On Mon, Apr 24, 2000 at 06:09:36PM -0500, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> 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,
Um, no. From an accounting standpoint, the dollar value of the shares is
what you paid for them. Until you enter a transaction to sell the shares,
and actually realize the value, there is no adjustment of the value.
I think one problem here is that there is a level confusion.
We need to distinguish the accounting database from the reports. In the
accounting database, neither the number of shares nor the value of the
original transaction will ever change. OTOH, when i call up a 'present
market value' report, that should show, well, the present market value of an
account.
So, the dollar value of the account doesn't change. What gets displayed in
a report might.
It seems to me that the engine needs to record stock splits in a separate
table. It can then combine this table and the account transaction
information to prepare reports showing things like the current number of
shares owned or the present market value of such shares.
But the actual transaction data itself is a number of share, a date, and a
price (and the other half of the double entry, of course). This data
doesn't change after it is entered. That is what happened, anything else is
dependent on what type of report you want to run.
--
Chance is irrelevant. We will succeed. -- Seven of Nine
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