[GNC] More Fun with Lots

[Christopher Lam]

Hi Geoff, feel free to analyse the Lot Viewer report (visible with gnucash
--extra) and offer any suggestions. It was designed to assist AP/AR lot
usage, and could be augmented to assist STOCK use of lots (afaik is
optional for this).

On Wed, 26 Aug 2020 at 02:19, Geoff <cleanoutmyshed at gmail.com> wrote:

> Yes David there are some "interesting" behaviours within the Lot Viewer,
> however with patience and perseverance you should be able to master it,
> and one day you will sit back and wonder what all the fuss was about.
>
> I have successfully used Lots for all sorts of corporate actions
> including returns of capital, fractional consolidations, demergers,
> dividend reinvestments, and partial sales spanning multiple lots.  It
> can be relied upon to calculate the correct capital gains/losses on each
> lot.  One of my accounts has over 200 lots in it.  The only weakness I
> have encountered is that it doesn't include brokerage and other charges,
> and there is a workaround for this (nett pricing).
>
> Here are some tips:
> Read (and re-read) this excellent guide:
> https://codesmythe.gitbooks.io/gnucash-guide/content/en/ch_invest.html.
> The team that wrote it deserve a medal!
>
> NEVER EVER click on "Scrub Account" - unless you have a simple series of
> Buys & Sells that you are happy to treat on a FIFO basis.
>
> Start with a blank slate.  Everything the Lot Viewer does is completely
> reversible.  Delete all of the "Realized Gain/Loss" transactions it
> creates in your register, and then delete all the Lots it created by
> selecting them one at a time and hitting the Delete button in the Lot
> Viewer.
>
> Manually create a new Lot for each of your "Buy" splits:
> (1) Use the "New Lot" button
> (2) Select the newly created Lot (in the top panel)
> (3) Select the "Buy" split (in the bottom left panel)
> (4) Hit the ">>" button.
>
> Manually allocate all of your "Sell" splits to your newly created Lots:
> (1) Select the "Buy" Lot (in the top panel)
> (2) Select the correct "Sell" split(s) (in the bottom left panel)
> (4) Hit the ">>" button - this is the magic step that calculates the
> Gain/Loss and creates a corresponding "Realized Gain/Loss" transaction
> in the register.
>
> Resist the temptation to click on the "Scrub" button.
>
> Review all the "Realized Gain/Loss" transactions in the register.
> Replace the default description with some details of the Sale (eg cut
> and paste the description from the Sale transaction).
>
> DELETE the "Orphaned Gains-XXX" account and move its transactions to
> your regular Capital Gains / Losses accounts.
>
> Rinse and repeat.
>
>
> Good luck!
>
> Geoff
> =====
>
> On 26/08/2020 12:44 am, David T. via gnucash-user wrote:
> > Hello,
> >
> > Having now fiddled with the Lots features some more, I have encountered
> > some issues with its implementation.
> >
> > First, if I open up the lots viewer to see what it is doing with lot
> > allocations, the interface appears to automatically recalculate the gain
> > in the entire account, and it does this silently when you simply click
> > on a given lot (e.g., to see its allocation). I discovered this issue
> > because I was attempting to clean up several accounts in which a stock
> > split had occurred at some point in the past, and for which I still had
> > active holdings. Attempting to adjust the transaction for the stock
> > split to account for an adjusted cost basis caused all gains to become
> > adjusted--even ones that had been manually entered to match my
> > institution's accounting.
> >
> > Second, I am having troubles with the Scrub feature. While manually
> > assigning a sale to a particular lot, when I clicked Scrub (not Scrub
> > Account) I found that the viewer would automagically assign subsequent
> > transactions to the lot--even though I had specifically assigned only
> > particular transactions to a lot. For example, I have one account where
> > I had two purchases (i.e., two lots), followed by a partial sale (which
> > could be assigned wholly to the first lot with remaining shares in that
> > lot), followed by a reverse split, followed by another sale. For reasons
> > that were not clear, when I assigned the first sale manually to a
> > particular lot and then clicked Scrub, the subsequent transaction for
> > the reverse split kept getting added to the lot. It appears that the
> > scrub function insists on adding all subsequent share transactions to
> > the lot. Given that there is no way to process the lot without using the
> > Scrub in one of its forms, the user is left having to either delete all
> > subsequent transactions and reconstruct the account step by step, or
> > abandon the lots altogether for that account. This leaves the user with
> > the unfortunate situation of having to remember which accounts use lots,
> > and which don't.
> >
> > I am not sure how best to proceed for my own accounts; I generally like
> > the lots features, and hope to find a way to use them even in this
> > particular use case. I welcome suggestions.
> >
> > Best,
> >
> > David
> >
> >
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