GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 751686
Chapter 14. Payroll Note to "use reports to view per-employee information" fails to explain how this is done
Last modified: 2018-06-29 23:41:36 UTC
http://www.gnucash.org/docs/v2.6/C/gnucash-guide/bus-pay-acct1.html has a note as folows: "Note Resist the temptation to create per-employee sub-accounts to track individual salaries. Creating a sub-account for each employee leads to unmanageably large lists of accounts. Imagine the account structure after a few years of employees coming and going. It is much simpler to keep all of your employees’ payroll records within a single account (Expenses:Salaries for example) and use reports to view per-employee information." The problem is that there's absolutely no way to generate such a report showing only one employee's information if that employee is nothing other than a name used for the description in the Salaries account as suggested by this chapter. It's possible to find all the transactions with a description that matches the employee's name, but there's no way to generate a report on what's found. The pre-defined reports act on entire accounts, and do not have any filters to only report on transactions with a certain description. The quick note does not seem to imply it would be necessary to learn Scheme and develop a custom report to accomplish this "per-employee" report. It's not even clear if it's possible to create such a custom report anyway.
Thank you for your report. (In reply to Colin Keenan from comment #0) > The problem is that there's absolutely no way to generate such a report > showing only one employee's information if that employee is nothing other > than a name used for the description in the Salaries account as suggested by > this chapter. It's possible to find all the transactions with a description > that matches the employee's name, but there's no way to generate a report on > what's found. You've unfortunately come to the wrong conclusion here... It is possible to generate such a report. By searching for all transactions with a description that matches the employee's name you are in fact already halfway to generate it. After you have run the search and see the list of found transactions before you, please select Report -> Account Report This report will list only the found transactions. > The pre-defined reports act on entire accounts, and do not > have any filters to only report on transactions with a certain description. > The quick note does not seem to imply it would be necessary to learn Scheme > and develop a custom report to accomplish this "per-employee" report. It's > not even clear if it's possible to create such a custom report anyway. Indeed, no scheme or custom reports are necessary. I agree this is not well documented and will keep this bug report as a reminder to improve the documentation.
Thanks. Now I see that I can get a report that duplicates what I see on the screen after a find. I can even do a report showing a single transaction. That might be a little useful, but it's not what I was looking for. How can I get a report showing the totals (YTD) for each of the split items for an employee Salaries transaction. In other words, a report showing all the year's transactions as if it was a single payment. I originally had a spreadsheet book with sheets for each employee where I entered start/end times and it automatically calculated weekly hours, which would show on another sheet that calculated all the values I needed to enter into Gnucash. But, I didn't have it calculate YTD, which would involve saving all the previous calculations in the spreadsheet book because I thought I could get that information from Gnucash. Can I? I've ended up expanding the spreadsheet book to store all the weekly calculations so it can also calculate YTD. Gnucash isn't doing much.
Created attachment 326529 [details] [review] Explain how to use Find Transaction to rpt on per-employee information
Comment on attachment 326529 [details] [review] Explain how to use Find Transaction to rpt on per-employee information Committed to maint, thanks!
(In reply to Colin Keenan from comment #2) > Thanks. Now I see that I can get a report that duplicates what I see on the > screen after a find. I can even do a report showing a single transaction. > > That might be a little useful, but it's not what I was looking for. How can > I get a report showing the totals (YTD) for each of the split items for an > employee Salaries transaction. In other words, a report showing all the > year's transactions as if it was a single payment. > > I originally had a spreadsheet book with sheets for each employee where I > entered start/end times and it automatically calculated weekly hours, which > would show on another sheet that calculated all the values I needed to enter > into Gnucash. But, I didn't have it calculate YTD, which would involve > saving all the previous calculations in the spreadsheet book because I > thought I could get that information from Gnucash. Can I? > I'm having some difficulty figuring out what exactly you are looking for. So allow me to ask for some clarifications: - YTD. I assume this is "Year To Date" and refers to the time period for which you want to see all transactions. Is that correct ? - If so, I also assume this is not your issue with the report. You can filter on a given date period in the Find Transactions window, right ? - I seem to understand your issue is with the fact that an Account report is always showing all splits for the transactions rather than one line per transaction as you have by default in the transaction report. Is that the right conclusion ? > I've ended up expanding the spreadsheet book to store all the weekly > calculations so it can also calculate YTD. Gnucash isn't doing much. Good you found a way to do what you need.
Since GnuCash can't do what I wanted, I've pretty much forgotten the details. A payment example might be easier to understand. It shows payment information (Net and Gross Pay, Withheld taxes ...) for a one week period, but also shows Year To Date (YTD) totals for Net and Gross Pay and Withheld Taxes. $124.65 Net Pay for 10.28 hr in the week of 5/9/16 - 5/15/16. $136.31 Gross Pay = 10.28hr * $13.26/hr. Withheld: $1.98 HI, $8.45 OASDI, $1.23 SDI. YTD Pay: $2597.63 Gross, $2375.52 Net. YTD Withheld: $37.68 HI, $161.06 OASDI, $23.37 SDI I wanted the report to give me the Year To Date (YTD) totals, one total for each split. It just seemed like it would've been possible for GnuCash to perform the summations and show them on a report.
When doing taxes, I also wanted it to show summations for all the employer paid taxes as well.
Thanks for your feedback. I wasn't aware of the meaning of the YTD value you were looking for. I don't know of a report in GnuCash that will show this specifically for one employee. It seems to me the values you are looking for are rather payroll specific, which gnucash unfortunately doesn't support as far as I know. So I'm afraid I indeed can't help you getting past this issue within gnucash. Sorry about that.
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