Hi all,
First of all, I have to say that I find ledger very convenient, and looks like
what I was looking for as accountancy software: the ability to just write on
the flight is really great !
Before going further, I have no real skills in accountancy, so I learned with
documentation from GnuCash and Ledger.
I got an understanding for daily transactions, but I can't get it the way I
want it for keeping track of a few stocks. It might also be because I don't
know the "right way" to handle "in the accountancy way".
Maybe, you'll have some hints, I would appreciate :)
So, I made a sample file, close to what's in the Ledger documentation.
I run ledger "3.0.0-20130529" from the Debian archives.
My first try (case A), looks like:
; Initial openings at 2014/01/01
2014-01-01 Opening Balance
Assets:Bank:Check Account 5000,00 €
Equity:Opening Balance
; Details of shares at 2014/01/01
2014-01-01 Details for shares
Assets:Investments:Stocks:Total Value
Assets:Investments:Stocks:Share A 15 ShareA @ 20€
Assets:Investments:Stocks:Share B 5 ShareB @ 100€
Then, I run "ledger --real -B -V balance", which returns:
: 5000,00 € Assets
: 5000,00 € Bank:Check Account
: 0 Investments:Stocks
: 300,00 € Share A
: 500,00 € Share B
: -800,00 € Total Value
: -5000,00 € Equity:Opening Balance
: --------------------
: 0
That's fine. I understand that doing this, only the gains and loss will end in
the assets. I put the "Total Value" entry in order to see at a glance the value
of all shares.
In my second try (case B), I wish to see the contribution of my stocks within
the assets (I don't know if that's a valid practice but it gives me an overview
of the whole money available a time "t").
; Initial openings at 2014/01/01
2014-01-01 Opening Balance
Assets:Bank:Check Account 5000,00 €
Equity:Opening Balance
; Details of shares at 2014/01/01
;P 2014-01-01 00:00:00 ShareA 20€
;P 2014-01-01 00:00:00 ShareB 100€
2014-01-01 Details for shares
Equity:Opening Balance:Initial Investments
Assets:Investments:Stocks:Share A 15 ShareA @ 20€
Assets:Investments:Stocks:Share B 5 ShareB @ 100€
In that case, the same commands returns:
: 5800,00 € Assets
: 5000,00 € Bank:Check Account
: 800,00 € Investments:Stocks
: 300,00 € Share A
: 500,00 € Share B
: -5800,00 € Equity:Opening Balance
: -800,00 € Initial Investments
: --------------------
: 0
That's still fine, and in this case, I get the global value of the stocks in my
assets.
The, I sell some shares of stock B at a higher price, in both cases.
This is were problems rises for me.
; Selling 2 ShareB at 2014/04/01
2014-04-01 Selling 2 ShareB
Assets:Bank:Check Account 240,00 €
Assets:Investments:Stocks:Share B -2 ShareB {100€} @ 120€
Income:Investments Gains
In "case A", the result is:
5000,00 € Assets
5240,00 € Bank:Check Account
-240,00 € Investments:Stocks
300,00 € Share A
260,00 € Share B
-800,00 € Total Value
-4960,00 € Equity
40,00 € Capital Gains
-5000,00 € Opening Balance
-40,00 € Income:Investments Gains
--------------------
0
In "case B", the result (hopefully) looks similar:
5800,00 € Assets
5240,00 € Bank:Check Account
560,00 € Investments:Stocks
300,00 € Share A
260,00 € Share B
-5760,00 € Equity
40,00 € Capital Gains
-5800,00 € Opening Balance
-800,00 € Initial Investments
-40,00 € Income:Investments Gains
--------------------
0
I can see that I sold 2 stocks for 240€, and I can see my gain which is
2*(120-100)=40€, that's great.
There are a few things that bother me:
1) The presence of the "Equity:Capital Gains", which I understand balances the
entry, but it is automatically added and I can't choose its name. I thought
the balance would go to the "Income:Investments Gains" in fact.
I found this discussion in the archives:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/ledger-cli/g9879yRsTBo/WQQDO7zCkWQJ
Which ends-up saying it cannot be handled, however I found this commit in the
older repository:
https://gitorious.org/ledger/ledger/commit
/edc971b49370ec12f904a946f4be09f9e7005b52,
and I could find the code in the current GitHub.
So, what's the status for this question ?
2) The left-over for "Share B" shows 260€, which does not render the fact that
I still have 3 plain stocks, which would at least value 300€ (from their
initial value), or 360€ for the current value.
In the documentation example, everything was sold at one time, so we are not in
the same situation.
3) I would like to have a view of the left-over value of the stocks, at time
"t". In "case A", the total still show "800€" which is the initial value,
and in "case B", I see 560€, which reflects the "800€-240€", but not the
sum of the 10 ShareA and the 3 remaining ShareB.
I understand that it shows what it has to show, but I would like to know how to
set things up, so that I can see what I described there.
I also tried to play with lines like:
P 2014-01-01 00:00:00 ShareB 100€
P 2014-04-01 00:00:00 ShareB 120€
In that case, I can toggle the display of share or values with the option "-V",
which gets close to what I want.
However, I run into other issues, mainly that it only uses the last value, even
for the initial value, and if I mix the notation in "plain shares" (-2 ShareB)
and the notation with attributed values (-2 ShareB {100€} @ 120€), they don't
get along very well.
So, I prefered to narrow things down and start with my first two examples.
Thank you for having the patience to read that all way through.
Do you have any clues or advices so I can get a clear view of stocks in my
files, in accountancy terms, and with ledger in particular ?
Any help will be appreciated,
Thanks in advance,
Christophe S.
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