Installing Finance::Quote

[Derek Atkins]

Hi,

"Gill and Geoff" <gillandgeoff at telefonica.net> writes:

> Hi there
>
> I recently downloaded GnuCash and have happily set up Asset & expense
> accounts etc, but am now having problems opening investment accounts because
> Finance::Quote is not installed, ie on the New Security page there's a
> message saying 'Warning: Finance::Quote not properly installed' and only the
> Help & Cancel buttons are available.  Your Tutorial says stock prices can be
> updated manually, but you cant do that until you've set up the stock
> account???

Well, you cannot set stock prices until you create the GnuCash commodity
for the stock, and the easiest way to do THAT is to create a Stock Account.
Note that you do NOT need F::Q in order to account for stocks in GnuCash.
You only need F::Q if you want to download stock prices.  You can always
enter in those prices manually.

But F::Q has nothing to do with your stock accounts.

> I found the instructions for installing Finance::Quote too daunting to
> attempt - I got lost after 'close down GnuCash.'  I'll be quite happy to
> manually update prices if you can tell me how to open the accounts.  If, not
> can you send me a non-computer-literate idiots guide to installing it?

You didn't say what OS/Distro you're running.  However, based on
your printing question below you're on Windows.  So, in order to install
F::Q you need to download and install Active Perl 5.8 and then run
[Start] -> All Programs -> GnuCash -> Install automatic quote grabber

As for how to "open the accounts" -- have you read the documentation?
The chapter on investments:

  http://svn.gnucash.org/docs/guide/chapter8.html

Even goes into the hierarchy you want:

  http://svn.gnucash.org/docs/guide/invest_accounts1.html

And if you can't figure out how to create a new account:

  http://svn.gnucash.org/docs/guide/accts-examples1.html

You just need to create a new account for each stock.  Click "New Account",
select the proper parent, then select type "Stock", then select/create
the stock commodity.

> I've also got a problem with printing reports - I tried printing a trial
> balance, it looked fine on print review, but the hard copy was printed in
> mirror image and reverse order!!

This is a known issue on Windows.  The current best workaround is to
generate a PDF and then you can print that from something like
acroread.

> Any suggestions?
>
> Many thanks Gill Harding

> Please remember to CC this list on all your replies.
> You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.

-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