stocks, capital gains/losses, and double entry accounting

[David Hampton]

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On Sat, 2002-06-22 at 12:05, Jim McCormick wrote:
>=20
> Some might say that if I don't like the stock account, then I can just
> use and manage my own asset accounts to my liking.  There are several
> things wrong with this.  First of all, there is currently no good way
> (as far as I know) in Gnucash to have an asset denominated in shares of
> stock without using a stock account.  There definitely should be.  Also,
> one should be able to have changes in stock/currency value be reflected
> in an unrealized gains/losses account.  When the stock/currency is sold,
> one should be able to have the unrealized gains/losses transferred to a
> realized gains/losses account.  There is just no good way (that I'm
> aware of) to do this currently in Gnucash.  Ease of use features (like
> the current "stock" account capabilities) should not be designed in
> parallel with harder to use but more powerful double entry accounting
> techniques.  They should be layered on top, and the user should be able
> to bypass the ease of use feature to get to the underlying more powerful
> capabilities.  This is one of the fundamental ways open source tends to
> differ from proprietary code.  This is a GOOD THING.
>=20
> It is quite possible that I have have some misunderstandings in my
> comments and analysis above.  If so, I'd love someone to clear these up
> for me.
>=20
> This is my $.02 (or maybe $2) worth.

Thanks for your $2 worth.  I am planning to enhance gnucash support for
stocks in the medium-term future, probably this fall, and will add your
comments into the bin of items to consider.  I hadn't thought about
tracking unrealized gain/loss in an account.

David


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