Chapter 8 - investment accounts

[Fred Bone]

On 3 November 2013 at 7:55, Jamestk said:

> I spent some of the afternoon on my trial account entering data similar to
> the 8.5 tutorial. It looks as though I may have solved (or at least
> partially) one of the issues, namely the 'orphaned imbalance' part of the
> entry.
> 
> I have substituted the 'imbalance' category with the brokers account
> representing the actual purchase. This isn't strictly accurate as we have
> usually several days between actual purchase and subsequently paying for
> the stock. This is some cases maybe up to a month (T28).

I use a subaccount of Assets:Investments:<broker>:Cash, which I named 
"Pending settlement", to deal with this issue. It is slightly 
inconvenient to have to enter a second txn, but does let me keep the 
A:I:<>:Cash account in line with what I see on the broker's website. And 
by entering the two txns at the same time, I know exactly what my cash 
position will be when. Finally, if I occasionally forget to enter the 
second txn, the difference will show up in the subaccount (it should 
always have a final zero balance, once everything has settled).

I put the broker's reference in the "Num" column to tie the two together.