investment lots

[David Carlson]

On 5/8/2016 6:03 AM, Chris Good wrote:
> Hi all,
>
>   
>
> GnuCash 2.6.7 Windows 10
>
>   
>
> I see from [1]:
>
> Gains are always calculated using FIFO cost basis
>
>   
>
> This agrees with what I see in the Advanced Portfolio Report after a sale -
> cost basis and realized/unrealized gain were calculated using the costs of
> the oldest stock acquisitions.
>
>   
>
> A friend partially sold some stock and elected to sell those lots with the
> highest cost, not the oldest.
>
>   
>
> This seems to mean if one partially sells an investment without selling the
> oldest first, the Adv Port Rpt (cost basis and gains figures) are now wrong
> for the residual stock going forward.
>
>   
>
> Is there some way to do a transaction or some lot magic that would allow me
> to adjust the cost of the sold stock to be from the lots actually sold?
>
>   
>
> I tried adding a dummy stock account transaction to decrease cost of
> remaining stock:
>
>   Shares 0, Price 0, Sell = Cost Adjustment
>
> but this made Adv Port Rpt incorrectly overstate the Realized Gain by the
> value of the Cost Adjustment
>
> (and what should the other side of the double entry be?).
>
>   
>
> I have heard about GnuCash 'lots' being used to keep track of which stock
> lots are unsold.
>
> I searched the GnuCash xml data file for stock lots but couldn't find any (I
> searched for the figures I would expect to find).
>
>   
>
> When I go Actions, View Lots from the Stock account, there is nothing in the
> 'Lots in this Account' or
>
>   'Splits in lot' panes, and just info from the stock transactions splits in
> the 'Splits free' pane.
>
> Nothing to indicate how much of a particular 'lot' is unsold.
>
> The signs of the (cost) values in the 'Splits free' pane do not seem to be
> what I would expect:
>
> the opening balance cost value is +ve, DRP's are -ve, and a sale is +ve.
>
>   
>
> Am I perhaps going into the View Lots screen incorrectly?
>
>   
>
> Are the stock lots perhaps only calculated by the report and not persisted
> to the saved xml file?
>
>   
>
> I know the report has 'Basis calculation method' options Average, FIFO or
> LIFO but none of these match the correct cost.
>
>   
>
> If anyone can shed some light on this I'd really appreciate it.
>
>   
>
> [1]
> https://lists.gnucash.org/pipermail/gnucash-user/2010-February/033668.html
>
>   
>
> Regards,
>
> Chris Good
>
>   
>
>
>
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I think that you should update to GnuCash 2.6.12 then try an experiment 
on a test data file.  Turn on "Use Lots" preference for that test file, 
which I do not remember the exact location for, since I do not use it.

I did test it once and the Scrub Accounts function seemed to allow 
selecting arbitrary lots for sale transactions, but there was some 
reason that I did not decide to do it on my real data.  I do not recall 
now why I did not like it but it may have not worked very well for me 
because I track commissions separately.

Perhaps others can help you more.


David C