Unrealised losses

[John Ralls]

> On Nov 26, 2015, at 7:31 PM, Wm... <tcnw81 at tarrcity.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> 
> Fri, 27 Nov 2015 09:38:17 <565789D9.4090205 at iinet.net.au>
> Peter <p.hoban at iinet.net.au> wrote...
> 
>> So the data has opening values equal to the audited balance sheet on that date.  The EOFY balance sheet (nearest in time) shows a value for Unrealised Losses but I cannot calculate the same value.
> 
> I'm not sure I understand that.  Do you have an Unrealised Losses figure on a balance sheet GnuCash is producing or are you trying to match a GnuCash report to one someone else has produced? See note below [1]
> 
> 
> [1] just to separate out this point in case someone else is following. It is unclear to me if P is trying to get an existing Unrealised Loss into a GnuCash book (in which case Equity would seem the sensible route) or if 2.6.1 has an Unrealised Loss on the Balance Sheet which has got lost (arf!) in development, in which case where did it come from as I think in 2.6.9 it would be called Retained Losses.  I'm not sure if we are at version cross-purposes or not.
> 

GnuCash is designed from the view that you don’t mark-to-market and therefore don’t book unrealized gains/losses. There are reports (the advanced and regular portfolio reports) that show unrealized gains/losses, and the values on the Accounts page and in the summary bar reflect the latest prices in the price database and so might reflect unrealized gains if one keeps the price database up to date.

To get unrealized gains/losses on the Balance Sheet report one would need to manually mark-to-market by creating a transaction in each security account increasing or decreasing the currency amount (make sure that shares and price are empty!) with Equity:Unrealized Gains as the balance account. Pay close attention to debit and credit to make sure that you get the transaction direction right. Note that doing this will screw up the portfolio reports; they’re designed to recognize splits like that as realized gains.

Wikipedia has a nice article on mark-to-market accounting at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark-to-market_accounting.

Regards,
John Ralls