Handling Initial Stock Holdings

[David T.]

Shout Hallelujah! I have a question about how to use GnuCash, and accounting
(as opposed to railing annoyingly about how I could get GC to install and run
on my IntelMac...).

I imported my Quicken files, and am getting my brain around how to do stuff the
GC way. My immediate question has to do with setting up stock holdings. Let's
say that on the starting day of my GnuCash existence, I own 100 shares of XYZ
Widget company, with a value of $500. I think that I should create a
transaction from Equity into my Brokerage account of 100 XYZ shares, value
$5/share. But if this is the case, how do I track capital gains? If I bought
the shares for $1 a share, there's nothing in the record to show the cost
basis...

I'm asking because when I imported my Quicken file, I found that Quicken had
retained earlier transactions in my stock accounts that had to do with the
addition or subtraction of shares (such as reinvested dividends). In that
Quicken file, I had performed a year-end copy at some point in the past;
Quicken retained those earlier transactions, but somehow hid them. Now when I
import the QIF file, these hidden records turn up, with disastrous results on
the accuracy of my overall accounts. 

So, I am figuring that I will have to reset my stock accounts at an arbitrary
date, and move forward from there. Unless someone has a better idea...

David

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