[GNC] non-currency liabilities

[John Ralls]

> On Aug 1, 2020, at 4:21 PM, dann frazier <dannf at dannf.org> wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
>  I'm trying to figure out the right way to represent a non-currency
> debt in gnucash. That is, I'd like to be able to record that I *owe*
> 20 shares of FooFund. I thought I'd just create a Mutual Fund
> Liability account, but apparently Mutual Funds and Liabilities are
> mutually exclusive. Is that restriction by design?
> 
>  One of the reasons I want to do this is for a college fund. I'd like
> to keep track of the fund value in an account, but also "keep it off
> the books" in a sense when it comes to Asset vs. Liability
> calculations, as I consider it both something I have and something I
> owe. I tried doing this by creating an Asset account and a Liability
> account that grow together, and cancel each other out, but I couldn't
> get that to work since it won't let me make the Liability a security.
> Is there a better way to do this?

Yes, only Asset accounts of type Stock and Fund can have non-currency commodities. GnuCash doesn't support barter.

You could do that with two Asset accounts, one with a positive balance and the other with an equal negative balance.

However, if what you're modeling is your kid's college fund it would be more correct to create a separate book for it, particularly if it's a tax-advantaged fund like a US 529 fund or a court-supervised entity like a trust or guardianship.

Regards,
John Ralls