I have all the records, but not all are in or available in digital form, so
I have been laboriously entering them in a spreadsheet.
Would it be worthwhile to set up a new data file just for those stocks and
import/hand enter them in Gnucash instead? (I suspect any IRS auditor would
be more impressed with my Gnucash data store than my Excel data store.)
Whether worthwhile or not, you'd have to judge, but since you would be
hand entering the data in either case, not more work using gnucash and
as you note, easier t produce the reports you would want.
The point is, you can most certainly use gnucash to maintain multiple
sets of books. Back in the old days of pen and ink on paper bookkeeping
it was quite usual to have subsidiary sets of books. A main set of
books, of course, but then possibly also a "cashbook" (for transactions
involving actual cash and a small set of the most popular ledger
accounts involved with those transactions) and a "petty cash book". Thus
once a month (when being replenished) the "petty cash book" account
TOTALS (not each tiny transaction) entered into the main books. The same
with the "cashbook".
Another use you might make of additional sets of books is for virtual
entities. When I was doing books for organizations that put on events
(and these dwarfed the "main" other transactions of the entity) I would
create a set of books for the event (opened with a "loan" from the
organization) and then closed back to the organization when all was
over. Makes it easy to see what the organizers want to see (like how did
event X do compared to last year's X).
For my [personal use, I have a set of books for our solar system so we
can correctly track things like how it is paying itself off.. Keep in
mind that ordinarily you can be entering only real transactions but in
this case there are virtual transactions (an electric bill we don't have
to pay is not a transaction in the real sense, but represents income to
the solar system which can be used to pay on the loan, etc. At this
point it has almost paid back the original loan (with interest) even
accounting for its expenses (what we pay on its behalf) like its share
of property insurance, its share of our taxes from sale of SRECs, etc.
<< those payments to us are taxable (if you don't cheat) so we credit
80% of "sale of SRECs" to income and 20% to expenses "tax owed". Once
100% paid off I will have to decide what to do. Either close out OR
perhaps continue treating it as an ":investment" (what it is in our
personal books) paying dividends and/or building a sinking fund to pay
for its eventual repair/replacement.
Michael D Novack
Note -- The "cashbook" would actually be more familiar to you than other
parts of traditional bookkeeping as it was direct entry into the ledger
just like you do with gnucash. No entering first into a journal and then
posting to the ledger. Using gnucash is very much like "cashbook for
everything" but gnucash CAN produce the corresponding journal as a
report if you wanted to see that for some reason.
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