Actually that’s just what the Balance Sheet (Multicolumn) does right out of the box.
Just set the period and the range and it gives you the balance sheet at each point in time in columns. For example, I have one set of books (for a complex estate) where it suits me to have columns for Balance at Death, after one year, two years, and three years. But it has no option to create intermediate column showing net difference (change). For that, one must export to a spreadsheet. Sent from my iPad > On Jul 19, 2026, at 10:41 PM, Michael or Penny Novack via gnucash-user > <[email protected]> wrote: > > >> >> >> The "Balance Sheet (eguile-gnc)" report takes an "end date" which we can >> manually configure, but the start date is not defined in the UI. Presumably >> the software uses the date the account was first defined in GNUcash — which >> will get increasingly less useful each month: members would have to dig up >> *last* months' report and do a subtraction to see month-to-month deltas. >> Without setting a start date for the report, eventually we'll have financial >> tallies that represent years worth of financial records. > > THAT isn't really a gnucash matter but an accounting matter, definition of > the Balance Sheet. > > The "Balance Sheet" isn't defined for a date interval but a single date > (state of the ledger at the end of a single date). And that is what gnucash > is producing. > > I rather suspect what you want/need (and what is usually provided to the > board, etc.) are TWO balance sheets, one for the start or the interval (the > end of the previous interval) and one for the end of the interval. Usually > printed side by side to make comparison easy. I used to do this "manually", > exporting, and then using a favorite editor. In other words, Balance Sheet > before, Balance Sheet after, and Statement of Revenues (and Expenses) for the > interval between (what a non-profit calls the Profit and Loss Re[port of a > for-profit) > > I should explain that as a retired pro, though not really fluent in LISP > (scheme is a LISP dialect) I proposed coding a custom report Balance Sheet > report to that (when you are fluent in half a dozen computer languages, > what's one more). But the BoD member who was an accountant/lawyer said, > "Mike, don't bother. Export the two and combine/edit OUTSIDE gnucash where > you have the full power of general purpose editor. That's what any of us > accountants would do." WHY -- because in general you will want to "pretty > print", hide unwanted detail, and want to insert annotations to highlight an > unusual numbers. << I might add that I was on the BoD and Treasurer for > several non-profits >> > > That was good advice, so I will pass it on. > > > _______________________________________________ > gnucash-user mailing list > [email protected] > To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: > https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user > ----- > Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. > You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All. _______________________________________________ gnucash-user mailing list [email protected] To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user ----- Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
