MYSQL Join Union Group By - two tables advice

[eluser]nevsie[/eluser]
sample data? do you mean some working content like sql for income and expense so you can play? if so i will produce a basic overview of what i have and get back to you...

in regards to ifnull - this is not really the issue (unless i have misinterpreted) as when doing a left join and union right join - the sum of the groups get confused and display some crazy totals... my next idea into this is to make more use of brackets to seperate the two select queries before doing the union to keep the two sums apart - but this is just wild guessing in my head!