How to Manually Track a Collection of Stocks & Stuff Combined into a Single Share

[Timothy B. Taylor]

Roger, there may be a simpler solution. I had an investment account that
internally was kind of a mess, with various holdings that I really didn't
want to try to track individually. The reports from the investment company
were sufficient to track dividends and gains and to report taxes. I wanted
to track the overall value in that account, but I didn't want to or need to
deal with the internal ups and downs.

So I created an asset account (type=asset) with the opening balance the
total value of the account and date shown on the most recent statement.

Then I created an equity account called Changes in Investment Value or
something similar with an opening balance of zero.

Periodically I add a transaction in the asset account to reflect the
accumulated changes in value since the last transaction, to make the
Gnucash account balance match the total value of the account. This
transaction is balanced against the corresponding equity account. This
makes sense to me. When my overall asset value goes up, so does my equity.
And vice versa.

In effect I am treating this investment account as a cash account, with a
particular value on any given day, with ups and downs corresponding to the
overall value of the account.

The result is my Gnucash net worth, balance sheet and similar reports make
sense. But of course dividends, capital gains, purchases, sales, investment
fees and similar accounts do not. At tax time I have to add the Gnucash
results to the data received from the investment company.

I'm sure this won't pass anyone's proper-accounting test, but it seems to
work for me. Tim

On Thu, Feb 8, 2018 at 10:47 AM, Roger Miskowicz <rmisko11 at gmail.com> wrote:

> I went through the section 9.5.3 Entering Pre-Existing Stocks for about the
> fifth time.  Don't know what I did differently but it now works as
> expected.  Before it used to crash when I tried a price update.
>
> Actually it still crashes when I click on Apply instead of Ok when editing
> a Price Entry.  (I think, I need to check it out more to determine exactly
> what I am doing to cause the crash).
>
> Is there a related bug in 2.6.12?
>
> On Thu, Feb 8, 2018 at 9:28 AM, David Carlson <david.carlson.417 at gmail.com
> >
> wrote:
>
> > If you want to create a fictional stock and manually enter prices from
> > time to time that is easy.
> >
> > Just use the security editor and invent a name and symbol, possibly under
> > the group called Fund.  Do not set an online quote source.  Then manually
> > use the price editor to enter prices for whatever dates you like.
> >
> > David C
> >
> > On Thu, Feb 8, 2018 at 8:00 AM, Roger Miskowicz <rmisko11 at gmail.com>
> > wrote:
> >
> >> Sorry, I just want to take a number from one online brokerage report and
> >> manually put it into gnucash.
> >>
> >> On Thu, Feb 8, 2018 at 6:28 AM, David T. <sunfish62 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> >>
> >> > Roger,
> >> >
> >> > You stay by stating that you are able to generate a report that tells
> >> you
> >> > "the current value of everything."  Then, you ask how you can add
> >> another
> >> > layer of complexity to accomplish the same thing?
> >> >
> >> > I don't understand: what's wrong with the report?
> >> >
> >> > David
> >> >
> >> >
> >> > On Thu, Feb 8, 2018 at 16:14, Roger Miskowicz
> >> > <rmisko11 at gmail.com> wrote:
> >> > I have an Investment Account which is a collection of stocks,
> >> certificates,
> >> > cash etc in two currencies.  I can get a report that tells me in my
> >> local
> >> > currency the current value of everything.
> >> >
> >> > I would like to create a stock, fund, or whatever appropriate with 1
> >> share
> >> > for which  I can manually update a single price representing the
> current
> >> > value of the entire collection.
> >> >
> >> > Using the online guide I have tried creating a fund or stock but I
> don't
> >> > understand the process and can't seem to get it to work and even
> >> > ocassionally crashing gnucash.
> >> >
> >> > I think I would like something such as:
> >> >
> >> > Investment
> >> >   Stocks
> >> >     myStock  (I would like to manually update the price of a single
> >> share.)
> >> >
> >> >
> >> > I am using gucash 2.6.12 on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS.
> >> >
> >> > I would appreciate it if someone can suggest a way to do this.
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