Making the General Ledger Transactions report more useful

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I think it belongs on both. I love the idea of being able to export the G/L to Excel, which would then allow me to do pretty much anything with my data. (“Data Liberation,” to use Google’s term). But that doesn’t replace the need for a good printed archival audit trail, be it paper or PDF. A printed version is still required for bullet-proof, audit-capable documenting and for peeling through layers of transactions when something goes awry – in other words, a G/L Transactions report and a Journal report.

The G/L and Journal reports may get long, but that’s exactly the point. They memorialize all of the transactions that Manager sees. The other reports are just summaries, while the G/L and Journal reports are the logs, if you will.

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I side with @Jon on this. If you go back to the dark ages of accounting, an entry was first made in the journal (from the Italian for day), as the transaction occurred. It was then transferred to individual account ledgers, perhaps at a slightly later time. The former was the chronological record of transactions of the business; the latter was the record of debits and credits to individual accounts and their running balances, be they asset, liability, equity, income, or expense. The income and expense accounts would be summarized and closed at the end of an accounting cycle.

All that was a lot of work, and much of it is unnecessary since the advent of computerized accounting programs. But it is still necessary from time to time to be able to conveniently look things up, follow a money trail, check for errors (or fraud), and so forth. And those original accounting formats are pretty handy for doing that, even if you never print one out.

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In that case, I suggest users would print (to paper or to PDF) directly from spreadsheet program.

This is the same argument I’m making when people ask for ability to print list of all invoices under Sales Invoices tab.

You can print it by exporting data to spreadsheet, then print it (if you still want to)

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@Lubos,

Respectfully, I really don’t understand why you’re so resistant to this.

We appear to have two key differences of opinion on this:

  1. There should be a separate Journal report, distinct from the General Ledger Transactions report. The former is strictly chronologic, while the latter is by account. The Journal report is really a log, and it helps the user (and the auditor) see what happened in what order. It is absolutely necessary to support an audit, and it’s also extremely helpful to see what each entry actually does.

  2. Printing an Excel file is not the same as printing a report. While each can certainly be altered, the report coming directly from the accounting software is somehow more “official” than a printout from an Excel file, which is subject to easy modification and alteration in formats, be it intentional or not. Moreover, having Manager produce a PDF transactions report is one step, while dumping to Excel and then creating a PDF from there involves multiple steps (exporting, formatting, adjusting columns, margins, line breaks, etc.) with potential for error. Several of your more vocal and supportive users have found the General Ledger Transactions report to be extremely useful, and my initial request was to make it more useful and internally consistent, not to get rid of it or turn it into a spreadsheet. I know you don’t see the use-case, but there clearly is one (or several), judging from the input here from @Tut and others. Really, we need this.

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Obviously its only relevant for my country, but my accountant said the following for those who might be interested:

One needs the following supporting documentation for something like a tax audit:

  1. Suppliers Invoices (Paper Format is the simplest as easy to order in file)
  2. VAT Returns (I backup my PDF files)
  3. Company Annual Return (I backup my PDF Files)
  4. Bank Statements (Paper Format is the simplest as easy to order in file)
  5. Obviously the Manager Data file

For end of world scenarios, you would need the General Ledger Transactions Report and the Journal Report. This would only be required in the event that you cannot use Manager in the future for some reason so in short these two reports could rebuild all the transactions in Manager. There is no value in a paper copy of this as this is just Manager in another electronic form provided that the PDF and Excel copies are backed up! However, if you do not have a backup system in place and the hard drive goes, then you would need to print the reports so that you have a hard copy in the event of total disaster.

So for end of world scenarios, I would imagine the General Ledger Transactions Report and the Journal Report would make more sense in an excel format because you don’t need it if you are in Manager and if you need to restore the data, it would be far easier to rebuild from Excel. Having said that, backing up your Manager data file would prevent this issue if hard drive goes or other data corruption.

If a paper copy is required, possibly the excel format would be better as you would print significantly fewer pages. However a better option would be to have a backup of the reports saved as pdf files. Once again, backing up your hard drive is the best way to ensure no data is lost and PDF is a format that is very unlikely to ever go obsolete.

However to avoid issues with future electronic incompatibility, I would recommend exporting to both pdf and excel formats because excel itself may be very different in say ten years time, so clearly both pdf and excel formats are required.

I also agree with the point that Lubos made in that every time a user needs to use the general ledger report to fix some transaction, he sees it as something is wrong with Manager. It would make more sense to improve Manager to prevent mistakenly applying invoices to wrong customer which could have been as a result of debit/credit customer credits etc with the result that one would not need to view the general ledger report at all. That is not to say that one should get rid of the general ledger reports - the point he was making is that the program should prevent the end user from making mistakes within the program.

In short to sum up.

I would agree with @Jon on the following points:

  1. The general ledger report needs to contain all the information otherwise its basically useless.
  2. The report should have the ability to save as either excel or pdf format as both formats are necessary for different reasons but both for mainly disaster recovery.
    Also it would be preferable to save as pdf from Manager as it would already be in a format suitable for pdf viewing whereas saving as pdf from Excel has issues as Jon outlined.

