Question about Lots and Capital Gains

[Charles Day]

On Mon, Mar 31, 2008 at 11:22 AM, Derek Atkins <warlord at mit.edu> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> Quoting Rich Bloch <richbl at gmail.com>:
>
> > Hello all,
> >
> > I'm running 2.2.1, and I'm in the process of learning how to manage
> stock
> > purchases/sales. However, I'm having a difficult time understanding how
> > "lots" work.
>
> Unfortunately Lots are not fully implemented at this time.
>
> > There's a dialog accessed by View Lots off the main account window,
> > which--not surprisingly--permits me to scrub and view stock lots.
> However,
> > this dialog doesn't appear to do much else (either that, or I'm just not
> > seeing any functional changes). So, here are my questions:
> >
> > --If I want to sell a stock, how does gnucash identify the stock
> lot--and
> > it's basis--to determine capital gains?
>
> It doesn't... Nor does it compute capital gains for you.
>

I found by accident yesterday that "View Lots" actually seems to do capital
gains calculations:
1. Enter a sale of stock in the register without accounting for the capital
gains.
2. Choose Actions->View Lots.
3. Click the "Scrub Account" button.
4. Capital gains get calculated and a new transaction is automatically
created in the register to account for them.

So there would seem to be more functionality behind the "View Lots" dialog
than viewing alone.

> --What accounting policy does gnucash use for determining capital gains? I
> > believe FIFO is most typically used, though LIFO is also legal, as is
> lot
> > selection.
>
> None.  See above.  But the partial implementation is FIFO, IIRC.
>

The "Scrub Account" button used FIFO in my experiments.

-Charles

> --Are there specific docs available that address how gnucash handles lots
> > (in 2.x)? I spent some time picking through notes and conversations on
> > gnucash.org and the wiki, and haven't really found anything definitive.
>
> There may be a lots.txt somewhere.  But the only definitive source
> would be, um, the source.
>
> > Thanks much.
> >
> > --
> > rich
>
> > Please remember to CC this list on all your replies.
> > You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
>
> -derek
>
> --
>       Derek Atkins, SB '93 MIT EE, SM '95 MIT Media Laboratory
>       Member, MIT Student Information Processing Board  (SIPB)
>       URL: http://web.mit.edu/warlord/    PP-ASEL-IA     N1NWH
>       warlord at MIT.EDU                        PGP key available
>
>