newbie how-to-best-do-it ?

[Jason Rennie]

fpmi@home.com said:
> Over the next two years, $2 is accumulated due to  interest/dividends/
> capital gains.  At the present time there are three different ways
> that occur to me to enter the $2:

fpmi@home.com said:
> 	c) set up an "income" account on higher level
> 		Problem: Gnucash can't readily associate the income 
> 		with its source.  It still gets counted as cost. 

Hmm... given my understanding of GNUCash, I would think that choice c) 
would do the right thing.  So, I guess you have an account hierarchy like 
this:

+--Assets
|   |
|   +--Stocks
|       |
|       +--Amazon.com
|       |
|       +--IBM
|    
+--Income
    |
    +--Salary
    |
    +--Interest&Dividends

When you enter the $2 of interest/dividends, the two accounts you use are
(e.g.) Assets/Stocks/IBM and Income/Interest&Dividends.  Is your
difficulty with the fact that the number will come up negative in one of
the two accounts where intuitively one would think that it should be
positive in both accounts?  There is a way to tell GNUCash to flip the
sign of transactions in certain accounts.  I don't have GNUCash in front
of me ATM, but you should be able to find an option like this in the
preferences pop-up window.

Jason