To setup investment accounts in GnuCash you can either use any of the predefined categories or setup your own. The minimum you need to do to track investments in GnuCash is to setup an account for your brokerage firm or trading account and to add shares to it with a price per share and the transfer account that is paying for the investment listed in the transfer box. GnuCash will automatically calculate the value of the shares and show at the top of the register both the number of shares you own and their current value.
The following is a somewhat more complicated example of setting up GnuCash to track your investments which has the advantage that it groups each different investment under the brokerage that deals with the investments. This way it is easier to compare the statements you get from your brokerage with the accounts you have in GnuCash and spot where GnuCash differs from the statement.
- Assets
- Investments
- Brokerage Accounts
- I*Trade
- Stocks
- ACME Corp
- Money Market Funds
- I*Trade Municipal Fund
- Cash
- My Stockbroker
- Money Market Funds
- Active Assets Fund
- Government Securities
- Treas Bond xxx
- Treas Note yyy
- Mutual Funds
- Fund A
- Fund B
- Cash
- Income
- Investments
- Brokerage Accounts
- Capital Gains
- I*Trade
- My Stockbroker
- Dividends
- I*Trade
- Taxable
- Non-taxable
- My Stockbroker
- Taxable
- Non-taxable
- Interest Income
- I*Trade
- Taxable
- Non-taxable
- My Stockbroker
- Taxable
- Non-taxable
- Expense
- Investment Expenses
- Commissions
- I*Trade
- My Stockbroker
- Management Fees
- I*Trade
- My Stockbroker