# Customizing &app;

## Account Display Options

The View Filter By ... is used to set or modify the view of the account tree window. The Accounts tab of this form allows the selection of the types of accounts to display. These selections effect the view on each specific open window of the account tree.

The Other tab allows enabling/disabling of the options; Show Hidden accounts, Show zero total accounts.

The account tree window, by default, only shows the quantity of each commodity that you own, under the column heading Total. Often, however, you may want to display other values. This is easily accomplished by clicking on the Options button (the small down pointing arrow on the right side of the main account window Titlebar), and selecting the option(s) to display. These selections set the view on all open windows of the account tree.

## Setting Preferences

The &app; Preferences window allows you to customize your &app; session by setting several options. From the &app; menu select Edit Preferences (GnuCash Preferences on MacOS). The &appname; Preferences window will open. Using the tabs on the left make your desired changes. The settings in this dialog are set per user and not stored with the file. This is in contrast to the settings described in , which are kept with, and are part of, the file (or Book), and as such are common to all users. So &appname; Preferences settings are individual to each user who uses a given file and any changes made by one user will not affect other users of that file. Also, a given user's preferences will be common to all files that that user opens with &app;.

Pausing the cursor for a couple of seconds over options in these windows will display a tooltip with in-depth information on the choice.

The changes you make will be applied at once.

To close the &appname; Preferences window press the Close button.

Each tab in the &appname; Preferences window is discussed in its own section below. For a listing of the tabs, see .

The presentation of the sections that follows matches the order of the tabs, which are sorted alphabetically by name, in English. The order of the tabs may be different in other languages.

### Accounting Period

#### The Preferences window, Accounting Period tab

The Accounting Period tab

- Start Date: This item sets the accounting period’s start date.

  - Relative: Use the specified relative starting date for profit/loss calculations. Also use this date for net assets calculations. Relative defines start by today or start of current/previous year, quarter, month.

  - Absolute: Use the specified absolute starting date for profit/loss calculations. Also use this date for net assets calculations.

- End Date: This item sets the accounting period’s end date.

  - Relative: Use the specified relative ending date for profit/loss calculations. Also use this date for net assets calculations.

  - Absolute: Use the specified absolute ending date for profit/loss calculations. Also use this date for net assets calculations.

- Summarybar content

  - Include grand total: If checked, show in the Summarybar a grand total of all accounts converted to the default currency.

  - Include non-currency totals: if this option is selected, &app; will include in the Summarybar a total for non-currency items (for instance number of shares).

### Accounts

#### The Preferences window, Accounts tab

The Accounts tab

- Separator Character: The account separator is the character that separates a parent account from its sub-account, for example Utilities:Electric. The default is a : (Colon), but you can also select / (Slash), \ (Backslash), - (Dash) or . (Period), or any Unicode character that isn’t a letter or a number.

- Reverse Balanced accounts: This option lets you determine whether account balances will display as positive or negative numbers:

  - Income & Expense assigns a positive credit balance to income account balances and a negative debit balance to expense account balances. See for more information on these account types.

  - Credit accounts (default) displays a positive balance for account types that would normally carry a credit balance (income, credit, liability, equity). See for more information on these account types.

  - None shows all credit balances as negative and all debit balances as positive.

- Labels: Select this option if you want column headings in the register to refer to debits and credits instead of the default informal headings such as withdrawal and deposit.

- Default Currency: This item determines which currency will be selected by default when creating new accounts.

  - Locale: Use the system locale currency for all newly created accounts.

  - Choose: specify the currency to use, independent of your system settings.

- Account Color: This option lets you manage the display of the account color set in the Edit Account window:

  - Show the Account Colors as background: show the accounts color as account name background in the Accounts Page.

  - Show the Account Colors on tabs: show the accounts color as background in the account register tabs.

### Business

#### The Preferences window, Business tab

The Business tab

- General

  - Enable extra buttons: If checked, extra toolbar buttons for common business functions are shown.

  - Open in new window: If checked, each invoice will be opened in its own top level window. If clear, the invoice will be opened in the current window.

  - Accumulate splits on post: Whether multiple entries in an invoice which transfer to the same account should be accumulated into a single split by default.

- Invoices

  - Report for printing: Allows to select the invoice report to be used for printing.

  - Tax Included: Whether tax is included by default in entries on invoices. This setting is inherited by new customers and vendors.

  - Auto pay on posting: If enabled, at post time automatically attempt to pay customer documents with outstanding pre-payments and counter documents.

    Counter documents are documents with opposite sign. For example for an invoice, customer credit notes and negative invoices are considered counter documents.

    The pre-payments and documents obviously have to be against the same customer.

- Bills

  - Notify when due: Lets you set whether you want to be notified at &app; startup of when a bill is soon to be due.

  - Days in advance: How many days before the due date to warn about bills coming due.

  - Tax Included: Whether tax is included by default in entries on bills. This setting is inherited by new customers and vendors.

  - Process payments on posting: If enabled, at post time automatically attempt to pay vendor documents with outstanding pre-payments and counter documents.

    Counter documents are documents with opposite sign. For example for a bill, vendor credit notes and negative bills are considered counter documents.

    The pre-payments and documents obviously have to be against the same vendor.

