[GNC] Proper Way to Record Capital Gains/Losses?

[gcul209 at mynym.us]

On 1/5/22 5:29 PM, Chris Good wrote:
> Message: 9
> Date: Wed, 5 Jan 2022 09:16:50 -0500
> From: Dustin Henning <gcul209 at mynym.us>
> To: "gnucash-user at gnucash.org" <gnucash-user at gnucash.org>
> Subject: [GNC] Proper Way to Record Capital Gains/Losses?
> Message-ID: <e7390eaa-4ded-6919-1545-4bd4a69c0eaf at mynym.us>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed
>
> Up until about 6 months ago, I was running an old 2.x version of
> GnuCash, but when I upgraded from Win7 to MacOS Big Sur, I also upgraded
> GnuCash, and I'm currently running 4.9.? Yesterday, I went to record my
> first capital gain/loss transaction since that move, and I found that
> the method I am using no longer works.? I thought I started using the
> method I was previously using based on documentation and/or advice from
> here, but that may not be the case.
>
> Historically, I have posted two separate transactions in the stock/fund
> account.
>
> The first transaction was a normal transaction removing the number of
> shares sold from the stock/fund account and adding the amount of
> currency received to the brokerage account, so in a theoretical
> transaction selling 10 shares @ $10 with a $1 commission, the split
> would look like this (using - for null fields):
>
> Account ?? Shares??? Price??? Buy??? Sell
> Stock????? 10??? ??? 9.9?? ?? -????? 99
> Brokerage? -??? ???? -??????? 99???? -
>
> The second transaction was only to tie the capital gain to the
> stock/fund account, and it would look like this for a $10 short term
> gain (again using - for null fields):
>
> Account Shares??? Price??? Buy??? Sell
> Stock????? -???????? -??????? 10???? -
> STCG?????? -???????? -??????? -????? 10
>
> The buy/sell columns would be reversed for a loss.? IIRC, all I had to
> do in order to enter this transaction in 2.x was remove a default 1 from
> one of the columns, but there is no longer a default 1 to remove and the
> stock/fund side of the split always calculates for the Shares and Price
> columns in this scenario (I don't even see a way to bypass that when
> entering from the relevant capital gain/loss account).? As I can't
> figure out a way to enter a transaction like this in 4.9, I assume the
> method I have used historically is incorrect.? I noticed that the Shares
> and Price columns don't calculate on both sides of the split if I
> accidentally use the same account on both sides, so I thought maybe I
> could merge the two transactions moving forward, but it seems those
> columns do calculate on both split entries for the stock/fund account
> when I try to set it up as a four way split.
>
> The good news is my old transactions don't break when I look at them,
> but I need a path forward regardless of whether or not I need to adjust
> past transactions.? Assuming the behavior I'm dealing with isn't a bug
> (and I've been doing this wrong), could someone advise on how I should
> do this moving forward or point me at the correct documentation?
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Dustin,
>
> I think this is the same problem as reported in
> https://bugs.gnucash.org/show_bug.cgi?id=798406 :
>     4.9 inappropriately converts dollars to shares at $1 a piece in pure cash
> transactions
>
> Regards, Chris Good
>
>
That is exactly it, and the workaround of entering a 0 for price takes 
care of my immediate concern.  I thought about searching for a bug 
first, but second-guessed myself since it hadn't been discussed on 
list.  Thank you for posting it here,

Dustin Henning