Importing from Quicken

[Charles Day]

On Sun, Mar 16, 2008 at 7:43 AM, Steve <zephod at cfl.rr.com> wrote:

>
> ---- Charles Day <cedayiv at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > And by all means, if you find anything else in
> > > > your QIF that doesn't import correctly, let us know.
> > >
> > > You say shorts and covers aren't supported by the QIF importer but you
> > > imply that they supported by GC at all? How do I go about entering a
> short
> > > transaction?
> > >
> >
> > That is a good question. I have not tried to enter shorts or covers in
> > GnuCash. Off the top of my head, it seems like you would need a
> "Borrowed
> > Shares:Security Name" liability account for which the underlying
> "commodity"
> > (GnuCash term) is the security being sold short. Transfer shares from
> that
> > account into your portfolio and immediately sell them. That would be the
> > short, leaving you with the cash you got from the sale plus a liability
> of
> > the borrowed shares.  For the cover, buy shares for the liability
> account.
> >
> >
> > > I'm well beyong the import stage now and I'm not going to go back and
> do
> > > it again but if you want me to pull out a short transaction from the
> QIF
> > > file to help with future GC revisions, I can do that.
> > >
> >
> > Yes, if you can pull out a short transaction and a cover, I'll see how
> hard
> > it would be to import them. At the very least I can use them to file a
> > request for enhancement.
> >
> > -Charles
>
> OK, Better late than never, eh?
> Here a part of a QIF file that contains a short and a cover. GC 2.2.3ignored these and put up a waring that it was ignoring some transactions but
> it didn't say which ones.
>

Thanks!

The first two below should have succeeded (the ones with "MargInt" and
"Cash" on their 'N' lines). The short should be easy to add, but the cover
can only be "mostly" imported because the importer can't calculate the
profit. The problem is that unlike your broker, the importer doesn't know
which cover goes with which short. So the importer can't determine what the
profit (or loss) is. This problem currently affects normal sells too: the
importer doesn't know the basis of the shares sold, or even which method of
calculation would be used, so it doesn't compute the capital gain/loss at
all, which puts the books out of balance (Trial Balance report). Definitely
a problem!!!

Anyway, if I make the importer deposit the proceeds from the short sale
immediately into the brokerage account, even though your broker hasn't paid
you yet, then the cover just reduces that balance. That's easy. All that's
missing is the capital gain/loss.

But if the short sale's cash proceeds go into a special "short sales"
account, representing what the broker owes you, then the cover would reduce
that account's balance. So you'd then have to transfer the difference (the
profit or loss) to the brokerage account manually. At least that *might*
remind the user to account for the capital gain/loss.

I'm not sure which way to go. The second seems closer to reality. Do you
have a preference, and what would your argument be for doing it that way as
opposed to the other?

Cheers,
Charles


> !Type:Invst
>
> D4/ 3' 6
>
> NMargInt
>
> CR
>
> U33.24
>
> T33.24
>
> MMARGIN INTEREST CHARGE
>
> ^
>
> D4/ 3' 6
>
> NCash
>
> CR
>
> U0.37
>
> T0.37
>
> MINTEREST CREDIT
>
> ^
>
> D4/ 4' 6
>
> NShtSell
>
> YAMERADA HESS CORP COM
>
> I141.10
>
> Q100
>
> CR
>
> U14,098.57
>
> T14,098.57
>
> MSELL SHORT 100.000 SHARES AHC @ 141.10
>
> O11.43
>
> ^
>
> D4/ 5' 6
>
> NCvrShrt
>
> YAMERADA HESS CORP COM
>
> I148.09
>
> Q100
>
> CR
>
> U14,819.99
>
> T14,819.99
>
> MBUY TO COVER 100.000 SHARES AHC @ 148.09
>
> O10.99
>
> ^
>
> Steve
>