gbonds

[Jim Evins]

On Tue, 12 Dec 2000, Dave Peticolas wrote:
> Jim Evins writes:
> > Hello,
> > 	I am the author of a program called gbonds, which may be of interest
> > to the gnucash developers.  It is a small savings bond inventory program for
> > GNOME.  More information can be found at
> >
> > 	http://snaught.com/gbonds/
> >
> > Would there be any interest in this functionality in gnucash?
>
> Sure, I think it would be great to have that capability.
> Are you familiar with gnucash at all? I'm not that familiar
> with how bonds work, so I'm not sure how you typically
> represent them in accounting. Would you have an account
> for each bond, with entries representing interest accruals?
>
> dave

My experience with gnucash is currently limited.  I would doubt that you
would want an account for each bond.  Savings bonds are typically bought
through payroll deduction, so inventories of 100's of bonds are not
uncommon.  The way I represent the bonds in gbonds is that every "entry"
in the inventory represents a bond with its current value automagically
updated.  Which is in keeping with the way the treasury quotes bonds.
The treasury does not send you a statement or any other record of
individual accruals.  Instead for a given issue date, series, and
redemption date they quote the redemption value of a reference $25 bond.
These tables are published every 6 months for the upcomming 6 months.
One would have to work backwards from these tables to establish individual
accruals.

-Jim

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Jim Evins       email:  evins@snaught.com
                web:    http://snaught.com/JimsWeb/
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