[GNC] Tracking cash flows with balanced transactions

[peterb]

Oh, I like that a lot, that's much more elegant than what I was
experimenting with. Somehow it didn't occur to me that a zero-value split
would still show up in the register...even though I've seen that happen
when I've included one by accident.

Thank you!

-Peter

On Thu, Aug 20, 2020 at 3:40 AM Geoff <cleanoutmyshed at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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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