trial balance - how to find mismatch question

[Deva -]

Thanks John. Last time you directed me to this bug report, I didn’t pay attention to the entire discussion - just browsed through to ensure I was adding my use case to the right bug. But this time, I went through all the *gory* details and I think I have a better understanding of what various price source options mean.

I was wrong when I said I have seen the imbalance in trial balance in previous versions - the huge imbalance appears only in 2.6.19 (other versions I am running are 2.6.11 and 2.6.6). When I go back to 2.6.6 or 2.6.11, there’s still a difference, but not a huge one - imbalance is only to the tune of few rupees (presumably due to rounding adjustments on 18 years of data).

I know now that my previous posting on mutual fund cost basis issue and this trial balance issue in 2.6.19 are connected, so sorry for taking up your time. I can already see that future releases will bring back the average cost computation as it was before 2.6.12, so this is not an issue, at least for me.

Cheers.

On 16-Feb-2018, at 9:02 PM, John Ralls <jralls at ceridwen.us<mailto:jralls at ceridwen.us>> wrote:



On Feb 16, 2018, at 5:58 AM, Deva - <pobox.deva at outlook.in<mailto:pobox.deva at outlook.in>> wrote:

I am seeing huge imbalances in my trial balance report as well. This is one report I have not been sending to my tax professional until I understand how to interpret it.

This behaviour is seen in 2.6.19 currently, but I am sure I have seen it in previous versions as well (I have been on GC since 2.6.6).

Though I started using GC only since 2015, I actually entered past 18 years of my transaction history from annual spreadsheets I used to maintain before. After reading this thread, I went back year after year change the end date until I hit the first mismatch between credits and debits - just over INR 70 as of Mar 2009. Progressively after that, this report now shows a difference of over INR 600,000!

There’s nothing in imbalance or orphan accounts and my entire datafile is in single currency (INR).

Only thing I can see from the time this first mismatch popped up in 2009 till now is that I have had capital gains from sale of shares since 2009. Though I recorded these gains carefully each year manually from statements, etc., the difference still shows up.

One reason I can think of is this -

When I run the trial balance report (or balance sheet report), the options given for commodity pricing are: average cost, weightage average, nearest in time and most recent. However, when computing capital gains, Indian tax authorities will only accept gains/losses computed on a FIFO basis (FIFO option can be selected when running Advanced Portfolio Report).

Since FIFO is not one of the options I can select for commodity pricing in trial balance and balance sheet reports, I am guessing the difference in credits and debits  is coming from cost basis determined by FIFO and average cost basis methods?

Deva,

See https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=775368.

“Average Cost” as a price source isn’t the same as “Average Cost” as a capital gains recognition policy. In GnuCash reports it means that the price used for converting one commodity to another is derived from the actual transactions, not from prices recorded in the price database. Read the bug for lots of gory details.

Regards,
John Ralls