I have downloaded version 21 and find that in the Profit & Loss account brackets are used in the expenses section. In my previous version there were no brackets. Can the brackets be deleted?
There have been hundreds of versions beginning with 21. You need to furnish a full version number, such as v21.3.75, or whatever you have downloaded.
Next, are you referring to the Profit and Loss Statement? There is no such thing in Manager as “the Profit & Loss account.”
Also, by “brackets,” are you referring to parentheses? If so, that is how negative numbers are shown. A negative balance in the expenses section indicates you have a contra balance, that is, one whose sign is opposite of normal. For example, you might have recorded a large refund of a purchase. And those parentheses cannot be changed. Formatting of built-in reports cannot be modified.
It is also possible that you have incorrectly designated an expense group as an income group under Settings.
If this is not what you are referring to, illustrate with screen shots.
The version number is v21.3.75. Sorry for using the local vernacular. Yes it is Profit & Loss Statement and yes! I meant parentheses. The expenses are not contra balances. It is all expense balances and they are all normal and not opposite of normal. The Profit and Loss statement treats expenses as if normal and the end result is arithmetically correct.
Provide screenshots as asked for. I would also recommend to run the same dates for the report as you did when not getting the negative balances (in parentheses) as these only automatically appear when becoming negative and you may not have experienced that in previous reports because they remained positive.
Excuse my ignorance! How do I provide a screen shot .
Press CTRL+ALT+Prt SC/Snp from key board
Use Windows’ Snipping Tool or Snip & Sketch
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What are you using - PC, Mac? Windows, MacOs ? what version of OS?
What do you mean by Profit & Loss Statement? Are you talkng about the numbers on the Summary screen or in a report? If a report, which report?
I am using PC, Windows 10. The Profit and Loss Statement is from a report. All reports going back in time display the parentheses which were not previously displayed in reports.
A colleague of mine who has recently downloaded version v21.3.75 is experiencing the same problem.
I have just updated to 21.3.75 and I cannot reproduce this. (laptop Windows 10)
So that other forum members can help with this issue it may be helpful to post screen shots of the P&L report edit screen and also the view screen with the report header showing
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Also show a screen shot of the Edit screens for a couple of your expense groups.
A good way of finding a relevant edit screen would be:
- Drilling down from one of the expense totals in brackets,
- sort by amount (click on the heading) then
- showing a positive and negative entry
That is not what I am interested in. I want to see how the chart of accounts groups were defined. As I wrote in an earlier post, if they were defined incorrectly, all numerical signs could be reversed.
Come to think of it, we need to see not only some of the groups already pictured, but the highest level Expenses group itself.
The problem seems to be in the chart of accounts. See the screen before edit and the screen shot after edit. It now seems ok. I am not sure why the problem only showed up after downloading v21.3.75. This also happened with the accounts of my colleague. is there anything else I should check.
I see no before and after shots. Are you saying (1) that the problem has been resolved, and (2) that you edited the chart of accounts? If both are true, how did you edit?
Yes the problem has been resolved. Yes the chart of accounts was edited. Originally, In chart of accounts in box under NAME was “expenses” and in the box under TYPE the selection was “subgroup of” and in the next box “expenses”.
This was edited by changing “subgroup of” to “Expenses”.
My colleague also solved her problem in the same way. So, on downloading 21.3.75, the expense heading appears to have been altered.
Well! I would suggest that the program should not allow a group to be nominated as a sub-group of itself.
That is obviously a correct statement. The fact remains, the problem did not exist before I downloaded version v21.3.75. Also it happened to another user as well.
When I upgraded to 21.3.75 I was only a few version out of date. You may have updated from an earlier version which could have triggered the issue.
It wasn’t that obvious to me at first as I thought that you may have had 2 groups with the same name. It wasn’t until I went to my test database and made changes to the chart of accounts and was able to produce the effect and at that point it become clear that a group was able to be nominated as a sub-group of itself.
First off. OK, the OP likely forgot/missed the word “statement” as in “Profit & Loss statement accounts”, but hey we’re all human.
Second, if you are trying to use your statement to export to excel or some other external program I feel your pain. As Tut says, quote “There have been hundreds of versions beginning with 21” and at no time have Manager’s users been consulted concerning how changes would affect them. If you lose a day or two redesigning a spreadsheet … oh well too bad! BTW if you export the statement to excel without formating the “()'s” will be “-”.