Setting up an investment account

[Elmar Schmeisser]

I understand the double entry, which is why have have an account for
invested cash with which to buy the shares I hold.  I have the shares
set to trade at 1/10000, which should be enough decimal places (shares
are reported to 4 places). I can set the accounts screen to show "total
(USD)" as well as "total", so I see value as well as shares, so that is
no problem.

How do I turn trading accounts off since that is what seems to be
messing up my entry?  You seem to want me to tab over the price column,
and put the dollar value in the buy column right? Whenever I try to
remove the imbalance line (remove split), GC will not allow me to leave
the transaction and pops up the rebalance window again, and again, and
again ....

- Elmar

On 7/26/2016 11:34 AM, Derek Atkins wrote:
> 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>
>> 
>> 
>