Hey Martin,
Thanks again for the thorough response. I think I'm struggling to grasp
this line from the docs:
>The “FIFO” method automatically select the oldest of the matching lots up
to the requested size of the reduction.
In the case I posted, there is only one lot in the Hotwallet inventory,
large enough to cover both the deposit to the Coldwallet and the fee. Even
if I simplify the case to a single withdrawal with no fee:
option "operating_currency" "AUD"
2014-01-01 open Equity:Opening-Balances
2014-01-01 open Assets:AU:Cash AUD
2014-01-01 open Expenses:Financial:TransactionFees:BTC BTC
2014-01-01 open Assets:AU:Hotwallet BTC "FIFO"
2014-01-01 open Assets:AU:Coldwallet BTC "FIFO"
2014-01-01 * "Initial cash balance"
Assets:AU:Cash 1000.00 AUD
Equity:Opening-Balances
2014-01-02 * "Initial hotwallet balance"
Assets:AU:Hotwallet 1.00 BTC {1000 AUD}
Assets:AU:Cash -1000.00 AUD
2014-01-03 * "Deposit Cold storage"
Assets:AU:Hotwallet -0.050000000 BTC {}
Assets:AU:Coldwallet 0.050000000 BTC {}
This fails with an error, but the following tx works:
2014-01-03 * "Deposit Cold storage"
Assets:AU:Hotwallet -0.050000000 BTC {AUD}
Assets:AU:Coldwallet 0.050000000 BTC {}
Given I've specified FIFO (and in my case there is only one lot in the
Hotwallet inventory anyway), I can't quite get my head around why I can
leave out the number but not the currency.
However, I had a further surprise: the cost basis in the Coldwallet becomes
2014-01-03. I presumed that once a cost basis had been attached to a lot,
it would be preserved unless overridden explicitly.
To take another example: I have two stockbroking accounts. One has my
margin loan so I normally buy shares with that account. However when I come
to sell I often transfer them to another account which has lower brokerage.
It's not relevant to my cost basis which account I hold the shares in; I
can move them around as I choose but I'd need my cost basis to reflect the
reality of when I bought and sold a specific share. I presumed that the
<Position> objects created on the augmenting leg(s) would inherit the cost
basis of the reducing leg(s) where FIFO is used and unless I explicitly
reset the cost basis.
Effectively, it seems the safe way to proceed is to use STRICT and to
specify the cost basis explicitly on each tx. But as you noted in our
previous thread, these txs are quite small and frequent. But that would
also realistically mean running bean-doctor before every entry I write to
establish what my inventory is, and rely on my not making mistakes. If I
had to correct an historical tx, I'd have to update the cost basis of every
subsequent tx.
If this is true, I'd probably write a helper script to 'do FIFO' for me,
but before I start going too far down that road it may be that I am still
just a bit confused about how beancount's FIFO behaviour works.
Any thoughts on this?
Thanks again,
Dave
On Fri, 16 Jun 2017 at 13:45 Martin Blais <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Thu, Jun 15, 2017 at 11:17 PM, Dave The Happy Singer <
> [email protected]> wrote:
>
>> Hi Martin et al,
>>
>> I'm still trying to understand how to reliably book transactions without
>> explicitly specifying the cost basis on every leg (e.g. with FIFO booking)
>>
>> Here is a test case with everything explicit, that passes bean-check. I
>> buy 1 BTC for 1000 AUD from an account initialised with a positive AUD
>> balance. Then I transfer a sum to a cold wallet and back to the hot wallet,
>> incurring a fee on each transaction which I book to a BTC-denominated
>> expenses account.
>>
>> option "operating_currency" "AUD"
>>
>> 2014-01-01 open Equity:Opening-Balances
>> 2014-01-01 open Assets:AU:Cash AUD
>> 2014-01-01 open Expenses:Financial:TransactionFees:BTC BTC
>> 2014-01-01 open Assets:AU:Hotwallet BTC "FIFO"
>> 2014-01-01 open Assets:AU:Coldwallet BTC "FIFO"
>>
>> 2014-01-01 * "Initial cash balance"
>> Assets:AU:Cash 1000.00 AUD
>> Equity:Opening-Balances
>>
>> 2014-01-02 * "Initial hotwallet balance"
>> Assets:AU:Hotwallet 1.00 BTC {1000 AUD}
>> Assets:AU:Cash -1000.00 AUD
>>
>> 2014-01-03 * "Deposit Cold storage"
>> Assets:AU:Hotwallet -0.050000000 BTC {1000 AUD}
>> Assets:AU:Coldwallet 0.049000000 BTC {1000 AUD}
>> Expenses:Financial:TransactionFees:BTC 0.001000000 BTC {1000 AUD}
>>
>> 2014-01-04 * "Withdraw Cold storage"
>> Assets:AU:Coldwallet -0.049000000 BTC {1000 AUD}
>> Assets:AU:Hotwallet 0.048000000 BTC {1000 AUD}
>> Expenses:Financial:TransactionFees:BTC 0.001000000 BTC {1000 AUD}
>>
>
> Side note: Your expenses should probably be best booked in AUD, not in BTC.
> In any case, it doesn't make much sense to store anything in an expense
> account with a cost basis.
>
>
> However, despite making my wallet accounts "FIFO", whenever I try to
>> remove the explicit {1000 AUD} cost basis in my reducing postings, I start
>> getting errors.
>>
>> For example, if I use {} in the first transaction:
>>
>> 2014-01-03 * "Deposit Cold storage"
>> Assets:AU:Hotwallet -0.050000000 BTC {}
>> Assets:AU:Coldwallet 0.049000000 BTC {}
>> Expenses:Financial:TransactionFees:BTC 0.001000000 BTC {}
>>
>> I would be hoping that as FIFO is specified for the Coldwallet account,
>> the lot is inferred.
>>
>
> The reducing lot is inferred (the first one).
>
>
> However, bean-check now complains: Failed to categorize posting.
>>
>
> For the augmenting lots (the second and third one), there's no way to
> infer what the cost basis should be, only you know that. e.g., you can use
> this syntax to do cost basis adjustments.
> Except, you may still be able to skip ONE number for each currency group.
>
> But... you also cannot omit too many currency groups. Consider the case
> where you might use a different currency on the other leg (this has
> happened to me before for a stock exchange between CAD and USD if I
> recall). Anyhow, disambiguating the currency is easy; for example, this
> works:
>
> 2014-01-03 * "Deposit Cold storage"
> Assets:AU:Hotwallet -0.050000000 BTC {1000 AUD}
> Assets:AU:Coldwallet 0.049000000 BTC {999 AUD}
> Expenses:Financial:TransactionFees:BTC 0.001000000 BTC {}
>
>
>
> Furthermore, attempting to debug with bean-doctor doesn't quite work for
>> me. The transaction in question starts at line 17. But beandoctor context
>> <filename> 17 returns the context for the previous transaction at line 13.
>>
>
> That's interesting; if there's no error, it works fine.
> However, I think in this case, because this error was irrecoverable, the
> transaction was skipped, and the behavior of the line-number selection is
> to select the closest previous transaction. It does result in an odd
> behavior.
>
> Maybe I should always create transactions even when there are errors.
>
> https://bitbucket.org/blais/beancount/issues/169/consider-always-creating-some-transaction
>
>
> Which it correctly infers to:
>
> bean-doctor context smile2.beancount 19
> Hash:b8a74ca220f3ebc6fce9da5d1ddd8738
> Location: /home/blais/r/q/beancount-data/user/smile/smile2.beancount:17
>
> ------------ Balances before transaction
>
> Assets:AU:Hotwallet 1.00 BTC {1000
> AUD, 2014-01-02}
>
> Assets:AU:Coldwallet
>
> Expenses:Financial:TransactionFees:BTC
>
>
> ------------ Transaction
>
> 2014-01-03 * "Deposit Cold storage"
> Assets:AU:Hotwallet -0.050000000 BTC {1000 AUD,
> 2014-01-02} ; -50.000000000 AUD
> Assets:AU:Coldwallet 0.049000000 BTC {999 AUD,
> 2014-01-03} ; 48.951000000 AUD
> Expenses:Financial:TransactionFees:BTC 0.001000000 BTC {1049 AUD,
> 2014-01-03} ; 1.049000000 AUD
>
>
> Tolerances: BTC=5E-10
>
> ------------ Balances after transaction
>
> * Assets:AU:Hotwallet 0.950000000 BTC {1000
> AUD, 2014-01-02}
>
> * Assets:AU:Coldwallet 0.049000000 BTC {999
> AUD, 2014-01-03}
>
> * Expenses:Financial:TransactionFees:BTC 0.001000000 BTC {1049
> AUD, 2014-01-03}
>
>
>
>
>> If I try amending the second transaction to use {} (instead of the first
>> which I set back to {AUD 1000}), bean-check replies "Too many missing
>> numbers for currency group 'AUD".
>>
>
> How would you like Beancount to know which currency should be used?
>
> I've been thinking in the past that perhaps it should infer it from the
> prior inventory--e.g., if there's a single (unambogious) cost currency
> present in the ante-inventory's list of positions, fill that in
> automatically-- but that would be more inference than it has done before. I
> don't dislike the idea.
>
> https://bitbucket.org/blais/beancount/issues/170/try-inferring-currency-from-the-contents
>
>
>
>> And bean-doctor ... 13 shows the expected balances after the first
>> transaction but beandoctor ... 17 doesn't show any opening balances even
>> though it directly follows the tx at 13.
>>
>
> Also probably the same issue, transaction might have been skipped due to
> error.
> Hmm I should improve that, I have seen that problem from time to time, it
> is a bit of an annoying behavior.
>
>
> Any idea what I may have done wrong here? I'm using beancount==2.0rc1 as
>> installed by the latest package on PyPI. I've read the Inventory and
>> Trading docs several times, but obviously I'm still learning so if I've
>> wasted your time I apologise. Still excited by beancount!
>>
>
> You're not wasting our time; please keep bringing up interesting corner
> cases like this.
> I'm not really interested in Bitcoins, but I like that it's dredging up
> things at the edge of the booking code...
> This is all good testing and discussion, if you have the patience.
>
>
>
> Dave
>>
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