[GNC] How to Realized Gain/Loss when turned on trading account ?

[David Cousens]

Long,

Balance Sheet and Income Statement are attached for a simple test which
involved a currencytransfer of 100 AUD to a USD account and then a transfer
back from the USD account to the AUD with a different exchange rate that
created a loss of 0.26 using trading accounts to record. I used the
menu->Action->Transfer ( or the Toolbar-> Transfer button to create the
transfer. I am using GnuCash 3.9.
Trading_test_balance_sheet.png
<http://gnucash.1415818.n4.nabble.com/file/t375329/Trading_test_balance_sheet.png>  
Trading_test_IncomeStatement.png
<http://gnucash.1415818.n4.nabble.com/file/t375329/Trading_test_IncomeStatement.png> 
.

1. If you are using trading accounts, i.e. you have used the
File->Properties to get the book properties and selected the Use Trading
Accounts checkbox in the Accounts tab as described in the wiki
https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Trading_Accounts trading accounts will be
created automatically whenever you do a multiple currency transfer if they
don't already exist. You do not create them manually. You do not have to
manually create the transactions to them when you do a currency transfer,
they are automaticall created.  These are special accounts and the user is
locked out of editing transactions to them. 
While experimenting I had a situation where an incorrect value was created
in a trading account and an Imbalance was created as a result. I  was unable
to edit the trading account value so the only way to fix it was to delete
the transaction completely and then start again.

2. There is no need while using the trading accounts in GnuCash to transfer
anything from the trading account balances to any sort of realized gains
account or unrealized gains account. These amounts are calculated
automatically for you in the Balance Sheet and Income Statement reports from
the values in the Trading accounts as per the above examples.

Selinger's article  predates the setting up of trading accounts in GnuCash.
While he illustrates the use of them in the painting sale AFAIK in GnuCash
they seem only to be setup for currency transfers at this point although it
is possible they may also work for other commodities (e.g.shares). I could
be wrong on that but I don't have time to explore it fully at the moment and
it is not a feature I currently use.

You could also manually setup trading accounts rather than using the inbuilt
GnuCash trading account type which is created automatically. In that case
you have to create all the transactions for unrealized gains and losses and
realized gains and losses manually rather than having them done
automatically which was where we started in this discussion. 

GnuCash is very flexible and there are often different ways you can achieve
the same objective which can sometimes be confusing for new users and even
for those of us who have been using it for a relatively long time (~2010 in
my case when I used it in case studies while doing a masters in accounting
and I am also a minor contributor to the development and documentation). 

David

  



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David Cousens
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