Tracking commodities

[John Ralls]

> On Nov 7, 2016, at 1:47 PM, Keith Edmunds <kae at midnighthax.com> wrote:
> 
> I'm struggling with finding an effective way of managing commodities in
> GnuCash. For example, holdings of Gold or Silver, not as equity traded
> funds but as real metal (ie, xxx grams of gold, etc).
> 
> There's reference to using Trading Accounts to do this, but I've not been
> able to find much documentation on that, and my experiments in trying to
> make that work are disappointing.
> 
> I'd like to be able to:
> 
> - buy, say, £100 of gold
> - see the value of the holding
> - edit the gold price from time to time and see the value of the holding
>   reflected
> 
> Is anyone doing this? Any tips?

It's pretty simple:

Create a commodity (using the security editor) and name it something. I'd suggest a new category PRECIOUS and call the commodity Au_Tr_Oz (for gold troy ounce) or Au_gm (for gold gram) depending on for which you can most easily get prices.

Now create an account for it. You can use either type STOCK or FUND; any other type will insist on using a currency instead of a commodity. Let's call that Assets:Gold. Set the commodity to PRECIOUS:Au_*.

Open a register on your new Gold account and create your £100 buy transaction. That will create your first price in the Price Editor; you can make new prices from time to time and the balance will update on the Accounts page, the status bar, and in reports.

Regards,
John Ralls