Adv Port Report - Capitalization of Commissions

[CDB-Man]

Hey everyone,

I was talking to jralls over on IRC, and he suggested posing the question
to the group here, and more specifically to *Mike Alexander* as well, the
maintainer of the Adv. Portfolio Report if he's listening.

The conversation is recorded in the #gnucash IRC logs, starting at 13:47:26
time stamp.
http://lists.gnucash.org/logs/2015/11/2015-11-21.html#T13:47:26
Most of the issue and my suggested possible solution is detailed in the
conversation.

*To put it into paragraph form instead:*
Essentially, the issue at hand is how the advanced portfolio report handles
commissions on purchase of securities.  Current behaviour is to only
consider an amount as commissions, if the amount is a debit to an expense
account.

The advanced portfolio report itself will capitalize the commissions into
the cost basis if you tell it to do so in the options.  However, it means
that in my actual account and on my balance sheet (B/S), it won't be
capitalized there, as it's been debited to an expense account.  It would
also mean the commissions are flowing through profit and loss (P&L) via the
income statement (I/S), so not correctly reflecting the capitalization of
the commissions.

My suggestion is to make use of the activity flags in the "Action" column
of the stock/commodity register (the one with buy/sell/dividend/fee/etc),
specifically the "fee" option.  My general idea is to make a split for the
commissions that debits the stock account, so that the commissions are
capitalized into the asset.  Using the :fee: activity option, the Adv Port.
Report would then pick up on it, and capitalize it as well into the cost
basis in the report + summarize it in the "brokerage fees" column too.

I'm aware that not all countries have tax laws that require commissions to
be capitalized, so perhaps have a separate option in the advanced portfolio
report?  For example, some sort of toggle that would allow it to recognize
all 0 share debit splits to the stock account to be counted as commissions,
to reflect commission capitalization.

I took a brief look at the Scheme file for the advanced portfolio report...
and it's most likely beyond me.  I haven't worked on code since 2010; I'm
now in accounting at a CPA firm.

Well, thank you all for listening to my rant, and I'd appreciate if anyone
could help out, or could make some updates to the Adv. Port. report.

Thanks!
CDB-Man

*CDB-Man*
*Email:* cdbman.online at gmail.com