Capital Gains Input Question

[John Ralls]

On Dec 11, 2010, at 4:15 PM, David T. wrote:

> 
> 
> --- On Sat, 12/11/10, Fred Bone <Fred.Bone at dial.pipex.com> wrote:
> 
>> From: Fred Bone <Fred.Bone at dial.pipex.com>
>> Subject: Re: Capital Gains Input Question
>> To: "David T." <sunfish62 at yahoo.com>
>> Cc: gnucash-user at gnucash.org
>> Date: Saturday, December 11, 2010, 3:08 PM
>> On 11 December 2010 at 14:39, David
>> T. said:
>> 
>>> I have been trying to enter capital gains/loss in
>> 2.3.17 on a Mac, and I
>>> want to understand an interface gotcha. Specifically,
>> it it Extremely
>>> Confusing that when you want to enter the split lines
>> for capital gains in
>>> a Stock or Mutual Fund account, you can't enter the
>> dollar figure for
>>> capital gain directly in the transaction register for
>> the stock. If you
>>> try to do this, Gnucash requires **and will
>> automatically assign** a
>>> number of shares and a per share price--an action that
>> is guaranteed to
>>> throw your portfolio off.
>> 
>> Wrong. This is explained, quite well though perhaps not
>> perfectly, in the 
> 
> Ah, well, MY problem was that I looked at Chapter 9--you know, that one that is titled "Capital Gains"?
> 
>> "Tutorial and Concepts Guide", under "Selling shares". I
>> recommend 
>> reading it.
> 
> This, I see now, is in Chapter 8, which is called Investments in the main index.
> 
>> 
>>> However, Gnucash allows these splits to exist--it just
>> requires you to
>>> enter the split information from a different register.
>> It seems to me that
>>> either you should be allowed to enter a cash split
>> line in a register--or
>>> not. This "You can't do it here, but you might be able
>> to do it from over
>>> there" interface is very very very very confusing. 
>> 
>> It might be, if that were true, but it isn't.
> 
> Um, the example in 8.7.1 clearly shows a line (the 1600.00 buy line below) with 0 shares and 0 price. In MY copy of Gnucash (2.3.17 on Mac OS X), I cannot do this in the SYMBOL register. Every time I attempt to do this and tab or enter off the split, the dollar amount is "helpfully" removed from the line and a new line is added to the transaction for Imbalance-USD.
> 
> If, instead I simply enter 1600 (the dollar amount) in the buy column of this line, Gnucash "helpfully" provides 1600 shares priced at 1 each.
> 
> As I stated originally, this is not good.
> 
> I will check to see whether this is the same in stable; if this is new behavior in 2.3.17, then hooray! I've found my first bug in the development release!
> 
> Account	                Shares	Price	Buy	Sell
> Assets:Bank	 	 	3525.00	 
> Assets:Stock:SYMBOL	-100	36.00	 	3600.00
> Assets:Stock:SYMBOL	0	0	1600.00	 
> Income:Capital Gains	 	 	 	1600.00
> Expenses:Commissions	 	 	75.00	 
> 

The trick is to delete the value in the price column rather than to zero it, and to make sure to tab or mouse (don't use "Enter/Return" !) to the balancing split and also delete the price there.

No, it's not new behavior.
No, I don't know how to fix it.

Regards,
John Ralls