Stock sales & balance

[Martin Ewing]

Hello brave gnuworld -

I was happily running all my accounts with gnucash, until one day I did 
a Balance Sheet and found myself way out of balance.

This seems to arise from sales of appreciated (or, lately, depreciated) 
stocks or mutual funds.  I was just doing the "obvious" thing of 
recording a purchase of xxx shares at yyy dollars and a sale of -xxx 
shares at zzz dollars.  This balances the number of shares, but 
unbalances the dollars, because the prices are different.

The only "cure" I see is to book a sale of -xxx shares at yyy (i.e., the 
principal value) plus a capital gain/loss income/expense of xxx * 
(zzz-yyy) dollars.  But then the simplicity of recording the sale is 
lost -- i.e., I can't just type in the number of shares & share price 
any more.

What to make of this?  Is gnucash just not automated enough (auto CG 
income)?  Should I just forget about account balance?  Am I missing 
something?  Is this discussed somewhere in the documentation?

I would call this a gnucash bug, because it should not allow me to enter 
an unbalanced transaction without ringing bells loudly.

I am using v 1.6.6.

Thanks for any advice.

Martin