Newbie Q - Buying and Selling Capital Assets without keeping track of unrealized Gain or Loss

[ph hermes]

this is what i do too.... works well for me.

   ph


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On Wed, May 18, 2016 at 6:10 PM, Suresh Bazaj <suresh at bazaj.org> wrote:

> John,
>
>         Thanks for the quick response and confirming that I am on the right
> track.
>
>         To keep it simple ( the # of such assets is small), I am entering
> them as a single asset and not entering them as a Stock.
>
> Suresh
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: John Ralls [mailto:jralls at ceridwen.us]
> Sent: Wednesday, May 18, 2016 5:57 PM
> To: Suresh Bazaj
> Cc: gnucash-user
> Subject: Re: Newbie Q - Buying and Selling Capital Assets without keeping
> track of unrealized Gain or Loss
>
>
> > On May 18, 2016, at 4:12 PM, Suresh Bazaj <suresh at bazaj.org> wrote:
> >
> > Hello,
> >
> >
> >
> >            The procedure described in Chapter 9 (Capital Gains) is
> > quite elaborate. I only want to record the cost (buying price), sale
> > price and gain or loss on the Capital assets. So, I did the following
> > that seems to
> > work:
> >
> >
> >
> > 1.     Created an entry under Fixed Assets (call it Degas to match the
> > example name in the User Guide). It was bought in the previous year
> > (when I did not use GNUcash), so I marked it as Opening Balance in the
> > Transfer column and entered the cost ($5,000) in the "Increase" Column.
> >
> >
> >
> > 2.     Added an entry on the sale date under Assets:Degas with the sales
> > proceeds ($4,500) going to the checking account in Transfer column and
> > the sale price in the "Decrease" Column. This leaves a balance of $500.
> >
> >
> >
> > 3.     Added another entry on the sale date under Assets:Degas for the
> > balance $500 going to Income: LT Capital/Gain loss and the balance
> > $500 in Decrease column.
> >
> >
> >
> > These three transactions Zero out the Assets:Degas, added the sales
> > proceeds to checking account and the $500 loss shows as a loss (red J)
> > in thr LT Capital Gain column.
> >
> >
> >
> > I think it all works. Just looking for confirmation from expert
> > GNUcash users to make sure that it won't bite me later for something
> > that I have not thought through.
>
> That's the correct procedure for simple sell transactions (or buys when
> when
> the opening trade is a sell). The one thing that trips up some users is
> that
> if you're creating the transaction in the stock account you must be sure to
> leave the quantity and price columns blank and enter only the gain or loss
> amount so that gnucash doesn't modify the share balance.
>
> Regards,
> John Ralls=
>
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