When I do stock transactions that involve shares being bought or sold, I always do them in the investment account for that "holds" the shares for that specific stock. For example, the account structure might be something like:
Investments:My Brokerage Account:XYZ Stock So I open the account "XYZ Stock" and I can now buy shares. There are two types of buy transactions I can do; add shares from old account that I already own, using equity open balance transaction, or buy with cash in my investment account. --- Use Equity Open Balance --- Start a new transaction. Gnucash will automatically put a split in the transaction that will have the "XYZ Stock" account referenced. This is the line where you tab over and put the number of shares in the "Tot Shares" column and the total cost of the shares in the "Tot Buy" column. Gnucash will automatically calculate the price per share. Next tab to the next line. Gnucash will automatically enter the same amount as the "Tot Buy" column in the first line but in the "tot Sell" column. Pick the equity account you are using to track the amount of initial equity (for example, "Opening Balances" or something like that). Once both these transaction lines are entered, you are done. Hit Enter to finish the transaction. You should see the "Balance" column listing the number of shares you added. --- Use Cash from Account --- This transaction is exactly like the Equity one, but instead of an Equity account, you will be using cash from another account. For me, this is always a "Cash" account that is a part of my investment account. For ecample: Investments:My Brokerage Account:Cash Once the buy transaction is done, the cash account inside my investment account will be decreased by the cost for the new shares. I think the trouble you might have been having is trying to enter the transactions from within a cash account. I don't know how you can specify shares when entering the transaction that way. That's why I always do buy and sell transactions for investment securities in the accounts that hold those securities. Hope this helps. Getting used to the double entry accounting can be a bit confusing at first, but after a while it makes sense. ----- Ken Farley -- Sent from: http://gnucash.1415818.n4.nabble.com/GnuCash-User-f1415819.html _______________________________________________ gnucash-user mailing list gnucash-user@gnucash.org To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user If you are using Nabble or Gmane, please see https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Mailing_Lists for more information. ----- Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.