I will start over and use different language, but I still have issues to express.
I was exploring ways to transform a copy of an existing stock purchase or sale of some number of shares of stock FOO into a similar purchase or sale of stock BAR on a different date and in a different brokerage account in GnuCash. My goal is to find a way to do it as efficiently as possible, retaining all of the transaction structure and at least the structure of the the various memos, descriptions and notes of each split line. One method would be to print out a complete copy of a model transaction onto a sheet of paper, but that uses paper and ink and sometimes it requires exploration and testing to get all of the information onto one sheet of paper. My present method is to start by selecting a model transaction, preferably in the same brokerage account, but once in a while I want to copy transaction structure into a different account. I usually start by creating new security accounts if necessary, then setting the date of the transformation copy of the model transaction to the correct date while looking at an image of a recent confirmation statement from my broker. I could do the rest in any order but I usually start in the brokerage account view and highlight and change the security purchase/sale account split line to the desired security. This may or may not trigger a pop-up called Transfer Funds which, as you point out, is incredibly confusing. It is not tailored to picking numbers off of a confirmation statement to get to a correct transaction. The next intimidating thing is that it displays values in the GnuCash fractional form which makes no sense to mortals like me, but it suggests that I need to figure out how to enter a price in that impossible format. Because this is so confusing, even if there is some way to make this create a split line showing the correct number of shares and price, it is overwhelming. So I just click OK, planning to later switch to the security account, and correct the number of shares and total amount, and let GnuCash figure out the price required to develop those values. In a brokerage account or a general ledger view, the visible numbers are the most important ones, namely total currency amounts. There are an infinite number of different combinations of shares and prices to produce the same currency amount. Currently the only way edit or verify those that I am aware of requires jumping to the security account. However, it is necessary commit any changes already made to the transaction or it will be impossible to edit in the other account view. Years ago I think that I wrote a bug report suggesting that there be a warning when jumping out of a transaction that has a pending edit, and maybe a way to find and get back to that pending edit. Maybe that Transfer Funds dialog could be redesigned to facilitate entering numbers that are picked off of a confirmation statement. Then the main concern remaining would be whether GnuCash uses a rounding scheme close enough to the one that the broker uses. Going back to one other point in the previous message, I may not understand where or why the need for currency conversion arises in an account that only uses one currency. That is probably another reason that the Transfer Funds dialog is so confusing. David C _______________________________________________ gnucash-devel mailing list gnucash-devel@gnucash.org https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-devel