Average Monthly Expenses Report/Chart?

[Chris Ingram]

I have been using GnuCash (1.6.4) for about 4 months now to track my
family's (me and my wife) finances, but have been loosly following its
development for much longer. I am trying to figure out how to best
track historical expense patterns to help us budget and see where we are
overspending.

I'd like to be able to generate an "Average Monthly Expense" report that
shows for a given time period how much we've spent in each expense
account. I can get close to this by using the Profit and Loss report
and selecting all of our expense accounts in the report options, but
instead of showing me total dollars for each account for the entire time
period selected, I'd rather see the average per month spent. Also in
the "Expense Piechart" I'd like the dollar amounts shown in the legend
to be average monthly dollars as opposed to total dollars for the entire
time period.

I'd ultimately like to see three of these "Average Monthly Expense"
reports side by side (I think I could do this using the "Multicolumn
View") for three different time periods like last 12 months, last 3
months, and last 1 month. However, there don't appear to be options to
select the start date for the P&L report as "Start of previous month
minus X" where X is could be 12 or 3 (or any other number of months I
choose).

My question is: How does everyone else generate reports and pie charts
containing such average monthly expenses dollar amounts? Is this
currently possible? Also, is it possible to select dates like I
mentioned (Previous month minus 12, etc.)?

If not, should I look into modifying the existing P&L report and Expense
Piechart to have a "show average monthly dollars instead of total
dollars" checkbox? Where would I start looking to do such a thing? Is
there any documentation available for creating/modifying reports and
charts? Should I also look into modifying these to be able to select
the previous month minus X as a start/end date?

I appreciate any help anyone can give me in this area.

--
Chris Ingram
***@acm.org
http://www.purl.org/net/cingram/

[Dave Peticolas]

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[Christian Stimming]

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Post by Chris Ingram
My question is: How does everyone else generate reports and pie charts
containing such average monthly expenses dollar amounts? Is this
currently possible?

It is not possible currently. If I want to have averages, I open one expense
piechart for the whole period, take my HP-48 (calculator) and calculate the
result "by hand".

Post by Chris Ingram
However, there don't appear to be options to
select the start date for the P&L report as "Start of previous month
minus X" where X is could be 12 or 3 (or any other number of months I
choose).

No, there is no such option at the moment. If you want to add these to the
dropdown multi-choice list by yourself, you can do so relatively easily
(provided you are willing to take the Scheme challenge). Changes in two files
are required: In date-utilities.scm, you need to add a function to calculate
the right relative date (just follow e.g. gnc:get-start-prev-month).
Additionally, this relative date option has to be added to the big lists in
the function gnc:reldate-initialize, just the other examples. One more file
change and you're done: In the file options-utilities.scm, add the new date
option to the lists in the functions gnc:options-add-report-date! and
gnc:options-add-date-interval! . That's it, no more changes in any report
code is required.

Post by Chris Ingram
Should I look into modifying the existing P&L report and Expense
Piechart to have a "show average monthly dollars instead of total
dollars" checkbox? Where would I start looking to do such a thing?

Just a rough hint: Dividing the amounts in the expense piecharts by some
value (e.g. the number of months) would need to take place in file
account-piecharts.scm line 249-250. The function collector->double returns a
double value which can be divided by the number of months. To create an
option choice box for this, follow the example for e.g. the show-total option
in that file. To get the number of months you can use the function
gnc:timepair-get-month and gnc:timepair-get-year from date-utilities.scm.

If you have further questions, don't hesitate to ask and we'll try to assist
you in your requests as quickly as possible. Thanks for your ideas.

Christian

[Chris Ingram]

I have been using GnuCash (1.6.4) for about 4 months now to track my
family's (me and my wife) finances, but have been loosly following its
development for much longer. I am trying to figure out how to best
track historical expense patterns to help us budget and see where we are
overspending.

I'd like to be able to generate an "Average Monthly Expense" report that
shows for a given time period how much we've spent in each expense
account. I can get close to this by using the Profit and Loss report
and selecting all of our expense accounts in the report options, but
instead of showing me total dollars for each account for the entire time
period selected, I'd rather see the average per month spent. Also in
the "Expense Piechart" I'd like the dollar amounts shown in the legend
to be average monthly dollars as opposed to total dollars for the entire
time period.

I'd ultimately like to see three of these "Average Monthly Expense"
reports side by side (I think I could do this using the "Multicolumn
View") for three different time periods like last 12 months, last 3
months, and last 1 month. However, there don't appear to be options to
select the start date for the P&L report as "Start of previous month
minus X" where X is could be 12 or 3 (or any other number of months I
choose).

My question is: How does everyone else generate reports and pie charts
containing such average monthly expenses dollar amounts? Is this
currently possible? Also, is it possible to select dates like I
mentioned (Previous month minus 12, etc.)?

If not, should I look into modifying the existing P&L report and Expense
Piechart to have a "show average monthly dollars instead of total
dollars" checkbox? Where would I start looking to do such a thing? Is
there any documentation available for creating/modifying reports and
charts? Should I also look into modifying these to be able to select
the previous month minus X as a start/end date?

I appreciate any help anyone can give me in this area.

--
Chris Ingram
***@acm.org
http://www.purl.org/net/cingram/