Newbie Qs

[Keith Iosso]

Thank you, Benoit, for your generous response.  
I still don't understand how to represent my financial situation in
Gnucash, however.  If you or anybody else is willing to help, perhaps
you could please respond to the interspersed questions below.  

Thanks Again,
Keith

--snip-- 
> On Thursday 18 March 2004 14:18, Keith Iosso wrote:
> > Q7. What is the point of forcing the commodity setting for all stock
> > accounts?
> 
> There is no point in a stock account without a commodity in gnuCash, as they 
> are denominated in the quantity of the commodity you own (a constant unless 
> you do some operation on it), not their value (which is normally not constant 
> at all).

OK, I think I get the theory.  I want some help in how to apply it to my
reality.  I have 3 stock portfolio accounts.  One holds various stocks
and cash.  The other two hold various stocks and are linked to cash
accounts.  
As far as I understand it, a gnucash stock account seems to be used to
represent 3 different things:  
1. a portfolio account that has various stocks and also holds cash, 
2. a portfolio account with stocks that doesn't hold cash and 
3. an account that I need to create for each stock each portfolio holds
that only holds a single type of stock.  

For 1. above, I imagine the commodity would be cash, but I have been
unable to set up a stock account that uses currency as a commodity
type.  
Specifically, when I used the starting druid, it created a stock account
which shows a value in the Total column of the Accounts view of $0.00. 
If I right-click->edit account, it shows a commodity of "USD (US
Dollar)".  If I push the "Select" button at the end of the Commodity
field, I see a type of "AMEX" and Currency/security of "USD (US
Dollar)".  I haven't been able to reproduce this.  
I can create a stock account->Commodity->Select->New such that I have a
type of "AMEX", Currency/security of "USD (US Dollar)" and the Commodity
shows "USD (US Dollar)" (all just like the druid, as far as I can see). 
The total in the accounts view shows as "0 USD" instead of the "$0.00"
of the druid-created account.  I fear that this 0 USD commodity will not
be able to easily combine with other commodities that list as $0.00.  

For 2. above, the commodity field seems irrelevent to me, and I wonder
how to reconcile that with your statement that "There is no point in a
stock account without a commodity in gnuCash".  However, if I could use
currency, that would be fine.  As in the above paragraph, I have not
been able to do that.  

For 3. above, the system works fine.  I can create a new account for
each type of stock I hold in each portfolio account and a new commodity
for each type of stock.  

> > Q9. If the stock account that I have in the real world has cash
> > balances, can I use it as the statements arrive for me or do I need to
> > create an extra bank account to hold the cash?
> 
> You normally don't need a separate account.
> - -- 
If I can't represent currency as the commodity in a stock account as
described above, how would that work?