Record a sale of stock

Daniel Hannum dhannum at magicdan.net
Sun Jun 8 16:17:47 CDT 2003


Is there any truly correct way to record a security sale as Gnucash is 
now? It seems that "stock" accounts are essentially useless, and I doubt 
that, given that it is widely used

Fabien COELHO wrote:

>>However, it seems to be lacking in one area.  Consider buying and
>>selling stock. I buy $100 of stock, so I transfer $100 from my bank
>>account into a stock account that is using a particular commodity (that
>>I defined). Now suppose that the price of that commodity increases so
>>that my investment is now worth $200. I can now sell the stock by
>>transferring $200 out of that stock account back into my bank account.
>>And just like that, my books are no longer balanced. Gnucash has allowed
>>me to increase my assets by $100 without recording any income.
>>    
>>
>
>This is a long-standing issue raised quite often.
>
>My understanding is that
>
>(1) The report generation should take care of the accounting of
>commodities related incomes/losses, but it lacks some information on how
>to do it, information that should be provided by a "lot" management (a lot
>is a group of related transactions on a given commodity, you tell that the
>one you sold are those you bought at this date). I think this is still
>under developpement.
>
>(2) Another way of doing it is to keep separate accounts for the financial
>value and the count of commodities, but this is not the way the accounting
>management of gnucash is designed.
>
>So the answer is "wait and hope";-)
>
>  
>




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