[GNC] Bug in design of commodity sell transactions? (was Re: Getting My Account To Trial Balance)

[Adrien Monteleone]

I suppose this is for another thread and certainly not on point for the OP’s question, but I don’t see those two transactions as balanced.

The first one is. You credit $100 from Assets:Cash and debit $100 to Assets:Stocks (or whatever it’s designated as)

The second one is not balanced. You’re debiting $150 to Cash, but you only have $100 in Assets:Stocks to credit. It doesn’t magically grow to $150. Sure, the sell price reflects this, but the difference as you note is Income. That sell transaction can’t be balanced without a credit to Income as part of it. If GnuCash allows this, I’d say that’s a bug. (not a feature) Perhaps the implementation of the feature was designed that way, but then the bug is not in the code but in the design of the feature. I find it strange GC would auto-enter a split for Imbalance-xxx or Orphan-xxx in any normal register transaction, but a sell transaction doesn’t do the same if you don’t book a gain or loss as one of the splits.

I’m sure I’m not understanding how this works. (I do account for multiple currencies as on-off acquisitions, but I don’t trade them or any securities) It can’t be that easy to create an unbalanced sell transaction is it?

Do the price revaluations not auto-generate splits balanced to Unrealized Loss/Gain accounts? Or at least store the info in order to generate that Loss/Gain balancing split on the sale?

Regards,
Adrien

> On Jul 25, 2018, at 8:50 PM, David T. <sunfish62 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> 
> David,
> 
> I imagine that the number of GnuCash users who only have accounts in a single currency (i.e., without any investments in stocks, mutual funds, or other commodities) is probably pretty small.
> 
> For those who *do* have such holdings, a balanced transaction will still fail the trial balance if the gain or loss isn’t entered. In this instance, there will be no entries in IMBALANCE-XXX, since each transaction balances. Example: buy 10 shares of X for $100, using cash from your checking account (credit/debit of $100). Then sell those shares for $150 (debit/credit of $150). Both transaction balance—but where did that extra cash come from? Without entering the gain of $50 as income, the Trial balance will fail. You can enter that gain manually, or use trading accounts or the scrub lots feature to help manage this.
> 
> David T.