[GNC] recognition of unrealized gains

Adrien Monteleone adrien.monteleone at lusfiber.net
Tue Aug 18 22:24:54 EDT 2020


Don,

Documentation, especially for reports, is lacking in some areas.

If you aren't finding something there, that doesn't mean GnuCash can't 
do it, but that the docs haven't been updated yet to describe or explain it.

I think some sections are listed as 'coming soon' or something to that 
effect. Such a hint at least alerts the reader that there should be 
material there, but it hasn't been formalized yet. I'm not sure what 
protocol the devs prefer in those cases, but I'm inclined to be partial 
to knowing documentation *could* exist for something, rather than 
thinking the something itself doesn't exist.

Note also, a dev or two in the last year or so began a massive 
undertaking of re-organizing the docs. (there's at least one working bug 
on it) I'm not certain of the status of that project for about 4–6 
months now.


Regards,
Adrien

On 8/5/20 6:07 PM, doncram wrote:
> Does GnuCash recognize unrealized gains/losses of investments such as
> stocks, so that they would appear in an Income Statement for a given period
> and in a Balance Sheet for a given date?  And if so, how/where, and can one
> control the presentation?
> 
> The online documentation of the Tutorial and Concepts Guide, (at
> www.gnucash.org) doesn't say.  A lot of effort seems to be devoted to the
> good purpose of developing/maintaining the automated updating of prices for
> securities, drawing from the internet.   The Investments Chapter covers
> purchases and sales and other transactions, and in 9.6.5 has an example
> "Assets Over Time" bar chart (found by selecting Reports / Assets &
> Liabilities / Asset Chart, apparently) showing the changing value of an
> investment in Amazon stock, using varying price quotes, so surely an
> updated "most recent" value is available for reporting the value of the
> Amazon investment in the Balance Sheet report for any given date, either in
> total or by basis vs. unrealized gain/loss amounts.  Also the amount of
> unrealized gain/loss achieved for any period could be computed, using the
> price database.  Chapter 11 describes manual updating of asset value for a
> valuable painting by an explicit entry recognizing unrealized gain, but
> this seems not applicable to securities.
> 
> Do the B/S and IS reports reflect these?  Sorry for dumb aspect of this
> question, because I should be able to figure that out by testing an
> example.  I am guessing not because it is not described.  If the reports
> automatically do, then the documentation should report that (and I think it
> should be highlighted as a really nice feature of GnuCash not done by, say,
> Quickbooks AFAIK).  If not, can the amounts be reported, so one could at
> least manually record, by journal entry dated December 31, what is
> necessary for the B/S and IS to report correctly in total?  If it is
> automatically done, it seems to me that one would want to designate where
> each stock's unrealized gain/loss should go, e.g. into a general
> "Unrealized Gain/Loss - Taxable" or a "-Non-Taxable" account.  Or for a
> more specific account like "Unrealized Gain/Loss in Education Fund" (to
> relate this to ongoing thread titled "non-currency liabilities").
> 
> The not-dumb aspect of this question is to call for a new section in
> Chapter 9 and/or Chapter 11 to cover this topic, for an individual and/or
> for a business, whether the feature is already developed within GnuCash
> 4.0, or not.
> --Don



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