Investments

[FireFly]

I've tried to keep up with where you are, so my 2 cents, for what it's worth.

1. You need an "cash" account that money gets transferred into before buying any funds. In my setup that account is an asset account, that gets money from my paychecks (income) or any dividends (also income)
2. Personally I have an asset account at the same level to hold all the funds, it's tagged as a placeholder (it doesn't have any transactions in it)
3. Each fund that you purchase will be an account (for me under that placeholder account mentioned in 2) account type on that one is Mutual Fund (could be stock I would assume)
4. Flow of money is

Income account -> Cash Account -> Fund account (to buy funds)

For dividends it's in essence the same

Income account -> Cash Account -> Fund account 

Why the cash account for dividends? Because otherwise you'll find the advanced portfolio giving you some screwy numbers, it doesn't like you buying things straight out of income accounts.

Dividends are income, whether they are/need to be reported to the tax-man is a separate question, but they are income. Perhaps have a high level placeholder account on income called taxable and another called non-taxable, or, flag each account as such. I don't use the tax features of GNUCash so can't comment on how easy this is to do, depending on who is the user of the data depends on how much you need to worry about this.

Dividends will get bigger, same as interest, or any other income, through the year(s) you "gain" interest/dividends/pay (etc). Personally I zero those accounts at year end to equity, re-aligning my base equity (using the close-books feature), you choice on whether you do this or not.

- James Duerr

E-mail: FireFlys_98 at yahoo.com
---------------------
Discover a lost art - play Marbles. May 2004
www.marillion.com