Trial Balance report -operator error or bug

hppweu hppweu at frontier.com
Thu Feb 9 12:25:24 EST 2017


I have been tracking my brokerage accounts and personal finances in gnucash for a couple of years now.  Last year I had some problems and found out what the statement:  "GnuCash does not automatically calculate your net capital gains" really meant.  I asked and got help from the list (thanks David Carlson). 

1.  I started tracking all of my individual stock, mutual fund, and unit trust transactions in a spread sheet to calculate gross & net gains.  (Some have commissions, others do not, some dividends are reinvested, some are not, etc.)
2.   I used the Transaction Report to ensure that the total value debits and credits were equal, after all shared had been liquidated.

After getting  out of the weeds, so to speak, with the above process I was good for year end 2015.  The trial balance report balanced, the balance sheet balanced, all transaction reports for liquidated investments balanced.

Now I am trying to do the same for 2016.  Low and behold 2016 doesn't balance.  In tracking down where the error happened, I went back & back, and I finally tracked the imbalance to a sale of some Microsoft shares in July 2013. That didn't seem correct, since everything had balanced at the end of 2015.  I had updated to gnucash version 2.6.15 in January.  I saw one of the changes was Bug 775368.  Long story short, I have run several reports against the same data using gnucash ver. 2.6.14 & 2.6.15 with different results.  I realize that the default for the commodity price source was changed between ver. 2.6.14 & 2.6.15, so I also ran each report using average cost and nearest in time.  I have attached a file showing the results.

The results showed that using version 2.6.14 my trial balance is still equal for year end 2015.  Using version version 2.6.15, my trial balance is off beginning with a sale of some Microsoft shares in July 2013.
For the trial balance report:
On 7/15/13 the debits = credits for nearest in time & for average cost for both versions of gnucash.  
On 7/16/13 the debits = credits for nearest in time & average cost for 2.6.14.  But in version 2.6.15 the credit is greater than debit by $3.35 for nearest in time & average cost.
 For the Balance Sheet report:
On 7/15/13 the assets = total equity (liabilities = 0) for nearest in time & for average cost for both versions of gnucash.  
On 7/16/13 the assets = total equity (liabilities = 0) for nearest in time for both versions of gnucash and for average cost in version 2.6.14.  But for average cost in version 2.6.15, there is an unrealized loss of $3.35, and the assets are not equal to the total equity.

I have double checked my gain calculations for the stock sale that appears to have caused the issue in version 2.6.15.

My question is whether there is a bug in version 2.6.15 or did those changes highlight a bug in my process?

Thanks in advance for any help,
Pam
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