Stocks, gains/losses, do I really have to calculate them by hand?

[John Ralls]

On Apr 22, 2012, at 7:30 AM, Fredrik Persson wrote:

> Let's assume I have an account with Stock X, where I buy and sell
> frequently. It can be difficult to know exactly what gain, or loss, a trade
> has generated. According to the concepts guide, I need to calculate this by
> hand:
> 
> http://www.gnucash.org/docs/v2.4/C/gnucash-guide/invest-sell1.html#invest-sellexample2
> 
> While this is trivial in the case described in in the link above, it's a
> lot more difficult if you've bought and sold a number of times.
> 
> Do I really have to do this calculation by hand? Or does gnucash have
> support for automatically calculating gains and losses from the
> transactions alone?
> 
> Thanks in advance!

There's the Lots mechanism [1], but it can handle only FIFO, makes a separate transaction for the gains, and the account that it puts the gains splits into is hard-coded with a weird name.  I've used it a few times and gone back to doing it by hand.

Don't forget that gnucash will do calculations for you in numeric fields. There's no need to pull out a calculator.

Regards,
John Ralls

[1] http://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Concept_of_Lots