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

Thu Feb 20 10:50:27 EST 2025

That's what I did. Opened account fresh. Ran checks. (took 0 seconds since
no trading accounts, no closed accounts, no imbalances). Then turned on
trading accounts. Then picked a relatively small account with say 20
transactions. Ran checks again. Crashed.

I did do a test on my toy account trying to dummy up currency trading
accounts manually by making my own top level currency trading accounts  as
per that long ago article. I can get the trading accounts themselves to
work, but the system creates crazy wrong unrealized gains/losses if you try
to adjust any currency off of 1:1. So I just don't think it works.

What I am going to do is later this month convert all my private funds to
Assets (not stocks) and remove all of their "prices". That will leave me
with just a few cross-currency transactions and I will then turn on trading
accounts, and not be too worried about running  checks or crashing the
system then.

On Thu, Feb 20, 2025, 9:32 AM Kalpesh Patel <kalpesh.patel at usa.net> wrote:

> 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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