need help setting up transactions for sale of house

[Derek Atkins]

I realized I missed a part of your question in the first response I
sent.  More inline...

Quoting J E <joele54 at yahoo.com>:

> I am trying to set up the accounting for the sale of a house
> in GnuCash.  I have already received the payment in my checking
> account, but I want to account for commisions/fees and also show
> the capital gain in a split transaction, but am unsure of how to
> do this.
>
> The numbers are:
> Checking acct. Deposit: $375000
> Sold (2007):            $400000
> Bought (1987):          $150000
> Commissions/fees:       $ 25000
> Net capital gain:       $225000
>
> I have tried doing a split transaction, but always wind up with
> an Orphan-USD, and totally confused.

Right, you don't need the "Bought" split here.  Also be sure you
set up the correct splits on the correct sides of the transaction
(debits and credits).  There's an example in the documentation
under the "Capital Gains" section that should show you what you need
to do.

> I have tried setting up:
>
> Assets:Fixed:House:Cost        $150000 (Equity:Opening Balances)
>
> to show the initial purchase, but the balance winds up being:
>
> - $150000.  Any help would be greatly appreciated.

This means you entered the transaction backwards, or you did it
incorrectly.

> TIA.
> J. Estes

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-derek

-- 
       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