Employee Stock Option Grants

[Greg Grotsky]

Hello Gnucash Users,

 I've been using Gnucash for a while and I'm starting to feel like an
accountant. :) Anyway, I've been interested in trying to map out employee
stock option grants for a while to form a more complete financial view of
all my investments.

 I finally took a stab at it using the "stock" account type. It works
really well to calculate the "real time" value of a number of shares.
However, I realized quickly that I can't fathom a way to capture the strike
price of the options (price to buy them at). This is a fixed value with
which I purchase the shares from the company and needs to be subtracted
from the "real time" price to get the actual gain at any given point in
time.

 I'm thinking I could just calculate the strike price as a fixed credit to
the same account that the stocks are in but the problem with this is that
the balance may go negative if the "real time" price of the shares drops
below the strike price. In reality this means my gain/loss is zero and I
just can't exercise those options for a gain.

 Anyway, I'm guessing that most people who track their employee stock
option grants probably don't track the actual shares that they hold. They
probably only enter something into Gnucash when they perform a cashless
execution. I'd like to be able to *see* my potential gains for shares that
are "in the money", so to speak. If anyone has a suggestion, I'm all ears.

Thanks,
-Greg