How to report transactions from rented flat?

[surcouf]

Hello,

I struggle to report the yearly transactions related to a flat I rent to a tenant.

My goal is to use the report Income and Expenses By Year specifically filtered on all transactions related to this flat. Of course, if someone suggests another (better) report, i am happy to try it.

I know that Kmymoney handles expense and revenue categories as accounts and every revenue/expense transaction is booked twice: from/to a bank account into/from an revenue/expense category account.
Transactions between accounts are also booked twice (once in each account) but they are booked neither revenue nor expense accounts.
I guess this is the reason why i am not able to get what i want using the standard report.

I can show my issue with this fictive example:
I have three accounts in Kmymoney:

1. checking: my current account
2. loan: my mortgage account
3. asset: my nice flat

Let’s take the year 2024 as an example. These are all the transactions (i have no flat rent income to make it shorter here) of the checking account:

the most important information is that i pay 3.000 € each month from my checking account.

• one part goes into the monthly mortgage interests (type: expense category),
• one part into the mortgage account (type: loan account)

I also paid a one-shot 10.000 € extra-reimbursement.
I spent 12 * 3.000 € + 10.000 € = during the year 2024, so i expect to see 46.000 € as spending somewhere in a report.

Then i open the standard report Income and Expenses By Year, i change nothing in the report configuration and see this:

The mortgage amortization does not appear since it is neither a revenue nor an expense category account . I wish i would see Grand total = 4.000 € in 2024 (as i see in the ledger of the checking account).

How could i report the mortgage amortization yearly amount as well here?
Has anyone already solved this question? Which kind of Kmymoney standard report have you used?

I have already tested these ways but they are not satisfying me:

• tick “include transfers”:

  

• untick both accounts of type “asset” and “loan”

  

=> this result in a satisfying report, i see the mortgage amortization part and the grand total 2024 = 4.000 €

BUT this makes any filter on category impossible:

in real-life data, there are much more transactions and the Income and Expenses By Year report shows much more categories than in my simple example here. Therefore i must filter on category to get a usable report.

So I am kind of stuck here…
Does anyone know the reasons why a filter on a category and a transfer transactions exclude each other in reports?

[ostroffjh]

First, (just a matter of terminology) I would not say that any of these transactions are “booked twice.” I interpret “booking” as a transaction, not as a split. Every transaction has two or more splits, each referring to one of the Accounts from which money is coming/going. These can be regular asset/liability accounts, or income/expense account (i.e., Categories.) When you open a transaction in a ledger, the amount of the transaction show is the amount of the split for that account. If you then open the split editor, it shows you the splits for all the other accounts/categories.

Look at the “Show Transaction Details” for one of these transactions. I’m guessing you have made transfers, which do not include any Category type accounts. You might want to post or describe one or two examples.

I am assuming the report you want will include some multiple of 12 transactions for one year. In the short term, one possible thing to think of is to use one of the Transaction reports - not specifically an Income/Expense report. That may give you better control of the transactions you want to include, especially if you have 24 transactions, separating the transfers from the expenses, but I can’t quite tell from your examples.

Separately, if you ARE using separate transactions for the transfers and for the expenses, consider only using one transaction. If it is created in the current account, the amount is the monthly total payment, but use separate splits for each category and one for the transfer to the mortgage account. (I hope you get the idea, even if I list the wrong items here.)

Does this give you anything useful to try?

[ipwizard]

@ostroffjh

Separately, if you ARE using separate transactions for the transfers and for the expenses, consider only using one transaction.

Looking at the second screenshot in the first post of this topic I think @surcouf is doing already what you suggest. It really looks like a split transaction.

@ostroffjh

Every transaction has two or more splits,

I do have some that have only one split. They are legitimate since the amount is zero. They usually come from an import where the bank sends me information as part of the memo. Since a balanced transaction requires the sum of all splits to be zero, they are in fact valid transactions.

[surcouf]

@ostroffjh

First, (just a matter of terminology) I would not say that any of these transactions are “booked twice.” I interpret “booking” as a transaction, not as a split.

I understand the logic.
I used the terminus booking because i derived it from this wikipedia sentence:
KMyMoney is a cross-platform double-entry bookkeeping system for personal finance management built on KDE technologies.

@ostroffjh

Look at the “Show Transaction Details” for one of these transactions. I’m guessing you have made transfers, which do not include any Category type accounts.

I know KMyMoney is naming the double-entry items as splits, see example screenshot below. It is, as said, not the term i would prefer (since i understand split as an axe splitting a wood log in two smaller parts), but anyway, my personal taste is irrelevant here.

@ostroffjh

I am assuming the report you want will include some multiple of 12 transactions for one year

Not really. As said, i posted here a fictive example with fictive values, see my original post:

@surcouf

in real-life data, there are much more transactions and the Income and Expenses By Year report shows much more categories than in my simple example here.

In real-life, my report filters 5 income and 11 expense categories, it shows only their data by year and exclude all other categories. These 5 + 11 categories have alltogether ~ 50 transactions each year.

@ipwizard

Looking at the second screenshot in the first post of this topic I think @surcouf is doing already what you suggest. It really looks like a split transaction.

Yes, I use the split transactions, see my very first screenshot of the ledger of checking account. The new user interface of version 5.2.1 shows the total transaction amount and its split in smaller amounts on an elegant manner.

@surcouf

Does anyone know the reasons why a filter on a category and a transfer transactions exclude each other in reports?

To me, this is the decisive question: is it possible to remove this constraint?

[ostroffjh]

I do also have some transactions with only one split - but mine are add or remove shares.