Thanks for the edition of the experimental income statement.
I believe that in addition to the "if more than 1 period column, include overall period?", an average column option will also be very useful.

Thank you for the recommendation. It works. Inelegant, but it works!

It would be nice to have subtotals for Income and for Expenses.

--Provided by Anthony Dardis
[Copied to here by L P Luigi Espenlaub]
As of GnuCash 2.6.15, the Tutorial & Concepts Guide contains a Reports chapter. Please refer to the Guide for details about the reports included with GnuCash.
A single report that shows summary amounts for multiple months for multiple accounts

To create a single report that shows summary amounts for multiple months for multiple accounts (for example, monthly totals for expense accounts over the course of a year), you can use the Transaction Report

Choose your Accounts as the Accounts source in the Accounts tab, e.g. highlight "Expenses" and click "Select children"
Set sortkeys in the Sorting tab: Primary key is Account Name, Primary subtotal is enabled. Secondary key is Date, secondary subtotal for date key is Monthly
Enable Subtotal table in the Display tab

I found this at:
https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Using_GnuCash

I also recommend In the General Tab, enable Table for Exporting.
This will allow you to copy and paste the multi-column table including totals and the Averages column into a spreadsheet program

This is desirable because there is no way presently to disable the pages long detail lines that display below the table.

LuigiWriter

Any possibility of this happening? It's extremely useful.

Guys I'm a BI consultant (ABAP and some Python knowledge) basically this is a valid request, it's a view similar to the budget input when you see every account hierarchically on lines and the time period on columns. Just Mounth Shoud be great, Year to date (sum of all month untile the selected month in the current year and the last year) and by quarters should be a must. Guys sereusly these reports are the base of any accountant comparison.

I am an audit and accounting professional and I was astonished that GnuCash does not provide multiple periods reporting. Compared to Quicken, the GnuCash Reporting Engine is very poor. It doesn't help much to prepare an income statement for the current period. A basic data analysis feature of financial reports is to compare the current year-to-date data with the corresponding prior year data in order to draw conclusions from it (e.g. possible cost cutting measures)

Merged as requested.

Hi, this is essentially the same Feature request as this one:
https://gnucash.uservoice.com/forums/101223-feature-request/suggestions/2149519-reporting-multiple-periods

@Admin: Could you merge These two and add the votes, so it may get more Attention?
@Mike: As I don't know if admins will follow my request for merging, please consider moving your votes to the above Feature request. If we split our votes on two very similar requests, we will never draw enough Attention.

Hi, this is essentially the same Feature request as this one:
https://gnucash.uservoice.com/forums/101223-feature-request/suggestions/2149519-reporting-multiple-periods

@Admin: Could you merge These two and add the votes, so it may get more Attention?
@reachsuns93: As I don't know if admins will follow my request for merging, please consider moving your votes to the above Feature request. If we split our votes on two very similar requests, we will never draw enough Attention.

Hi,

I think what is needed is the common "Previous Period" usually reported in financial publications. This could be extended to allow more than one previous period, so you could have the previous 12 monthse for example.

Provide the ability to create an income and expense report that shows the amount for all (or specified) accounts for each quarter (or month) in addition to the total amounts for those accounts for the fiscal period. For example, a net worth report for the first three quarters of 2012 would include columns for quarter 1, quarter 2, quarter 3, and total. Also provide the ability to create a similar net worth report.

The ending dates for each net worth period can be specified, and the beginning and ending dates for each income and expense period can be specified. Also provide the ability to select whether or not to print amount (dollar) changes as well as percentage changes.

It is common for businesses to present multiperiod reports to shareholders to demonstrate the financial performance of the corporation over time. Currently, to have this functionality, the user would either design his own report (which would require great effort and programming knowledge beyond the average user) or would have to use a multicolumn report, which would require setting each individual report's options separately and would repeat much of the same information (such as the account tree). I would propose having a multiperiod balance sheet and income statement that would allow users to set custom periods or use predefined periods (such as monthly, quarterly, annually) and a start/end date. This would be more effecient and give more information to the financial officers without requiring the use of other software (spreadsheets, etc.) or knowledge of programming.

I suggest adding the functionality of comparative - side by side reports for a trial balance, balance sheet and income statement, where you have to columns - comparing the current period to a prior period.
As an accountant, I use such reports ALL the time.

I didn't know about this but it does not work for me since it summarises everything.

What I'm looking for is the profit & loss account and balance sheet reports reported by month on one page. At the moment I can see what one month (or any given period for that matter) is, what I cannot see are comparisons with other periods (monthly is what I'm looking for) on one page.

For example, something like

Jan Feb Mar etc....
Salary 1,000 1,000 1,000 etc...

is not possible currently.

I hope that better explains what I'd like to see.

Have you tried the "Income/Expenses" -> "Income barchart" (or "expense barchart", or "Income/Expense barchart") report? That one shows multiple periods. Also, those reports have the option under "Properties" -> "Display" -> "Show Table" which will display the numbers that are shown in the diagram also as numbers (useful for exporting). Does that meet your requirements? If not, what else would you like to see? Please describe this a bit more in detail.

Could reporting be enhanced to show multiple periods on one report (e.g. income and expenses shown monthly on one page)?