### Date/Time

#### The Preferences window, Date/Time tab

The Date/Time tab

- Time Format

  - Use 24-hour clock: Lets you specify if you want to use 24 or 12 hours time format. That is if 11 o’clock at night should be represented as 11PM or 23:00.

- Date Format: This option controls the appearance of the date (you can see a preview of the date beside each of the choices). The available choices are:

  - US: Use the date format common in the United States.

  - UK: Use the date format common in the United Kingdom.

  - Europe: Use the date format common in continental Europe.

  - ISO: Use the date format specified by the ISO-8601 standard.

  - Locale: Use the date format specified by the system locale.

- Date completion: This option lets you manage the case when a date is entered without a year:

  - In the current calendar year: (Default) Dates will be completed so that they are within the current calendar year.

  - In a sliding 12-month window starting a configurable number of months before the current month: Dates will be completed so that they are close to the current date. You can enter the maximum number of months to go backwards in time when completing dates.

### General

#### The Preferences window, General tab

The General tab

- General

  - Display "Tip of the Day" dialog: This option displays or hides the Tip of the Day screen when &app; is started.

  - Show splash screen: With this option you can enable or disable the visualization of the startup screen while &app; is starting up.

  - Perform account list setup on new file: This option turns off the display of the New Account Hierarchy Setup assistant when the entry File New File is selected from the &app; menu.

  - Set book option on new files to use split "action" field for "Num" field on registers/reports: If selected, the displayed setting on the New Book Options dialog for the Use Split Action Field for Number setting will be selected and, if saved, the book option for the new file will be set so that the "Num" field on registers shows/updates the split-action field and the transaction-num field is shown on the second line in double line mode (and is not visible in single line mode). Otherwise, the displayed setting on the dialog will not be selected and, if saved, the book option for the new file will be set so that the "Num" field on registers shows/updates the transaction-num field. See the discussion in about how to set book options including the option for . Regardless of the setting of this preference, the user can modify the initially displayed setting for this option on the New Book Options dialog before saving the options.

  If the New Book Options dialog appears in situations where a new book is being set up, the settings from this preference will determine the default setting for the corresponding check box on the dialog. However, the OK button on the New Book Options dialog must be pressed for the setting to be made for the new book; otherwise it will default to not selected.

- Numbers

  - Display negative amounts in red: If you turn off this option, &app; will display negative numbers in black.

  - Automatic Decimal Point: This option will automatically insert a decimal point into numbers you type in.

    When a calculation is entered in the Amount field, the decimal sign is inserted into every operand that omits a decimal separator.

  - Decimal Places: This field allows you to set the number of decimal places to be used.

- Files

  The following options are only relevant for files saved in XML format.

  - Compress files: This option determines whether the &app; data file will be compressed or not.

  - Show auto-save confirmation question: If this option is enabled, &app; will show you a confirmation screen each time the auto-save process is started.

  - Auto-save time interval: This field sets the number of minutes between each automatic saving of the file. Set to 0 to disable the auto-save feature.

  - Enable timout on "Save changes on closing" question: If enabled, the Save changes on closing question will only wait a limited number of seconds for an answer. If the user didn’t answer within that time, the changes will be saved automatically and the question window closed. You can set the number of seconds in the Time to wait for answer field.

  - Retain log files: In this section you can set your preferences about the log files using the provided radio buttons.

    - Never: Disable the creation of log files.

    - For: Enter a specific number of days for which keep the files.

    - Forever: Disable the auto deletion of log files; retains the log files forever.

- Search Dialog

  - New search limit: Defaults to "new search" if fewer than this number of items is returned.

### Online Banking

#### The Preferences window, Online Banking tab

The Online Banking tab

- QIF Import

  - Show documentation: The first time you use the QIF importer you may notice that the importer has detailed instructions on how to import a file. Once you have become familiar with using the importer, you might want to turn off this option. Turning off the option gives you less detail in the importer screens.

  - Default transaction status (overridden by the status given by the QIF file): In this section you can set the default status for imported transactions using the provided self-explainingradio buttons:

    - Not cleared (Default)

    - Cleared

    - Reconciled

- Generic Importer

  - Enable skip transaction action: Enable the SKIP action in the transaction matcher. If enabled, a transaction whose best match’s score is in the yellow zone (above the Auto-ADD threshold but below the Auto-CLEAR threshold) will be skipped by default.

  - Enable update match action: Enable the UPDATE AND RECONCILE action in the transaction matcher. If enabled, a transaction whose best match’s score is above the Auto-CLEAR threshold and has a different date or amount than the matching existing transaction will cause the existing transaction to be updated and cleared by default.

  - Use Bayesian matching: Use Bayesian algorithms to match new transactions with existing accounts.

  - Match display threshold: The minimal score a potential match must have to be displayed in the match list.

  - Auto-add threshold: A transaction whose best match’s score is in the red zone (above display threshold, but below or equal to Auto-add threshold) will be added by default.

  - Auto-clear threshold: A transaction whose best match’s score is in the green zone (above or equal to Auto-clear threshold) will be cleared by default.

