On Apr 26, 2009, at 3:01 PM, Derek Mahar wrote:
So you need to specify the original cost of the commodities you wish to sell or the date on which you bought those commodities or both?
You can specify one, both or none.
What does ledger do if you specify neither?
Ledger itself doesn't actually know anything about commodities as opposed to anything else you might trade. Depending on the information you provide, it can generate reports which reflect that info. If you don't provide it, it just won't come through in any reports.
Must the cost be the actual purchase price or can it be an average cost?
Must be the actual purchase price.
Since capital gains (or profit in general) is both an income entry and a kind of report, might a ledger option compute these profit entries on behalf of the user which the user could then use to replace the original entries? Or, if the user leaves them out, might ledger compute them automatically, similar to how it already automatically balances a transaction by calculating the other side?
Ledger doesn't really do any automatic computation of this kind. That would be the job of an external tool, which might then generate Ledger- compatible transactions.
John
