Stock sales & balance

[Martin Ewing]

Conrad,

Thanks for the enlightenment...

Conrad Canterford wrote:
> On Fri, 2003-01-31 at 01:49, Martin Ewing wrote:
> 
... (stuff about cash unbalanced when shares are sold)

> 
> 
> No, it isn't automated, and I don't believe its documented either. We've
> had a discussion on this subject fairly recently, but I don't know that
> any solution came out of it. This unfortunately applies for both 1.6
> versions and the imminent 1.8.
> 

I vote for accounting to keep track of money, first and foremost.  If 
the program can also do share accounting, so much the better, but 
transactions should always balance in cash.  The default mode should 
flag or prohibit unbalanced transactions, IMO. (whether cash or shares!) 
Otherwise it's not double entry bookkeeping.

> 
>>I would call this a gnucash bug, because it should not allow me to enter 
>>an unbalanced transaction without ringing bells loudly.
> 
> 
> Unfortunately, while some developers agree with you, others feel that
> the transaction *is* balanced because its recording shares not money.
> 

Maybe a "strict financial" switch would help, as an option.  Also, a 
"check for balance" function could find aberrent transactions. That 
would have helped me.

A paragraph on this subject in the documentation would help a lot, even 
just to say that the situation is confused. :-)

Cheers,
Martin