Would it at all possible to change the current Balance sheet report to be able to have a periodic report as well.
In other words one should be able to select a specific month from a certain date to a certain date and then have the report as it is now as a year to date report.
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No. Accounts on the balance sheet are so-called permanent or perpetual accounts. That means their balances are not reset at the beginning of an accounting period, but depend on every transaction posted to them since the inception of the business. This is a fundamental accounting principle, not something unique to Manager. The balance sheet reports the financial position of the business at a single point in time. You can create a balance sheet for any date, but not for a period of time.
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@Tut No I do not mean to reset the balances. My proposal is to report for a period similar to the P&L report. One can set the P&L report for a specific month (February 2021, March 2021, April) and as well as year to date (February until April). It is just to report the same balances differently.
I will say it again. You cannot do that because you would not have a balance sheet. Your books would not balance. By requesting this, you are literally standing against about 500 years of established accounting practice. A balance sheet is what a balance sheet is, and a balance sheet is not a report that covers a month. It defines your position at a point in time.
If you want to know about movement in balance sheet accounts over some period of time, I suggest you explore the General Ledger Summary report. It essentially produces balance sheets for the beginning and ending dates you select and shows the debits and credits that account for changes between those two dates. But note—and this is important—the opening and closing balances for the balance sheet accounts do not constitute the period-to-date balance sheets you ask for. Opening balances reflect the entire history of the business until that date. Closing balances represent the entire history until that date. Together, these are very different from what you have requested.
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@Tut Thank You. I have looked at the Ledger Summary. Anyway I think we are not understanding each other. I do know a balance sheet shows the state of the business from the day it started being a business. All I was requesting was to use the report exactly as it is now, but to put an option to change the beginning and end dates similar to the P&L report. (If one wants to use it) It will not change anything. The BS report as it is now will still define the financial position at a point in time. The 500 years of accounting practice will still be there unchanged.
It was just a request for a report to use if one wants to like some other existing reports. I do not believe everybody use all the reports available, but they are there to use.
Perhaps the underlying database will not change, but the report will cease being a balance sheet. The developer has previously expressed strong opposition to introducing features that violate basic accounting principles as your requested report option would do.
Yes, but they all follow sound accounting principles and practices. You cannot manipulate them into pointlessness.
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If I am understanding correctly, you want to see a single amount that shows the changes over time for the Balance Sheet accounts (what some may call a “Trial Balance Rollforward”)?
As a work-around you should be able to run a balance sheet report for one date, copy it to a spreadsheet, then run a balance sheet for the second date, copy that to your spreadsheet, then use formulas to compute the difference between the two. This will show the change in each account over the time period between the two dates you choose.
@Tut @p4unger I can not see how I would be manipulating anything. It is just to see a report differently.
But what are you hoping to get from the report? The numbers will not mean anything.
Indeed. But based on post #4 it seemed as if the report may have been confusing for @kobus_Jhg (debits and credits have a way of doing that for some); I just thought to provide another method that might have made more sense from their perspective.
@kobus_Jhg, if what we have suggested does not work for your needs, I would have to echo @Tut; what do you want to do with this report? You may be trying to use the wrong tool for the job. If you could provide an example of how you want use this to manage your business, the forum could likely provide better guidance.
@Tut @p4unger It is ok. It was a proposal and I never expected that I would get so much resistance.
By the way @p4unger I really do understand the debits and credits on the GL summary report. It is not confusing as you have said, but again this report gives the year to date (accumulative) information as well.
I need to have this information on a monthly basis not in an accumulative format as I have explained in order to see the differences per month whether the Assets, Liabilities and equity improve compared to the previous month or did it deteriorate. It would be used as a management tool only.
That is not correct. The General Ledger Summary report gives information for any period you define. It is not limited to the year to date. You can define a report for two days, a week, a month, a quarter, a year, or any other time period.
The report includes the net movement during the time period. It would give you exactly what you say you want to have.
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Yes and that is why you can only see this difference by putting an end date for each of these months as the start date is the start date of the company. As was explained it does not make sense on balance sheets to enter interval dates as for P&L because it would no longer “balance” the accounting equation (equity = assets - liabilities). BS is about what you own and what you owe at any particular date. It would for example not make sense to compare data from January 1 to January 31, 2021, with data from February 1 to February 28, 2021, because you may have bought assets in May 2019 that you still use, and/or took loans in December 2020 that you still owe. So do as advised by:
@Tut @p4unger @eko Ok I see that the GL Summary report can do what I need, but I will have to use the work around as suggested by @p4unger due to the reason that I have to see this months next to each other. It is better than to print month by month and compare it.
@eko Your explanation makes very good sense
Thanx everybody. Manager is still the easiest software
It may be easier to use the standard Balance Sheet and define multiple monthly comparative columns like this.
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@AJD @Tut @p4unger @eko This is mine. the only problem is I have not done any journals yet, but it shows values of May.
That is as it should be. The balances remain the same because you still have those assets and owe the liabilities at the beginning of June; they will always carry forward at their previous amount.
If you subtract June from May, the result will be 0, which matches to you having no activity recorded yet.
A balance sheet will never start from 0, like a P&L, if that is what you’re looking for.
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