Book clsoing [was: Re: Addition of HBCI support, Maturity of 1.7-branch, next stable release time frame?

[Michael T. Garrison Stuber]

--On Wednesday, April 17, 2002 02:12:38 PM -0400 Derek Atkins 
<warlord@MIT.EDU> wrote:
> Every time you buy shares (widgets, inventory, whatever) you create a
> new lot.  As you sell your shares, you tie your sales into specific
> lots.  Due to the one-lot-per-Split limitation, if you sell from
> multiple lots in one Transaction then you wind up requiring multiple
> Splits in the Transaction, one Split per lot.
>
> For example:
>
>         Date    Desc    Lot     Buy     Sell    Price   Value
>         1/1/01  XCORP   187     500             $10.00  $5000.00
>         2/1/01  XCORP   188     500             $12.00  $6000.00
>         1/1/02  XCORP   187             250     $20.00  $5000.00
>         1/1/02  XCORP   188             250     $20.00  $5000.00
>         2/1/02  XCORP   187             200     $19.00  $3800.00
>
> There are three Transacations, but four Splits into the XCORP Stock
> Account.  What this means is that on 1/1/01 you buy 500 shares at $10;
> on 2/1/01 you buy 500 shares at $12.  You have two lots, one for each
> purchase.  Then on 1/1/02 you sell 500 shares at $20, selling 250 from
> the first lot and 250 from the second lot.  Finally on 2/1/02 you sell
> another 200 shares from lot 187 at $19.
>
> The way a "lot" is like an Account is when you look at it from the LOT
> View:
>
>         Lot 187:
>         Date    Buy     Sell    Price   Balance
>         1/1/01  500             $10     500
>         1/1/02          250     $20     250
>         2/1/02          200     $19      50
>
>         Lot 188:
>         2/1/01  500             $12     500
>         1/1/02          250     $20     250
>
> As you can see, the lots are acting a lot like accounts in terms of
> keeping a balance of the number of widgets.  When the balance reaches
> zero, the lot has been completely sold and you no longer need to keep
> the information around.  If the balance is non-zero, then you need to
> keep the balance, purchase-date, and purchase-price around for the
> lot-basis.

Thanks.  This was very helpful -- assuming of course you and Linas are on 
the same page.  Having to put in an extra split for a sale across lots is a 
little counterintuitive, but I can't think of another way to do it which 
doesn't have really ugly implications.