Negative Numbers in Income Statement

Dan Hout-Reilly · July 17

Does anyone know how to get expenses to show as negative numbers in a section of an income statement report? I'd like to create an “Other Income (Expense)” section to our reports, but the natural account balances always show as positive numbers, i.e. revenue account credit balances and expense account debit balances all show as positive numbers. I need expense account debit balances to show as negative numbers, but just in this section of this report.

8/6/2025 Update: The reply from BB support is that this is functioning as expected! 😡

"I’ve received a response from our engineering team, and they’ve confirmedthat the behavior you described—where debit balances show as positive despite the “Show debit balance as negative” setting—is working as expected within thecurrent system design."

I now created an Idea that this functionality be added. Please vote for this idea.

https://financialedge.ideas.aha.io/ideas/FENXT-I-3491

8/11/2025 Update: Per BB support the "Show debit balance as negative" setting apparently only impacts the total for that header/section of the chart organizer, not the account detail. There currently is no way to mix revenue and expense accounts in detail in one section of an income statement report.

Please do vote for the above linked Idea to request that Blackbaud enable the ability to generate a standard income statment.

Nikki Baldwin · July 17

@Dan HoutReilly, you can do this in a couple of ways. One is more cascading, which is to mark the account code as ‘contra’ in configuration.

One that is more specific to the report you're running would be made on the Chart Organizer. You'd select to edit the Chart Organizer and for the Header section above the accounts you want to edit, you'd select ‘Negative’ instead of ‘positive’ on the right for ‘Show debit balance as’ (see screenshot).

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Dan Hout-Reilly · July 17

@Nikki Baldwin Hi Nikki. Marking the accounts as a contra accounts is not an option in this instance as other reports will need to show this account as a possitive balance. I do have the "Show debit balance as" indicated as 'negative' for all of the headers in this chart of accounts, but none of the expense accounts show as negative.

JoAnne Thielen · July 18

@Dan HoutReilly I have this same issue. It doesn't seem to matter which bullet I check, the expenses do not change from positive to negative.

Nikki Baldwin · July 18

@Dan HoutReilly, something I should've mentioned earlier, I would recommend you save this chart template as a separate one so you can continue to utilize the original on your reports wherein you don't want the expenses to show as negative.

With that disclaimer out of the way, depending on the report, if you're using IS/IS accounts, we can change the headers to income statement and tell it to treat debits as negative/positive based on your needs. In addition, I spoke to a colleague about your response and he advised that as he was working on this same task with a client directly last month, (and it was negative and they wanted the inverse positive) they were able to get this to work. However. they had to make any main header show that way, so that meant checking all headers in the chart organizer--all of them that control that section. For that client that was literally 30/40 headers for one section of VCO.

So I would encourage you to review all of the headers available in the chart organizer and if that still does not work (same to you, @JoAnne) please contact support because that absolutely should solve that issue for you and if it doesn't, they will need to address it.

Dan Hout-Reilly · July 18

@Nikki Baldwin I created a new VCO to test this with one header and it still was not working. I have opened a ticket.

Nikki Baldwin · July 21

@Dan HoutReilly, sorry it's giving you so much trouble and hope support can resolve for you quickly!

Patricia Nowak · July 21

@Nikki Baldwin
I have had success flipping the sign within custom management reports by using the following: {Actual} * ( 0-1 ) Not sure if this will help, but thought I would share.

Mary Solorzano · July 23

@Dan HoutReilly - I've faced this situation too. The default account ranges FE forces us to use are designed with the underlying assumption that an account always has a normal account balance that corresponds to its account range (revenues = CR, expenses = DR). I too tried checking the “show debit balance as” and it did not work. Changing the account to a contra worked for me as a bandaid. I've not been able to find any other way of getting the account to appear correctly in a detailed income statement.

Dan Hout-Reilly · July 23

@Mary Solorzano I used the contra account setting in another instance that made sense for us: investment fees in an “investment income, net” section and we never show investment fees in another report or section where we need it to be positive. My support case is continuing.

Dan Hout-Reilly · July 24

Most recent update on my case/ticket: “this has been forwarded to our programming team where it will be investigated. Once the investigation process is complete and we are able to fully understand the issue, the next step is to develop a fix. After the fix has been developed, it will go through a testing process to ensure that it corrects the issue without negatively impacting any other areas of the software. Due to the complexity of this process, our programmers are not able to provide an official timeframe on when this will be resolved.”

Dan Hout-Reilly · August 6

The reply from BB support is that this is functioning as expected! 😡

"I’ve received a response from our engineering team, and they’ve confirmedthat the behavior you described—where debit balances show as positive despite the “Show debit balance as negative” setting—is working as expected within thecurrent system design."

I now created an Idea that this functionality be added. Please vote for this idea. https://financialedge.ideas.aha.io/ideas/FENXT-I-3491

Negative Numbers in Income Statement

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