How to get online quotes for UK Funds working in GnuCash
 
Verified for GnuCash version 2.2.1, 2008-01-24
Summarised by Conor O'Neill, with significant help from Fred Bone.


Note:
There is a large amount of information about this contained
within the GnuCash documentation, such as here:
http://svn.gnucash.org/docs/guide/invest-setup1.html
http://svn.gnucash.org/docs/guide/invest-stockprice1.html

However, I have written this because I have been frustrated for a while
with the difficulty of finding the correct symbols to use for online
retrieval, specifically for UK Funds.

As it happens, once you know the 'correct' symbols, you can use the
(American) 'Yahoo' price source to retrieve the online prices.



Step 1a.
Work out the correct symbols and codes for your stocks and funds.
For stocks (shares) listed on the London Stock Exchange (LSE),
this is simple.
The Symbol for the share price is simply the code used, with a suffix of
.L to indicate London. For instance, Vodafone is "VOD.L".
For shares, the CUSIP field is irrelevant and can be left blank (see below).

For Unit Trusts and other funds, it is a bit harder to work out the symbols,
but this seems to be working at the moment.
Go to http://uk.finsearch.yahoo.com/uk/
Type in a name to search here, with Type set to "Funds".
This will (probably) provide you with a list of likely candidates.
For example, if you search for "Artemis UK", you get a list of 119 results!
You can try to use other information from your broker / organisation
to determine which one is correct. In my case, my broker (Fidelity
and/or Morningstar) includes an ISIN number on their web site;
this is listed as GB0002583267 for Artemis UK Growth.
I can type this into the search page on yahoo, and it identifies the
correct fund.
Yahoo's web page then also gives a yahoo symbol (MF8AAUK.L).
It is _this_ symbol which works for the online quotes.
For future reference, I also type the ISIN number into the CUSIP field
in the GnuCash security editor (see below).


Step 1b.
If you haven't already done so,
you should verify that Finance::Quote is properly installed.
See instructions here:
http://svn.gnucash.org/docs/help/acct-create.html#Online-price-setup
and:
http://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/FAQ#Q:_Why_did_Finance::Quote_stop_working.3F


Step 1c.
before going into GnuCash and using these symbols,
you can verify simply that the sumbol is correctly recognised
by the Finance::Quote.
Open up a command line prompt to get a shell on your machine.

Type: gnc-fq-dump yahoo symbol
For example: gnc-fq-dump yahoo MF8AAUK.L

This should give some output looking something like this:
Finance::Quote fields Gnucash uses:
    symbol: MF8AAUK.L            <=== required
      date: 01/24/2008           <=== required
  currency: GBP                  <=== required
      last: 2.5168               <=\       
       nav:                      <=== one of these
     price: 2.5168               <=/        
  timezone:                      <=== optional
This confirms that the quote source can find the prices.

Note: Some of the GnuCash documentation recommends a different (but related)
check, using this instead: 
echo '(yahoo "MF8AAUK.L")' | gnc-fq-helper 
This currently produces the following output:
(("MF8AAUK.L" (symbol . "MF8AAUK.L") (gnc:time-no-zone . "2008-01-24 11:00:00") (last . 2.5168) (currency . "GBP")))

Either of these steps can be used to verify that the symbol is correct.


Step 2a.
GnuCash Security Editor (Tools -> Security Editor).
This is where you define any stocks and funds which you wish to track.

Create entries in here for each of your funds.
For example, to add Artemis UK Growth, create a entry as follows:
Full name: Artemis UK Growth
Symbol/abbreviation: MF8AAUK.L  (see above for details of this!)
Type: FUND
CUSIP or other code: GB000258326 (see above)
(I don't think that this is actually used by GnuCash).
Fraction traded: 1/10000

Tick the box labelled Get Online Quotes
Set Type of quote source: Single
and choose Yahoo from the drop-down list.
Timezone: Use local time.

Create entries for each of your Stocks, etc. The 'Type' field is purely
for your own information, but it is useful to distinguish between FUND
for Unit Trusts, etc, and LSE for London Stock Exchange, etc.


Step 2b.
In your account tree inside GnuCash, you need accounts which hold
details of the numbers of each of the stocks and/or funds you hold.
I have mine organised in a tree under
Assets / Investments / [name of organisation] / fund name
This is the same structure which is suggested by GnuCash here:
http://svn.gnucash.org/docs/guide/invest_accounts1.html

The accounts must be marked as 'Account Type' either 'Stock' or 'Mutual Fund'.
Then, on the Security/currency field you can choose one of the securities
you set up earlier.
It is perfectly acceptable to have multiple accounts for the same
stock or fund in different places in this account tree.


Step 2c.
In the Price Editor, click on 'Get Quotes'. Wait a few seconds.
Hopefully, if you then open up any of the rows in this screen,
you should see today's price listed against each stock and/or fund.
Success!


Step 2d.
In GnuCash, go to Reports / Assets & Liabilities / Advanced Portfolio
to see the results...