[GNC] non-currency liabilities

[dann frazier]

On Sun, Aug 2, 2020 at 11:36 AM John Ralls <jralls at ceridwen.us> wrote:
>
>
>
> > 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.

I think I tried that before but ran into another issue, but I don't
recall what it was. Let me give it another shot.

> 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.

Yeah - you're probably right - but I assume I'd then have to deal with
contributions separately in both books, which would be a bit
cumbersome.

  -dann