A few issues/suggestions for the General Ledger Transactions report:
1) Can there please be dividers or at least headings between the major sections of Revenues, Expenses, Assets, Liabilities, and Equity? As my ledger becomes busier, it gets a bit confusing to interpret and sometimes difficult to find the various accounts, especially those with similar names like Billable Time and Billable Time - movement. Also, for accounts that have Code numbers, it would be easier to read the report if the Codes were to appear after the account name (e.g., Cash (-999)) instead of before (e.g., -999 Cash); this applies to other reports, as well.
2) It would be very helpful to have a Journal report, showing each transaction in chronological order, with the corresponding double entries for that transaction. This would be useful not only for audit purposes, but also for Manager users who are learning double-entry accounting and are trying to understand how each action in Manager affects the books.
3) Finally, there are still some problems with information not being conveyed in the General Ledger report. While line-item entries in most accounts are printed with the customer or payee name and the description (e.g., 11/12/2015 - Delta Airlines - economy airfare JFK/CDG and 04/03/2015 - ABC Partners - 06/08/2015 - Teleconference), entries in the Billable time and Billable time - movement accounts do not show the customer name (e.g., 06/08/2015 - Teleconference). Similarly, while invoices are listed in the Accounts Receivable account by customer name and invoice description without the invoice number (e.g., 06/11/2015 - ABC Partners - Consulting services), they are listed in the Billable time accounts by invoice number only (e.g., 06/11/2015 - Sales Invoice #2115). Particularly without a Journal report, this makes it very difficult at times to match up transactions.
To illustrate, here is the G/L for a business with only three transactions, all performed on the same date:
A) Perform a service
B) Issue an invoice
C) Collect payment
(N.B. The Billable time - movement account here has been renamed Billable time - uninvoiced per local custom, and the Cash account has a Code of -999 to force it to appear at the top of the Assets section in financial reports.)
All of the issues I described above are demonstrated in this G/L Transactions report. It’s hard to tell which Billable time account is the Asset and which is the Revenue (unless you’re well-versed in credits vs debits or can remember which of those has the word “uninvoiced” or “movement” attached to it), and it would be even harder in an actual, multi-page ledger. It’s even harder to tell which $100 debit transactions go with which $100 credit transactions. The Cash account has its Code number prepended to its caption, which may be confusing. The entries are inconsistent as to which ones have invoice numbers, descriptions, or customer names.
The requested Journal report for these three transactions would look something like this, with the entry details adjusted for consistency. (The letters in red are not part of the report itself.)
Generally speaking, account codes are enabled via a tick box on the screens for creating or editing various reports for which they make sense, in other words, where individual accounts are listed. The tick box is right below the date range input fields. But there are some anomalies:
The option is available for General Ledger Summary, but when ticked, the codes do not appear.
No option exists for General Ledger Transactions. The codes always appear if you have entered them. So your original post about this particular report was correct.
I’m sure not having the option for the G/L Transactions report is just an oversight, just as the non-functional option in the G/L Summary is most likely a bug. Perhaps @Lubos will fix both.
(Note: This post was edited by @Tut for consistency with previous edits to earlier postings in the thread. Information for the edit came from a personal message from @Jon; the edit was made to ensure other readers of the Forum could understand the discussion.)
For those accounts which have similar BS & P&L names - insert either (B) or (P) into the account name.
As to your other points, consistency in format throughout Manager would be beneficial
In the latest version (16.4.49). I did some improvements to general ledger transactions report.
Headings will show groups too. This way you can easily tell where the account belongs to within chart of accounts
Descriptions will include sub-account names (if applicable).
For the rest, I agree, general ledger descriptions will need to be reworked. It’s something I plan to work on in upcoming weeks so there should be many improvements in that area.
