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

[Derek Atkins]

"Michael T. Garrison Stuber" <garrisonstuber@bellsouth.net> writes:

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

Nope, that's a Transaction.  A Transaction contains at least two
Splits.  A Split is _part_ of a Transaction, and ties the Transaction
to a particular Account. 

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

You're a little confused.  Basically you would have a Transaction
that looks like:


        Account         Buy     Sell    Price   Value
        Stock:XCORP             250     $20     $5000           (lot #1)
        Stock:XCORP             250     $20     $5000           (lot #2)
        Cash            10000           $1      $10000

This Transaction has three Splits; when you view the account Stock:XCORP
there are two ways to view it:

        1) with lots, in which case you'd see the two different splits
           pointing to the individual lots, or
        2) without lots, in which case the splits would be "combined"

-derek

-- 
       Derek Atkins, SB '93 MIT EE, SM '95 MIT Media Laboratory
       Member, MIT Student Information Processing Board  (SIPB)
       URL: http://web.mit.edu/warlord/    PP-ASEL-IA     N1NWH
       warlord@MIT.EDU                        PGP key available