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

Linas Vepstas linas@linas.org
Wed, 17 Apr 2002 20:18:26 -0500


On Wed, Apr 17, 2002 at 09:05:21PM -0400, Michael T. Garrison Stuber was heard to remark:
> --On Wednesday, April 17, 2002 08:57:23 PM -0400 Derek Atkins 
> <warlord@MIT.EDU> wrote:
> >I imagine that in some views the "extra split" would be combined
> >together and leave you with just the total split value.  So in the
> >main view you'd only see one Split for 500 shares at $20, unless you
> >looked at the lot view, in which case you'd see it split.
> 
> Okay, I fully admit that I hack around (not in) GNUCash for the most part 
> -- that is, I'm largely interested in the adding to the reports and things 
> on the edges -- but does the engine actually support that?  Perhaps I 
> misunderstood Linas's comments about a split being assigned to one lot and 
> one lot only.  

The engine does not yet support lots :-)

> I understood a split to be a single atomic financial 
> transaction between two or more accounts.

Yes..

>  If I understand Linas correctly 
> (big if), combining things in certain views would entail either (a) 
> violating the one lot per split rule, or (b) having some sort of metadata 
> to know what to combine, or (c) the GUI making a best guess about combining 
> things based on some set of embedded rules.  (I suppose option C could work 
> like the different register views, but it seems kind of scary to me that 
> the register would combine splits) 

That's right. I'd prefer (b).  

But if I think about it, maybe there really aren't that many places in
the gui where we'd need to automagically recombine splits. Anyone
dealing with stocks would lready be fairly used to the idea of multiple
lots, and it could/.would have advantages at tax time ...

The only place where it would suck would be mutual funds with automatica
dividend reinvestment.  Every month, you'd get a lot consisting of
1.36784 shares... yuck.


>  Of course, I may not really appreciate 
> what a split is, or how they work.  Am I bent?

No, I thnk you've got it.


-- 
pub  1024D/01045933 2001-02-01 Linas Vepstas (Labas!) <linas@linas.org>
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