[GNC] Realized and unrealized gains added together on balance sheet.

[Robert Johnson]

RE: Gnucash combines both capital gains (realized) and unrealized gains into Unrealized Loss/Gain on the balance sheet and the Advance Portfolio  

Have been using Gnucash for the past six months with quite a bit of ease. However, I have a problem that I just can’t solve after following the gnucash documentation regarding investments. 

I have entered a mutual fund acquired over the past thirty years but following chapter 9.5.1 (Investments) for Entering Preexisting Shares. There are numerous lots both recorded and unrecorded by the brokerage, therefore I entered the present number of shares at the NAV price at the time of entry into Gnucash.  Using the formal accounting labels, I debit (Buy) the Asset: Investment:Mutual fund account and credit (Sell) the Equity:opening balance.  The very last unlabeled column recapitulates the number of shares entered. So far so good. 

Following the section  9.7.1.2. Separate the Capital Gain/Loss Transaction from the Sale Transaction with figure  9.21. Selling Shares for Gain Where the Sale and Gain are Recorded in Separate Transactions, in Transaction Journal View, I then redeem a portion of the mutual fund with a capital gain that cannot be calculated from prior lots from thirty years ago as they are not reported by the brokerage firm. I therefore manually calculate the gain from what I know of the early purchases. It is an estimate, but very close. 

I therefore enter the redemption by  debiting(Buy) the personal checking account with the net proceeds of the sale and crediting (Sell) the Investment:Mutual fund account with the number of shares sold at the price sold which exactly calculates the dollar value of the sale which was debited to the checking account.  I think so far so good. 

I then enter another line, and label it Capital Gain.  The capital gain amount is then entered as a debit to the Investment:Mutual fund account and credited to the Income:Capital Gains account. 

I then run the balance sheet and it records the Unrealized Loss as a combination of the capital gain and the true unrealized loss.  Herein lies my question: what did I do wrong that gnucash is combining the true capital gain with the true unrealized loss/gain (representing the change on paper of the original preexisting entry of mutual fund value from the daily change). 

I’m sure this question has been asked by others, but I can’t find it in the archive.  Thank you for your thoughts.