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Comment by kdwikzncba | Hacker News Reader

I've been using GnuCash for over a year now and I still don't know the answer to the following: is it possible to transactions tag transactions with custom tags, and then breakdown reports on those? I mean actual tags, not accounts.

Someone on the Beancount thread explained his workflow using tags link transactions to IRS form entries. I would like to try the same on GnuCash, but haven't yet figured out whether tags even exist (haven't had the time to check since)

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I have the same need, and now I'm trying out a system where I put a "label" or "tag" in the Memo or Notes field (e.g. #SummerHoliday2023) that I then can create a filter for and generate a report for.

Got the idea from https://money.stackexchange.com/questions/91029/gnucash-tags...

Ok, and then you can do reports by that?

> Someone on the Beancount thread explained his workflow using tags link transactions to IRS form entries. I would like to try the same on GnuCash, but haven't yet figured out whether tags even exist (haven't had the time to check since)

I don't use tags, but GnuCash does have some built-in reporting features for tax forms.

1. You have to have assigned an account to a tax field (Edit -> Tax Report Options). It's what controls the "tax-related" checkbox when you edit an account.

2. Then you can go to Reports -> Tax Schedule Report & TXF Export to generate a report for the last tax year.

Hopefully this helps!

Ok thanks for that, but that has two problems. First, it's still "account based". I can't label a single transaction. Second, it's not versatile enough, it's US specific.

I quickly researched this a couple of months ago and came to the conclusion that using separate accounts was the only easy-to-understand way to do it. So now I have accounts like:

    Hosting Expenses
    [SomeTag] Hosting Expenses

It's nice because its compatible with all the built-in reports, including graphs, though it takes a little while to configure presets for them all filtered by the right accounts.

Also curious to hear if anyone knows a better way.

> using separate accounts was the only easy-to-understand way to do it

This can't possibly be right... If I'm going on holidays, I don't want to have to open a new "holidays" account; holiday expenses are still expenses. If I accepted this, and I wanted to separate holidays in 2021 from holidays in 2022 by using different accounts, you can imagine how many one-off accounts id have laying around. No, this is confusing the concepts of an account as an accounting concept, with the concept of a generic aggregation segment.

I agree. It's the only easy-to-understand way to do it _in GnuCash_, _that I could find_, anyway

You can probably do this with notes field, but more often I think people use an account hierarchy, have you tried that?

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