On 9/1/2021 12:28 PM, John Ralls wrote:
On Sep 1, 2021, at 12:16 PM, John Ralls <[email protected]> wrote:
On Sep 1, 2021, at 11:15 AM, Lisa Rowell <[email protected]> wrote:
On 9/1/2021 5:27 AM, Lisa Rowell wrote:
On 8/31/2021 9:41 PM, John Ralls wrote:
On Aug 31, 2021, at 8:32 PM, Lisa Rowell <[email protected]> wrote:
I'm working my way through my account history after a massive GnuCash import,
straightening out issues with missing realized capital gains/losses and came
across an event that I can't figure out how to properly handle.
I held shares of a fund called Spartan 500 Index Investor Class (FSMKX) which
merged with Spartan US Equity Index Investor Class (FUSEX) at some odd rate
around 1:0.513. When I did the import, I ended up with an account for FSMKX and
an account for FUSEX and a manually entered exchange transaction which did a
sell of FSMKX shares and a buy of FUSEX shares with no share price. This got
everything balanced out as far as share counts go, but now I'm finding it's
showing up as being not correct in the Trial Balance. It looks to me like the
exchange is being interpreted as if an actual sell event had taken place.
Can GnuCash properly account for this? The case in the manual's More Complex
Merger example is a bit different because the example stock continued to trade
under the same symbol, so that solution doesn't map well. I found a past
mailing list thread that said that the proper way to account for this is as a
sell transaction of the going away fund and a buy transaction of the fund that
lives on with an accompanying Realized Gain transaction. This doesn't seem
right to me though since I didn't sell the shares and did not realize a gain
and I don't even have prices for the time of the merger. In my way of looking
at it, the gain calculation should come at the time of sale and be based on
purchase price of the various share amounts, and not at the time of the merger,
since that maps to the tax view of things where I live.
I understand that GnuCash wouldn't be able to calculate the realized gains post
merger, and I'm ok with doing that in a side spreadsheet, but am more looking
for a way around the bogus realized gain entry at the time of merger just to
make the Trial Balance happy.
If you're not too compulsive and since this is presumably ancient history in a
personal book one simple way to deal with it would be to pretend that you
bought the FUSEX in the first place and ignore the FSMKX, but that might be a
little painful if you have a bunch of reinvested FSMKX dividend transactions
that you'd also need to change.
I've handled similar situations in the past by doing a simple transfer
transaction between the two accounts, as in CR FSMKX 513 and DR FUSEX 1000. As
long as there's no currency component to the transaction it shouldn't create a
trading imbalance in the book currency.
Regards,
John Ralls
That solution was what worked for me for share transfers between brokerages,
where the commodity was the same, but when I changed commodities it somehow
shows up as a mismatch in the Trial Balance. I don't have a share price for the
shares in either split so, in theory it shouldn't involve the book currency at
all. I don't get it at all.
I'm sure it's this transaction since the balances match on the previous day and
the only other transaction on this date is a paycheck deposit in the book
currency that's no where near the amount of the imbalance. The transaction is
in the image attached, that's what you're advocating, right?
Thanks.
Lisa R.
Additional information:
Removing the cross commodity sell/buy transaction does remove the Trial Balance
discrepancy. Additionally I added up all of the purchase prices of shares of
the fund being merged away and that amount does equal to the credit / debit
difference in the report.
It is, but that doesn't quite work. Here's a sample that does:
If you don't price the share transfer to the currency (USD in both examples)
the trial balance logic assumes 0 and calculates a loss. To avoid that enter
the book value of the shares you're transferring as a sell (credit) amount in
the source split and a buy (debit) amount in the destination split:
Unfortunately my screen shot didn't make it to the list. It contained the
following transactions:
1/23/19 Buy PIODX 1000 Brokerage Account 1000 25.0000
25,000.00 1,000
2/28/19 Reinv PIODX 11.231 Brokerage Account 11.231 22.2598
250.00 1,011.231
9/1/21 Transfer to PXXXX -1011.231
1,011.231 0
PXXXX 1971.211 12.8094
25,250.00
PIODX -1011.231 24.9698
25,250.00
The last transaction is in split view showing the identical cash amounts for
the two stock accounts. Enter the amounts and let GnuCash compute the prices to
prevent rounding errors from causing a gain/loss.
Regards,
John Ralls
I got the image in email, and it cleared things up for me. It looks to
me like you put in the sell book currency amount as not the value on the
date of the merger, but rather the basis for the shares being converted,
thus making the it look like there is no gain/loss being realized. I
suspect this simplifies dealing with gains/loss calculation on the post
merger shares as well.
The one issue I see with this as a solution is that it creates incorrect
prices in the price database, which I assume would mess up a Network
Report. I'm not sure this bothers me in this case.
Thanks for getting me back on track, it's greatly appreciated.
Lisa R.
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