unbalanced balance sheet

[Derek Atkins]

Known issue.

The gnucash 1.8 (and 1.6) balance sheets do not properly handle
changes in the value of commodities.

-derek

Mark Johnson <mrj001 at shaw.ca> writes:

> I just imported some of my wife's Quicken 98 data into gnucash.  This 
> gnucash file already had my data in it.  Before I started, the balance 
> sheet was balanced.
>
> After I finished, the balance sheet was unbalanced.  I was able to track 
> this down to a single transaction.  It is in my wife's share purchase 
> plan.  I set this up with an account hierarchy like this:
> Asset (type asset)
> - Stephanie (type asset)
>   *SPP (type Bank)
>      ~CompanyShares (Type Stock)
>
> The SPP accounts holds cash deducted from her paycheck.  Once we receive 
> statements telling us how many shares were purchased, we enter buy 
> transactions to convert them into shares in the CompanyShares account.
>
> Naturally, I wanted to enter an Opening Balance transaction in the 
> CompanyShares account.  The balancing account was Equity:Retained 
> Earnings.  However, whenever I enter this single transaction, the 
> balance sheet becomes unbalanced.  If I delete the transaction, the 
> account is once again balanced.  If I re-enter the transaction, the 
> imbalance re-appears.  I tried this several times.  (Not sure why I 
> thought that would make a difference. :-)
>
> I tried deleting the CompanyShares account and the commodity for the 
> shares.  I re-entered them, and re-entered an Opening Balance 
> transaction.  The balance sheet was still unbalanced.
>
> Out of curiousity, I decided to "Jump" to the other side of this 
> transaction to see what it looked like in Equity:Retained Earnings.  To 
> my surprise, the transaction was there, but all amounts were blank!
>
> Once again, I deleted the transaction.  Once again, the balance sheet 
> was balanced.  This time, I decided to enter it from the Equity:Retained 
> Earnings register.  Gnucash popped up a dialog noting that the 
> commodities for the two accounts were different and asking for an 
> exchange rate (or number of shares purchased).  I opted to enter the 
> number of shares purchased rather than the exchange rate.
>
> Now, there is no problem.  Both ends of the transaction have amounts.  
> The balance sheet balances.
>
> Clearly, there is some sort of bug here.  Is this one anyone else has 
> encountered?  If not, I will enter a report.
>
> I am using gnucash 1.8.11 on Slackware 10.0.
>
> Mark
>
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>

-- 
       Derek Atkins, SB '93 MIT EE, SM '95 MIT Media Laboratory
       Member, MIT Student Information Processing Board  (SIPB)
       URL: http://web.mit.edu/warlord/    PP-ASEL-IA     N1NWH
       warlord at MIT.EDU                        PGP key available