Setting up an investment account

Derek Atkins warlord at MIT.EDU
Tue Jul 26 11:34:07 EDT 2016


Hi,

Keep in mind this is double-entry, so it all depends on which side of
the transaction you look.  From the EQUITY side it's the value of the
investment that matters.  From the STOCK/FUND side it's the number of
shares AND the value that matters.  So technically you don't need a
dummy account; you can create a transaction (from the FUND register)
directly from Equity:O-B.

It looks like you have trading accounts turned on.  It also looks like
there may be a rounding issue there.

Moreover, the Imblance-USD line can disappear.

Honestly, you should enter this transaction manually in one easy step in
your mutual fund register in basic-ledger mode:

Date      Desc                Account                      shares            buy
1/1 [tab] share balance [tab] Equity:Opening Balance [tab] <num> [tab] [tab] <total value> [return]

-derek

Elmar Schmeisser <eschmeisser at nc.rr.com> writes:

> It seems odd to have in the Opening balances list entries in both
> dollars (for most of the accounts) and shares for the investment
> accounts.  OTOH, I guess I could create a dummy account called something
> like "investment funds" in assets, and put an opening balance dated
> 31DEC15 in that which sums all the funds used to buy the shares in all
> the various investments (I started using GC on Jan 1 this year, so there
> are no entries before 31DEC15).  Then do a buy on 01/01/2016 in the
> actual investment account using some of those those funds.  Would that
> work as expected?
>
> For this particular investment, since I am retired, I can no longer buy
> new shares in TSP, but I get price updates quarterly.  It doesn't seem
> that I can track/graph the share price and/or total value over time in
> QC if the only way to update the price is to change it in the entry, or ?
>
> - elmar
>
> On 7/25/2016 9:42 PM, David Reiser wrote:
>> Accounts can have only one commodity. So you’ll either have to make
>> the opening balance in TSP as shares or create another account in
>> dollars which you can then use to buy shares in the TSP account.
>> Since your opening balance as of Jan 1 was actually shares in that
>> account, why not record it that way? You’ll want to enter a price in
>> the Price Editor under Tools for Jan 1 also, so that you can evaluate
>> the balance then.
>> 
>> There are a couple oddities with report settings to get the reports
>> to use the most appropriate share price (one of the reasons to add
>> the Jan 1 price to the Price Editor).
>> 
>> Dave
>
> <rest snipped>
>
>

-- 
       Derek Atkins, SB '93 MIT EE, SM '95 MIT Media Laboratory
       Member, MIT Student Information Processing Board  (SIPB)
       URL: http://web.mit.edu/warlord/    PP-ASEL-IA     N1NWH
       warlord at MIT.EDU                        PGP key available



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