Reecording stock buys

[Richard]

On Tue, 2003-04-22 at 10:47, Derek Atkins wrote:

> 
> > When buying a stock, how do I record it the purchase and the commission?
> > I tried making the appropriate entries under Shares and price, but
> > gnucash likes to calculate the result then replace shares with that
> > result and the price with "1". It's just weird. Do I use a split
> > transaction to record the commission? 
> 
> This is because you failed to set the commodity in the stock account.
> In the account tree window, select the stock account, then click on
> the "Edit" button.  You'll see an entry for the account commodity.
> You need to "Select" that item and create a commodity for each stock
> (and set the commodity for each stock account).

Ah! And here's the link between commodity editor and accounts. Got it.

> 
> To answer your final question: yes, you do use a split transaction to
> record the commission.


So, I enter a new transaction for this stock and split it. I select
"Buy" as the action, no memo, use the Brokerage account as the Account
(that, presumably, is where the cash to buy stocks is coming from, but
maybe I should have a "cash" subaccount under the brokerage account?). I
can put in the number of shares and the price per share. On the next
split line the action is "Fee", no memo. Account is the same.I guess I'm
buying the commission (when I go back to edit this, the Share and Price
fields aren't available). 

Now I have an unbalanced transaction. On the final split line the total
transaction cost is listed, but what account does this go to? I put in
the Brokerage account (the same as the other two lines). And to balance
it, this must be a Sell. I guess. Confusion reigns.  

So I have a three-line split. The first has the buy, the second the Fee.
The third line doesn't have an action but does show the total cost of
the transaction as a Sell. It's weird.

And apparently wrong because when I look at the register for the
brokerage, I find two transactions. One shows a withdrawal for the total
transaction amount. Then next shows a deposit of my commission fee.
(Both are split transactions and refer back to the same transaction
above). Where did I go wrong?


I think that I need to go back to accounting 101. Next lesson: recording
dividends.