[GNC] Stock transaction: how to record "buy amount" being more or less than product of "shares * price"?

[R Losey]

If you think about it, the price is the least important of a buy
transaction; the money that is taken from elsewhere is important so as to
match the records, and the number of shares purchased is critical to match
the investment records. These are the two fields to enter, and just let the
price adjust accordingly.

Note that the "real" culprit is the fact that shares are in .001 shares.
When you buy a small amount of shares (as in a dividend reinvestment), the
shares purchased may be 0.3016927347343 -- presumably, investment companies
round this to 0.302, which is going to drive the computer price lower (or
the actual shares may compute to be 0.30148692432, which will round to
0.301, which drives the price higher)

This used to bother me until I realized that the price just isn't as
important as the other two parts of the transaction.


On Wed, Mar 12, 2025 at 8:15 AM G.W. via gnucash-user <
gnucash-user at gnucash.org> wrote:

> So there's no way to have the price reflect accurately in the price column
> for this scenario? (I already have set 1/1000).
>
> On Wednesday, March 12th, 2025 at 8:56 AM, Murugan Mariappan <
> m.muruganandam at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Check the fraction traded field in your security and adjust it to
> 1/1000. Ensure your account uses the commodity value under the smallest
> fraction field. Enter the debit value as $1.04; the system will calculate
> the price as $130 due to rounding. Your bank should update correctly with
> the $1.04.
> >
> > Saludos Cordiales
> >
> > Murugan
> >
> > ---------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> > From: gnucash-user <gnucash-user-bounces+m.muruganandam=
> hotmail.com at gnucash.org> on behalf of G.W. via gnucash-user <
> gnucash-user at gnucash.org>
> > Sent: 12 March 2025 08:50
> > To: gnucash-user at gnucash.org <gnucash-user at gnucash.org>
> > Subject: [GNC] Stock transaction: how to record "buy amount" being more
> or less than product of "shares * price"?
> >
> > My investment firm (Fidelity) allows the buying of fractional shares. I
> purchased some shares of stock with the following details:
> >
> > Purchase-1: shares: 0.008 | price per share: $124.42 | total amount I
> paid to get the 0.008 shares = $1.04
> >
> > Purchase-2: shares: 10 shares | price per share: $111.25 | total amount
> I paid to get the 10 shares = $1,112.45
> >
> > As you can compute by doing the math, the total amount paid does NOT
> equal shares*price. Purchase-1 should have only costed $1 and Purchase-2
> should have costed $1,112.50.
> >
> > How do I account for this in Gnucash because it will not let me input
> the actual money I spent on the shares. Is there a way to override
> Gnucash's automatic calculation?
> >
> > (I phoned Fidelity and they explained this discrepancy is normal, a
> result of fractional share buys).
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-- 
_________________________________
Richard Losey
rlosey at gmail.com
Micah 6:8