  - Commercial ATM fees threshold: In some places commercial ATMs (not belonging to a financial institution) are installed in places like convenience stores. These ATMs add their fee directly to the amount instead of showing up as a separate transaction or in your monthly banking fees. For example, you withdraw $100, and you are charged $101.50 plus Interac fees. If you manually entered that $100, the amounts won’t match. You should set this to whatever is the maximum such fee in your area (in units of your local currency), so the transaction will be recognized as a match by &app;.

  - Automatically create new commodities: Enables the automatic creation of new commodities if any unknown commodity is encountered during import. If not enabled, the user will be asked what to do with each unknown commodity.

- Online Banking

  This section is shown only if &app; is compiled with Aqbanking and HBCI support.

  - Close log window when finished: Close the log window when the operation is completed.

  - Remember PIN: Enable this option if you want &app; to remember the PIN you enter for online banking authentication.

  - Verbose debug messages: Enable this option if you want &app; to show more information about the online banking operations.

### Online Quotes

#### The Preferences window, Online Quotes tab

The Online Quotes tab

The Online Quotes tab allows you to set options that affect the fetching of online quotes with the perl module Finance::Quote.

- Alpha Vantage API key: To retrieve online quotes from Alphavantage, this key needs to be set. A key can be retrieved from the Alpha Vantage website.

#### See also:

- ,

- Automatic Updating Exchange Rates in the guide.

### Printing

#### The Preferences window, Printing tab

The Printing tab

The Printing tab allows you to set some options that affect the printing of checks on paper.

- Print date format: Enable this option if you want to print on the check, below the actual date, its format in 8 point type.

- Print blocking chars: Enable this option to print a series of three asterisks before and after each text field in the check.

- Default font: Click the button on the left to open a Pick a Font screen in which you can customize the font that will be used to print checks.

### Register

#### The Preferences window, Register tab

The Register tab

- Actions

  - 'Enter' moves to blank transaction: If selected, move the cursor to the blank transaction at the end of the register after the user presses the Enter key. Otherwise the cursor will be moved down one row.

  - Auto-raise lists: If selected, all lists will automatically be expanded when input focus is in the list field.

  - Tab order includes Transfer on Memorized Transaction: If selected, when the transaction is auto filled, pressing the Tab key in the register the cursor’s jump will include the Transfer field.

- Reconciling

  - Check cleared transactions: If selected, automatically check off cleared transactions when reconciling.

  - Automatic interest transfer: If selected, prior to reconciling an account which charges or pays interest, prompt the user to enter a transaction for the interest charge or payment. Currently only enabled for Bank, Credit, Mutual, Asset, Receivable, Payable, and Liability accounts.

  - Automatic credit card payment: If selected, after reconciling a credit card statement, prompt the user to enter a credit card payment.

  - Always reconcile to today: If selected, always open the reconcile screen with today’s date for statement date, regardless of previous reconciliation.

- Graphics

  - Use &appname; built-in color theme: If selected, the original &app; register color theme will be used. Otherwise the system color theme will be applied to register windows.

  - Double mode colors alternate with transactions: If selected, configures the register window to alternate between the primary and secondary colors with each transaction, instead of each row.

  - Draw horizontal lines between rows: If selected, &app; will draw a horizontal line between each row.

  - Draw vertical lines between columns: If selected, &app; will draw a vertical line between the cells in each row.

### Register Defaults

#### The Preferences window, Register Defaults tab

The Register Defaults tab

The Register Defaults tab preferences affect the behavior of the transaction register windows.

- Default Style

  Here you can choose from 3 different styles for register windows:

  - Basic ledger: Show all transactions on one line. (Two in double line mode.)

  - Auto-split ledger: Automatically expand the current transaction to show all splits. All other transactions are shown on one line. (Two in double line mode.)

  - Transaction journal: All transactions are expanded to show all splits.

- Other Defaults

  - Register opens in a new window: If selected, register will be in a separate window instead of in a tab.

  - Double line mode: If selected, show two lines of information for each transaction instead of one.

  - Only display leaf account names: If selected, only the name of the leaf accounts will be displayed in the Account selection popup. The default behavior is to display the full account name including the path in the account tree.

    Enabling this option implies that you use unique leaf account names.

  - Number of transactions: How many transactions to show in a register. Set to 0 to show all transactions.

### Reports

#### The Preferences window, Reports tab

The Reports tab

The Reports tab preferences affect the behavior of &app; reports.

- Default Report Currency: This item determines which currency will be used by default when creating reports. You can choose:

  - Locale: Use the system locale currency for all newly created reports.

  - Choose: Use the specified currency for all newly created reports.

- Location

  - Report opens in a new window: if you select this option, the reports will open up in a new window, instead of in a tab.

### Scheduled Transactions

#### The Preferences window, Scheduled Transactions tab

The Scheduled Transactions tab

The Scheduled Transactions tab preferences affect the behavior of &app; for scheduling transactions. More information about scheduled transactions can be found in .

- Since Last Run Dialog

  - Run when data file opened: If selected, the Since Last Run screen will appear when &app; opens the file.

  - Show notification window: If selected, a list of scheduled and created transactions will appear when &app; opens the file.

