The value of a commodity, such as a stock, must be explicitly set. The stock accounts track the quantity of stocks you own, but the value of the stock is stored in the Price Editor. The values set in the Price Editor can be updated manually or automatically.
To use the Price Editor to track a stock value, you must initially insert the stock. To do so, open the Price Editor ( → ) and click on button. The first time a Commodity/Stock is entered this window will be blank except for the control buttons on the bottom. Select the appropriate Commodity you want to insert into the Price Editor. At this point, you can input the price of the commodity manually. There are 6 fields in the New Commodity window:
- Namespace
The exchange market where the security/commodity is traded (in this example NASDAQ)
- Security
The name of the commodity, must be chosen from the list
- Currency
The currency in which the Price is expressed.
- Date
Date that the price is valid
- Type
One of: Bid (the market buying price), Ask (the market selling price), Last (the last transaction price), Net Asset Value (mutual fund price per share), or Unknown. Stocks and currencies will usually give their quotes as one of bid, ask or last. Mutual funds are often given as net asset value. For other commodities, simply choose Unknown. This option is for informational purposes only, it is not used by
GnuCash.- Price
The price of one unit of this commodity.
As an example of adding the AMZN commodity to the price editor, with an initial value of $40.50 per share.
Click when finished. Once you have performed this initial placement of the commodity into the Price Editor, you will not have to do it again, even if you use the same commodity in another account.
 | Примечание |
|---|---|
If you have online retrieval of quotes activated (see Раздел 9.6.3, «Configuring for Automatic Retrieval of Quotes»), you can initialize a commodity without manually making an entry. When you initially add the security in the Security Editor, check and save the security. Then, in the Price Editor, click , and the new security will be inserted into the price list with the retrieved price. | |
If the value of the commodity (stock) changes, you can adjust the value by entering the Price Editor, selecting the commodity, clicking on and entering the new price.
If you have more than a couple of commodities, you will tire of having to update their prices
constantly. GnuCash has the ability to automatically download the most recent price for your
commodities using the Internet. This is accomplished through the
Perl module Finance::Quote, which must
be installed in order to activate this feature.
To determine if the Perl module Finance::Quote
is already installed on your system, type perldoc Finance::Quote in a
terminal window and check to see if there is any documentation available. If you see the
documentation, then the module is installed, if you do not see the documentation, then it
has not been installed.
Windows:
Close
GnuCash.Run Install Online Price Retrieval which can be found in the
GnuCash«Start» menu entry.
macOS: You need to have XCode installed. XCode is an optional
item from your macOS distribution DVD. Run the Update Finance
Quote app in the GnuCash dmg. You can run it from the dmg or copy it to the same
folder to which you copied GnuCash. It will open a Terminal window and run a script for you
which will ask lots of questions. Accept the default for each unless you know what
you’re doing.
Linux:
Close any running
GnuCashinstances.Locate the folder where
GnuCashis installed by searching forgnc-fq-updateChange to that directory, open a root shell
Run the command gnc-fq-update
This will launch a Perl CPAN update session that will go out
onto the internet and install the Finance::Quote module on your
system. The gnc-fq-update program is interactive, however, with most systems you should be
able to answer «no» to the first question: «Are you ready for manual
configuration? [yes]» and the update will continue automatically from that point.
After installation is complete, you should run the «gnc-fq-dump» test program, in the
same directory, distributed with GnuCash to test if
Finance::Quote is installed and working properly.
| Примечание |
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If you feel uncomfortable about performing any of these steps, please either email the | |
With Finance::Quote installed and functioning correctly, you must
configure your GnuCash securities to use this feature to obtain updated price information
automatically. Whether creating new securities or modifying securities that have already
been setup, use the
→
, to edit the security and check the Get Online Quotes box. You will
now be able to modify the radio buttons for Type of quote source, the
pull-down menus to specify the specific source(s) and The timezone for these
quotes. When finished editing, Close the Security Editor
to return to the Price Editor and click on the button to update your stock prices on the Internet.
The command gnucash --add-price-quotes $HOME/gnucash-filename can be used to
fetch the current prices of your stocks. The file specified
$HOME/gnucash-filename will depend on the name and
location of your data file. This can be determined by the name displayed in the top frame
of the GnuCash window, before the «-». The file name can also be found under
in the recently opened file list; the first item, numbered 1, is
the name of the currently open file.
This can be automated by creating a crontab entry. For example, to update
your file every Friday evening (16:00) after the relevant exchange markets close (modify
the time accordingly for your time zone), you could add the following to your personal
crontab:
0 16 * * 5 gnucash --add-price-quotes $HOME/gnucash-filename > /dev/null 2>&1
Remember that Mutual Fund «prices» are really «Net Asset Value» and require several hours after the exchange closes before being available. If NAVs are downloaded before the current days NAVs are determined, yesterday’s NAVs are retrieved.
The main account window, by default, only shows the quantity of each commodity that you own, under the column heading Total. In the case of stocks, this commodity is the number of shares. Often, however, you will want to see the value of your stocks expressed in terms of some monetary unit. This is easily accomplished by entering the main window, selecting the Accounts tab, by clicking on the Titlebar button (the small down pointing arrow on the right side of the main account window titles bar), and selecting the option to display the account total field «Total (USD)». You will see a new column in the main window entitled Total (USD) that will express the value of all commodities in the report currency.
Most GnuCash reports have options to set/modify a number of parameters for the report. The Options
dialog box is displayed by selecting the report tab then clicking on either the
icon in the Menubar or selecting
→
. Price Source determines how accounts denominated in commodities
different from the report currency are converted to the report currency. Depending on the
report the selector may appear in either the General, the
Commodities, or the Display tab of the
Report Options dialog box.
| Примечание |
|---|---|
In the example below, the report is a customization of the Average Balance report in the Assets & Liabilities reports submenu. | |
Determining the value of a stock commodity or a currency other than the report currency in a report by setting the Price Source option.
Weighted Average: Calculates the price by summing the absolute value of the amount and the absolute value of every split in every account denominated in the commodity, excluding those splits with a zero amount, and dividing the sum of values by the sum of amounts to obtain a price. For example, if you had a buy transaction for 200 shares of XYZ for a total of 2000 and a sell of 100 for 1300 the weighted average would be 3300/300 or 11/share.
Примечание Gain/Loss splits have an amount of 0 and are not included in this calculation.
Average Cost: Calculates the price by summing the amounts and values of every split in every account denominated in the commodity, including the zero amount splits. In the example above, with an additional split (either part of the sale transaction or in a separate transaction) booking the gain at 0 shares and a 300 gain, the average cost is 1000/100 (2000 original cost - 1300 proceeds from the sale + 300 gain)/(200 - 100) shares or 10/share.
Примечание Gain/Loss splits are included in this calculation.
Примечание This is the only Price Source that will balance the Trial Balance Report and in order for it to balance you must correctly book your gains and losses.
Most Recent: Uses the latest price from the price database.
Nearest in time: Uses the price nearest in time to the report date—the datum date for time series reports like Assets Over Time—from the price database.
Примечание The nearest date isn’t necessarily before the date in question.
