Stock gains/losses cause balance sheet imbalance

[Nikunj Bansal]

Charles,

Thanks for the response.
This is exactly where I am getting stuck in fact. I am
trying to strictly follow the double accounting. In
fact, my balance sheet is almost perfectly matched...
except that there is some flaw in the way I am doing
the stock trades. The balance sheet is off by exactly
the amount I lost in stock trades during the year.

This is how I am doing it. When I bought stock X, I
show the money coming from cash as the double entry.
Hence cash gets reduced by $1000 and when I sold those
stocks, say for $900... I do the reverse. The cash now
increases by $900 and stock numbers fall back to 0.
Now.. suddenly my assets (cash) has fallen by $100 but
there is no corresponding Income/Expense to reflect
this and hence the balance sheet is off. I have been
struggling with how to do this correctly.

Can u suggest in more detail.

Thanks
Nikunj.

--- "Charles M. Gajan" <charlesgajan@earthlink.net>
wrote:
> On Sat, 2002-01-05 at 07:27, Nikunj Bansal wrote:
> > Hi everyone,
> > 
> > I have broken my head obver this one for sometime
> now
> > and I am not able to figure this out myself. Maybe
> > someone here can help.
> > 
> > Ok, say, I bought $1000 of stock X and few days
> later
> > sold them at $900, taking a $100 loss, or at $1100
> > taking a $100 profit. How would I show this in
> gnucash
> > so that the Balance sheet remains balanced i.e.
> Assets
> > = Equity + Profits + Liability?
> 
> This is double entry accounting.  If you enter a
> gain or loss in a stock
> or mutual fund account, you need to enter a
> corresponding entry in
> another account.  In this case I use (naming
> convention optional) an
> income account named Long Term Capital Gains and
> Short Term Capital
> Gains.  I break it out into seperate accounts for US
> tax purposes.
> I hope this helps.
> 
> > 
> > As of now the way my accounts are arranged,
> everything
> > balances out but my Balance sheet is imbalanced
> > exactly by the amount of money that I lost (sadly
> :-()
> > on stock trades during the year.
> > 
> > All help will be appreciated.
> > 
> > Thanks
> > Nikunj.
> > 
> > 
> > __________________________________________________
> > Do You Yahoo!?
> > Send FREE video emails in Yahoo! Mail!
> > http://promo.yahoo.com/videomail/
> > _______________________________________________
> > gnucash-user mailing list
> > gnucash-user@lists.gnumatic.com
> >
>
http://www.gnumatic.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user
> 
> 


__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Send FREE video emails in Yahoo! Mail!
http://promo.yahoo.com/videomail/