- Transaction Editor Defaults

  - Auto-Create new transactions: If selected, new scheduled transactions will automatically be entered into the register. If the auto-create option is enabled, you can also check Notify before transactions are created so that you will be able to confirm creating the transactions.

  - Create in advance: The default number of days in advance to create the registered scheduled transactions.

  - Remind in advance: The default number of days in advance to remind about new scheduled transactions.

### Windows

#### The Preferences window, Windows tab

The Windows tab

- Window Geometry

  - Save window size and position: If selected, next time &app; starts it will re-use the window size and position configured in the last run.

- Tabs

  - Show close button on notebook tabs: Adds a small close icon on each tab, to make it easier to close the various tabs.

  - Bring the most recent tab to the front: If selected, the newly created tab will be shown over the other tabs.

  - Width: The width of tab label expressed in characters.

    If the text in the tab is longer than this value (the test is approximate) then the tab label will have the middle cut and replaced with an ellipsis.

- Tab Position

  Position the tabs at the Top (default), Bottom, Left or Right.

- Summary Bar Position

  Position the Summary Bar at the Top or at the Bottom (default) of the &app; main window.

## Book Options

The File Properties menu item is used to set or modify choices that affect how a specific &app; file (also referred to as a Book) operates. Selecting this menu item brings up the Book Options dialog. This dialog also appears in situations where you are importing transactions into a new book, with the title New Book Options. It is automatically raised in these 'new book' situations because these settings can affect how imported data are converted to &app; transactions and so should be considered and set before your first import (specifically, the setting).

The settings in this dialog are kept with, and are part of, the file (or Book). This is in contrast to the settings described in , which are set per user and not stored with the file. So Book Options settings are shared by all users who use a given file and any changes made by one user will affect all users of that file.

Pausing the cursor for a couple of seconds over options in these tabs will display a tooltip with a more detailed description of the choice.

The Book Options dialog has five buttons that are common to all tabs. The Reset defaults button takes all items on the visible tab and sets their value to the default setting; it only affects the visible tab. The Help button opens up a help window to this section. The Cancel button closes the dialog, making no changes to the saved settings for Book Options. The Apply button is initially insensitive but becomes sensitive when any setting is set or changed. Selecting it saves the setting(s) for the book but keeps the Book Options dialog open. Typically, the changes are reflected in the affected areas of &app; as soon as the button is pressed, so it can be used to 'see' the effect of a given option without having to re-open the dialog. The Apply button is not sensitive on the dialog if it appears during transaction import (that is, 'new book') situations. The OK button behaves like the Apply button except that it immediately closes the dialog, as well.

### Accounts Book Options Tab

#### The Book Options window, Accounts tab

The Accounts tab of this dialog allows the selection of options that affect how accounting registers function.

#### Use Trading Accounts

Check the Use Trading Accounts checkbox to have trading accounts used for transactions involving more than one currency or commodity.

#### Day Threshold for Read-Only Transactions

Use the Day Threshold for Read-Only Transactions spin-box to choose the number of days before today, prior to which, transactions will be read-only and cannot be edited anymore in the registers. This threshold is marked by a red line in the account register windows. If zero, all transactions can be edited and none are read-only. This feature is intended to be used to guard against accidental changes to non-current transactions.

#### Use Split Action Field for Number

This option is only available in &app; version 2.6 or later.

Check the Use Split Action Field for Number checkbox to have the split action field of the anchor split used for the 'Num' column in registers, reports and import/export functions, where applicable, in place of the transaction number; the transaction number is then shown as 'T-Num' on reports and on the second line of registers. This choice has a corresponding effect on business features.

The difference between the two is that with the checkbox not selected, the same 'Num' is displayed for a given transaction regardless of what register it is viewed in and with the checkbox selected, a different 'Num' can be entered/displayed for a given transaction in each register it is viewed in. In both cases, the 'next number logic' of the 'Num' cell is based on the account of the register the transaction is entered to or viewed from but in one case it fills the transaction number, in the other, it fills the split action field of the anchor split. In both cases, both fields are visible and can be viewed and used as free-form text in double-line mode for any value the user wants.

Initial setup of &app;: It is expected that, after careful consideration of the consequences, this option will be set when a new &app; file is created and not changed thereafter (see next warning). For this reason, a preference is provided (see Setting Preferences - General ) that can establish an initial default setting for new files, so that if you will have more than one file, it is easier to set them all up consistently. You may wish to set up a test file and experiment with the two settings to understand the differences before establishing your first real &app; file.

Moving from Quicken: For users that are switching from other personal accounting applications, such as Quicken, selecting this option may be more consistent with the numbering approach used there and can preserve the numbering of historical data brought over; this option should be set before performing the initial import.

Changing this option for an existing &app; file: If you change this option for an existing file, historical data will not be changed. This means that if you set the option one way, enter (or import) transactions, then change the option and enter (or import) additional transactions and switch back-and-forth, you will end up with a file that will appear to have inconsistent treatment of numbers in registers, reports and exports. This is because the setting of this option at the time of data entry/import determines where the number data is stored and the setting at the time of data display/reporting/exporting determines which field is displayed as number.

There is no reason to avoid changing this option for an existing &app; file if you understand the implications. If you elect to make this change, it should probably be done between accounting periods with the understanding that number data prior to the date the option is changed will be displayed/reported/exported differently from that after the date.

