[GNC] Are Trading Accounts meant to affect "Stocks" as well as Currencies?

[Kalpesh Patel]

If those 13k transactions are spread across multiple accounts than try doing one account at a time.

I've also noticed that more often it works better if the program is fresh launched and then commencing the check without doing anything in-between. 

-----Original Message-----
From: David Warren <david at warren1.net> 
Sent: Wednesday, February 19, 2025 7:36 PM
To: tydeman.fred at gmail.com
Cc: gnucash-user at lists.gnucash.org
Subject: Re: [GNC] Are Trading Accounts meant to affect "Stocks" as well as Currencies?

lol (and yes, I always make copies before going nuts), it started to 'repair' my 13k transactions and....crashed

On Wed, Feb 19, 2025 at 7:30 PM Fred Tydeman <tydeman.fred at gmail.com> wrote:

> Make a backup before you try this.
> Turn on Trading accounts.
> Actions
>   Check & Repair
>      All transactions
> Does that then add the Trading account splits to the transactions?
>
>
> On Wed, Feb 19, 2025 at 9:25 PM David Warren <david at warren1.net> wrote:
>
>> OK, I went to my toy account, and just created a simple traded USD 
>> equity account, and I see that with Trading Accounts turned on, they 
>> do indeed apply to all Stocks & Currencies.  So you get all of these 
>> extra trading account entries every time you buy or sell shares in a 
>> Stock account.  But I also see that the prior Unrealized Gains row in 
>> the B/S report is now replaced by Trading Gains.  When I sell shares 
>> of the stock, it doesn't automatically create any realized gains in 
>> my income statement or B/S, so apparently I'd have to add Realized 
>> Gains manually to the sall transaction?
>>
>> I think there is some logic to this, though I'd note there is now no 
>> clear/obvious way to distinguish between Trading Gains from 
>> currencies vs Trading Gains from stocks (since the offset account for 
>> both the stock I created and the non-USD currency are each the USD 
>> Trading account.)
>>
>> One takeaway is it seems it's a very bad idea to switch Trading 
>> Accounts on *after *one has hundreds or thousands of stock 
>> transactions.  As it appears I'd have to go and re-enter every single 
>> one of them for gc to add the Trading Account splits so that I could 
>> recover the Trading Gains (previously unrealized gains on stock 
>> investments) to get my Equity accounts in balance.
>>
>> So, for me, I'll have to wait to turn Trading Accounts on until I 
>> move all my (private) "Stock" investments to be Asset accounts, and 
>> then I'll deal with unrealized markups/markdowns periodically 
>> *manually*.  So then I can safely turn Trading Accounts on, and they 
>> should only apply to my remaining Currency Transactions.
>>
>> I'm still interested in how others with complex/rich multi-currency 
>> investment accounts handle all this.  And I suppose if you started 
>> with Trading Accounts on (or if there is some trick to *ex post 
>> *apply the Trading splits to thousands of stock transactions), then 
>> Trading Accounts for all investments where you use gc to track prices 
>> could make some real sense.  (I already made the decision NOT to 
>> track individual public equities in gc.  I get good reports from my 
>> brokerage accounts, and it would be wayyyyyyy too much work to try to 
>> match all individual transactions.  So I (again) treat brokerage 
>> accounts as Asset accounts, and then make debit entries for growth in 
>> the account, offsetting with Unrealized Income credits until the end 
>> of the year, where I then credit taxable income when I get my tax 
>> forms and debit Unrealized income in an offsetting amount.  (I am 
>> aware that some will choose to credit Equity instead of Unrealized 
>> Income, but this works for me in a personal capacity, and at all 
>> times I can see how much I have in aggregated unrealized gains that I 
>> will eventually have to pay tax on.))
>>
>>
>> On Wed, Feb 19, 2025 at 6:31 PM David Warren <david at warren1.net> wrote:
>>
>> > I am running 5.9+(2024-09-28) on Windows 11.
>> >
>> > I have been using gnucash for 18 months or so, solely for personal
>> finance
>> > purposes, but I have a reasonably sophisticated set of investments, 
>> > including numerous private fund & individual private positions
>> (businesses,
>> > real estate, etc.)  I set up all these private investments as "Stocks"
>> in
>> > new namespaces I created (Private Fund, Private Debt, Private Real
>> Estate),
>> > and for better or for worse, treated them like stocks, meaning if I 
>> > received an initial $15,000 capital call for a private fund, I
>> pretended I
>> > purchased 150 shares at $100/share.  If the Fund was later marked 
>> > up to $18,000, I remarked the shares to $120/share.  If I then 
>> > received a distribution, I "sold shares" .  (For a number of my 
>> > investments where there are lots of transactions, I have now moved 
>> > away from this
>> approach,
>> > and converted these investments to "Assets" (not Stocks) and then 
>> > simply debit the accounts upon in-flows or re-marks, and credit 
>> > them
>> after
>> > distributions to me.  I was probably heading to treating ALL my 
>> > private investments this way, in which case converting them from 
>> > Stocks to
>> regular
>> > Assets would likely make my questions below moot, but I'm still 
>> > curious
>> how
>> > gnucash works so here goes.)
>> >
>> > I have NOT been using Trading Accounts, but I have recently stepped 
>> > up some non-USD investing (also privates), and so set up assets in 
>> > other currencies, and I was having some issues keeping the books in 
>> > balance,
>> so
>> > today I turned Trading Accounts on.  Before adjusting any 
>> > transactions individually, I checked the balance sheet, and my 
>> > Assets and Liabilities didn't change, but the move to Trading 
>> > Accounts immediately removed the balance sheet line item in the 
>> > Equity section for Unrealized Gains.  I
>> then
>> > manually re-entered transactions in my non-USD accounts and gnucash
>> asked
>> > me if I wanted to enter something manually(*) to remove imbalances 
>> > from
>> the
>> > dual currency splits, or let it add the Trading account entries
>> itself.  I
>> > let gnucash do the work and the Trading Accounts clearly appear to 
>> > work
>> as
>> > I expected.
>> >
>> > THe problem is that the Trading Accounts are being applied to my
>> (private)
>> > "Stocks" too.  Is this expected behavior?  I searched pas entries 
>> > in
>> this
>> > list extensively, and there was a bit a of a discussion in 2015 
>> > about houses, but it was very hard to figure out.
>> >
>> > Are my created namespaces what is causing Trading Accounts to apply 
>> > to
>> my
>> > "Stocks"?  Or do all Stocks automatically get Trading Account behavior?
>> > (That's def not what I would have expected.)  I'll do some further 
>> > experimentation on a toy set of accounts I set up initially to test
>> Trading
>> > Accounts on currencies, but the behavior I am seeing is not going 
>> > to
>> work
>> > for me.
>> >
>> > Separately, does anyone here do "trading accounts" manually for
>> x-currency
>> > transactions?  If so, why did you choose to do it fully manually 
>> > without turning on gnucash Trading Accounts?
>> >
>> > Thanks very much in advance for any thoughts.
>> >
>> > David
>> >
>> > (*) Why does gnucash allow for this manual adjustment?  What 
>> > entries
>> would
>> > be valid in this instance, as I know you aren't supposed to be able 
>> > to
>> make
>> > entries manually affecting the Trading Accounts.
>> >
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