[GNC] Trail Balance Help

[David Carlson]

While I am not an accountant, I fail to understand why you need to record a
conversion from an unknown and unrealized gain or loss to a realized gain
or loss without it affecting your balance sheet.  If you do not enter
realized gains and losses you do not have an accurate estimate of your net
worth.

In fact, the problem that I see with GnuCash is that it does not provide an
easy way to track unrealized gains and losses, which are the source of the
inconsistency that you see.  I doubt that any other product makes it any
easier to track unrealized gains and losses.

On Fri, Jun 24, 2022 at 11:19 AM Jack Lockard <JELockard at outlook.com> wrote:

> Thanks for your reply.
>
> How could I record a realized gain and only impact one side of the ledger?
> I don't think you can. Doesn't the imbalance have to be an improperly
> entered transaction?
>
> I think I'll just give up. It's my personal finances so I guess, at the
> end of the day, it doesn't matter if it is out of balance.
>
> Jack
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Derek Atkins <derek at ihtfp.com>
> Sent: Thursday, June 23, 2022 10:58 AM
> To: Jack Lockard <JELockard at outlook.com>
> Cc: GnuCash User List <gnucash-user at gnucash.org>
> Subject: Re: [GNC] Trail Balance Help
>
> Hi,
>
> On Thu, June 23, 2022 10:37 am, Jack Lockard wrote:
> > I've been using GnuCash for over ten years now and just the other day
> > ran a Trial Balance report for the first time. As you might imagine,
> > it did not balance and was out of balance in excess of $100k. I
> > started running reports year by year. 2011 and 2012 were in balance.
> > 2013 was out of balance by $4303.1. I ran it with a date of 7/15/2013
> > and it was in balance. Ran it again with a date of 7/16/2013 and it
> > was out of balance $4303,10. Next I ran a General Ledger report for
> > 7/16/2013 for all accounts and there were only two transactions. One
> > was $40.75 for a gas purchase (40.75 credit to checking and 40.75
> > debit to expenses:auto:gas&oil). The other was a rollover from an ESOP
> > account to an IRA account in the amount of $6222.88. No match to
> $4303.10.
> > There is an Unrealized Gain amount on the trial balance of $87,645.69.
> > I ran an Advanced Portfolio report for the same date and it shows an
> > Unrealized Gain of $84,389.45. Don't understand why they are different
> > by
> > $3,256.24 and it doesn't match the out of balance amount and would
> > only make the out of balance amount larger.
> > I have no clue how to find where the imbalance is coming from. Any
> > suggestions on how to locate it?
>
> My INITIAL guess is that the "difference" is due to a change in value in
> the PriceDB, and the different reports are using a different exchange rate
> than the transaction itself.
>
> Generally an out-of-balance Trial Balance implies you did not account for
> realized gains/losses.  So the IRA account transaction would be the reason
> for that.  Perhaps you're missing $4303.10 of realized gain?
>
> > Jack
>
> > Please remember to CC this list on all your replies.
> > You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
>
> -derek
>
> --
>        Derek Atkins                 617-623-3745
>        derek at ihtfp.com
> https://nam12.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ihtfp.com%2F&data=05%7C01%7C%7Ca961f3886fcf49f88bc808da5528c496%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C637915930842486726%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=fDApnxyj7UtGu4%2Btq4%2F4kh%2BNjN%2B%2Bo04OI4HRci7qF84%3D&reserved=0
>        Computer and Internet Security Consultant
>
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-- 
David Carlson