My “Accounts Receivable” has a balance of 0 (yeah, all collections done).
On the Summary tab, I click on the little blue dash that is a hyperlink on the Accounts receivable line, and all I get is a page that says “Empty”. I can not review all the transactions that have occurred in the Accounts receivable.
And since the balance is zero, the Accounts receivable does not appear on the Balance Sheet, Trial Balance, nor General Ledger Summary. So there is no way to access all of the transactions that have occurred in Accounts receivable.
Look at the General Ledger Summary report. You can click the amounts for total debits, total credits, or net movement and see exactly what you want, for Accounts receivable or any other account for whatever time period you have defined.
The Balance Sheet is a snapshot, not a history. This is true of every single account displayed. An empty account means only that there is nothing in it as of the date of the report.
The Trial Balance works the same way for the Balance Sheet accounts. It’s a balance, not a history. It may seem to offer a history for P&L accounts, but only because the income and expense transactions during the defined period are what make up the snapshot. In actuality, part of this report is for a period of time, part is at a specific date.
The General Ledger Summary will show the amounts described above if there have been any transactions during the period defined for the report. If the account doesn’t show, that means there have been no transactions affecting that account during the period (and there must have been no opening balance).
I just want to point out that clicking on the balance of any other asset account on the Summary tab (even a zero balance) opens a page that lists all transactions that have occurred in that account. And there is an Export button at the bottom. That works great. Accounts Receivable does not behave in the same way.
You are right that I can get the same info from the General Ledger Summary if the period is set correctly. It is not quite as convenient but works, so I will use it.
Actually, that isn’t quite right. Many asset accounts are control accounts, that is, they are made up of subaccounts. What you get when you drill down is a register of subaccount balances. Only when you drill down further from there do you get the transaction history. But when there is no subaccount with a non-zero balance, you don’t get the subaccount list. Fixed assets and Intangible assets work the same way. So does Inventory on hand. Of course, if you don’t use some of those tabs, you wouldn’t see that behavior. And if most of your asset accounts were created by you, instead of automatically as control accounts when various tabs were enabled, the behavior might look inconsistent. It is not.