Problem Creating Stock Account

[Fred Bone]

On 22 Jun 2007 at 19:46, John Robinson said:

> Hello,
> I'm new to gnucash, only coming onboard since the port to Windows. I'm
> using 
> version 2.1.4. I'm experiencing a problem creating a stock account
> manually. 
> I have been practicing, using accounts created by the New Account
> Hierarchy 
> druid; however, I want a customized accounts tree. I have no need of the
> Brokerage account, so have created an 'Investments' account under
> Assets. I 
> then attempt to create a stock subaccount called 'Shareholdings',
> similar ro 
> the 'Stock' account created by the druid.
> 
> The problem arises in that I am always asked to enter a commodity, even
> though it is just a placeholder for individual stock accounts beneath
> it. I 
> have tried mimicking the settings of the 'Stock' account created by the
> druid, but with no success. The druid-created 'Stock' has a 
> security/currency of GBP, yet I cannot duplicate this manually.
> 
> What am I doing wrong?

You're not - it is. Either it should be possible to select a "Currency" 
for a placeholder Stock account - in which case it should let you do so - 
or it should not - in which case the Druid's setup file is wrong.

A work-round I used is to set the placeholder account up as account-type 
"Bank", which lets you use a Currency (indeed, won't let you do 
otherwise). This does prevent the sub-accounts defaulting to type 
"Stock", which is a pain (as you have to set each one individually), but 
it does what you want.

Alternatively, you could let it create a "Brokerage" account and then 
edit the sub-accounts to put them where you want in your hierarchy (and 
delete the stuff you don't want). However, this limits you to the one 
umbrella "Stock" account (since that's what the Druid creates). OTOH, it 
does create the related Income accounts, which you probably will want 
(assuming at least some of your shares generate dividends!)

As a last resort, you could fiddle with the setup file the druid uses - 
acctchrt_brokerage.gnucase_xea in the gnucase\share\gnucash\accounts\C 
directory.

With v2.1.3 it was possible to type-in "ISO4217" in the "Select Security" 
dialog, but that seems to have been fixed in 2.1.4.