While entering a number of investment transactions recently I realized that
KMM doesn't actually have a way to record the gain/loss on the sale of an
investment. I was thinking about implementing something to solve this but
wanted to pass the idea past the list first.
As a first step at a solution, I was going to add a couple more rows to the
transaction detail in the investment register:
- A cost basis field. This would be an amount field that is
used to determine how much the cost of the investment is
reduced by the sale. Initially this field could be pre-filled
by the average cost (based on the number of shares being sold).
If the entire investment is sold, this field would be fixed
and not editable.
- A gain/loss field. This would be an splitable account field
for entering the category or categories for the gain/loss.
Splits are useful for allowing both short-term and long-term
gain/loss specifications on a transaction.
The current implementation "hides" the gain/loss because the balance of an
investment shows as zero when the share value is zero, regardless of the
amount the investment is sold for. Whereas, since the gain/loss is not
recorded anywhere, the balance ought to be negative if the investment was
sold for a gain and positive if sold for a loss.
Mitch
