Managing prices in stock transactions.

[David Carlson]

I will start over and use different language, but I still have issues to
express.

I was exploring ways to transform a copy of an existing stock purchase or
sale of some number of shares of stock FOO into a similar purchase or sale
of stock BAR on a different date and in a different brokerage account in
GnuCash.

My goal is to find a way to do it as efficiently as possible, retaining all
of the transaction structure and at least the structure of the the various
memos, descriptions and notes of each split line.

One method would be to print out a complete copy of a model transaction
onto a sheet of paper, but that uses paper and ink and sometimes it
requires exploration and testing to get all of the information onto one
sheet of paper.

My present method is to start by selecting a model transaction, preferably
in the same brokerage account, but once in a while I want to copy
transaction structure into a different account.  I usually start by
creating new security accounts if necessary, then setting the date of the
transformation copy of the model transaction to the correct date while
looking at an image of a recent confirmation statement from my broker.

I could do the rest in any order but I usually start in the brokerage
account view and highlight and change the security purchase/sale account
split line to the desired security.  This may or may not trigger a pop-up
called Transfer Funds which, as you point out, is incredibly confusing.  It
is not tailored to picking numbers off of a confirmation statement to get
to a correct transaction.

The next intimidating thing is that it displays values in the GnuCash
fractional form which makes no sense to mortals like me, but it suggests
that I need to figure out how to enter a price in that impossible format.

Because this is so confusing, even if there is some way to make this create
a split line showing the correct number of shares and price, it is
overwhelming.  So I just click OK, planning to later switch to the security
account, and correct the number of shares and total amount, and let GnuCash
figure out the price required to develop those values.

In a brokerage account or a general ledger view, the visible numbers are
the most important ones, namely total currency amounts.  There are an
infinite number of different combinations of shares and prices to produce
the same currency amount.  Currently the only way edit or verify those that
I am aware of requires jumping to the security account.  However, it is
necessary commit any changes already made to the transaction or it will be
impossible to edit in the other account view.  Years ago I think that I
wrote a bug report suggesting that there be a warning when jumping out of a
transaction that has a pending edit, and maybe a way to find and get back
to that pending edit.

Maybe that Transfer Funds dialog could be redesigned to facilitate entering
numbers that are picked off of a confirmation statement.  Then the main
concern remaining would be whether GnuCash uses a rounding scheme close
enough to the one that the broker uses.

Going back to one other point in the previous message, I may not understand
where or why the need for currency conversion arises in an account that
only uses one currency.  That is probably another reason that the Transfer
Funds dialog is so confusing.

David C