[GNC] Recording stock holdings

aeg aeg21212-forum at yahoo.com
Tue Aug 23 03:45:50 EDT 2022


 

   
 
 
 


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?


On Monday, 22 August 2022 at 16:52:08 BST, john <jralls at ceridwen.us> wrote:

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


Thanks John.
As far as I'm aware, all of my transactions are in GBP and I've never set up any trading accounts manually, but they first appeared automatically when I recorded my holding of Santander shares and added DRIP dividends. Although that is a Spanish company, the shares and dividends are recorded in my book in GBP.
I set up a new book as you suggested, and was able to enter the transaction without any problems, so when I returned to my current book, I decided to delete the troublesome account and start again. This time, when I pressed Enter, GnuCash inserted the trading account splits, but with a different set of trading account numbers: 67,487,302.84 and 67,487,044.35. (Note that the difference between those numbers is still 258.49)
(Note also that I previously recorded other stocks in my original book without problems. and without trading account splits)
Regarding your suggested upgrade to GnuCash 4.11, I would normally have done that by now but my last upgrade (to 3.5) resulted in the need for a substantial amount of format tweaking to create the screen layout that works for me, so I'm reluctant to rock the boat again unless I have to; (If it ain't broke, etc...)
Regards,Alan G
  


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