GL Transactions report inconsistent with opening / closing balances

I noticed that the General Ledger Transaction report randomly, in only some accounts, skips opening and closing balance.

It is not random, and it is not a bug. Opening and closing balances are shown when they exist for the time period of the report. If zero, nothing appears.

Happy to know it’s not a bug but I think that is a little misleading. I think that they should be always shown: opening and closing balance for balance sheet and closing balance for P&L.

I noticed this also. Using 20.5.20.


Has an opening balance but no closing balance, which should be 0.00
I know my version is out of date, but there was an issue there then.

If closing balance = 0 it is not mentioned.

I understand it. But think of an auditor that sees a list of movements that doesn’t have a closing total… I don’t even know if this kind of report can be considered compliant to the law.

A balance of $0.00 is a numerical result just as a $0.01 balance is a numerical result, therefore exist.

If you had 86 transactions, it is inconsistent for Manager to display a balance of $0.01 yet not display a balance of $0.00. Why should a User (an Auditor) have to get their calculator out to prove that the transactions add to $0.00, whereas Manager is happy to disclose that the transactions add to $0.01.
A $0.00 balance is not “Null”.

Totally and utterly agree, therefore I am going to list this as a Bug, as it proposes to fix inconsistency in the report. A User shouldn’t have to have specialist knowledge of Manager quirks (zero equals nothing) to read the reports.

PS: I will also edit the heading.

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The latest version (20.8.38) is adding Balance column to the report. This makes closing balances to be shown for all accounts.

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Thanks a lot!

I foresee a lot of potential functionalities for Balance columns in Custom Reports… if it will be dynamic ie linked to the data displayed on Custom Report and not to the General Ledger Transactions.