Advance Portfolio Basis for funds not working

Mon Feb 4 14:05:49 EST 2013

I'm reviving this thread, after doing a little (okay, a LOT) of trial and error.

I wish I could say I figured out why the basis doesn't work under some circumstances, but I have run up against a wall.

To recap, I have an old Mutual Fund which will not show the cost basis in the Advanced Portfolio report. I decided to test out what might e blocking the calculation, so I created a copy of the report, with just the offending account in it. Then, I began moving the cutoff date forward from the earliest transaction until the cost basis disappeared. Doing this turned up a sell transaction that was directed into Retained Earnings (account type: Equity). I changed the transaction to use Current Accounts:Cash, and the report worked for that date. Voila, and I moved forward to the next sale, expecting that transaction to cause a problem. Well, yes and no. The Cost Basis wasn't showing, but fixing the transaction the same way didn't bring back the cost basis.

So, I moved back to the previous good date, and moved forward in time. I arrived at a dividend transaction, which appeared (and still appears) to be exactly like the ones before and after it. If I delete the transaction, the basis shows up; if I add it back in, the basis disappears. I even tried copying another (apparently good) transaction without success.

Finally, I noticed that just prior to this dividend, there is a sell transaction, and even though this sell transaction doesn't cause the report to fail, I suspect that something about it is causing the problem. This is confirmed by the fact that if I change the dividend transaction to occur *before* the sale, the report works, but if it occurs after the sale, the report breaks.

I wonder if there is something about the scrub lots feature (which I believe I tried on this account) that causes the cost basis to fail.

Can anyone tell me whether it is possible to remove any lot-scrub information without re-entering the entire account history? And, how might I even know what the scrubbing did?

Thanks,
David

On Jan 14, 2013, at 11:35 AM, David Carlson <carlson.dl at sbcglobal.net> wrote:

> On 1/13/2013 5:04 PM, FireFly wrote:
>> Figured mine out, It had been so long since I'd played with the
>> Advanced Portfolio that I'd forgotten to change Basis to FIFO, change
>> to that from Average fixed my issue (thanks David for the reminder).
>> 
>> - James Duerr
>> 
>> E-mail: FireFlys_98 at yahoo.com
>> ---------------------
>> Discover a lost art - play Marbles. May 2004
>> www.marillion.com
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> *From:* David T. <sunfish62 at yahoo.com>
>> *To:* David Carlson <carlson.dl at sbcglobal.net>;
>> "gnucash-user at gnucash.org" <gnucash-user at gnucash.org>
>> *Sent:* Sunday, January 13, 2013 2:51 PM
>> *Subject:* Re: Advance Portfolio Basis for funds not working
>> 
>> I've had the same issue as well, with a fund that I have held for a
>> very long time. David--is there any way to determine what information
>> might be missing from the transactions that would mess up the Basis
>> calculation? I'd love to figure out how to get this minor point
>> addressed, but I don't see how I would even tell which transactions
>> lacked a proximate price.
>> 
>> Another question is: how would a mere mortal user add the price for a
>> commodity in the past? As far as I can tell, the only way to add
>> historical prices is to use the python-bindings activated version of
>> Gnucash along with the python scripts on the web for this purpose--but
>> that would be precluded for people unwilling/unable to compile from
>> source. Or else, the user must hack the XML and manually insert dates?
>> 
>> David
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> ________________________________
>> From: David Carlson <carlson.dl at sbcglobal.net
>> <mailto:carlson.dl at sbcglobal.net>>
>> To: gnucash-user at gnucash.org <mailto:gnucash-user at gnucash.org>
>> Sent: Sunday, January 13, 2013 12:52 PM
>> Subject: Re: Advance Portfolio Basis for funds not working
>> 
>> On 1/13/2013 10:54 AM, FireFly wrote:
>>> I'm having the same issue, I've managed to figure mine down to some
>> "sale" transactions that I had, if I remove all the sale transactions
>> then my basis shows up.
>>> 
>>> The funny part is that some accounts I have sales in are just fine,
>> no issues at all, others have this problem, so I'm really not sure
>> what's causing it.
>>> 
>>> - James Duerr
>>> 
>>> 
>>> E-mail: FireFlys_98 at yahoo.com <mailto:FireFlys_98 at yahoo.com>
>>> ---------------------
>>> Discover a lost art - play Marbles. May 2004
>>> www.marillion.com <http://www.marillion.com/>
>>> 
>>> 
>>> ________________________________
>>> From: Stephen Myers <stevem at scn.org <mailto:stevem at scn.org>>
>>> To: gnucash-user at gnucash.org <mailto:gnucash-user at gnucash.org>
>>> Sent: Sunday, January 6, 2013 11:06 AM
>>> Subject: Advance Portfolio Basis for funds not working
>>> 
>>> On my advanced portfolio page the Basis field is blank for some of my
>>> mutual funds.  I know there was an issue in 2.2 that got fixed, but
>> I seem
>>> to have an issue still.  Any idea what I should look for?  Something
>> in my
>>> configuration? Data?  Places to look to understand the problem?
>>> 
>>> 
>>> Thanks.
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> 
>> I have also seen this.  At one point I thought that I could make some of
>> the fields repopulate themselves by carefully making sure that there are
>> prices in the file for those securities on the dates in question and
>> that "nearest in time" option is selected in the report options for
>> security valuation.  However, that was some time ago and I have not had
>> time to pursue that further.  You might try playing with that.  Since
>> there are three choices for basis calculation method, try playing with
>> those. If there are multiple purchases and/or sales, lot identification
>> may be a factor.
>> Errors in capital gain entries and failure to associate dividends with
>> their respective securities properly will also affect this report. Right
>> now I am working on correcting capital gains in old sales in my data file.
>> I also have not figured out how to get money in, brokerage fees, total
>> return or rate of return to populate correctly.
>> 
>> David C
>> 
>> _______________________________________________
>> 
> To David T
> 
> Some reports seem to have errors if they try to show a value for a
> security on a date that is is not present in the Security Price Editor. 
> I do not know if that is an issue here, but I have some securities whose
> prices cannot be downloaded by GnuCash and I have to remember to go to
> the proper website to search for the prices manually.  Prices can be
> entered manually for any security on any date using the price editor. 
> While that is a pain in the a__, I don't need to mess with code.  Most
> historical prices can be found at Google Finance or Yahoo Finance.  When
> you have a transaction, it always has an associated price, but it might
> be different than the daily closing price (or bid price in some cases).
> 
> As an aside, there is a neat stock portfolio tracking program called
> TakeStock 2 available for free at http://ravib.com/takestock/2/ which
> has dynamic one click links to info about whichever securities that you
> are tracking.
> 
> David C
> 
> 
> 
> 
> <0xDC7C8BF3.asc><0xDC7C8BF3.asc>_______________________________________________
> gnucash-user mailing list
> gnucash-user at gnucash.org
> https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user
> -----
> Please remember to CC this list on all your replies.
> You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.