I will add this to the docs. I will take me a few days.
On Wed, Sep 18, 2013 at 8:42 AM, Brandon Rhodes <[email protected]>wrote: > I wrote: > > > 2005/08/01 Stock sale > > Assets:Broker -50 APPL {$30.00} @ $50.00 > > Expenses:Broker:Commissions $19.95 > > Income:Capital Gains $-1,000.00 > > Assets:Broker $2,500.00 > > > > There are three problems with this. > > I was wrong; there are four, I just forgot to mention the last one. > > Problem number four is that there is no check here for whether the > notation "@ $50.00" is actually correct! Try it: grab the balanced > version of the transaction that I provide a bit further down in my > email, and start changing the stock price. For example, let's add $100 > to the sale price of the stock: > > 2005/08/01 Stock sale > Assets:Broker -50 APPL {$30.00} @ $150.00 > Expenses:Broker:Commissions $29.95 > Income:Capital Gains $-1,010.00 > Assets:Broker $2,480.05 > > Ledger is not bothered at all and will not complain in the least that > the cash actually generated by the sale is far too little given the > stated price of the stock. This defect is not, by contrast, suffered by > the fixed version that I recommended; if you get the stock price wrong > in the version I offered, then both transactions will be unbalanced > until you fix it. > > In fact, I cannot see that Ledger does anything useful to balance the > numbers when a two-price expression like "{$30.00} @ $50.00" is used, > and so I avoid such constructions entirely! So far as I can see, they > cause no actual double-entry bookkeeping to take place. > > So the stock-sale reporting method currently recommended in the > documentation has *two* entirely un-checked degrees of freedom, when > there should be none: the stock price can be wrong and Ledger will not > flag it, and (as described in my first email) the commission can be > wrong and Ledger will not complain so long as the capital gains number > is also wrong to compensate. > > -- > Brandon Rhodes [email protected] > http://rhodesmill.org/brandon > > -- > > --- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Ledger" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. > -- Craig, Corona De Tucson, AZ enderw88.wordpress.com -- --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Ledger" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
