Stock Price / Exchange Rates Used while Closing Book

[David Carlson]

On 4/16/2011 9:58 AM, David T. wrote:
>
> The Close Book function in Gnucash closes the books on expense and income accounts only. It does nothing with unrealized gains, which from an accounting perspective, don't exist.
>
> David
>
Some of us may be wondering why GnuCash (among others) can report
unrealized gains if they do not exist.  Truth be told, they do exist,
but they represent someone's estimate of what the asset could be sold
for.  In the stock market, this is represented by the "Bid" price. 
Accountants usually (and legally) ignore unrealized gains because they
do not want to pay tax on them.

The rest of us are fools, thinking that these imaginary gains can be
converted into realized gains and then we could retire in luxury on some
South Seas island, perhaps Tahiti.  See you there in a few years.

David L Carlson
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