[GNC] More Fun with Lots

[David T.]

Geoff,

Thanks for the directions. I'll give them a try.

One thing I'm having trouble with is that I don't see how to handle a 
sell that covers more than one lot. If I have a Sell for 200 shares, and 
I assign it to a 50 share lot, the manager notes that the lot has (150) 
shares available on it, but does nothing to allow them to go to other 
lots. How do you convince the manager to release the remaining 150 
shares to assign to a different lot, other than Scrub?

You mention that the ">>" creates Gain transactions; I have found that 
clicking on a lot to view its contents can also trigger this process, 
resulting in multiple spurious and duplicative transactions for the same 
gain. I find this annoying.

All of this is exacerbated by the fact that my brokerage has a penchant 
for combining multiple lots into one gain value, leaving me to try and 
figure out WHICH small lot combination will give me the same final 
result as theirs. Believe me, when you have one value on the statement 
that incorporates two gains and one loss, it gets *very* confusing, 
especially since GnuCash orders the splits debit-credits (or vice 
versa--I can never remember which). My eyes glaze over at trying to 
figure out which figure goes where. My current approach is to go back 
and combine the different gains and losses into a single transaction, 
which then allows for a single amount to transfer to the proper income 
account. This at least allows me to use GNC's mathematical functions to 
verify the final amount. Of course, if I get it wrong, then I have to go 
back and delete all the spurious gains, recombine the spuriously-split 
sell transactions, and try again.

In addition, I have a number of corner situations in which GNC 
calculates basis differently from my brokerage. For example, when a 
stock split results in a cash in lieu transaction, my brokerage reduces 
the underlying basis by the original basis for that fractional share, 
whereas GNC reduces the basis by the total amount received from the cash 
in lieu transaction. So, if I sold off a half share for $10 that had an 
original basis of $5, the brokerage reduces the basis by $5, while GNC 
reduces it by $10. I'm not sure which approach is proper, but I'd tend 
to vote with the financial institution who reports my capital gains (and 
that of all its other customers) to the government.

As I write all this, I begin to think that it might just be easier for 
me to drop GNC's lots functions altogether and create the gains manually 
based on the broker's assertions. That obviously violates that whole 
"these are MY books, not my broker's, and the two should independently 
agree"--but then again, on all of this, I end up trusting the broker's 
numbers anyhow. I do appreciate that it is mostly possible to use these 
features to confirm the numbers, but it's the 5% that don't line up that 
render the entire enterprise less than successful.

Thanks anyway,

David

On 8/25/2020 10:17 PM, Geoff 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
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> gnucash-user mailing list
>> gnucash-user at gnucash.org
>> To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe:
>> https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user
>> If you are using Nabble or Gmane, please see 
>> https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Mailing_Lists for more information.
>> -----
>> Please remember to CC this list on all your replies.
>> You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.