Change to the Advanced Portfolio report

[David Carlson]

On 1/19/2015 6:00 PM, Mike Alexander wrote:
> I made another change to the Advanced Portfolio report which may
> simplify the recording of dividend and interest payments.  With this
> change you may not need to include the dummy split in the transaction
> as described in
> <http://gnucash.org/viewdoc.phtml?rev=2.6&lang=C&doc=help>.
>
> This change causes the report to find income (and expense)
> transactions that are in the parent account of the security account
> being reported on.  This is done by looking in the parent account for
> transactions that have exactly two splits (not counting trading
> account splits) where the other split is to an income or expense
> account with the same name as the security's account.
>
> For example given an account structure like
>
>  Assets (type ASSET)
>    Broker (type ASSET)
>      Widget Stock (type STOCK)
>  Income (type INCOME)
>    Dividends (type INCOME)
>      Widget Stock (type INCOME)
>
> If you are producing a report on "Assets:Broker:Widget Stock" a
> transaction that debits the Assets:Broker account and credits the
> "Income:Dividends:Widget Stock" account will count as income in the
> report even though it doesn't have a split in the account being
> reported on.
>
> This only works if the parent account ("Assets:Broker" in this case)
> is a Bank or Asset account and the Income/Expense account has the same
> name as the security account.  It won't double count transactions that
> have the dummy split since they won't be two split transactions.
>
> Let me know what you think about this, particularly if it causes
> problems.  This version should be in the next 2.6.x release.  The new
> version of the report is also at
> <https://github.com/Gnucash/gnucash/blob/master/src/report/standard-reports/advanced-portfolio.scm>.
> The "Raw" button near the top of the page will get you a copy you can
> use to replace the one installed.
>
>          Mike
>
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Mike,

I have another use case that others may also have.  401-K accounts often
have sub-accounts defined by differences such as Employee Contribution,
Company Contribution, Pre-Tax employee contributions, after tax
contributions, Roth contributions and sometimes even more, such as
rollover contributions, and probably other variations that I haven't
thought of. 

Often, many of the securities in the 401-K are spread across several of
these sub-accounts.  It is convenient to have a single master
transaction of the January dividend from security A divided up into the
applicable sub-accounts.  There would be a separate dividend income
sub-account for each security sub-account, and if there are
re-investments, separate purchases in each security sub-account, but all
in one master transaction for convenience to reduce errors of omission
and reduce the total work to enter the data.  Then that one master
transaction can be replicated for the next dividend, changing the
amounts allocated to each sub-account when necessary.

This results in as many accounts as there are sub-account types times
the number of securities in the 401-K, plus associated income, capital
gain, and expenses(if documented).  When the 401-K allows re-balancing
transactions, there can be purchase and sale transactions involving
certain securities across some or all sub-accounts.  Again it is more
convenient to group these into master transactions including all
sub-accounts containing that particular security.

In one of the 401-Ks that I am tracking there are 11 securities spread
across 4 different sub-accounts, and the majority of them have either
monthly or quarterly re-invested dividends.  Thus, if I have to split
each dividend transaction into separate transactions for each
sub-account, the total number of transactions is multiplied by four.  I
am willing to have eight or more split lines in each transaction.

Bottom line, I am asking that the Advanced Portfolio Report correctly
allocate dividend income (or capital gain income) for several different
security accounts that are combined into one transaction, probably by
noting that each income sub-account has a name similar to it's
corresponding security sub-account.

David C