[GNC] Using the advanced portfolio report for mutual fund income

pobox.deva at outlook.in pobox.deva at outlook.in
Sat Sep 5 02:31:44 EDT 2020


Alister,

I had a similar problem when I recorded multiple stock buys in a single transaction covering over a dozen splits to account for purchases in different stock accounts along with its attendant brokerage and statutory levies. Advanced portfolio report would show incorrect brokerage amounts in that case.

The way I got around it was to create a dummy asset account (called $Cash in my case, but you can call it "Broker" or "Suspense” or “Staging” account, etc.). This is a dummy asset account that acts as a staging account - a sort of a bridge between fund/stock accounts and your bank account. This account is of simple type Asset (not Mutual Fund or Stock). And it can reside under the main “Investments” asset account. For example -

Assets:Investments:$Cash
Assets:Investments:Mutual Fund:Fund1
Assets:Investments:Mutual Fund:Fund2
.
.
. and so on...
Assets:Investments:Stocks:Stock1
Assets:Investments:Stocks:Stock2
.
.
. and so on...

The idea is, $Cash will always be a zero balance account after your record all your transactions.

With this structure in place, you can record multiple distributions from your fund house as if they were single distributions on each fund (as you stated in example 1), but instead of depositing your bank account, you would deposit your $Cash staging account instead. After recording your $75 distribution from fund 1 and $25 distribution from fund 2 in the respective fund accounts, you would now have a balance of $100 in your $Cash (staging) account.

Now from your $Cash account, record a single transaction to move $100 from it to your bank account. This will bring your $Cash account back to 0.

$Cash account will not be visible if you have your settings to hide zero balance accounts, so you have to change that setting for you to use $Cash account every time.

Cheers,
Deva

> On 04-Sep-2020, at 9:30 PM, gnucash-user-request at gnucash.org wrote:
> 
> Date: Fri, 4 Sep 2020 15:02:55 +1000
> From: Alister Briggs <alister58 at gmail.com <mailto:alister58 at gmail.com>>
> To: gnucash-user at gnucash.org <mailto:gnucash-user at gnucash.org>
> Subject: [GNC] Using the advanced portfolio report for mutual fund
> 	income
> Message-ID: <03a772fd-0aac-e623-69b0-ffe51c387f99 at gmail.com <mailto:03a772fd-0aac-e623-69b0-ffe51c387f99 at gmail.com>>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8; format=flowed
> 
> Can anybody help me work around a problem using the Advanced Portfolio 
> Report to report income on mutual funds where a single payment is made 
> for multiple funds? The Advanced Portfolio report requires atransaction 
> split to include a dummy transaction of zero value as shown below:
> 
> Scenario 1 - A single distribution payment per fund
> 
> Direct Credit CFS Distribution
> 
> 	
> 
> 	
> 
> 	
> 
> 100
> 
> 	
> 
> 100
> 
> 	
> 
> Assets: Bank: CBA
> 
> 	
> 
> 100
> 
> 	
> 
> 	
> 
> 	
> 
> Income: Mutual Funds: CFS: Fund1
> 
> 	
> 
> 	
> 
> 100
> 
> 	
> 
> 	
> 
> Assets: Investments: Fund managers: CFS: Fund1
> 
> 	
> 
> 0
> 
> 	
> 
> 0
> 
> 	
> 
> 	
> 
> 	
> 
> 	
> 
> 	
> 
> In this situation the Advanced Portfolio Report correctly reports the 
> income for Fund1 as $100.
> 
> Where more than one fund is paid the split becomes more complicated:
> 
> 
> Scenario 2 - A single distribution payment for two funds
> 
> Direct Credit CFS Distribution
> 
> 	
> 
> 	
> 
> 	
> 
> 100
> 
> 	
> 
> 100
> 
> 	
> 
> Assets: Bank: CBA
> 
> 	
> 
> 100
> 
> 	
> 
> 	
> 
> 	
> 
> Income: Mutual Funds: CFS: Fund1
> 
> 	
> 
> 	
> 
> 75
> 
> 	
> 
> 	
> 
> Assets: Investments: Fund managers: CFS: Fund1
> 
> 	
> 
> 0
> 
> 	
> 
> 0
> 
> 	
> 
> 	
> 
> Income: Mutual Funds: CFS: Fund2
> 
> 	
> 
> 	
> 
> 25
> 
> 	
> 
> 	
> 
> Assets: Investments: Fund managers: CFS: Fund2
> 
> 	
> 
> 0
> 
> 	
> 
> 0
> 
> 	
> 
> In this situation the Advanced Portfolio Report incorrectly reports the 
> income for both Fund1 and Fund2 as $100. How do I correct this so the 
> result for Fund1 is $75 and Fund2 is $25?
> 
> I am using GnuCash 4.1 on Windows 10 and fairly new user.
> 
> 
> Thank you for your efforts
> 
> Alister
> 



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