If you change this option, and press Apply or OK, open registers and labels on query and sorting dialogs will be refreshed to reflect the new option immediately. But open reports need to be individually reloaded by the user to have the change reflected on the report.

This option is only available in &app; version 2.6 or later. If a &app; file from an earlier version is opened in version 2.6 or later, and this feature is not used, this feature will not prevent the file from being opened in the earlier version of &app;. However, if the option is set, the file will not be able to be opened by the earlier version, even if the option is set back to its original setting. A warning dialog will be displayed from the earlier version. Do not set this option if you want to open the file with an earlier version.

### Budgeting Book Options Tab

#### The Book Options window, Budgeting tab

The Budgeting tab allows you to specify the budget to be used for reports when none has otherwise been specified.

### Business Book Options Tab

#### The Book Options window, Business tab

The Business tab allows you to enter values that are in turn used by the business features of &app;:

Company Name

  The name of the company is used in many reports.

Company Contact Person

  The name of the contact person to print on invoices.

Company Phone, Fax, Email Address

  The references of your business.

Company Website URL

  The internet address of the company’s website.

Company ID

  The tax ID of your company.

Default Customer TaxTable

  The default taxtable applicable to your most common customers.

Default Vendor TaxTable

  The default taxtable applicable to your most common vendors.

Fancy Date Format

  The default date format used for fancy printed dates (e.g. on invoices).

Reset Defaults

  Press the button to reset all values to their defaults.

None of the above values is required to use &app; but, if given, will be used throughout the program. (f.e. in reports, invoices etc...)

### Counters Book Options Tab

#### The Book Options window, Counters tab

The Counters tab allows you to set the 'previous' value for each number indicated: Bill, Customer, Employee, etc. These counters are used by the of &app;.

The number entered here will be incremented when the various business features calculate a value for a corresponding field on a dialog. For example, if you leave the Customer Number field blank on the New Customer dialog, the customer will be assigned the number in the counter field plus 1. The numbers displayed in the tab are incremented as these business features are used. (But note that if you have the Book Options dialog open, you need to close it and re-open it to see the changes; the displayed field values are not automatically refreshed.)

The corresponding format fields are used to specify printf-style format strings that are used to format the printing of the number. For example, to put the literal "C - " in front of the customer number, you would put "C - %li" (without the quotes) in the customer format string field. If the value in the customer number field was 5, the next customer added would be assigned the number "C - 6". As another example, if you wanted the number to be printed with leading zeros and 5 characters wide, you would enter "C - %05li" and the next customer number would be assigned the number "C - 00006".

For historical reasons &app; accepts multiple format specifiers although they all yield the same end result. You can choose "li", "lli" or I64i".

## Changing Style Sheets

&app; has four default style sheets for web-page reports. These style sheets can be altered by using the HTML Style Sheets editor. To access the editor go to Edit Style Sheets...

Using the Style Sheet Editor you may display/modify the setting of a Style Sheet.

Changing the Style Sheet will change the appearance of all reports that have selected that Style Sheet. A Reload is required to view the changes, if the report(s) are currently displayed.

To add a new Style Sheet click the New... button in the Style Sheet pane. The New Style Sheet dialog will appear. Fill in the name field with the name of the new Style Sheet and choose a template. To remove a Style Sheet select the Style Sheet from the list and click Delete.

### Default Style Sheet

The Default Style Sheet has four tabs to alter the appearance of reports utilizing it, Colors, Fonts, General and Tables.

#### Colors Tab

- Alternate Table Cell Color: Opens the color picker to choose a color that will be applied to alternate table rows.

#### Fonts Tab

- Title: Select the font and size for Titles.

- Account Link: Select the font and size for Account Links.

- Number Cell: Select the font and size for Number Cells.

- Negative Values in Red: Select to have negative values displayed in red.

- Text Cell: Select the font and size for Text Cells.

- Total Number Cell: Select the font and size for Total Number Cells.

- Total Label Cell: Select the font and size for Total Label Cells.

- Centered Label Cell: Select the font and size for Centered Label Cells.

#### General Tab

- Background Color: Opens the color picker to choose a new background color.

- Background Pixmap: Use the Browse button to select a picture to use as the background in reports.

- Enable Links: Select this to enable blue hyperlinks in reports.

#### Tables Tab

- Table cell spacing: Sets the space between table cells

- Table cell padding: Sets the space between table cell edges and contents

- Table border width: Sets the width of the borders on tables.

### Easy Style Sheet

The Easy Style Sheet has five tabs to alter the appearance of reports: Colors, Fonts, General, Images and Tables.

#### Colors

- Background Color: Opens the color picker to choose a new background color.

- Text Color: Opens the color picker to choose a new text color.

- Text Cell Color: Opens the color picker to choose a new text cell color.

- Link Color: Opens the color picker to choose a new link color.

- Alternate Table Cell Color: Opens the color picker to choose a new color for alternate table rows.

- Subheading/Subtotal Cell Color: Opens the color picker to choose a new color for subheading/subtotal table rows.

- Sub-subheading/total Cell Color: Opens the color picker to choose a new color for sub-subheading/total table rows.

