GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 399784
Reports: Period should default to account period preference
Last modified: 2018-06-29 21:23:49 UTC
Version: r15420 Platform: WinXP Problem: Set a user preference for the accounting period. Generate a report. The period for the generated report defaults to "this year" instead of defaulting to the accounting period preference. Workaround: Manually set the accounting period on each report to the desired period.
I'm not so sure whether it is a good guess that *all* users want the default reporting period to be the "accounting period". I can easily imagine many users are fine with the default reporting period being "this year", and then the period needs to be changed anyway, for example to "beginning/end of accounting period" etc. If I understand correctly, the only possible enhancement here would be to say "If the user set a non-default accounting period, then use this as default reporting period, else use this year as default". However, this is far from trivial to be implemented, as (IIRC) it's not quite easy to query whether the accounting period preference has been changed by the user or not. Not to mention those users whose accounting period happens to be the default value. Actually I'm rather inclined to say the default reporting period should stay as it is, and the whole point of the report options is to choose your preferred period for this particular report.
I'm not sure why you're suggesting working out whether the user has changed the accounting period or not. There's always an accounting period. It defaults to "this year". I'm saying that reports should always use the accounting period initially - whether the user has changed the accounting period or not. (Note that if they haven't changed it, they'll get the same behaviour as they do at the moment - namely reports for "this year".) Users that have selected a different accounting period will (by default) get reports for their default period - the one they've asked for by setting the accounting period preference. If you think the default accounting period used on reports should be different from the default accounting period used throughout the rest of GnuCash then (1) I'm surprised (2) I'd suggest a second option "default accounting period for reports".
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