These points being said, there have been suggestions made in this list by others more qualified than I on the circumstances in which a user might need to track unrealized gains and account for them on an ongoing basis. I believe the term they used was "mark to market." You might look for those threads in the list archives.
Not just "mark to market", and in fact, it is so long since I had to look at this, I am not sure that in the example I gave you also had to "mark to market" (include changes in the price of the commodity). It has been many decades since I had to worry about things like what was needed to figure "personal property tax" on livestock. I'm in my late 70's now, can't remember << and in any case, for us it was "incidental", not primary economic activity, so followed those rules--- I wrote software for my living >>
Look, if you have a thousand pounds of silver, if you don't buy or sell any, the quantity of silver remains constant, and any change in value would be due to changes in the price of silver.
But if you had a thousand acres of woodland, currently forested at 5,000 board feet/acre (young trees, many below marketable size) some years down the road there might be 10,000 board feet/acre (trees that were marketable, now larger AND some that were below market size now marketable size). This is in addition to the "mark to market" from changes like the price per board foot of that sort of wood going from $200/kboard feet to $250/kboard feet.
In other words, having a thousand pounds of silver is not the same as having a thousand head of cattle. If you have 1000 pounds of silver and five years later you sell 200 pounds of silver, how many pounds of silver do you have left? (you can answer that). But if you have 1000 head of cattle and five years later you sell 200 head, how many do you have left? (not enough information; how many were born and how many died in those five years). That is a separate matter from the price of beef on the hoof.
Michael D Novack _______________________________________________ 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.
