarely provide the end user with something useful. Hey, but it looks good! So, which options on the transaction report do you never use? Which options do you always set one particular way? --Steve -- Stephen M Butler, PMP, PSM stephen.m.butle...@gmail.com kg...@arrl.net 253-350-0166 ------------------------------------------- GnuPG Fingerprint: 8A25 9726 D439 758D D846 E5D4 282A 5477 0385 81D8 _______________________________________________ gnucash-devel mailing list gnucash-devel@gnucash.org https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-devel