Hi John,
thanks for the explanations, great piece of documentation. A few remarks and
questions.
On Sat, Mar 10, 2012 at 01:51:37AM -0600, John Wiegley wrote:
> You can mark individual postings as cleared or pending, in case one "side" of
> the transaction has cleared, but the other hasn't yet:
>
> 2012-03-10 * KFC
> Liabilities:Credit $100.00
> * Assets:Checking
Is this a spurious * on the first line?
> If you want, you can state that virtual postings *should* balance against
> one or more other virtual postings by using brackets (which look "harder")
> rather than parentheses:
What happens if it doesn't balance?
> It is a general convention within Ledger that the "top" postings in a
> transaction contain the target accounts, while the final posting contains the
> source account. Whenever a commodity is exchanged like this, the commodity
> moved to the target account is considered "secondary", while the commodity
> used for purchasing and tracked in the cost is "primary".
Great, this part is totally new to me. Much clearer now.
> For example, consider the stock sale given above:
>
> 2012-03-10 My Broker
> Assets:Brokerage 10 AAPL @ $50.00
> Assets:Brokerage:Cash
>
> The commodity transferred into Assets:Brokerage is not actually 10 AAPL, but
> rather 10 AAPL {$5.00}. The figure in braces after the amount is called the
> "lot price". It's Ledger's way of remembering that this commodity was
> transferred through an exchange, and that $5.00 was the price of that
> exchange.
Is it {$50.00} or {$5.00}? You lost me there.
> Instead, if you reference that same hidden price annotation, Ledger will
> figure out that the price of the shares you're selling, and the cost you're
> selling them at, don't balance:
>
> 2012-04-10 My Broker
> Assets:Brokerage:Cash $750.00
> Assets:Brokerage -10 AAPL {$50.00} @ $75.00
> This transaction will fail because the $250.00 price difference between the
> price you bought those shares at, and the cost you're selling them for, does
> not match. The lot price also identifies which shares you purchased on that
> prior date.
So what is the exact rule when both sides of an @ don't match? Here we have a
$250 difference, and this difference is added to the balance of the transaction
if and only if I use the lot-price annotation { } (or the shorthand {{ }})?
> Plus, it comes with dangers. This works fine:
>
> 2012-04-10 My Broker
> Assets:Brokerage 10 AAPL @ $50.00
> Assets:Brokerage:Cash $750.00
I don't understand how this can balance. Should it be $500.00 instead? (I
believe it's not a typo since you reuse the example several times below).
> In addition to lot prices, you can specify lot dates and reveal them with
> --lot-dates. Other than that, however, they have no special meaning to
> Ledger. They are specified after the amount in square brackets (the same way
> that dates are parsed in value expressions):
>
> 2012-04-10 My Broker
> Assets:Brokerage:Cash $375.00
> Assets:Brokerage -5 AAPL {$50.00} [2012-04-10] @@ $375.00
> Income:Capital Gains $-125.00
Does ledger check that the dates match (ie can I use the lot date as some kind
of inventory tracking)?
> # Lot value expressions
I skipped that part, I feel I need to understand the rest before diving into it.
Best,
--
Gabriel
