[GNC] Stocks/Equities queries (Australian Based)

[David Cousens]

XboxBoy

I've done this recently with a superannuation pension fund. I had initially
entered an Opening Balance from mid last year and the transactions forward
from that. I already had data for the pension payments entered as income
(not taxable in my case for this fund which is taxed in the hands of the
fund administrator), but not the fund itself as an asset and the investment
returns and fees charged, payments to me out of it etc. I took it back six
months  at a time using the six monthly statements/transaction records I had
on file. Just changed the date on the opening balance transaction to the new
starting date and the balance at that date, then entered the investment
returns, fees pension payments etc between the new opening balance date and
the previous one. Checked that the opening and closing balances for that
period still agreed with my statements. 

I had to do a bit  of trickery as I receive the pension payments paid
directly into my bank account from the fund administrator. To be able to
reconcile that with the bank statements, I could not record my pension
payments simply as decreases (credits) to the fund and increases in my bank
account. I set up a separate Income and Expenses account to record the
Investment return to the fund and expenses associated with that. An
additional Expenses account recorded the pension payments as decreases
(credits) to the asset account for the fund. My entries for the pension
payment are a bit complex. a 4 way split records both the payment into my
bank account as income and the reduction in the asset value as an expense
against the fund. 

Asset:Bank                                                                          
Db xxxx
Income:non-taxablePension                                                                           
Cr xxxx
Expenses:non-taxablePensionFund:pensionPayments       Db xxxx
Asset:non-taxablePensionFund                                                                       
Cr xxxx

where xxxx is the pension payment I receive from the fund. Recording the 6
monthly investment returns looked like:

Asset:non-taxablePensionFund                                           Db
nett investment return
Expense:non-taxablePensionFund:Fees&Taxes                 Db  fees and taxes
Income:non-taxablePensionFund:InvestmentReturn                                      
Cr  Gross invetment return

Once your back to the original purchase transaction and have entered it you
can then delete the opening balance transaction for that stock completely. 
Once I had it all in, I reconciled it forward against the statements to
check I had it right. As others have noted you have to be careful. If you
are in Australia, you aren't taxed on unrealized gains/losses. You can still
track them in an equity account though if you have access to the historical
price information.

Regards

David Cousens



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David Cousens
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