[GNC] Tracking cash flows with balanced transactions

[Geoff]

Peter, this is the way that I do it, and it doesn't require double entry 
of the transactions.

Simply "tag" all dividend payments when they arrive in the bank account 
with the relevant stock account - you do this by entering a third (zero 
value) split.

The dividend will then automatically show up in the stock's register.

The "Advanced Portfolio" report will also automatically include the 
dividend income as part of its return calculations.

Hope this helps - please see the attached screenshot.

Regards

Geoff
=====
P.S.  This is mentioned in Chapter 9.8: 
https://code.gnucash.org/docs/C/gnucash-guide/invest-dividends1.html

On 20/08/2020 2:01 pm, peterb wrote:
> Let's say I have a security - could be a stock, or a bond - which
> periodically yields some dividend or interest.  Often it's convenient to be
> able to see those dividends in a single register.
> 
> The vanilla way to account for dividends or interest doesn't quite make
> this easy: the obvious way to do it will appear in your brokerage register,
> but not in the register for the stock.  And that makes perfect sense - the
> money isn't going in to your stock account!
> 
> Description          Account          Debit      Credit
> Dividend BIGCO     Assets:Brokerage   50
>                     Income:Dividend               50
> 
> If you're disciplined about your descriptions you can of course search for
> these, but it feels potentially error prone when looking for them.
> 
> I'm on record as not liking the way GnuCash handles realized income/loss
> from sales in stock accounts (putting "zero share" dollar values in the
> share-denominated register instead of explicitly treating stock sales as
> return-of-capital plus gain/loss) but it occurs to me that you can do
> something similar for dividends and interest:
> 
> Description          Account                  Debit      Credit
> Dividend BIGCO     Assets:Brokerage:BIGCO     50
>                     Assets:Brokerage           50
>                     Income:Dividend                       50
>                     Assets:Brokerage:BIGCO                50
> 
> The idea here being: the income flows into the BIGCO-denominated account,
> but immediately flows out again into the cash-denominated account; if one
> looks at the BIGCO register, all of the dividend events will be clearly
> visible.
> 
> Does anyone have either a more elegant way of accomplishing the goal of
> "all cash flows from a stock are visible on the stock's register", or a
> good reason *not* to do what I'm giving an example of here?
>   (Alternatively, if this is in fact what everyone does as described in
> chapter 7853.633 of the user guide, and I just missed it, please let me
> know!)
> 
> Thanks!
> 
> -Peter
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