Canadian RRSP

[Glen Ditchfield]

On Thursday 06 January 2005 21:31, Bernard Fay wrote:
> Does someone knows how to setup a canadian RRSP in gnucash? Is it
> feasible?

Feasible, yes.  Useful? Well, it keeps me too busy to play with matches ...

For my self-directed RRSP,  I set up an asset account, "RRSPs".  Under that I 
set up a cash account, for cash held by the administrator, and one asset 
account for each mutual fund company (e.g. "CI Funds").  I also set up an 
income account, "RRSPs", and one income account under that for each company.  
These all use loonies as their commodity.

When I buy I new mutual fund, I use the commodity editor to create a new 
commodity of type FUND traded in 1/10000ths.  I don't know if the other 
fields matter at all, so I use the fund's name ("Landmark Canadian DSC") for 
the "Full name", and the fund code ("CIG576") for "Symbol/Abbreviation" and 
"CUSIP or other code". 

Then I create a new mutual fund account under the company's asset account, 
using the new fund commodity for its commodity.  Fund names all look alike, 
so I use the fund code for the account's name and the fund name for the 
account's description.  I enter the initial purchase into the fund account in 
the usual way.

Finally, I use the price editor to enter the purchase price into the price 
database.  If I don't, the value of the new fund won't be included in the 
total for the fund company account or the RRSP account.  (I've already put a 
wish list item in the bug database about that.)

Purchases and transfers are handled in the usual way.  Dividend reinvestments 
are purchases where the money is transfered from the fund company's income 
account.

I don't bother to use Finance::Quote to keep close track of prices.  When a 
company sends me a quarterly statement, I enter the fund prices into the 
price database, and then the totals shown by GnuCash's main window should 
match the company's statement.  I reconcile the fund accounts when the 
companies send me confirmations of activity.