Income Statement Format
First off, I love MD! As a long-time Quicken user, I was broken-hearted by Intuit's decision to under-serve the Mac community. I tried every viable looking personal financial solution for the Mac and found that MD stands head and shoulders above the rest. Well done!
Being a business person, I read a lot of income statements and like to view my personal finances in an income statement as well. I don't even bother with graphs. It would be helpful to me if you could make some minor changes to the income statement report to make it more usable.
Your monthly headers currently look like, "1/1/2010 - 1/31/2010". This is a silly way to use up valuable screen real estate. That is, it causes huge gaps between the month columns so that I'm unable to see a whole year on my screen. Instead, I'd like to see column headers like, "Jan 2010". This would allow me to see almost twice the information I currently see and would certainly allow me to see a whole year of monthly columns.
When I scroll my income statement to see later periods, my account names scroll off the left side of the screen. Then, I'm faced with a screen full of numbers and no descriptions for them. It would be helpful if you would lock the column with the accounts in them so that they don't scroll off the screen.
Because of these two minor problems, I tend to copy and paste my income statements into OpenOffice for analysis instead of looking at them in MD. (BTW, thank you for the ability to do this!) These issues are not a big deal, but they seem like they should be easy to fix (speaking as a former programmer myself) and they would make a bid difference to me and anyone else who likes to see their financial situation using the income statement.
Thanks,
Steve
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1 Posted by -Kevin N. on 13 Oct, 2010 02:55 PM
Hi Steve,
1. I agree and I like the idea of changing or having the ability to change the date format.
2. As a work-around you can 'Grab' the 'Account' column header and position the column between June and July so that it's visible throughout the year.
HTH -Kevin N.
2 Posted by Noname on 13 Oct, 2010 03:27 PM
I'd like to see both these suggestions implemented as well.
3 Posted by Steve T. on 13 Oct, 2010 04:23 PM
I'm glad to hear that y'all like my suggestions. I'm looking forward to the next software rev.
Kevin, thanks for the tip about dragging columns. I had no idea you could do that. Very cool.
4 Posted by Angie Rauscher on 19 Oct, 2010 05:50 PM
I agree that these are great suggestions, and we do have feature request tickets for them both which I have attached to this discussion. By posting in this discussion your interest in the ticket has been registered. This is equivalent to voting for it. We will post on this forum thread if and when there are further developments on this topic.
Please let me know if I can be of further assistance,
Angie Rauscher
Moneydance Support
Check out our new blog series, Moneydance on the Road.
5 Posted by snakedoctr on 08 Dec, 2010 02:30 PM
These sugesstions have my vote as well. I'm always dragging the columns to make them smaller. Simpler column headers (e.g., "Jan", "Feb", "Mar") would be more useful and allow more information to fit on screen/page.
The second suggestion is also a good one. In addition to having the accounts "stick" to the left side of the screen, maybe have alternating row colors that will help the eye to follow the line over to the end.
Thanks!
-- Jason
6 Posted by snakedoctr on 08 Dec, 2010 02:51 PM
In addition, if it would be possible to remove the Subtotals in this report that would be great (e.g., I don't want to see totals for categories that have subcategories. I just want to see each category, and their respective totals for the week/month/year). Oh, and possibly giving the user the option of having the full category name (pathname?) that would be cool, too! (e.g., Automobile:Gas:Subaru instead of "Subaru", and Automobile:Gas:Honda instead of "Honda").
Thanks!
-- Jason
7 Posted by -Kevin N. on 08 Dec, 2010 03:14 PM
Hi snakedoctr,
File > Preferences > General tab, Show Full Account Paths. Is that what you were looking for?
HTH -Kevin N.
8 Posted by snakedoctr on 08 Dec, 2010 03:27 PM
Hi Kevin,
Yes, but I actually want to see it on the report, not the main program itself. e.g., this report currently lists subaccounts underneath the main account...
Automobile
..Gas
....Subaru
....Honda
..Gas - TOTAL
Automobile - TOTAL
(Sorry for the formatting, this syntax is stupid, lol)
Is what it would look like on this report. I'd rather see each row as:
Automobile:Gas:Subaru
Automobile:Gas:Honda
(And the option to include or exclude the TOTAL lines for each category that has subcategories.)
Thanks,
-- Jason
9 Posted by -Kevin N. on 08 Dec, 2010 04:39 PM
Hi Jason,
It would be my guess that what you're suggesting would require a major re-write of the report generator.
-Kevin N.
10 Posted by Steve T. on 08 Dec, 2010 05:29 PM
I like the alternating row color idea.
If no sub-totals and long account names are implemented, I'd rather see them as options given in the Edit dialog box. That way, I could turn these features off so that I can continue to see income statements in a format that is more like what I see in the business world, with sub-totals and short account names.
11 Posted by snakedoctr on 08 Dec, 2010 06:00 PM
@Steve
Yea, I would definitely like the subtotal and long account names implemented as options in the Edit Report dialog, and not a permanent change.
12 Posted by Angie Rauscher on 14 Dec, 2010 12:04 PM
Thanks for all of these great details, I've added them to the feature tracking tickets. As always, you'll be notified when there are developments on these features.
Please let me know if I can be of further assistance,
Angie Rauscher
Moneydance Support
System closed this discussion on 31 Mar, 2015 03:31 PM.