Advanced Portfolio Income (maybe Brokerage Fees too) incorrect in switch and multiple investments transactions

[Alberto Dante]

Hi Chris,
Thanks for your clarifications.
I'm not a programmer, so I'm not aware of consequences of my suggestions 
(I apologize for this trouble).
Please just have a look at two my notes below.
Everything else ok (specially manual integration).
Thanks for your kindness and patience.
Regards, Alberto

On 13/01/2017 01:33, Chris Good wrote:
>
> Il 12/Gen/2017 00:57, "Chris Good" <chris.good at ozemail.com.au 
> <mailto:chris.good at ozemail.com.au>> ha scritto:
>
>     > -----Original Message-----
>     > From: Alberto Dante [mailto:alberto.dante at gmail.com
>     <mailto:alberto.dante at gmail.com>]
>
>     > Sent: Thursday, 12 January 2017 6:35 AM
>     > To: Chris Good <chris.good at ozemail.com.au
>     <mailto:chris.good at ozemail.com.au>>; gnucash-user at gnucash.org
>     <mailto:gnucash-user at gnucash.org>
>     > Subject: Re: Advanced Portfolio Income (maybe Brokerage Fees too)
>     > incorrect in switch and multiple investments transactions
>     >
>
>     > Hi Chris,
>     > I'm sorry for the long delay due to end year holidays.
>     > Please have a look at attached files (screenshots are of the
>     Advanced
>     > Portfolio reports).
>     > You can compare results using split transactions (wrong report
>     results)
>     and
>     > no-split transactions (with DUMMY BANK right report results, as
>     account
>     tree
>     > values) in the following cases:
>     > 1) Switch Investments (FUND 1 and 2)
>     > 2) Multiple Investments (FUND 3 and 4)
>     > 3) Reinvested dividends (FUND 5)
>     > I think user manuals should emphasize that split transactions
>     must be
>     > avoided in order to have right Advanced Report results (for not-so-
>     > experienced users as me).
>     > I've lost many time to separate lot of split investment
>     transactions.
>     > Hope this helps.
>     > Thanks, best regards
>     > Alberto
>     >
>
>     Hi Alberto,
>
>     OK, that sounds like a useful addition to the manual.
>     You're not the first to get into trouble from being too creative.
>
>     Regards, Chris Good
>
> *From:*Alberto D [mailto:alberto.dante at gmail.com]
> *Sent:* Thursday, 12 January 2017 7:19 PM
> *To:* Chris Good <chris.good at ozemail.com.au>
> *Cc:* gnucash-user at gnucash.org
> *Subject:* RE: Advanced Portfolio Income (maybe Brokerage Fees too) 
> incorrect in switch and multiple investments transactions
>
> Hi Chris,
>
> please note that I encountered these situations in the real life (I 
> think I'm not so creative).
>
> Split transactions respect real transactions, while separate 
> transactions using Dummy Bank is a trick.
>
> Split and separate transactions give the same values on the account 
> register, but Advanced Investment report gives correct results just 
> with separate transactions.
>
> So, I think, the right way to proceed should be to make Advanced 
> Investment report working fine with split (real) transactions too.
>
> Modify manuals is a trick again.
>
> This is my opinion.
>
> Thanks, best regards
>
> Alberto Dante
>
> Hi Alberto,
>
> Even though what you did mirrors your real life events (usually a good 
> practice), there is nothing in the manuals that says you can put 
> splits for different stocks in 1 transaction.
>
Please note that FUND 5 dividend reinvest translation involves only one 
stock.
>
> I intend to add that you should NOT do that if you wish to use the 
> Advanced Portfolio Report (APR).
>
> Yes it is a trick to use a dummy intermediate bank transaction to 
> change a switch from 1 fund to another in 1 transaction to a sell in 1 
> transaction and a buy in another transaction,
>
> but to be realistic, to make the APR handle multiple different stock 
> accounts in 1 transaction would, IMHO, be a huge amount of work and 
> the user setup required to make it work, would make it much more 
> ungainly to use.
>
> As there is a simple work-around, it is unlikely a developer would 
> ever decide this was a good use of their time.
>
> Of course if you could do this yourself, or were prepared to pay for 
> some-one else to do it, that may be a different story.
>
> The reason I think this would a huge amount of work, is that the APR 
> (AFAIK) makes assumptions about what the other splits in a 
> transactions are, depending on what type of account they are (Income 
> or Expense etc).
>
> If you have multiple stock accounts in a transaction, how would it 
> know how to apportion the fees, income etc to what stock?
>
Please note that in my account tree, Income are stock-related, and 
fees/dividens/capital gains/... are separated for each stock account, so 
APR knows Stock vs Income relations.
>
> I admit I haven’t thought long about this as it is not a priority for 
> me. If you’re a programmer and have any ideas about how to simply 
> implement your required functionality (and still be useful to other 
> users), please share them.
>
> Just to be clear: Note GnuCash reports are written in Scheme and I’m 
> only a Scheme beginner, and I’m not offering to do this work.
>
> Regards, Chris Good
>