- Grand Total Cell Color: Opens the color picker to choose a new color for grand total rows.

#### Fonts

- Title: Select the font and size for Titles.

- Account Link: Select the font and size for Account Links.

- Number Cell: Select the font and size for Number Cells.

- Negative Values in Red: Select to have negative values displayed in red.

- Number Header: Select the font and size for Number Header table rows.

- Text Cell: Select the font and size for Text Cells.

- Total Number Cell: Select the font and size for Total Number Cells.

- Total Label Cell: Select the font and size for Total Label Cells.

- Centered Label Cell: Select the font and size for Centered Label Cells.

#### General

- Preparer: Name of the person preparing the report.

- Prepared for: Name of Organization or Company the report is prepared for.

- Show preparer info: Show the Preparer information in the report.

- Enable Links: Select this to enable blue hyperlinks in reports.

#### Images

- Background Tile: Use the Browse button to select a picture to use as the background in reports. The Clear button will clear the selection.

- Heading Banner: Use the Browse button to select a picture to use as the heading in reports. The Clear button will clear the selection.

- Heading Alignment: Select from pull-down list; Left, Right, Center, to specify the alignment of the banner at the top of report(s).

- Logo: Use the Browse button to select a picture to use as the logo in reports. The Clear button will clear the selection.

#### Tables

- Table cell spacing: Sets the space between table cells

- Table cell padding: Sets the space between table cell edges and contents

- Table border width: Sets the width of the borders on tables.

### Footer Style Sheet

The Footer Style Sheet has the same five tabs to alter the appearance of reports as the Easy Style Sheets: Colors, Fonts, General, Images and Tables.

#### Colors

- Background Color: Opens the color picker to choose a new background color.

- Text Color: Opens the color picker to choose a new text color.

- Text Cell Color: Opens the color picker to choose a new text cell color.

- Link Color: Opens the color picker to choose a new link color.

- Alternate Table Cell Color: Opens the color picker to choose a new color for alternate table rows.

- Subheading/Subtotal Cell Color: Opens the color picker to choose a new color for subheading/subtotal table rows.

- Sub-subheading/total Cell Color: Opens the color picker to choose a new color for sub-subheading/total table rows.

- Grand Total Cell Color: Opens the color picker to choose a new color for grand total rows.

#### Fonts

- Title: Select the font and size for Titles.

- Account Link: Select the font and size for Account Links.

- Number Cell: Select the font and size for Number Cells.

- Negative Values in Red: Select to have negative values displayed in red.

- Number Header: Select the font and size for Number Header table rows.

- Text Cell: Select the font and size for Text Cells.

- Total Number Cell: Select the font and size for Total Number Cells.

- Total Label Cell: Select the font and size for Total Label Cells.

- Centered Label Cell: Select the font and size for Centered Label Cells.

#### General

- Preparer: Name of the person preparing the report.

- Prepared for: Name of Organization or Company the report is prepared for.

- Show preparer info: Show the Preparer information in the report.

- Enable Links: Select this to enable blue hyperlinks in reports.

- Footer: Text to be included in report footer.

#### Images

- Background Tile: Use the Browse button to select a picture to use as the background in reports. The Clear button will clear the selection.

- Heading Banner: Use the Browse button to select a picture to use as the heading in reports. The Clear button will clear the selection.

- Heading Alignment: Select from pull-down list; Left, Right, Center, to specify the alignment of the banner at the top of report(s).

- Logo: Use the Browse button to select a picture to use as the logo in reports. The Clear button will clear the selection.

#### Tables

- Table cell spacing: Sets the space between table cells

- Table cell padding: Sets the space between table cell edges and contents

- Table border width: Sets the width of the borders on tables.

### Technicolor Style Sheet

The Technicolor Style Sheet has has five tabs to alter the appearance of reports: Colors, Fonts, General, Images and Tables.

#### Colors

- Background Color: Opens the color picker to choose a new background color.

- Text Color: Opens the color picker to choose a new text color.

- Text Cell Color: Opens the color picker to choose a new text cell color.

- Link Color: Opens the color picker to choose a new link color.

- Alternate Table Cell Color: Opens the color picker to choose a new color for alternate table rows.

- Subheading/Subtotal Cell Color: Opens the color picker to choose a new color for subheading/subtotal table rows.

- Sub-subheading/total Cell Color: Opens the color picker to choose a new color for sub-subheading/total table rows.

- Grand Total Cell Color: Opens the color picker to choose a new color for grand total rows.

#### Fonts

- Title: Select the font and size for Titles.

- Account Link: Select the font and size for Account Links.

- Number Cell: Select the font and size for Number Cells.

- Negative Values in Red: Select to have negative values displayed in red.

- Number Header: Select the font and size for Number Header table rows.

- Text Cell: Select the font and size for Text Cells.

- Total Number Cell: Select the font and size for Total Number Cells.

- Total Label Cell: Select the font and size for Total Label Cells.

- Centered Label Cell: Select the font and size for Centered Label Cells.

#### General

- Preparer: Name of the person preparing the report.

- Prepared for: Name of Organization or Company the report is prepared for.

- Show preparer info: Show the Preparer information in the report.

- Enable Links: Select this to enable blue hyperlinks in reports.

