Advanced Portfolio Report

[Mike Alexander]

--On February 11, 2014 5:52:48 PM +0000 Richard Ullger 
<rullger at gmail.com> wrote:

> As you can see, the initial investment [2] and the reinvestment (when
> entered as a separate transaction) [1] are identical, so I'm not sure
> how you would distinguish between the two in respect of money in. I
> currently enter dividend reinvestment transactions as a single
> transaction containing a split for the income and in this respect,
> apart from not including the charges, the money in column on the
> report in v2.6.1 correctly excludes any reinvestments. I don't know
> what its behaviour would be if the income and reinvestment
> transactions were recorded separately.

Thanks for the detailed explanation.  I think I understand things 
better now.

As you say, distinguishing those two cases would be difficult if the 
dividend and its reinvestment are separate transactions.  If you're 
willing to continue recording them in a single transaction that may be 
a better solution.

I'm thinking about adding an option which might help a bit.  I'm 
planning to change the way money in and money out is calculated.  Right 
now it infers it indirectly instead of looking at money flowing between 
asset accounts and the stock account in question.  Instead I'll look at 
asset account splits and get money in and out from them.  I think this 
will be more reliable.  In connection with this I can add an option to 
not consider money to or from a parent or sibling account to be money 
in or out of the stock account.  This isn't really what you want since 
in your case some of the money in from the Cash account is "money in" 
and some isn't, but it might help in some situations.

If the dividend and reinvestment are recorded in the same transaction, 
as in your first example, then the net money out will be the just the 
left over dividend not used in the purchase.  The rest will be 
considered reinvested, regardless of the setting of this new option.

I'm also planning to change the option related to brokerage charges to 
be a three way choice.  Include them in the basis as is customary in 
the US, record them separately as the report does now (although not 
always correctly), or ignore them entirely as the report does now if 
the option to do so is set (although again this isn't done entirely 
correctly).  Is any one of these choices the one you want?

         Mike