Trial Balance report -operator error or bug

Pam hppweu at frontier.com
Fri Feb 10 11:15:29 EST 2017


David,
I'm not sure what you mean by "anyone who tracks (un)realized gains".  I'm not trained in accounting, and sometimes get confused by the subtlety in the definition & interchangeability of terms used.  What I do is use a separate spreadsheet to record the purchase, dividends reinvested and sale of investments.  I track gross purchase & sale price, net purchase & sale, commissions, fees, net gain(profit) and gross gain(profit). I also keep track of the lots, such that the basis for stocks are FIFO & mutual funds are average. When I sell a stock, for example, I make a split entry in gnucash which looks like:

Debit
Net Sale      Assets:Investments:Brokerage
Profit           Assets:Investments:Stock
Comm'sn     Expense:Investments:Fee
Trans Fee    Expense:Investments:Fee

Credit
Gross Sale   Assets:Investments:Stock
Cap Gain      Income:Investments:Stock

The amount that I enter for the Profit/Cap Gain is my calculated gross gain. 

When you talk about tracking (un)realized gain, are you referring to the difference between running reports using the commodity price of nearest in time v.s. average cost? 

If that is what you mean, then there is a problem with 2.6.15,regardless of which option you use for commodity price.  In 2.6.14 all reports balanced using either nearest i time or average cost.  Upon updating to 2.6.15 the trial balance is unbalanced for either nearest in time or average cost and the balance sheet, using average cost, shows an unrealized loss value that is not present in 2.6.14.

Thanks,
Pam
-------------------------------------------
On Thu, 2/9/17, david.carlson.417 <david.carlson.417 at gmail.com> wrote:

 Subject: Re: Trial Balance report -operator error or bug
 To: "Michael" <mjchurchil at aol.com>, gnucash-user at gnucash.org
 Date: Thursday, February 9, 2017, 6:42 PM
 
     
 It looks like anyone who tracks (un)realized gains should
 run their reports in an older version of GnuCash before
 adopting release 2.6.15.  
 I think there is a bug, but it must be a subtle one.  If
 anyone can build a small sample file to illustrate the
 issue, it would be helpful.
 I will try to remember  to do that before I update but it
 may take me a couple of months to get to that priority. 
 David  C
 
  -------- Original message --------
 From: Michael via gnucash-user <gnucash-user at gnucash.org>
 
 Date: 2/9/17  1:13 PM  (GMT-06:00) 
 To: gnucash-user at gnucash.org
 
 Subject: Re: Trial Balance report -operator error or bug 
 
 Hi hppweu,
 
 I have had the same experience with 2.6.15 vs 2.6.14.  I
 certainly don't 
 know what the problem is, but I have spent a lot of
 fruitless time 
 trying to figure out what might be happening.  I believe at
 least one 
 other person has had the same problem.  I believe he
 switched to 
 2.6.12.  Anyway, I have kept a version 2.6.14 around just
 for this 
 reason.  Mike Churchill
  
 On 02/09/2017 09:25 AM, hppweu wrote:
 > 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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