Advanced portfolio/Brokerage statement

John Ralls jralls at ceridwen.us
Fri Dec 14 20:01:37 EST 2012


On Dec 14, 2012, at 3:56 PM, Jethro Beekman <gnucash at jbeekman.nl> wrote:

> Hi all,
> 
> I've seen numerous requests over the years for a better advanced portfolio
> report, also known as a brokerage statement. It would include other assests such
> as cash and fixed assets. For example
> http://lists.gnucash.org/pipermail/gnucash-user/2008-February/023818.html and
> https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=662118 . I don't think any progress
> has been made, so I thought I'd get started on the improvement myself.
> 
> Am I correct in assuming that no one is working on this? Are there any oddities
> I should look out for while working on this?
> 

No, I don't think anyone is working on this.

Don't call it a "Brokerage Statement", though. That's a document from your broker telling you what they think is in your account and what transactions occurred over a given period (usually a month). It's one sort of source document that you'd use to reconcile your Gnucash accounts.

Some immediately obvious pitfalls:
* There are (at least) 3 ways of accounting for realized gains/losses: Splits inside the sell transaction and splits outside of the transaction using or not using the "lots" mechanism.
* There is no good way to tie dividend or interest income to an investment.
* Some people (incorrectly under US tax law) book commissions and fees as separate splits to an expense account instead of netting them into the cost/proceeds.
* There is no standard way to account for covered options.
* There is no standard way to account for pass-through entities like S-corps and partnerships (limited or otherwise).
* It is for most users a manual operation to update prices. It *can* be scripted, but few Gnucash users have the technical ability to do so.

It's not going to be easy. Searching Gnucash Reports in Bugzilla for "investment" || "portfolio" || "stock" in comments returns 23 open bugs.
Good luck!

Regards,
John Ralls




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