[GNC] non-currency liabilities

[dann frazier]

On Mon, Aug 3, 2020 at 10:26 AM dann frazier <dannf at dannf.org> wrote:
>
> 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.

I finally got around to setting this up, and the negative asset model
does indeed work for my purpose. I think the issue I had before was
just that I wanted them to behave as liabilities.  Thanks for the
advice!

  -dann