I would highlight that backing up data would prevent most problems from occuring however, @Tut example highlights the need for a pdf or excel or paper backup of the entire database - [quote=“Tut, post:13, topic:6616”]
You don’t even have to look 10 years down the line to realize the value of paper records. Recently, I found myself unable to open a 2-year old tax return for an audit despite having the original software installed…on my new computer, with which it was mysteriously not compatible. And I was so proud of myself for even archiving the original tax software and returns on CDs in addition to all other backups. Fortunately, I had the paper printouts.
[/quote]

Lastly, I would agree with @lubos on the following points:

Manager should prevent users from making mistakes so that General Ledger report is not required for this particular purpose.

That I agree with, however as clearly indicated there are other uses for the reports (mainly in the area of disaster recovery) and clearly having a pdf and excel version meets the requirements of disaster recovery assuming that you have the supporting documents such as end of year returns and suppliers invoices etc.

So the point stands - in the event of disaster recovery or tracking down an elusive problem - you need a general ledger report that has all the information which is currently not the case and the original question that the OP posted. Secondly, it needs to support both PDF and Excel formats.

My apologies for the length of the post, but I wanted to cover all points.

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I’m fine with at least that option, but really, I don’t really see what’s the big deal on not having a complete General Ledger Report and a Journal Report, like @Jon said. It would be really easier to have a General Ledger Report if you’re looking for possible errors because that way you can correct the mistakes in the same program instead of locating errors of data entry in an external worksheet and then having them corrected in the program. The actual report does not show the person who you’re paying money, for example, just the description of the transaction. If you forgot to put a description or you just simply are not used to put a description in your transactions, you will have to enter to every one transaction to know who are you paying to. That can be helpful at all if you want to review your accounting.

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Another user posted a good use case for the G/L Transactions Report here.

Sometimes you need a report of transactions for a particular account. You shouldn’t have to export to Excel to get that report; Manager should provide it. An enhanced G/L Transactions report along the lines of what I recommended in the first posting in this thread would provide that, particularly if there were an option to filter the G/L Transactions report for a particular account.

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And another specific use case for the G/L Transactions report that I just encountered in real life:

I needed to track down which invoices a large customer payment was applied to, because the customer questioned why one of their invoices was showing up as overdue on their statement. The easiest way to track down which invoices the payment was automatically allocated to was by finding the payment in the G/L Transactions report’s Accounts receivable section and seeing the invoice numbers listed in the “Automatic payment using available credit” entries.

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Yet another use case!

In the following thread, @Lubos, a user was having trouble with Manager, and you identified the problem as possibly being because he is still using Windows XP:

This user may or may not be able to upgrade to Windows 7 or 10 or whatever. Maybe his computer is old and he can’t afford to buy a new one that is compatible with a later version of Windows. Maybe he can’t afford to buy a new operating system. Maybe he works at a company that insists that he stay on Windows XP because of compatibility with legacy software.

Whatever his reason, he’s screwed if he doesn’t have a portable dump of his data. Since the .manager data format is proprietary, he can’t use it if he can’t run Manager. Assuming he’s already touched his .manager file with a version of Manager that is beyond the point when XP stopped being supported, he can’t go back to an earlier version with the same .manager file.

So again, having a low-level report (and preferably spreadsheet export) listing all transactions in all accounts (ie, the detailed G/L Transactions report and the Journal report) would hedge against this scenario. Not ideal, of course, but better than nothing.

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I will add ability to do complete GL export to spreadsheet with many columns so transactions can be easily searched, sorted, grouped etc. Showing the report on the screen for printing is not an option. Manager is not optimized to show a report with thousands or tens of thousands of lines. Spreadsheet programs are optimized for this use case.

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32

Thank you, @Lubos. I personally prefer to have the built-in report not only because it takes less Excel massaging and formatting, but also because of the nifty hyperlinks in the Manager G/L report that let you jump from the report directly to any transaction. With the Excel export, you’ll lose that direct Manager link back to the transaction. But, a spreadsheet will fulfill the other requirements.

Will you please also add a Journal report to the export? It represents a transaction log at the most basic level. (Alternatively, an exported G/L spreadsheet can be sorted into a Journal in Excel if each transaction in the G/L includes the precise time it was created or some other kind of unique transaction key, so that Debits can be matched with their corresponding Credits.)

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33

@lubos did you end up creating this? I am in need of the complete GL export function right now as my accountant is asking for detailed general ledger transactions with double entries. Many thanks!

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It is very time consuming to read all the threads here but can I just throw my hat in the ring and say that a Report whether in SS format is really a necessary tool .

We need to be able to see all transactions posted for a select period in entry order.
In other words the complete transaction with all its details and Debit & Credit:_

Date 01/03/2017
Paid to Fred Bloggs for Envelopes & junk
Bank Account Cr $5,000
Expense Account - Printing and stationery Dr $4,000
Expense Account - Sundry Expense Dr $1,000

BTW I have been out of action for some time and note that this system just keeps on getting
better and better. Thank you

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35

When will the complete GL export to spreadsheet function in double entry format be available? @lubos mentioned it August 2016 last time. I have also read it will be added as a custom report elsewhere. Is this feature coming and if so, when?

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36

@lubos
Has this feature been implemented

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Which feature? This topic has discussed many ideas over the last year and a half.