Chapter 8 - investment accounts

[Wm]

Sat, 31 Jan 2015 11:48:35 <1422733715702-4675562.post at n4.nabble.com> 
Jamestk <davidjamestk at hotmail.co.uk>

>Hello Wm, thanks for the reply.

Captain, you have tagged on to a thread from April last year!  Don't be 
surprised if people are confused about context.

>Hopefully I am now a little more knowledgeable on GNU Cash so let me start
>over refining my original; question.
>
>The following describes several scenarios which I find awkward to execute
>well on GC and tbh, not much better on Excel.
                      ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
That, btw, is a good thing to say.

>Firstly, you have to manually calculate the profit and loss which is then
>recorded as above. Aside from the confusing aspect of having three lines
>with the same entry, the process takes time as you have to look up the
>balancing trade (purchase if this is a sell).

I can't see the same thing as you.

Thunks.

Ah, there is a pic here

http://gnucash.1415818.n4.nabble.com/Chapter-8-investment-accounts-td4665
181i20.html#a4675562

OK

>This would be useful also in 'pairing' buys and sells together perhaps by
>contract number.

It looks to me as if you've sold your 100 AMZN twice which you probably 
shouldn't do unless you really, really know what you are doing, i.e. you 
expect the price to fall within a day and you can buy them back cheaper 
taking into account trading costs.

Caveat: gnc is *not* designed for that sort of transaction any more than 
a spreadsheet is.

Onwards.

>From a reporting standpoint you don't really need to know the commission for
>each stock purchased. However with investments set-up as described in the
>tutorial each brokerage has it's own individual stock code including sub
>accounts of 'commission', 'profit/loss' as so on.

Where you absorb or record commission and other costs is up to you and 
in some cases can be government or tax mandated.

gnc, in general, tries not to second guess things like that.

>Producing a tax return needs total expenses similar to say petrol, repairs
>ect., so one entry for commission would be sufficient if it works overall.

I'm going to take a wild guess that you're in the UK and self assessment 
tax day is close, like midnight.  gnc is no specific help, it doesn't 
have a clue about UK tax returns.

Take a good, honest guess if it is GBP10-ish then say so, 100-ish, etc.

That is filling in form advice not tax advice! :)

>I guess you currently need  separate categories for each brokerage account
>in order that they then balance, that said basic bank account's are not
>set-up in the fashion and use a common expense category list.

Way too much to get done before midnight.

>I still balance my brokerage accounts but they are listed as simple current
>accounts to negate the above.

Do your form and come back later.

>Hope the above makes some sense, it did when I was writing it

Sort of, the really old thread connection and remote pic didn't help me 
to sort out the puzzle, other people may simply not have bothered to 
reply because they couldn't be arsed to work it out.

-- 
Wm...