Re: RFP: Generic Comparison Report

[Mike or Penny Novack]

On 2/10/2018 12:52 PM, Adrien Monteleone wrote:

David,

As I noted in another thread, I'm interested in tackling this. I have a few
other ideas I want to try as well. (multi-step Income Statement and
Analytic/Activity style Income Statement)


Let me jump in hear a moment.

The "standard report" in my line of country (non-profits) is TWO periods 
side by side (generally two years, this year's annual vs last year's 
annual "Statement of Revenues and Expenses" and of course the 
corresponding ending Balance Sheets.


I did NOT write a custom report to do this in spite of the fact that I 
made my living doing software for a "financial" and was reasonably 
fluent in LISP << and Scheme is a LISP dialect >> That's because I 
expected the condition under which such a report to "line up properly" 
in the horizontal sense to be the exception rather than the rule. It is 
RARE that two consecutive years have NO changes to the CoA << no 
accounts renamed, no new accounts added, no account split into two, etc >>


In other words, since going to have to fiddle a bit anyway, doing this 
manually (export the constituent reports form gnucash and then 
reassemble the pieces with my favorite editor) and making decisions how 
to deal with the changes to the CoA as they become apparent)


Michael
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Re: RFP: Generic Comparison Report

[Dennis West]

If you're going to the trouble, it might be nice to enable subtotals 
within a report.  We use a report that shows all the income each year 
from about 20-30 vendors.  It would be nice to show subtotals by vendor 
as well as the grand total for the year.


I know - I'm trying to piggyback on someone else's question and you 
work.  I hope that's OK.


Dennis


On 2/10/2018 11:52, Adrien Monteleone wrote:

David,

As I noted in another thread, I'm interested in tackling this. I have a few
other ideas I want to try as well. (multi-step Income Statement and
Analytic/Activity style Income Statement)

Chris, thanks for the link. I'll take a look at Grid also.

While it is good to have a 'flexible and cover many use cases' report, most
people aren't going to be thinking in those terms. Users are more likely
going to want a Balance Sheet and then want it to be multi-column, or an
Income Statement and then see each month or quarter. So there should be
default reports with those names that do this. Ideally, those current
reports should be modified to include the new options rather than creating
separate new reports. (less clutter in the report menus the better)

I'm in the middle of Mardi Gras festivities at the moment, but I'll dive in
on Wednesday.

Regards,
Adrien

On Sat, Feb 10, 2018 at 1:32 AM, David T. via gnucash-devel <
gnucash-de...@gnucash.org> wrote:


Chris,

I think that users would like to know what is happening on this front.
Users are very interested in these developments, and there are far more
readers on users, who may have additional suggestions for use-cases and
features. Given the fact that there are current threads on the user list
that ask this very question, it seems to me unhelpful to split this off to
the devel list, where those users will not learn of this.

For what it’s worth, I have yet to see or use the new transaction report,
since my system hates both me and custom reports. I doubt most normal users
are aware of the new version of the report and its features, for the same
reasons.

David


On Feb 10, 2018, at 11:24 AM, Christopher Lam 

wrote:

Hi D

Wish to move to devel, technical and policy details abound.

There's already work done to enable periodic subtotals comparison. This

feature has been named "Subtotal Summary Grid". This is done by reusing and
augmenting the (most excellent) transaction report's grouping and
subtotals. I'm not sure whether this allows 100% coverage of users'
requirements for periodic comparison, but I suspect it would.

For example, setting accounts = expense accounts (+ children),

primary-key = account, secondary-key = date, secondary-subtotals = monthly,
subtotal-summary-grid = enabled -> will provide a nice 2D grid whereby
Y-axis = accounts, X-axis = monthly expense subtotals. This feature will
reuse the subtotals already generated within the transaction report,
therefore any errors in subtotals are not from my code. Example at
https://imgur.com/a/unDAD 

Unfortunately it was completed after string and feature-freeze for

upcoming 3.0 -- I'm afraid that inclusion into 3.0 isn't guaranteed yet.
Although, as I have notified devs, if this feature is renamed "Grid", it
could be written into 3.0. The translated string "Grid" already exists.

If you wish to experiment, the code is currently available at

https://github.com/Gnucash/gnucash/pull/266/commits/
4d2ee75b4fa138c0534ae739089d4df70d6d4117  -
(note, this commit link isn't permanent).

C

On 10/02/18 13:35, D via gnucash-user wrote:

Hello,

I want to raise a discussion here about the creation of a generic

comparison report.

I would preface this discussion by saying that, although I am a long

time user of Gnucash, I have repeatedly demonstrated my utter inability to
generate useful code for the project, so any ultimate action on the results
of this discussion would have to be applied by someone else.

As we have seen recently, and as I have seen repeatedly over the years,

one of the more common requests for reporting is to be able to see numbers
from different time periods in order to evaluate a financial situation.

As far as I can tell, other than the multi column report, nothing of

the sort exists in Gnucash. I started thinking that it might be good to
begin the process of detailing what features might go into such a report in
order to make it generally useful, with the idea of perhaps stirring up
someone's interest in creating such a report.

Some initial ideas include:

* Definable periods. Should be able to set the unit period, with

options for common units (month, quarter, year).

* Definable numbers of periods.
* Definable accounts, but with some common groupings (Assets,

Liabilities, Investments... Are there others?)

* Perhaps the option to use another report as a template? I have no

idea how that might work, but the fact that folks 

Re: RFP: Generic Comparison Report

[Adrien Monteleone]

David,

As I noted in another thread, I'm interested in tackling this. I have a few
other ideas I want to try as well. (multi-step Income Statement and
Analytic/Activity style Income Statement)

Chris, thanks for the link. I'll take a look at Grid also.

