Question on Investments

[Mike Roberts]

I think this particular function needs some work.  I usually use it, but
only as a starting point.  If I have multiple purchases, I don't use it at
all, because it will make a separate lot for each purchase.  I usually want
a single CG entry for a single sale.  I don't fault GC for separating a
single sale for multiple purchases as that is necessary when you have both
short term and long term purchases.

My biggest problem is that it does not account for purchase and sales
commissions.  I also don't care for the way it creates the accounts.  I
prefer that the gain or loss go into a Income:Cap gain(long):MyAccount to
better match with my 1099s at tax time and separate taxable transactions
with IRA transactions.  A Top Level Account called Orphaned Gains-USD is not
much help.  Lastly, though I normally use FIFO, it would be nice to have a
choice.

My normal procedure after selling a stock is to create the capital gain
entry as a starting point using View Lots and Scrub.  I then review the
purchase and sale data and edit the Scrub created entry to reflect
commissions and accounts.  At any rate, once you have seen a CG entry, it is
pretty easy to set up another.

I have heard about the wrong answer situation, but I have not run into it.

Mike

-----Original Message-----
From: gnucash-user-bounces+mike=roberts-engineering.com at gnucash.org
[mailto:gnucash-user-bounces+mike=roberts-engineering.com at gnucash.org] On
Behalf Of Mike C.
Sent: 08/22/2011 1:02 PM
To: JWatYahooGroups
Cc: gnucash-user at gnucash.org
Subject: Re: Question on Investments

After you open an account you can go to Actions>View Lots and then scrub
account to show the lots and it will calculate profit/loss based on
FIFO.  Unfortunately , there are some conditions when it calculates the
wrong answer and I haven't figured out what these conditions are.  Worse
yet, there is no indication when it has provided the wrong answer.  Last
year at tax season I used an Excel spreadsheet to figure profit/loss and
in 90% of the cases GnuCash had calculated the correct answer.  I hope
someone can define the conditions or sequence of steps that cause the
wrong answer to be calculated.  I think it is related to scrubbing the
account more than once but that does not seem to be the entire answer.
Mike

On 8/22/2011 12:22 PM, JWatYahooGroups wrote:
> Folks -
>
> I've been quite happy with GnuCash for my personal banking needs, and
> am now investigating it's use for my stock and mutual fund
> investments. I've read through the guide several times, and played
> with test data some, but don't see an answer to a couple of questions
> I have:
>
> Question 1:
> I do not buy or sell stock or fund shares very often, but when I do, I
> often "buy more" or "sell some" of what I already have, so I'd like to
> keep track of each "lot" purchased and its price so that when sold the
> capital gains tax can be calculated.  For occasional transactions, I
> suppose I can keep separate stock accounts for each purchase (100
> shares in "IBM-2010, and 100 shares in "IBM-2011" ).  But is there a
> better way using just one "IBM" stock account?
>
> Question 2:
> What about mutual fund reinvestments?  Here, there is a small but
> separate purchase (at a different price) of a fund's shares each
> month. I have several such funds, for several years history ...
> separate accounts for each lot surely will not be convenient!
>
> Perhaps I'm missing something on how (or if) GnuCash can keep track of
> separate purchase dates/prices for a single commodity?
>
> Thanks in advance,
>
> Jim W
>
>
>
>
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