GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 109641
bogus value inserted in the price field when using a mutual fund
Last modified: 2018-06-29 20:30:27 UTC
When Using a mutual fund account and making a transaction from the mutual fund account to for example a checking account then the value entered in the transaction dialog for the "price" field is bogus. (On my machine, it always entered 1, no matter what is the exchange rate given in the transfer dialog).
I've looked into this bug, and it only happens if the "from" account is the stock account. The workaround is to always transfer "from" the "currency" account and "to" the stock account... If you are selling the stock, then just make the amount be negative. I've added code to CVS to make sure you cannot do this incorrectly, and suggest you flip the from/to and invert the amount to a negative value if you attempt it. This change will be in 1.8.3.
I have what seems like a similar/same problem. But, i get this behavior in 1.8.4. What happens for me is that when I try to enter, even a beginning balance and xfer from Equity:OpeningBalances I am unable to correctly enter in the Shares, the Price, the Buy/Sell. The price defaults to 1 (this is unchangable from my perspective) The shares take the value that should be held in Balance.. and indeed it is the same value as balance with the price of the shares defaulted at 1).. When I attempt to change the value of the number of shares I get a dialog box asking me to Recalculate Transaction which gives me three radio buttons for Shares (Changed), Price (default checked) and Value. I choose price, because of course the value is currently correct so I need the price and number of shares to be refigured and as I have just changed the number of shares, the only thing left to be changed is price. The behavior that I get is that nothing seems to happen, other than the number of shares I had just entered are now changed to hold the same value as the Balance field and the price is now still 1. -- Slackware9.0, GnuCash 1.8.4 (from source tarball)
This is the result of two potential issues: 1) you don't have the commodity set properly on the account. If the account commodity is still USD, then all prices will be '1'. The fix is to properly set the commodity on the account (select the account in the account tree, click "Edit", then "Select" the commodity -- create a new one if necessary). 2) This could be bug #117773 in either case, this bug should remain closed. If the problem is #1 it's user error. If the problem is #2 then followups should go to that bug.
Okay, you are right, changing the commodity does allow me to enter in a value into the price field. Thank you. I'm still confused as to why the balance field shows the same value as the shares field.. I take it that it is meant to show the balance of shares? This doesn't seem to make sense really. Lastly, and I'm not sure if this is a bug that is properly assigned to this bug number, but here it is anyway. As this is a mutual fund that I wish to enter transactions for, and as such there are those quarterly reports that come out. In those reports one often finds that the price of the shares have appreciated or depreciated in value, as well as perhaps the occational dividend that is received...possibly 10's of other possibilities for change with these quarterly reports. That being the case, one has a difficult time (ie, impossible) to update the current value/balance of the mutual fund with existing entries for the mutual fund transaction. I can create a plain old asset account, but then i loose the benefits of the Mutual Fund category as a plain old asset account won't record shares, prices of shares etc.. From what I see, there is a flaw in the way these mutal fund transactions are handled. Or perhaps I just don't know what the fsck I'm doing.. entirely possible. But that out of the way I really for the life of me don't understand why it is that the Balance field shows the balance of shares rather than the current account balance in currency terms. P.S. Having just read bug #117773, this behavior has nothing to do with it. P.P.S. Sorry for being a pain in the ass btw..
You should read the archives of gnucash-user where this is all described. Or try reading the gnucash documentation (which also describes it). stock/mutual funds track #shares, so the balance is going to show you how many shares you have. The main window can show you the value in the "default reporting category" -- enter the current price in the pricedb, and from the main account tree click on "options", then select the "total balance in report currency" column. Follow-ups should go to gnucash-user
GnuCash bug tracking has moved to a new Bugzilla host. This bug has been copied to https://bugs.gnucash.org/show_bug.cgi?id=109641. Please update any external references or bookmarks.