[GNC] Lot Calculator Off?

[David T.]

John,

Thanks for the reply. I went back and re-entered all of the transactions 
again and this time it (mostly) came out as you have indicated. Not sure 
how I got into the rabbit hole I was in...

For what it's worth, the "separate" sales were the result of the lot 
manager's splitting of a single sale into separate splits. While I 
understand the programming necessities behind this approach, it renders 
some accounts nearly incomprehensible when comparing to a financial 
institution's records, as the GnuCash user is forced to examine (and 
tally) multiple GnuCash sales and gains entries to determine whether the 
GnuCash books match the bank's. When a given transaction is split into 
two or three separate sales/gains entries, the burden is (mostly) 
manageable; when a single sale gets split into 6 or more such entries 
(as can happen with mutual funds with regularly-reinvested dividend 
entries), it is significantly more difficult to manage. Since most 
institutions simply report the aggregate sale and gain, it would be nice 
if there were a way to mimic this in GnuCash.

David T.

On 12/2/2022 9:31 PM, john wrote:
>
>> On Dec 2, 2022, at 1:06 AM, David T. via gnucash-user <gnucash-user at gnucash.org> wrote:
>>
>> Hello,
>>
>> GnuCash 4.11 on Windows 10
>>
>> As the end of the year approaches, I am working to get all my accounts up to date, and I've stumbled across an apparent error in capital gains calculations in the Lot manager. I am attaching a screenshot of the problem I am seeing. If you add up the sales prices and the gains, they are off from the original purchase price by $4.20. The second sales loss has seemingly failed to account for the first calculation for some reason, and the resulting amounts differ from the financial institution by the same $4.20.
>>
>> Since I used the lot manager to handle all of the gains calculations, I'm at a loss for determining why or how I've achieved this erroneous result. Not sure if the table below will display correctly, but the numbers are there for reference.
>>
>> Best,
>>
>> David T.
>>
>> 	Amount 	Gain(Loss) 	Sale with Gain/Loss 	
>> Purchase cost 	$ 230.96 			
>> Sale 1 	$ 140.15 	$(4.20) 	$ 144.35 	
>> Sale 2 	$78.44 	$(12.37) 	$90.81 	
>> 			$ 235.16 	Total
>> 			$(4.20) 	Difference
> Combining the info in the image with your table, I think you have three transactions:
>
> 								Shares	Price		Debit	Credit
> Purchase:							        8      28.87	230.96
> Sale 1								5	28.03			140.15
> Sale 2								3	26.1467			  78.44
>
> The loss on the first is 5 * 0.84 = 4.20 and on the second 3 * 2.7333 = 8.17.  12.37 - 8.17 = 4.20.
> 12.37 / 3 = 4.1233, implying a sale price of 24.7467 and so proceeds of $74.24.
>
> Check your statement or sale ticket for the second sale to see which number you entered wrong.
>
> Regards,
> John Ralls
>
>