Richard Wackerbarth <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> As far as I know, EVERY account has a minimum transaction unit.
Actually, that's the question. If every account has a minimum
transaction unit, we need to enumerate what they are for every type of
account that gnucash can deal with. I'll start: I hypothesize that
banks don't do transactions in US Dollars with units smaller than
$0.01. Now you tell me about the limits on resolution of the number
of shares in a mutual fund account.
> Alternative 3 is to just accept the transaction. It is an artifact
> of gnucash that things must balance to floating point accuracy. The
> reality is that the accountants consider it balanced when the
> conversion error is within the roundoff error for the transactional
> units.
Are you kidding? Nobody just lets pennies drop off the face of the
earth. Those fractional pennies are scrupulously kept track of by the
bank, so why shouldn't they be kept track of by the user?
In the example I gave, the brokerage probably a bought a hundred
shares at 9 7/8 for $987.50, distributed 1 share to each person who
bought one, charged them $9.88 each, and pocketed the 50 cents
difference. Everyone's price was 9 7/8 (rounded to the nearest
relevant unit).
It's not an "artifact of gnucash", it's an artifact of accounting. If
what you paid is different from the total price of the items you
bought, that money will end up in a third party's pocket, and it makes
sense to record that. In any case, it *has* to be accounted for, even
if the number that you're counting is smaller than 1.
Bill Gribble
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