#### Images

- Background Tile: Use the Browse button to select a picture to use as the background in reports. The Clear button will clear the selection.

- Heading Banner: Use the Browse button to select a picture to use as the heading in reports. The Clear button will clear the selection.

- Heading Alignment: Select from pull-down list; Left, Right, Center, to specify the alignment of the banner at the top of report(s).

- Logo: Use the Browse button to select a picture to use as the logo in reports. The Clear button will clear the selection.

#### Tables

- Table cell spacing: Sets the space between table cells

- Table cell padding: Sets the space between table cell edges and cell contents

- Table border width: Sets the width of the borders on tables.

## Setting Tax Report Options

The tax report can be used to prepare online tax reports in the USA.

### Localization

Before it can be used in other regions, one needs to provide a localized taxtable. See the instructions in the wiki.

The Income Tax Information dialog is used to set Tax Report Options. The settings on accounts in this dialog are used by the TXF Export function in reports to select the accounts for export. To access this dialog go to Edit Tax Report Options.

If the Income Tax features are used, it is strongly recommended that the Tax Info column be made visible on the accounts tab (click large downward-pointing arrow and select Tax Info check box). The Tax Info column will display the Form/Schedule and tax category (e.g., Schedule D Dividend, cap gain distrib.) assigned to an account, if any. Alternatively, it will display the following error messages which can be corrected through Edit Tax Report Options

- Tax-related but has no tax code

- Tax entity type not specified

- Tax type "tax_type": invalid code "code" for account type"

- Not tax-related; tax type "tax_type": invalid code "code" for account type

- Invalid code "code" for tax type "tax_type"

- Not tax-related; invalid code "code" for tax type "tax_type"

- No form: code "code", tax type "tax_type"

- Not tax-related; no form: code "code", tax type "tax_type"

- No description: form "form", code "code", tax type "tax_type"

- Not tax-related; no description: form "form", code "code", tax type "tax_type"

- Not tax-related; "form"("copy") "desc" (code "code", tax type "tax_type")

The Income Tax Identity must be set in order to assign codes to individual accounts. Click Edit to set the identity. The Tax Name is optional. If entered, it will be printed at the top of the report. A Type must be selected in order to activate the tax category selections. The choices are:

- Individual, Joint, etc. - Files US Form 1040 Tax Return

- Partnership - Files US Form 1065 Tax Return

- Corporation - Files US Form 1120 Tax Return

- S Corporation - Files US Form 1120S Tax Return

- None - No Income Tax Options Provided

While the Income Tax Entity Type can be changed after tax categories have been assigned to accounts, you should be cautioned that you will need to manually change each one if you do so, which could be quite tedious. The tax categories are unique for each Income Tax Entity Type, so changing the type will make all previously assigned categories invalid. It is assumed (and highly recommended) that each &app; file is for only one tax entity and this is where you specify its type of tax entity. You should not keep, for example, personal and partnership accounts mixed in one &app; file if you plan to use the Income Tax Reporting features.

A given TXF code can be assigned to multiple accounts. The Tax Schedule Report will combine accounts by code and generate a detailed TXF record for each account and a summary TXF record for the total as calculated by the report.

For codes for which the "Payer Name Source" is not grayed, the payer on the TXF record will be based on what is specified here, either the account name of the account or the account name of the account’s parent account. This feature is typically used for interest accounts or stocks or mutual funds that pay dividends where the individual payees are shown on the tax schedule. For example, if the parent account’s name is the name of your broker and the sub-account’s names are the names of individual stocks that pay dividends and the name on the 1099-DIV received is that of the broker, in order to match that name, you would select ’Parent Account’; the total dividends from the broker would be exported and, if you had several brokers, there would be an amount exported and a subtotal for each broker, along with each brokers name. Alternatively, if you had a parent account named Directly Held, for example, and below it sub-accounts for one or more stocks, you would receive a 1099-DIV from the issuer of each stock separately and, in order to match that name, you would select Current Account; the total dividends from each stock would be exported and, if you had several stocks, there would be an amount exported and a subtotal for each stock, along with each stock’s name as the payer.

Some tax Forms/Schedules need to have multiple copies filed under some circumstances (for example, Schedule C if a taxpayer and spouse have separate businesses). For tax categories on these Forms/Schedules, the Copy Number is not grayed out and can be used to segregate accounts by copy number.

- Accounts: This pane contains the list of accounts. Select an account to set a TXF category. If no account is selected nothing is changed. If multiple accounts are selected, all of the accounts will be set to the selected item.

- Tax Related: Select this check-box to add tax information to an account then select the TXF Category below. This setting is displayed on the account edit dialogue but cannot be changed from there.

- TXF Categories: Select the desired one. A detailed description appears just below (if available, otherwise it says No help available), along with the TXF code for the category and information about what line number on the form or schedule the amounts are included in by tax year (used for detailed sort on report).

- Payer Name Source: Select an option to determine where the text description that is exported along with the value of the account is derived from, as described above. This is usually the name of a bank, stock, or mutual fund that pays dividends or interest. Occasionally, it is a description of a deduction.

