Strange experience today. I was entering some of my old financial
data, and I had an investment account that recorded the purchase of a
mutual fund into a retirement account. So I entered the transaction
into a mutual fund register (actually I entered it into the
cash-account clearing register and then modified the share values in
the mutual fund register).
After a few minutes of scratching my head, I realized that the numbers
they were giving me weren't telling me what I thought they were. The
information they give (making up some numbers) is a total cost for the
purchase (say $1000), including the share price (say $10.001), and the
quantity (100.000). In the description for the transaction, they also
list a transaction cost (say $30 -- it's a loaded fund).
First note that the total isn't the same as the quantity times the
price. It's actually off by about $0.10 in my favor, which they claim
is just roundoff in the share price as compared to what it "should
have been". Even given that, if the share price and the quantity are
correct, then I can't figure out what happened to the transaction
cost. because it's not deducted from anywhere else, and for it to be
included in the "direct way", the overal transaction value would have
had to be $1030.
So two questions:
* If the transaction fee really is incorporated into the cost of the
purchase, then the quantity or price values can't be right.
What's going on, and what's the right way to record this? I
thought perhaps they just adjusted the price per share upward from
the "value at purchase time" to account for the transaction cost,
but if so, then should I compute the "real" value and use it, even
though my gnucash records won't match the financial insitution's,
or should I do something to record the difference in the mutual
fund register itself?
* Presuming I'm not just interpreting things wrong, if there is a
roundoff error, how should that normally be handled? Do I enter
them as an adjustment? If so, from what type of account?
Thanks.
PS: Once I understand this, I'll be happy to add a section to the
docs.
--
Rob Browning <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> PGP=E80E0D04F521A094 532B97F5D64E3930
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