unbalanced balance sheet

[Mark Johnson]

I would not describe this as a change in the value of the commodity 
since I was entering an opening balance.  This occurred whether or not 
the price editor had a price in it.  Changing dates on the balance sheet 
did cause the imbalance to change, but for no reason known to me as I 
had not entered any prices for this stock; only an "Opening Balance" 
purchase to represent the amount she owned at the beginning of the year. 

Additionally, gnucash has been handling my stocks and their changing 
prices since the beginning of the year without unbalancing the balance 
sheet.  It alters the unrealized gains accordingly.

See also my second post wherein I discovered that the QIF importer had 
marked some transactions as being in USD rather than in CAD.  I have no 
USD accounts at all, and have not entered any exchange rates for them.

Also, why were the numbers on the balancing side of this purchase (in 
the Equity:Retained Earnings register) blank?  That seems to me to be a 
separate issue from gnucash's not maintaining changes in commodity 
values properly.

The missing numbers were not equal to the imbalance in the balance 
sheet, but removing the transaction caused the balance sheet to balance 
every time.  I strongly suspect this transaction was one which was being 
marked as using USD for some reason, and the imbalance had to do with an 
exchange rate.  I don't know where gnucash got the exchange rate from 
though.

Mark

Derek Atkins wrote:

>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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>>
>>
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