[GNC] "Unrealized Losses" in Trial Balance Report

[Phil Diacono]

Hi all,

I searched on this and found an email thread with the above title,
initiated thusly:

"On Mar 22, 2018, at 1:02 AM, Richard <richardcd73 at gmail.com> "

where Richard reports the lack of balance in his Trial Balance report.
The responses to his email seemed to be put it down to rounding errors
and/or Check&Repair.

I also use Trading Accounts and I've had this problem for a few years.

My workaround has been to
-1-  export Trial Balance report to html
-2-  open report in spreadsheet
-3-  replace report's totals with sum() functions of above rows (the
sum() and report totals numbers should match)
-4-  do the same for the Balance Sheet report of the same date
-5-  Note: the gnucash Trial Balance report always has a positive number
but changes the line description from Trading Gains to Trading Losses if
it would otherwise be negative. In the spreadsheet, make this number
negative for Trading Losses (or keep as positive for Trading Gains), and
change the line description to "Trading Gains/Losses"
-6-  Back in the Trial Balance spreadsheet, move the "Unrealized Losses"
line out of the items being summed
-7-  insert a new line copied from the "Trading Gains/Losses" line of
the Balance Sheet
-8-  move the "Trading Gains/Losses" value over to the Credit column and
ensure the Totals include it.
-9-  possibly add a line: "Rounding 0.01" to Debit or Credit column.
-10- hey presto, the numbers in the Trial Balance balance!

Perhaps this just works for my setup (my only "commodities" are
currencies). But it would appear that wherever the "Unrealized Losses"
value comes from, it is not of much use whereas the "Trading
Gains/Losses" value is just the job.

And perhaps I am violating some rule about not having negative numbers
in Balance Sheets or Trial Balances.

Anyway, I would be interested in comments from others on how they
approach this problem and whether they have a workaround.

Regards

Phil