Handling Investment gain and loss

[aga]

On 23/05/16 13:33, Mitch Frazier wrote:
> ​Either I wasn't clear or you're misunderstanding what I'm saying,
<snip>
> the
> "cost basis field" is the amount that is used to reduce the remaining
> basis of the asset.  If you sell the entire investment, the reduction
> would be the entire cost of the investment (thereby reducing the cost to
> zero).  The reason that you might need to adjust the cost basis is for
> exactly the reason that you pointed out: when you sell less than the
> full asset, there's more than one way to determine the cost of the part
> that was sold.  You can use "average cost", "FIFO", or "specific lots"
> (and probably some others) to determine the cost of the part that was
> sold.  A more sophisticated user interface for entering/determining the
> cost would be a refinement, this is just meant to be a first step along
> the way. The difference between the sales price and the cost basis of
> the part that was sold is the gain/loss on the sale.
>
> Creating a  "category" for storing the cost and/or recovering the cost
> doesn't make any sense, the cost is already stored in the investment
> account (the stock/bond account).  It contains the original amount
> (amounts if more than one purchase was done).  The difference between
> the sales price and the "cost basis" of the sale is the gain/loss on the
> transaction and that would go to one or more "categories".
>
> As far as developers with the time to implement it, when I said "I was
> thinking about implementing" I meant I was going to work on the
> implementation.​
>

I made no comment about the proposed functionality.

Neither did I suggest that the developers might have to implement it. 
However, they do have a say it what gets implemented, and it was that to 
which I was referring.

Allan

> On Mon, May 23, 2016 at 3:14 AM, aga <agander93 at gmail.com
> <mailto:agander93 at gmail.com>> wrote:
>
>     On 22/05/16 20:04, Mitch Frazier wrote:
>
>         While entering a number of investment transactions recently I
>         realized
>         that KMM doesn't actually have a way to record the gain/loss on
>         the sale
>         of an investment. I was thinking about implementing something to
>         solve
>         this but wanted to pass the idea past the list first.
>
>         As a first step at a solution, I was going to add a couple more
>         rows to
>         the transaction detail in the investment register:
>
>             - A cost basis field.  This would be an amount field that is
>               used to determine how much the cost of the investment is
>               reduced by the sale. Initially this field could be pre-filled
>               by the average cost (based on the number of shares being
>         sold).
>               If the entire investment is sold, this field would be fixed
>               and not editable.
>             - A gain/loss field.  This would be an splitable account field
>               for entering the category or categories for the gain/loss.
>               Splits are useful for allowing both short-term and long-term
>               gain/loss specifications on a transaction.
>
>         The current implementation "hides" the gain/loss because the
>         balance of
>         an investment shows as zero when the share value is zero,
>         regardless of
>         the amount the investment is sold for.  Whereas, since the
>         gain/loss is
>         not recorded anywhere, the balance ought to be negative if the
>         investment was sold for a gain and positive if sold for a loss.
>
>         Mitch
>
>
>     I think the developers will need to comment on this proposal.  From
>     my own point of view, it is not a functionality that I need, at
>     least at present.  What's more important, though, is that it might
>     be advisable for display of the extra fields to be optional,
>     certainly from the perspective of a new user.
>
>     Allan
>
>