[GNC] Recording stock holdings

[john]

> On Aug 21, 2022, at 11:30 PM, aeg via gnucash-user <gnucash-user at gnucash.org> wrote:
> 
> I have been using GnuCash for about 6 years, starting with version 2.6 and now use 3.5 on a Windows 10 laptop. I like it very much, but have a persistent problem with entering stock investments.
> The day-to day financial transactions cause me no problems at all, but I've never been able to fully understand how stocks and shares are recorded and managed, and I'm frustrated that, despite following the tutorials very carefully, it never works for me as it does in the tutorial, so I hope someone can explain what's going on.
> I have a relatively small portfolio of shares that I've tried to enter, and the following example should illustrate the problems I've faced:
> 
> Having set up the various accounts according to sections 9.4.1 and 9.4.2 of the tutorial, I then followed the instructions in section 9.5.1 to record 33 National Grid shares (NG.L) that were valued at 7.833030 GBP on 5/4/2019 as follows (note that I have used || to separate the columns):
> Transaction date: 5/4/2019Split 1: Brokerage Account:Stock:NG.L  || 33.00  || 7.833030 || 258.49  ||Split 2: Equity:Opening Balances       ||        ||          ||         || 258.49  
> However, when I press Enter, GnuCash seeks to make corrections and adds three more splits, leaving me with:
> Split 1: Brokerage Account:Stock:NG.L  || 33.00  || 0.903030303 || 258.49  ||    Split 2: Trading:CURRENCY:GBP          ||        ||             || 258.49  ||Split 3: Imbalance - GBP               ||        ||             || 15,588,385,182,335.90 ||Split 4: Equity:Opening Balances       ||        ||             ||         || 258.49Split 5: Trading:LSE:NG.L              ||        ||       ||       || 15,588,385,182,594.39
> Subtracting the large number in column 5 of split 5 from the large number in column 4 of split 3 equals 258.49, so why is it making any of these changes?

It's creating the splits because you have trading accounts enabled on the book, see https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Trading_Accounts. I'd need to see the rest of your book to figure out why the value of that split is so large. The price change is strange too.

Does it do that if you set up a new book and create just that transaction?

What about upgrading to GnuCash 4.11?

Regards,
John Ralls