Filtering Profit & Loss Report with GnuCash

Question

I am using GnuCash v3.11 (I'm still on Windows 7)

I am tracking multiple entities (personal, wife's business, my small businesses, children, etc...) in one chart of accounts since they share Banking Accounts and for personal use, it's a heck of a lot simpler.

I use a tag (e.g. *my tag) with each transaction so that I can use the Transaction Filter field (set to *my tag) and report on the entity desired.

I'd like the format of a standard Profit & Loss but I see that only some reports have the filter tab and this one does not. It seems that I am forced to use the Transaction Report but this report cannot separate Revenues and Expenses and does not subtotal on different levels I have set up with the chart of accounts.

Is there any way to get reports formatted like the Profit and Loss? I have a programming background, so if it's a matter of editing an XML file or something similar, this is an options.

Answer 1

By default, the Profit and Loss report in GnuCash reports data from all Income and Expense accounts - but you can go into report options and set it to only report on specific accounts.

You could set up your Chart of Accounts to include (for example):

... 
Expenses:Travel:MyBusiness 
Expenses:Travel:Personal
Expenses:Travel:WifeBusiness
... 
Expenses:Vehicle:MyBusiness
Expenses:Vehicle:Personal 
Expenses:Vehicle:WifeBusiness 
...(etc.)

and then code each expense and revenue item to the appropriate account.

If you now configure the Profit and Loss Report to include ONLY the income and expense accounts that refer to (say) WifeBusiness then you'll have a P&L report for that entity. You can save separate report configurations for each of the entities that you wish to report on.

If you are thinking "But this doesn't make use of the Tags that I've been using in each transaction!" then you are correct. As you've already pointed out, the use of tags is not formally implemented in GnuCash, and not all reports allow you to filter by transaction tags.