Unit Trusts assistance development

[Hylton Conacher (ZR1HPC)]

Hi,

I am a new user of Gnucash 2.6.17 on a Mac and after many years using 
the earlier versions (95/98) of Quicken on Windows Have started a fresh 
set of accounts on Gnucash, for personal use, since the 1st Sept.

I have managed to operate my way through how different the app works, 
and am actually enjoying the learning experience.

In the years previous to this I have invested funds in several unit 
trusts, or what I believe some call, Mutual Funds.

I would like to add the current balances of the unit trusts as opening 
balances in Gnucash however despite reading the on-line manual and doing 
some Google searching as well as Bugzilla searching, have been unable to 
successfully create the following unit trust type of account hierarchy, 
as the account type is not specified.

Further delving into the app trying to use either 'Stock' or 'Mutual 
fund' did not assist as then I needed to select the 'Security/Currency'. 
When I clicked on Select it only showed non-currency related items, and 
none of them in south Africa. As my country currency is not listed, 
despite being listed if I choose to add an 'Asset' account.

The composition of the units purchased is decided by the parent company 
from which you are buying the unit trusts. The money given to the 
company for the purchase of your units is invested in a variety of 
assets that should provide a return i.e. gold bullion, stocks purchased 
in a particular range of companies, bonds etc.
As the value of those investments increases i.e. those companies 
invested in are now worth more, so the value of a unit trust unit increases.
The parent company has absolute discretion on where and when it wants to 
invest your money and so manages the risk and ensures a positive return 
on investment, allowing them to take a fee of the profit earned.

A unit trust will normally be traded in the home country currency but 
may be traded in a completely different currency i.e. whilst the home 
currency is ZAR, I may have a unit trust that is traded in GBP. A unit 
trust consists of units purchased, usually to 2 or 3 decimal points i.e. 
0.01 or 0.001 but some might be more, a price per full unit and then the 
currency value of the total units held in that particular named unit trust.

I believe this unit trust account type needs further development work 
and wonder if there is a work around?

I have raised a feature request
<https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=787493>
to request this further enhancements to Gnucash.

Hylton