- Copy Number: A copy number that is exported along with the value of the account. This is used to segregate amounts between different copies of the same Form/Schedule that may need to be filed (e.g., Schedule C(1), Schedule C(2), etc.). This is also used to sort the report.

### TXF Export - Known Anomalies and Limitations

TaxCut 1999

- Code: N488 "^ Sched B \ Div. income, cap gain distrib."

- Code: N286 "^ Sched B \ Dividend income"

These two codes, from the same payer, are not correlated. The user will have to adjust for this after import.

TaxCut 1999, 2000

- Code: N521 " F1040 \ Federal estimated tax, quarterly"

Does not accept the date field and does not import the individual payment amounts, only the total. The date and individual payment amounts, only matter if you have to compute the penalty. (this may be a TurboTax enhancement)

- Code: N460 " W-2 \ Salary or wages, self"

- Code: N506 " W-2 \ Salary or wages, spouse"

- and other related codes.

Use Copy Number to separate information from more than one job.

TurboTax 1999, 2000

- Code: N521 " F1040 \ Federal estimated tax, quarterly"

Does not accept the dates outside of the tax year. This is a problem for the last payment that is due Jan 15. &app; changes the the date of the last payment to Dec 31 for the export unless the "Do not use special date processing" option is selected in the report options display tab. The user will have to adjust for this after import. The date only matters if you have to compute the penalty.

TXF Tax eXport Format

- Duplicate Codes

Codes can be assigned to multiple accounts and the amounts will be summed for all the accounts generating one detail TXF record per account and one summary TXF record for the sum. Codes that let you select "Payer Name Source" will generate a separate summary TXF account with each change in payer. Selecting the "Print TXF export parameters" option will cause the report to show to which codes this applies (Payer Name Source option Y) and, for the accounts assigned to those codes, the Name Source each account is set to and the TXF item number that will be assigned to each. A summary TXF record will be generated for each change in assigned item line number. These may not be handled the same by TaxCut and TurboTax.

- Code: N673 "Short/Long gain or loss"

Short term or long term gain or loss from the sale of a security; generates TXF output for only the date sold and sales amount, with the date acquired and cost basis information left blank (to be separately added in the tax software). The code can be assigned to either a short-, long-, or mixed-term gain/loss income account and the security sales transaction should be entered as illustrated in Section 8.7, Selling Shares, of the &app; Tutorial and Concepts Guide. The report uses the transaction split of the gain/loss account to find one or more other splits in the same transaction with negative share quantities. For each of these found, it generates a detailed TXF output record with the quantity sold, the name of the security, the date sold, and the sales amount. Note that if, for a given transaction, more than one transaction split is to a gain/loss income account assigned to code 673, TXF output data will be erroneously repeated. That is because the report will fetch the same data, and re-output it, for each transaction split set to a gain/loss income account within the same transaction. For this reason, there should be no more than one gain/loss account entered per transaction to use this tax reporting code properly. (Note that no amounts are used from &app;’s lot-tracking; a future enhancement is expected to use this data to provide capital gain reporting).

### Detailed TXF Category Descriptions

Table 32. Detailed TXF Category Descriptions

## Reset Warnings...

&app; gives warnings when certain operations are attempted, such as removing a transaction or removing the splits of a transaction. The warning message gives you the option to not give you these warnings when attempting the operation. Check-boxes labeled Remember and don’t ask me again and Remember and don’t ask me again this session allow disabling the warnings. This option permits reseting the warnings to the default, IE make the warning happen. Warnings may be selectivly enabled.

## Changing the Language

The language of the &app; user interface is not modifiable directly from the program’s preferences.

The way you can change the language depends on the operating system you are running &app; on.

Linux

  In general you should set the `LANGUAGE` and `LANG` environment variables before starting &app;. To do this you need to open a terminal and run the following command:

  `LANGUAGE=ll_LL LANG=ll_LL gnucash`

  ll_LL is the locale you want to run &app; with (de_DE for Deutsch, it_IT for Italian etc.)

  On some systems (e.g. Ubuntu) the encoding could be part of the locales name, like ll_LL.UTF-8. You can use these names as well.

MacOSX

  If you want to use a different translation from the one that is automatically selected, you can run the following in Terminal.app:

  `defaults write $(mdls -name kMDItemCFBundleIdentifier -raw /Applications/GnuCash.app) AppleLanguages "(de, en)"`

  Use whatever language codes you want, replacing Deutsch and English. It won’t work if there isn’t a translation file for the language you want.

  If you want to unset it (that is, return to using the system settings), run this:

  `defaults delete $(mdls -name kMDItemCFBundleIdentifier -raw /Applications/GnuCash.app)`

Windows

  If you are running &app; 2.4.0 (or newer) on Windows, you can set the interface language by editing the file `environment` with a text editor (e.g. Notepad). By default this file is installed in `c:\Program Files\gnucash\etc\gnucash`. Change this file such that the last few lines are:

      # If you wish GnuCash to use a different language, uncomment the two parameters
      # below and set LANG to your preferred locale
      LANG=ll_LL
      LANGUAGE={LANG}

  ll_LL is the locale you want to run &app; with (de_DE for Deutsch, it_IT for Italian etc.)

More and updated information about this topic can be found on the Locale Settings page of the &app; wiki.