Printing Control Accounts with Special Accounts

I have set up a Control Account for Listed Investments and selected Special Accounts.
I have added Special Accounts and posted transactions.
In the Balance Sheet and Trial Balance I have one line - Listed Investments $xxxx
All that is great and works very well.

I can print the Balance Sheet and Trial Balance but I cannot find a report for the control account.
If I drill down in the Trial Balance I can right-click and print a list but there are no headings, dates etc.
In customise “Special Accounts” and “Reports” are ticked.
Please let me know to print the required report.

Do you have instructions for Custom Reports?

Thank you

What kind of report are ou looking for for the control account?

When drilling down, don’t right-click, just click. The best way to see information about subsidiary ledgers in a control account is from the Summary page. Click the control account balance and get a list of subsidiary ledgers. Click any of the blue numbers. The exact options and presentation vary according to the context of the tab.

No. This has long been a work in progress with no documentation. It will likely be abandoned in favor of a more user-friendly capability.

Thanks. But I have not explained well.
When I view a trial balance or any other report on the screen there are buttons for Edit/Print/Pdf/Email. All good.

When I click on a Control Account I get an excellent list on the screen but there are no Print/PDF/Email buttons.

If I right click on that screen I can Print but the report has no headings and no heading or dates.

Thanks

That is because you are viewing a report. The same is true of all transaction forms. Reports have defined output formats. Transactions are viewed through themes.

That is because you are viewing a list. If you want to output the list, export it by clicking the button at the bottom of the screen.

These behaviors are uniform throughout the program.

Thanks Tut.

As an experiment I set up a share portfolio initially in the balance sheet and then, after your help, via a control account.

Both work well on the screen but, as you correctly point out, using control accounts is less cluttered.

At the end of a financial period most accountants would like to see a printed P&L and BS (both excellent reports) with details of any control accounts printed as a note or separate page.

The Export button result is unformatted, no total, no date, no entity name etc. As you say, it is just a list. It is even less attractive than printing from a right-click. One would have to import into a spreadsheet template. To much hassle.

Maybe this can be a future improvement or maybe it can be eventually done via custom reports?

Thanks.

That is the entire point of exporting. See the Guide: Manager Guides. The idea is that Manager is not able to offer every single output format users might want. So it offers the ability to export information for insertion in documents and spreadsheets. The program is also not meant to be charting or analysis program, again because no matter how many options it offered, users will want something different.

This is another reason why the suggestions in the Ideas topic General Ledger Transaction Report (Suggested Modifications) should be implemented.

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Yes, I agree. But, based on the complete lack of acknowledgement of my request by anyone “in authority” @lubos I don’t see it happening too soon. As I have repeatedly stated as a very experienced Australian CPA, a General Ledger Report is definitely needed in a financial accounting package … and it needs Opening Balance, Transactions, and Closing Balance details. In over thirty years of public practice experience, I have NEVER encountered any other accounting program without this capability … and I have used dozens of accounting systems. It should NOT be necessary to print out two separate reports to get a General Ledger. Why it is so difficult to produce this report is beyond by comprehension … as the concept is similar to (say) a Customer/Supplier Statement which Manager has no problem is producing. Manager is a FABULOUS piece of software, and the User Forum usually is VERY responsive, but the General Ledger issue that I have raised repeatedly doesn’t even seem to get the courtesy of a response … quite arrogant in my view.

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Thanks Tut but this discussion seems to have got off track. Exporting is not the answer and I have no idea where the idea of charting or analysis has come from.
This programme is brilliant and I think it will be a game changer for small business. However, there is a need to be able to present verifiable standard reports to auditors/accountants at period end.
From a trial balance/P&L/BS etc it is possible to drill down and see the detail (perfect). Look at inventory in Northwind.
Then you can right click and see a print preview of the account detail with column headings (perfect)
There are two very simple things missing on the top of each page: the name of the entity and the relevant date or date period. Surely, that could be very simple improvement that would benefit every user.

That was just another example of how it’s not possible to satisfy every user’s desire for various kinds of output. You happen to want (apparently) a tabular presentation. Others might want a graph. The point of allowing exporting of various lists and reports is so people can manipulate the information into whatever presentation they might want.

Remember that what you consider “standard” isn’t the same as what others elsewhere around the world consider standard. There are 206 sovereign jurisdictions and counting, many with different requirements in subsidiary districts/states/provinces. The idea is not to exclude the needs of users anywhere, but to provide flexibility to meet needs the developer can’t possibly be expected to satisfy with any reasonable number of predefined reports.

You’ve mentioned this several times. But it is not a feature of Manager. That’s a behavior of some browsers in Windows (perhaps some other operating systems, too, but not all). Manager is, after all, a browser. And much of its user interface is defined by what you can do with a browser in any given operating system. So what you are suggesting be improved isn’t actually in the program in the first place.

Sorry, you have not understood. I find your reply a bit offensive. I am not sure what is the problem.

The report exists in the programme now!

The format of the report that is currently printable in the system via right click is perfect except for two tiny things - a name of the entity and the relevant date. The report is not for manipulation but is for information for managers/accountants/auditors. It beggars belief that you think the 206 other jurisdictions would not like to have a title/name/date on a report that exists in the system!

For one thing, you have never expressed exactly what “report” you are referring to. Every time you mention it, you seem to be referring to some list having to do with a control account. But you’ve never said what that list is or what it contains.

You keep referring to a “report” printable after right-clicking. What I tried to explain is that what you seem to be referring to is not a report at all. And the fact you can do anything is a function of your particular operating system’s interaction with a browser, not a feature of the program. The developer cannot improve or add your desired headings and dates to something that does not exist within the program. Perhaps another way of saying this is that if you switched operating systems, you could not do what you describe at all, let alone enhance the result.

