The developers can give you a more detailed answer, but in fact GnuCash carries much more prrcision inyernally. To get the best results, enter number of shares and total currency then let GnuCash calculate the price. That usually allows GnuCash reports To mstch your brokers reports.
On Mon, Aug 21, 2023, 12:22 PM Bruce McCoy via gnucash-user < gnucash-user@gnucash.org> wrote: > Greetings to all of you, > > > Ingnucash, you have developed a wonderful program. Thank you. > > > Greatis my anticipation for using it, although there is at least one areaI > do not understand. Could you please help me comprehend what ishappening in > the calculations of gnucash compared with thecalculations of Federated > Hermes? > FederatedHermes determines the number of shares traded by the currency > amountof the trade divided by the price of the shares. For example, > onceupon a time they charged me a $15.00 Annual Fiduciary > Administrationfee. The share price was $6.26. To meet the fee they sold > 2.396shares and recorded it on their statement as -2.396 shares, accurateto > 1/1,000 of a share, for the transaction. As we see below thenumber of > shares they reported was truncated from the more accuratefigure given > below. > > AnnualFiduciary Administrative Fee of $15.00/Share price of $6.26 > =2.3961661341853035143769968 > > 05111821086261980830670926517571884984025559105431309904153354632587859425shares > traded. > Ingnucash, entering the fee of $15 and the number of shares as > 2.396,results in gnucash reducing the shares in the fund by 2.4, > changingthe fund and expense accounts by $15.02, and setting the trade > priceat $6.2583. > Gnucashunderestimates the trade price by (1-(6.2583/6.26))*100 = 0.02715 > %. > Gnucashcould use a longer fraction to generate a more accurate share > price. This only requires that the fraction have more significant digits. > If gnucash multiplied the $15.00 fee by2.3961661341853035143769968051118 > 21086261980830670926517571884984025559105431309904153354632587859425shares, > won't the result be a share price of $6.26. > > Mutualfunds seem to treat both the amount of the local currency > tenderedand the price per share as decimal numbers of high precision > e.g.$15.0000000000000000000 or $6.260000000000000000000000. They seem > toconsider the number of shares traded as an approximation. Of coursethey > add and subtract fractional numbers of shares. Where do we seethem dividing > the transaction cost by the number of shares, includingfractional shares, > to calculate the the price per share? > Inevery mutual fund statement I have seen, the prices and the numbersof > shares always agree from month to month. Aren't mutual funds astandard in > calculation of financial values? Why do we not do thesame by incorporating > more significant digits in the calculations? > InEdit > Preferences > Numbers, Date, Time > Numbers >Force Prices to > display as decimals, the maximum number of decimalplaces one can display is > only 8 (eight). If this is close to thenumber of significant digits gnucash > is currently using, could it bethat we might consider using, instead of, > say, double binaryfloating-point method, a decimal floating-point > arithmetic, e.x.http://speleotrove.com/decimal, as is done in financial > andcommercial applications (like engineering) requiring exact, > precisemeasurements, especially in applications having multiple > trailingzeros achieved by scaling? > > > > Aswe know both the IEEE have standards (ex. IEEE 754) recommending > andEuropean regulatory agencies have laws mandating working precision > indecimal digits for calculations. Packages like the Java BigDecimalclass > and the C decNumber package have been developed to providecompliance. > > > Whydo we not avoid rounding errors? Why do we not enjoy the accuracyand > precision that everyone else can? Well, we can increase theprecision of our > calculations by increasing the number of significantdigits in the decimal > representations of our numerical data. > > Bruce > > > > > > | | Virus-free.www.avast.com | > > _______________________________________________ > gnucash-user mailing list > gnucash-user@gnucash.org > To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: > https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user > ----- > Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. > You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All. > _______________________________________________ gnucash-user mailing list gnucash-user@gnucash.org To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user ----- Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
