Price editor unbalances accounts

[John Ralls]

> On Sep 4, 2017, at 7:43 PM, Keith Bellairs <keith at bellairs.org> wrote:
> 
> The price editor makes unbalanced entries in my accounts by increasing (or
> decreasing) the value of securities without the needed balancing entry to
> income. In US tax terms the gain (loss) is an "unrealized" gain (loss) so
> there's no need to pay tax on it, so some people might not want it show up
> as income.  But I would really like it if my trial balance actually
> balanced.
> 
> Has anyone looked at this "problem"?

No, the Price Editor doesn’t do anything at all to your accounts. The Accounts page shows the value of your securities according to the latest prices in the price database, but if you look at the account registers you’ll see that there’s no transaction that reflects price changes.

When you run reports you can select what price to apply to assets. “Nearest in time” will generally cause the report to show “book value” with no unrealized gains or losses; “Most Recent” will price assets at the most recent price found in the price database. The other two, “Average Cost” and “Weighted Average” use averages of the prices actually paid for the non-default-currency assets but average all purchases in different ways.

If you actually want to book unrealized gains (and unless a certified/chartered accountant tells you that you do, you don’t) you must create the transactions yourself.

Regards,
John Ralls