Retained Earnings Question

[John Ralls]

Please address your questions about Gnucash to the Gnucash Users list, not to individual developers. I've CC'd the list in this reply for your convenience; please use "Reply All" or "Reply List" so that the list is CC'd. Please also when you have a new question originate a new email rather than replying to an older one so that the mail archivers know to start a new thread.

Retained earnings is an equity account for businesses. Unless you're running an investment company, your profits from stock trading are a special form of income, capital gains. 

Most of the learning curve in Gnucash is, IMO, learning how to do accounting. If you find that the Tutorials and Concepts Guide insufficient, consider getting an introductory accounting textbook or taking a introductory accounting course. Not only will a solid understanding of accounting make it much easier to use Gnucash, it will also make you a much better investor.

Regards,
John Ralls

On Aug 11, 2012, at 9:21 PM, Paul Conrady <paulc at mydurango.net> wrote:

> John,
> I am hoping you can answer another question for me. How would you set up the
> transaction to record Retained Earnings? For example, let's say I invested
> $4000 in a mutual fund on January 1 and then close the account, withdrawing
> a total sum of $4,100 on December 31. Would you consider $100 to be Retained
> Earnings or $4,100? How would the two transactions look?
> BTW, I have been working with GnuCash for 2 months. The more I use it, the
> more I like it. The learning curve was a steep one! I am amazed how easy it
> is to spot an error, imbalance or omission in GnuCash. I once thought my
> records in Quicken were fairly accurate but after importing the Quicken data
> into GnuCash, the holes in my data became obvious.
> Thanks much for your help,
> Paul Conrady
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: John Ralls [mailto:jralls at ceridwen.us] 
> Sent: Sunday, July 01, 2012 3:25 AM
> To: Paul Conrady
> Cc: gnucash-user at lists.gnucash.org
> Subject: Re: GnuCash recommendation
> 
> 
> On Jul 1, 2012, at 6:17 AM, Paul Conrady wrote:
> 
>> Hello to all,
>> 
>> I am running GnuCash 2.2.9 using Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx on an old Pentium
> 3
>> laptop (256 Mb RAM). I would like to upgrade to GnuCash 2.4.10 but am
> unsure
>> if my current setup will handle the giant step. Any expert advice is
>> welcome.
>> 
>> Many thanks to the Ubuntu community for all the great software and
> support,
> 
> 2.4 doesn't use any more resources than did 2.2, so you should have no
> problems.
> 
> Regards,
> John Ralls
>