Dividend transaction results in unbalanced balance sheet

Jim Muchow jmuchow at gmail.com
Fri Apr 14 11:13:08 EDT 2006


On 4/14/06, Derek Atkins <warlord at mit.edu> wrote:
> What do you mean that "GnUCash will prevent this?  Oh, because GnuCash thinks
> the transaction is imbalanced?

In a sense. That extra penny (or two) has to come from somewhere
or occasionally go to somewhere. It would certainly be possible to
create some catch-all accounts to handle these small inconsistencies,
but that seemed dumb. I reasonsed that a small, up to perhaps a cent,
difference from the "true" price would not be significant in any
tax-related sense. For me anyway.

>  I have to wonder:  how many sig digits do
> you have assigned for this particular commodity?

Depends on the commodity. Some dividend reinvestment plans that
I participate in maintain share counts and prices out to the 1/10000
(0.0001), some only out to the 1/1000. I have been on a 401k plan that
went out to the 1/1000000 (0.000001).

> -derek
>
> Quoting Jim Muchow <jmuchow at gmail.com>:
>
> > This will happen especially with mutual fund/stock re-investments.
> >
> > I don't think it's an error - rounding or otherwise. I've seen it in
> > both GnuCash and Q*****n. With the latter, I used create penny
> > or two commisions (sometimes even negative ones). GnuCash
> > sort of prevents this so now I adjust the price of the offending object
> > to handle this situation. The fact is that penny ot two will cause a very
> > small (ie, insignificant tax-wise) price change.
> >
> > Just my two cents. Heh.
> >
> > On 4/14/06, Derek Atkins <warlord at mit.edu> wrote:
> >> It certainly sounds like a rounding "error", but not necessarily in
> >> the math routines.  More likely the rounding in the report is
> >> different than the rounding in the Chart of Accounts..
> >>
> >> What version of GnuCash?
> >>
> >> -derek
> >>
> >> Quoting John Schoffstall <john.schoffstall at pobox.com>:
> >>
> >> > This is odd.
> >> >
> >> > My 403(b) received three dividends on March 22, and three lots of its
> >> > mutual fund were purchased. Dividend was credited to
> >> > Income:Dividends. Since the purchase, my balance sheet has been off
> >> > by penny.
> >> >
> >> > I've tracked down the offending transaction to that
> >> > dividend/reinvestment. If I take those transactions out, the balance
> >> > sheet balances. If not, it doesn't. I've tried changing the balance
> >> > sheet's Options -> 'Price Source', but no dice. I've tried lumping
> >> > the three dividends together into one transaction, but the same thing
> >> > happens, off by a penny. I've deleted the transactions and reentered
> >> > them several times. Same thing happens. (I.e., it's not a typo.) Each
> >> > individual dividend reinvestment transaction is balanced.
> >> >
> >> > The penny off balance is annoying. Given the tiny size, maybe this is
> >> > rounding error in the math routines?
> >> >
> >> > Anyone else seen this? Any ideas for a fix?
> >> >
> >> > == John
> >> > _______________________________________________
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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
> >>
> >> _______________________________________________
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> >> https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user
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> >>
> >
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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
>
>



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