While it is good to have a 'flexible and cover many use cases' report, most
people aren't going to be thinking in those terms. Users are more likely
going to want a Balance Sheet and then want it to be multi-column, or an
Income Statement and then see each month or quarter. So there should be
default reports with those names that do this. Ideally, those current
reports should be modified to include the new options rather than creating
separate new reports. (less clutter in the report menus the better)

I'm in the middle of Mardi Gras festivities at the moment, but I'll dive in
on Wednesday.

Regards,
Adrien

On Sat, Feb 10, 2018 at 1:32 AM, David T. via gnucash-devel <
gnucash-de...@gnucash.org> wrote:

> Chris,
>
> I think that users would like to know what is happening on this front.
> Users are very interested in these developments, and there are far more
> readers on users, who may have additional suggestions for use-cases and
> features. Given the fact that there are current threads on the user list
> that ask this very question, it seems to me unhelpful to split this off to
> the devel list, where those users will not learn of this.
>
> For what it’s worth, I have yet to see or use the new transaction report,
> since my system hates both me and custom reports. I doubt most normal users
> are aware of the new version of the report and its features, for the same
> reasons.
>
> David
>
> > On Feb 10, 2018, at 11:24 AM, Christopher Lam 
> wrote:
> >
> > Hi D
> >
> > Wish to move to devel, technical and policy details abound.
> >
> > There's already work done to enable periodic subtotals comparison. This
> feature has been named "Subtotal Summary Grid". This is done by reusing and
> augmenting the (most excellent) transaction report's grouping and
> subtotals. I'm not sure whether this allows 100% coverage of users'
> requirements for periodic comparison, but I suspect it would.
> > For example, setting accounts = expense accounts (+ children),
> primary-key = account, secondary-key = date, secondary-subtotals = monthly,
> subtotal-summary-grid = enabled -> will provide a nice 2D grid whereby
> Y-axis = accounts, X-axis = monthly expense subtotals. This feature will
> reuse the subtotals already generated within the transaction report,
> therefore any errors in subtotals are not from my code. Example at
> https://imgur.com/a/unDAD 
> > Unfortunately it was completed after string and feature-freeze for
> upcoming 3.0 -- I'm afraid that inclusion into 3.0 isn't guaranteed yet.
> Although, as I have notified devs, if this feature is renamed "Grid", it
> could be written into 3.0. The translated string "Grid" already exists.
> >
> > If you wish to experiment, the code is currently available at
> https://github.com/Gnucash/gnucash/pull/266/commits/
> 4d2ee75b4fa138c0534ae739089d4df70d6d4117  gnucash/pull/266/commits/4d2ee75b4fa138c0534ae739089d4df70d6d4117> -
> (note, this commit link isn't permanent).
> >
> > C
> >
> > On 10/02/18 13:35, D via gnucash-user wrote:
> >> Hello,
> >>
> >> I want to raise a discussion here about the creation of a generic
> comparison report.
> >>
> >> I would preface this discussion by saying that, although I am a long
> time user of Gnucash, I have repeatedly demonstrated my utter inability to
> generate useful code for the project, so any ultimate action on the results
> of this discussion would have to be applied by someone else.
> >>
> >> As we have seen recently, and as I have seen repeatedly over the years,
> one of the more common requests for reporting is to be able to see numbers
> from different time periods in order to evaluate a financial situation.
> >>
> >> As far as I can tell, other than the multi column report, nothing of
> the sort exists in Gnucash. I started thinking that it might be good to
> begin the process of detailing what features might go into such a report in
> order to make it generally useful, with the idea of perhaps stirring up
> someone's interest in creating such a report.
> >>
> >> Some initial ideas include:
> >>
> >> * Definable periods. Should be able to set the unit period, with
> options for common units (month, quarter, year).
> >> * Definable numbers of periods.
> >> * Definable accounts, but with some common groupings (Assets,
> Liabilities, Investments... Are there others?)
> >> * Perhaps the option to use another report as a template? I have no
> idea how that might work, but the fact that folks seem to want side by side
> balance sheets suggests this to me.
> >>
> >> Does anyone else think this would be helpful? Is it a reasonable idea?
> Is it something that someone in the community with Scheme 

RFP: Generic Comparison Report

[D via gnucash-user]

Hello,

I want to raise a discussion here about the creation of a generic comparison 
report. 

I would preface this discussion by saying that, although I am a long time user 
of Gnucash, I have repeatedly demonstrated my utter inability to generate 
useful code for the project, so any ultimate action on the results of this 
discussion would have to be applied by someone else.

As we have seen recently, and as I have seen repeatedly over the years, one of 
the more common requests for reporting is to be able to see numbers from 
different time periods in order to evaluate a financial situation.

As far as I can tell, other than the multi column report, nothing of the sort 
exists in Gnucash. I started thinking that it might be good to begin the 
process of detailing what features might go into such a report in order to make 
it generally useful, with the idea of perhaps stirring up someone's interest in 
creating such a report.

Some initial ideas include:

* Definable periods. Should be able to set the unit period, with options for 
common units (month, quarter, year).
* Definable numbers of periods.
* Definable accounts, but with some common groupings (Assets, Liabilities, 
Investments... Are there others?)
* Perhaps the option to use another report as a template? I have no idea how 
that might work, but the fact that folks seem to want side by side balance 
sheets suggests this to me.

Does anyone else think this would be helpful? Is it a reasonable idea? Is it 
something that someone in the community with Scheme skills is interested in 
pursuing? Are there other elements that would make this a better idea? Are 
there elements that are absurdly difficult or impossible?

Cheers,
David
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