[GNC] asset discrepancy in change of year

[Andrea Borgia]

Il 10/04/21 20:33, John Ralls ha scritto:


> 1) No, but that's separate from trading accounts. That's the point of the bug report.
>
> 2) No, the trading accounts just make it obvious that you haven't booked the gain/loss.
>
> 3) That's back to the discussion in the bug. When you trade securities in a foreign currency you have *two* sources of gains/losses: The gain or loss realized in the foreign currency from the sale of the security and the gain or loss from converting the foreign currency back into your home currency. Study that bug and the spreadsheets that CDB-Man has attached. The basic point that CDB-Man (an actual accountant licensed in Canada) makes is that every time you touch an asset denominated in something other than your home currency the change must be converted back to your home currency and the change in home currency value booked as a gain/loss. It's possible, but difficult, to do this in GnuCash. Trading Accounts don't really help.

So, as an "executive summary" of sorts: I can't win and even a tie is 
out of the question ;)


I'm trying to think how to handle it as simply as possible; I'll study 
the bug report because I'd like to understand it but I'd rather avoid 
complicated manual work to be carried out each time I buy or sell funds, 
because that will happen seldom enough that I'd basically have to 
relearn the whole process each time :(


Would keeping the books open, without "trading accounts", across years 
actually help? I'd still be calculating a profit / loss by closing the 
income / expense accounts, but that's all. Somehow I think this would 
just hide the problem, though.

Alternatively, I could keep "trading accounts" enabled, see how much 
unrealized profit / loss I have for the year and factor in that when 
calculating the initial capital for the following year. That's actually 
the situation I am in right now: the discrepancy between initial capital 
in 2021 and end capital of 2020 is precisely the amount listed by the 
trading account, for both EUR and USD.


Thanks,

Andrea.