How do I take delivery of stock certificates? (Not a brokerage question.)

[Wm]

In article <572E384C.9090601 at verizon.net>
Jean-David Beyer <jeandavid8 at verizon.net> wrote:

Wm:
> > What version of GnuCash are you using?
>
> gnucash-2.4.15-4.el6.x86_64
>
> the latest one for my Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server release 6.7
> (Santiago) distribution.

OK, I should have asked earlier.  Thing is, there have been changes 
to the price db and related stuff since then and there are more on 
the way.  I don't use RH on my Linux systems, is this page any use 
to you in getting updated?

https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/RedHat

Otherwise you might need to search the lists or start a new thread 
as my quick search suggests RH isn't the most common choice in 
these parts.

> > For a balance sheet including traded stuff you generally want
> > Nearest in Time as you want the report to show the value of the
> > asset at the time of the report, often Today or the end of last
> > month or the end of last year.  Not often a time in the future as
> > you don't usually know what the asset will be worth, there are
> > exceptions with futures, traded options, stock borrowing, etc that
> > don't apply to what we are talking about in this thread.
> >
> >> If I change Balance Sheet->Commodities->Price Source from AverageCost to
> >> Most Recent it gives
> >>     3 BRK.A	$0.00
> >> But it then wrecks the cost of my bullion gold, but silver is OK.
> >
> > Why are you trying everything except the Nearest in Time?  That,
> > plus prices near the report date in your price db, will give you
> > sensible results.
>
> Average cost was the default and I never changed it.

> Nearest in time gives me 0.00 for Berkshire Hathaway.
> a big number for silver about 5x what I paid for the stuff, and way too
> much, and 0.08 for gold (actually worth much more).

Nearest in time isn't about what you paid for it, it is about what 
it was worth at the report date, to get that fixed a balance sheet 
is the obvious tool and to work that out for traded stuff GnuCash 
needs prices about the time of the report date.

> > OK, lets try some detail.
> > In Tools / Price Editor
> > find BRK.A
> > you should have a list that your eye can identify as containing
> > dates and prices for BRK.A.  You should have at a minumum a date
> > and a price for each transaction you have recorded in GnuCash
> > *plus* a price fairly close to the date you want to report on:
> > today or end of last year for example.
>
> There are NO entries in there (NYSE) for Berkshire Hathaway.
> There are entries for BRK.B.

While it won't bother GnuCash if you have BRK.B prices *as well as* 
BRK.A prices, they aren't a lot of use if the stocks you own are 
BRK.A
Did you originally buy BRK.A and split them into BRK.B ?  Also note 
that BRK.A and BRK.B are as different as AMZ and MSN as far as 
GnuCash is concerned, which is correct as they are traded 
seperately and may have unrelated prices on any given day.

> Most transactions and stocks and commodities are absent, but some are there.
>
> It seems that these are included in a whimsical way.

Nope.  An entry is made in the price db for each transaction you 
make that involves a stock and a price on a date (not sure if an 
entry is made for a stock split like BRK.A to BRK.B, but you 
haven't said that is what you've done).

You can change or delete these (I've done it myself when a real 
life currency transaction resulted in a weird exchange rate in the 
price db)

I've said this before but Finance::Quote is your friend.  I 
wouldn't have thought your OS choice would be a barrier in getting 
F::Q working as it exists independantly of GnuCash and is in wide 
use.

> >
> > Once you've got prices relevant to your report date into the price
> > db for each of your commodites *then* you can start looking at
> > other stuff like the Advanced Portfolio or a Balance Sheet, without
> > that you are asking GnuCash to invent valuations.
> >
> I do not think I am asking it to invent valuations. It needs only the
> initial transaction in the price editor to determine the cost basis. And
> most of these, but not all, are missing.

If the date, *correct* commodity code and price details are missing 
on or around reporting dates a lot of stuff isn't going to work.

I've tried to explain the accounting ideas and what GnuCash needs 
to achieve what you expect.  Given the version difference and the 
fact that we are talking at cross purposes after so many words I 
conclude that I am not not the right person to help you.

I will watch the thread with interest.

P.S. Congratulations on your initial investment :)

-- 
Wm