Question About using Lots Window

[David T.]

Hello,

I’m trying to clean up the accounting for ten years’ worth of various stock transactions—particularly, the capital gains portion—and a few questions arise.

First, I should preface all this by saying that a good portion of my data predates the lots feature, and it is unclear how data regarding gains that was created manually—that is, before the lots feature—can be coordinated with data that uses lots. 

For example, I have a stock account that predates my GnuCash file, and in this stock account, I have a sale transaction in 2007, for which I manually created the gain transaction. 

Is there any way to manually create the lot for these shares and then assign this previously-created gains transaction to the lots? It doesn’t appear to be possible; when I manually create a lot, and then assign the buy and sell transactions to that lot, the feature automatically creates the gain transaction. The existing gain transaction doesn’t appear in the lots window, so I can’t assign it to the lot.

The next part that I find difficult is that the automatically-generated entry doesn’t take into account commissions and fees, which reduce the gain in the U.S. It is not clear to me what to do in this circumstance. Should I change the transaction amount by the commission and fees, or will the trial balance be affected? Would it be more appropriate to add splits that go to the commission and fees accounts, thus countering the overall gain amount? I haven’t been able to figure this out in my data file, and wondered whether anyone had advice for me.

TIA,
David