What I’ve already expressed several times is that manipulation is not the goal, but a means for transforming information into a format that satisfies your manager’s/accountant’s/auditor’s desires. The program obviously does not provide what you want. But it meets others’ needs perfectly well. I’ve tried to explain the philosophy behind exports so needs that aren’t meant with built-in output can still be met.

Once again, the report does not exist in the system. Data exists from which certain predefined reports can be assembled because those report structures have been designed and coded. What you are asking for has not been coded. You are looking at the artifact of a browser’s interaction with your operating system as it displays a list. I don’t know how many ways I can say this, but there is no existing body of code in Manager that can be modified to add headings or dates to a list display produced not by Manager but by your operating system.

There seems to a significant lack of communication here. It is very frustrating.
Originally the enquiry was to do with Control Accounts and there is no formal Report written under the Reports tab. Ok. We moved on from that some time ago and looked for an alternative - you suggested using Export from the bottom of the screen generated report of transactions or whatever. For some time we have been talking about printing that report directly.

You may not believe that these are “reports” but that is simply playing with semantics.

If I go to Northwind
Click on sales invoices - a 40 page report appears on the screen and every page is formatted by “Manager” with column headers etc.
Or goto Reports - Trial balance - drill down on say Accounts Receivable and a report of all the balances at the particular date appears on the screen. It is also formatted by “Manager” page by page with column headers etc

These reports can be Printed as is or you can do a Print Preview and then Print. Print to pdf or whatever.

Everything that is printed out is exactly what “Manager” has created and displayed on the screen. The print is just a facsimile of the screen report originally generated by Manager. The content is not modified by the operating system, computer or whatever.

Seeing that “Manager” actually creates the page layout and the column headings page by page surely it is possible to have included just above the column headers on each page or even as part of the column headers the name of the entity and relevant date of the report.

What I believe is unimportant, @Tsesebe. We are not playing with semantics. Reports in Manager are predefined information packages that extract data, perform calculations, and display it in specified formats. They can be edited (to vary parameters that define what data is used and how it is labeled), printed, converted to PDFs, or emailed. These are all, without exception, available only in the Reports tab. While Manager is not strictly a what-you-see-is-what-you-get application, the results of printing, converting, or emailing look generally like what you see onscreen. The differences come from operation of the internal PDF generator used for all those functions and are necessary to accommodate the 70 languages Manager is translated into and print on different paper sizes.

What you keep referring to are lists. They appear when you first click on a tab or drill down on any clickable figure in a display. They cannot be edited except by editing the underlying transaction forms, printed from any control that is part of the program, converted to PDFs by the program’s PDF generator, or emailed from within the program. They are renderings by a browser of HTML code, just as if you were looking at some web site page. You can do some things with them if you can do the same things with a browser on your operating system to some random web site. The results and available options vary from one operating system to another.

If you are able to print, preview, or print lists to PDF with your operating system, you are performing functions entirely outside Manager’s control. On your operating system, you may be obtaining results that lead you to believe you are getting a “facsimile of the screen report originally generated by Manager.” But you are not. There is no report on screen, only an HTML rendering. And what you are doing is printing or converting a different rendering of the HTML code according to your operating system’s capabilities. So what looks like a facsimile on your operating system does not on some other systems. Results will also vary with screen size and resolution, window size, language preferences, and so forth. Some things also depend on browser settings that are not even addressable within Manager, believe it or not. But I’ve gone on long enough.

Please accept that, no matter what you think, there are fundamental technical differences between reports and lists. What can be done for one cannot necessarily be done for another. And Manager cannot be made to behave consistently across all operating systems any more than popular web sites can be made to display uniformly on every computer. Nor can your operating system be made to insert features in HTML code that are not there in the program.

Forget about the ability to Print. I will take you word for that only Windows 10 operating systems are able to actually print your “Lists”. I have to say that it would be remarkable that some users cannot actually print out the lists without using “Export” but so be it.

Prior to the possibility of Printing, the “Lists” are entirely created by “Manager” with column headings
You must agree with that.

So, at the top of the “Lists” are column headings. If “Manager” simply included in a column heading what was being displayed - something like “as at dd /mm/yyyy” or “for the period dd/mm/yyyy to dd/mm/yyyy” and the name of the entity all would be solved. Then those who are lucky enough to use Windows will be able to print these “Lists” with a proper name and reference period.

@Tsesebe, since every module has some sort of nice looking reports, I do think special accounts should also have something formal looking. The question is, what such a report should look like?

Just to show list of special accounts with their balances? Possibly comparative balances? Is that all?

Thanks for your attention to this.

Great programme – still looking forward to getting into it seriously.

Good improvement joining up the cash accounts

On reports:

My problem related to what I called “reports” but other call “lists”.

I fully understand that the lists on the screen can be exported and, at least Windows 10 users, can right click and print the list/report as it looks on the screen with the column headers but no entity name or period to which it applies. For accountants this is an excellent supporting schedule. The screen list can be created by drilling down on an account from a Report. I was asking that in the top of the column headers on the screen can there be the entity name and the date period. If that could be achieved then special accounts are not so important.

For Special Accounts which are more relevant when there are lots of special accounts for one control account.

The style of the BS is excellent.

Entity name

Control account name – eg Listed Shares

Period – dates – as at 30 June 2018

List of Special Account Names – eg BHP, WAM, -etc – as set-up

This year and last year at least but maybe exactly the same as Balance Sheet?

Total of the columns to agree with the place where one has drilled down

Again, thank you


Either you are talking about this type of report or
this👇
images

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