How can I show more detail in GnuCash Reports?

Question

I recently started using GnuCash as a tool for tracking my expenses. It has lovely built in reports on expense, but it seems to limit the categories/accounts displayed to a fairly low number (I think 8 for the bar chart, and 6 for the pie chart) lumping several of the smaller items into the "other" category. However I'm more immediately concerned about controlling my smaller expenses (dining, entertainment, etc).

How can I configure the reports to show me the detail about all expenses, or a limited set of expenses?

Answer 1

I'm going to take the “Expense Piechart” report in GnuCash 2.4.8 as my primary example; other reports may have slightly different options.

1. Open the report you want to use.
2. Click “Edit report options" in the toolbar or Edit menu.
3. In the Accounts tab, the “Show Accounts until level:” option cuts off subaccounts, and you may wish to increase it. For example, I keep expense accounts like “Expenses:Entertainment:Games”, and if I want to see that specific account I have to set this option to 3, instead of the default 2.
4. In the Display tab, the “Maximum Slices” (“Maximum Bars” for bar charts) controls how many accounts are shown before the rest are grouped as an “Other” entry.

If you want to keep this configuration for future use, you can either leave the report tab open indefinitely, or save a custom report:

1. In the General tab of the report options, give the report a new name. This is necessary.
2. Click the Save (floppy disk) icon in the toolbar.