[GNC] "Unrealized Losses" in Trial Balance Report

[Phil Diacono]

Hi all

I mentioned the following workaround the other day but have seen no
response. Am I correct in thinking the workaround is necessitated by a
bug i.e. the Trial Balance report uses "Unrealized Losses" (which
results in the report not balancing) instead of "Trading Gains/Losses"
(which does).

Should I log this as a bug?

Regards

Phil Diacono

On 18/10/20 11:49 am, Phil Diacono wrote:
> 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
> 
>