Let's say that you want to create an Account Summary:
- From the menu select Reports | Account Summary. The Account Summary report will open in a new tab. You notice that it is for the period ending on the last day of this financial year. Also, you find that the few relevant numbers are buried in a sea of zeroes.
- Click on the toolbar button Options. You can also select Edit | Report from the menu Options.
- The checkbox Include accounts with zero total balances in the Display tab will be checked by default. Uncheck it. The checkbox Omit zero balance figures in the same tab will be unchecked by default. Check it.
- In the General tab, type MACS in the Company name field.
- Click on the Stylesheet drop-down list and select Technicolor and then click on OK to see the following screenshot of the report:
- Now that you have jumped through enough hoops, you want to make sure this report is saved and saved for good. You may have earlier noticed the Add Report button on the toolbar but you may have also noticed that it has remained stubbornly disabled. Go back to the Report Options dialog by clicking on the Options toolbar button. In the General tab, change the name of the report to My Account Summary. Click on the OK button to see the name of the report change to My Account Summary. Once you have changed the name of the report, the magic happens and the Add Report button becomes enabled.
- Go ahead and click Add Report. You can also select File | Add Report from the menu.
- You will get a confirmation message, Your report "My Account Summary" has been saved into the configuration file "C:Documents and Settings<username>.gnucashsaved-reports-2.4". Click on Close.
- At this point if you select Reports | Custom Reports, from the menu you should see a dialog box with your saved report, My Account Summary, as shown in the following screenshot:
As we said earlier, GnuCash ships with a rich set of standard reports. However, the ability to customize them and save them for repeated use gives you a powerful tool to get precisely the data you want and formatted to your specific preference.
Here are a few tips that you may find useful while customizing reports:
- Exclude columns: You can exclude unwanted columns by deselecting them. You will find this useful if you don't want long notes and memos crowding out your data.
- Avoid zero balances: If you have a lot of zero balances, you can deselect them.
- Display as hyperlinks: You can choose to display some fields, such as accounts, as hyperlinks. This is helpful for drill down purposes. For example, when you are looking at a report you may want to go to that account and look at the details to see how a number was arrived at.
- Show subtotals: You can choose whether to show subtotals or not.
Here are a few tips that you may find useful while customizing charts:
- Show Table: Earlier we said that charts help you to quickly recognize patterns in the data. However, you should also exercise care with charts to avoid misinterpretations. Experts say that this is especially important if you are working under time pressure or if high risk is involved. Which small business is not under time pressure and with high risk? One way to avoid misinterpreting charts is to have the numbers alongside the chart. For this reason, many of the GnuCash charts have a Show Table option in the Display tab of the Report Options dialog.
- Step Size: This option is available on bar charts to select the interval that each bar represents. Typical values are Day, Week, Month, Quarter, and Year.
- Plot Width and Plot Height: There are width and height options for most graphs, which specify the displayed dimensions in pixels.
- Bar charts stacked or side by side: There is a Use Stacked Bars option for bar charts which specifies whether to stack the bars or show them side by side.
- Bar charts limit the number of bars: The bar charts have a Maximum Bars option to limit the number of bars in crowded charts.
These reports are accessed from the Reports | Sample & Custom menu:
|
Report name |
Report description |
|---|---|
|
Welcome Sample Report |
This report is under development. Not for business use. |
|
Custom Multicolumn Report |
This report is used to place multiple reports into a single report window in dashboard style. |
|
Sample Report with Examples |
This report is under development. Not for business use. |
When you open the Custom Multicolumn Report, you will see a totally blank report. This is a test of persistence. The intention is to separate the wheat from the chaff those who persist from those who give up too soon. You are made of sterner stuff. Hang in there. Click on the Options button. Go to the Contents tab, select the reports from the Available Reports, and add them to the Selected Reports. Increase the Number of columns in the General tab. Click on Apply or OK to see the Multicolumn Report.
- Which one of the following is not an essential step for saving a custom report?
a. Change the name of the report.
b. Click on the Reload button.
c. Click on the Add Report button or select File | Add Report.