[GNC] Fwd: Tips for maintining different accounting for different countries?

[Jim DeLaHunt]

Hello, James:

On 2020-05-18 12:54, James Cook wrote:
> Thanks, Jim, your responses are helpful.
>
> A couple of follow-up questions about doing cost-basis tracking outside
> of GnuCash (either for Jim or for the list):
>
> * When you do cost-basis tracking in a separate spreadsheet, do you have
>    a way to reconcile that with what you have in GnuCash, to make sure
>    everything's consistent? (I had been hoping to make my life simpler by
>    having a single source of truth, though as you point out, my scheme
>    may overcomplicate things.)


No I don't. In fact, my cost-basis spreadsheet predates my use of 
GnuCash. And I have done almost no tracking of stocks and lots in 
GnuCash, so I don't now how far GnuCash's capabilities can go. From what 
I've read of the documentation, I suspect that even if I was using 
GnuCash from the start for stock bookkeeping, I would be using a 
separate spreadsheet as well.

The financial advice I got was that there is a difference between 
securities you own when you enter Canada and securities you buy after 
you enter Canada. When you enter Canada, you pick up a second cost base 
for each security, equal to the market price — converted into Canadian 
dollars — of that security on the day of entry. As you sell those 
securities, the Canadian capital gain is based on the Canadian cost 
base, while the foreign capital gain is based on the original foreign 
cost base at time of purchase. This difference was significant for me 
early after my arrival in Canada, with some holdings of my employer's 
stock, and with some stock where I had been reinvesting dividends for 
decades, all outside of GnuCash. My lot-tracking and 
capital-gains-calculating spreadsheet got pretty arcane. Over time, I 
sold those shares, and the capital gains tracking became simpler, and my 
broker did that work.

I suffer greatly from an belief that, because my finances are composed 
of integers (OK, fixed-point numbers) which can have exact sums, they 
should be exact. Over time, I have come to realise that life is too 
short to track everything exactly.  If I can live with what is on my 
statements, and if the tax authorities can live with the returns I filed 
and the taxes I paid, then none of use needs to be sure that all the 
integers were tracked and calculated exactly right.

> * I see your point that my scheme is too complicated. But is using
>    separate cost-basis spreadsheets simpler than, e.g, using a separate
>    set of GnuCash accounts, or even separate GnuCash files if I want to
>    keep that stuff really really separate? I guess I'm just wondering
>    whether spreadsheets are inherently simpler than GnuCash for some
>    accounting tasks.


A lot depends on what you want to track, and how well you can make 
GnuCash accomplish that. See thread /[GNC] Stock "split" exchanging 
shares of different currencies?/ 
<https://lists.gnucash.org/pipermail/gnucash-user/2020-May/091160.html> 
for a case where GnuCash can't really track a cross-currency stock 
transaction which I had in real life.

I don't have anything to add to the rest of your message. You are 
thinking methodically about your accounting, and you will be able to 
figure out what GnuCash can and cannot do for you. I am confident you 
will get it right eventually, and the little learning experiences you 
have along the way will be your welcome into the cross-border finances 
club. ;-)

Best regards,
       —Jim DeLaHunt