Need better documentation on using Lots [Was: Chapter 8 - investment accounts]

[Philip Walden]

WRT the "Concepts of Lots", per the discussion below I want to use lots 
in my stock accounts, but the document "Lots Architecture & 
Implementation Overview" only talks about the concept and does not give 
many clues as to how one should use the View Lots... screen.

For example, what does Scrub Account do? What does Scrub (a record) do? 
What does the Splits Free and Splits in Lots mean or do.

I have experimented several times only to get confused as to what is 
happening and end up backing out the work for fear of going down a 
rat-hole and ruining my stock gain/loss reporting integrity.

I sort of understand the concept, but how is it implemented in the View 
Lots... screen? I cannot find anything helpful in the tutorial.

My particular circumstance is that I have many old stock holdings in 
several accounts with lot tracking done on paper. I'd like to get them 
into gnc if I can. So the "automatic" scrubbing and lot set up does not 
seem to work for me as I already have prior lot database I'd like to 
enter; and then it could be that I just do not understand the View 
Lots... screen and its nomenclature.

Thanks in advance for any help or pointers


Jamestk wrote:
> It's all here, everything we have been talking about on this thread is detailed under, wait for it...
> Implementing Cap Gains (Is a Pain in the Neck)
> http://svn.gnucash.org/docs/head/lotsoverview.html
> I am now puzzled as to why this wasn't mentioned before is it new or part of the Ed Snowden files :)
> Automatic calculation of capital gains!
> Date: Sun, 1 Feb 2015 10:58:29 -0800
> From: ml-node+s1415818n4675598h19 at n4.nabble.com
> To: davidjamestk at hotmail.co.uk
> Subject: Re: Chapter 8 - investment accounts
>
>
>
> 	Well that's interesting John, in fact that's exactly what I am after - cheers.
>
>
> Is it a new feature as I don't remember seeing it mentioned in the tutorial?
>
>
> I'll need to re-read the Wiki a few times to let that sink in a bit before moving on, it looks ideal though.
>
>
> Handling of Gains/Losses
>
>
> current "double-balance algorithm"
>
>
> The computation of (Realized) Gains/Losses is performed automatically by the lot "scrub" routines, using a "double-balance" algorithm.
>
>
> http://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Concept_of_Lots
> __________________________________________________
>
>
>> On Feb 1, 2015, at 8:23 AM, Jamestk <[hidden email]> wrote:
>> David, no apology necessary, pinch of salt.
>> Just to recap -
>> - A manual calculation is needed to enter a profit or loss
>> - This leads to two register entries, one for the selling of shares and the
>> second to record gain/loss
>> I thought one way around this would be for the gross purchase to appear as
>> an expense with gross sale as income, would this work on a profit and loss
>> report?
>> Investment accounts do not seem to be selected in the default settings (P+F
>> report), I tried manually clicking on brokerage accounts + sub accounts but
>> again, nothing within range.
>> Is it just the categories that appear in reports as opposed to accounts?
>> Just a thought, although I don't want to waste forum members time on a
>> fruitless exercise.
> «  [hide part of quote]
>
>
> There *is* another way: Open the stock account and select Actions>View Lots... from the menu. Click "Scrub Account" on the bottom of the resulting dialog box. That will automatically create a separate capital gains transaction in the account. However, it has a few drawbacks:
>
> - the capital gains account is hard-coded to "Orphan Gains -- XXX" where XXX is the transaction currency in (I think) the sale transaction.
>
> - It only does FIFO which if there's  more than one purchase might result in a different basis and therefor a different gain than what your broker reports to the tax authorities.
>
> - It can get confused if you buy some stock, sell part of it, then buy more and sell all or part; the lot-allocation code isn't quite general enough to handle all possible variations on this.
>
>
> The P&L report reports income and expenses: The name I learned for it in Accounting 101 (yes, I did actually take a course with that name!) was "Income Statement". Investment accounts are Assets. In order for your realized capital gains to appear on that report they need to be transferred to an income account; that's what we've been talking about here.
>
>
> GnuCash doesn't have "categories", only accounts, so no categories appear in reports. Adding categories is a frequent request from new users who haven't quite gotten their heads around double-entry accounting.
>
>
> Regards,
>
> John Ralls
>