[GNC] Trail Balance Help

Fri Jun 24 13:18:20 EDT 2022

Following up on Derek's example, if you sold a stock at a profit you ended
up with extra cash that you either spent on something disposable or
purchased something durable, either of which should appear on your income
and balance sheets in the correct form for your tax calculations.

On Fri, Jun 24, 2022 at 12:10 PM Derek Atkins <derek at ihtfp.com> wrote:

> Hi Jack,
>
> On Fri, June 24, 2022 12:18 pm, Jack Lockard 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?
>
> The issue is that you have two independent transactions, each which
> balance:
>
> 1: Buy 100 shares for $1000 (exch rate $10/share)
>
> 2: Sell 50 shares for $1000 (exch rate $20/share)
>
> Both of these transaction "balance" in the usual sense of the word,
> however if you do not explicitly account for the capital gain in #2, it
> will throw your Trial Balance out of whack.
>
> You can handle this in two ways:  You can turn on "trading accounts"
> (which may affect other things), or you can enter the gain manually.
>
> To enter the gain manually, you adjust your sale transaction to include
> the gain (and simultaneous change your ownership basis).  So you're not
> just affecting one side of the accounting equation, but you are "cheating"
> by having a split in the stock account that "affects 0 shares".
>
> For a more concrete example, #2 would be extended to be:
>
>   Sell  Stock Acct   -50      $1000
>   Cash  Bank Acct                       $1000
>   Basis Stock Acct    0                 $500
>   Gain  Income Acct           $500
>
>
> So basically you are selling $1000 worth of stock (@$20/share) but only
> affecting the basis by $500.  That other $500 is coming from Income, and
> that's how you get $1000 into the Bank.
>
> > 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.
>
> Of course this is up to you, but wouldn't you be happier to have it in
> balance?  :)
>
> > Jack
>
> -derek
>
> >
> > -----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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>
> --
>        Derek Atkins                 617-623-3745
>        derek at ihtfp.com             www.ihtfp.com
>        Computer and Internet Security Consultant
>
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-- 
David Carlson