Question on investing accounts / transactions.

Bman Q

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Sep 11, 2022, 1:07:15 PM9/11/22

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Hello everyone! As always thank you to Martin and community for amazing tool, i love beancount! And as always i have new questions :) This time on investing transactions side:

I have following investing accounts:

Assets:Investing:CSchwab:Cash USD
Income:Investing:CSchwab:Interest USD
Income:Investing:CSchwab:Gains USD
Expenses:Investing:CSchwab:Fees USD

and stock accounts:

Assets:Investing:CSchwab:FB FB

Assets:Investing:CSchwab:SQ SQ

....

With them i cover simple transactions (buy / sell stocks, and interest)

But now i encountered a bit more tricky ones, what accounts do i need for them and how transactions should look like?

1. Unissued Rights Redemption

2022-04-13 * "Unissued Rights Redemption; TENCENT HOLDINGS FUNSPONSORED ADR 1 ADR REPS 1 ORD SHS"
Assets:Investing:CSchwab:Cash 787.48 USD

2. ADR management fee

2022-06-21 * "ADR Mgmt Fee; TENCENT HOLDINGS FUNSPONSORED ADR 1 ADR REPS 1 ORD SHS"
Assets:Investing:CSchwab:Cash -14.17 USD

(should i write down this fee in Expenses:Investing:CSchwab:Fees or should i create Expenses:Investing:CSchwab:TCEHY:Fees ? )

3. Qualified Dividend

2022-06-21 * "Qualified Dividend; TENCENT HOLDINGS FUNSPONSORED ADR 1 ADR REPS 1 ORD SHS"
Assets:Investing:CSchwab:Cash 118.07 USD

Bman Q

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Sep 11, 2022, 4:04:39 PM9/11/22

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4. Also is it safe (acceptable practice) to combine transactions?

Example here i bought with buy limit order, and there are 2 transactions with same price (24.70)

2022-08-29 * "Buy; ACT GROUP INC"
Assets:Investing:CSchwab:ACT 25 ACT {24.70 USD, 2022-08-29}
Assets:Investing:CSchwab:Cash -617.50 USD

2022-08-29 * "Buy; ACT GROUP INC"
Assets:Investing:CSchwab:ACT 987 ACT {24.70 USD, 2022-08-29}
Assets:Investing:CSchwab:Cash -24378.90 USD

Can i combine them in one? I have similar example where buy limit order was spread into 4 transactions... want to keep things tidy.

Martin Blais

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Sep 11, 2022, 9:43:59 PM9/11/22

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On Sunday, September 11, 2022 at 1:07:15 PM UTC-4 Bman Q wrote:
Hello everyone! As always thank you to Martin and community for amazing tool, i love beancount! And as always i have new questions :) This time on investing transactions side:

I have following investing accounts:
Assets:Investing:CSchwab:Cash USD
Income:Investing:CSchwab:Interest USD
Income:Investing:CSchwab:Gains USD
Expenses:Investing:CSchwab:Fees USD

and stock accounts:
Assets:Investing:CSchwab:FB FB
Assets:Investing:CSchwab:SQ SQ
....

With them i cover simple transactions (buy / sell stocks, and interest)

But now i encountered a bit more tricky ones, what accounts do i need for them and how transactions should look like?

1. Unissued Rights Redemption
2022-04-13 * "Unissued Rights Redemption; TENCENT HOLDINGS FUNSPONSORED ADR 1 ADR REPS 1 ORD SHS"
Assets:Investing:CSchwab:Cash 787.48 USD

Book this against Income:Investing:CSchwab:TCEHY:Dividend or even make a new category for it if it's taxed differently (I don't know).

2. ADR management fee
2022-06-21 * "ADR Mgmt Fee; TENCENT HOLDINGS FUNSPONSORED ADR 1 ADR REPS 1 ORD SHS"
Assets:Investing:CSchwab:Cash -14.17 USD
(should i write down this fee in Expenses:Investing:CSchwab:Fees or should i create Expenses:Investing:CSchwab:TCEHY:Fees ? )

Depends how you want to account for its P/L, i.e. do you have a way to group all the dividends and fees for a particular position/trade? See https://github.com/beancount/beangrow to learn more about this idea.

3. Qualified Dividend
2022-06-21 * "Qualified Dividend; TENCENT HOLDINGS FUNSPONSORED ADR 1 ADR REPS 1 ORD SHS"
Assets:Investing:CSchwab:Cash 118.07 USD

Clearly book against Income:Investing:CSchwab:TCEHY:Dividend

On Sun, Sep 11, 2022 at 4:04 PM Bman Q <mpl...@gmail.com> wrote:

4. