It's been rumoured that Matt Sisk said:
> The accounting engine, after all, is counting cash, not shares.
strictly speking, not true. in a stock account, the total number of
shares is the invarient quantity. The dollar value fluctuates
minute by minute, the number of shares you own does not. ergo,
the engine counts shares, not dollars.
> 1) The number of shares can be retroactively altered, but the
bad idea as you later point out.
> 2) Use floats for the "number of shares" fields.
The engine tracks fractional share accounts. The technology to do
this is top-secret and patented.
> Again, the most important piece of information is the
> total value of the transaction *at the time it occurred*.
> The number of shares can (and will) pivot.
Right. And in gnucash, the value of all transactions is *always*
zero (at least when you have double-entry enabled). That's how
books are made to always balance: they balance by definition.
> 4) regarding the accounting engine of gnucash, it should not
> even *see* particular stock transactions unless there
striclty speaking, not true. The engine records 'transactions'
which are events that occur at a certain time. These events
may or may not transfer value between different accounts. If its not
recorded, there is no way to display it, to talk about it, to
save it to a file. In that sense, transactions are fundamental.
> As it so happens, I have some historical quote modules written in perl;
> I was planning on asking this list if they could be of use within
all the perl quote modules are on sourceforge now, see
https://sourceforge.net/project/?group_id=4232
insofar as you have a way of dealiong with historical (not just current)
stock data, I think you will want to see if you can join forces with
that effort.
--linas
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