[GNC] Lot Calculator Off?

[john]

It's not a programming necessity, it's an auditing necessity. Each purchase split represents a lot and in order to track the share balance of each lot a sale that touches multiple lots has to have a separate split for each lot so that you can work out what it did by examining the register.

It's possible that the lot scrubber screwed up--the code is old and torturously complex--but you didn't provide enough information for me to analyze that.

Note also that the lot scrubber is strictly FIFO.

Regards,
John Ralls

> On Dec 3, 2022, at 1:34 AM, David T. <sunfish62 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> 
> 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
>> 
>>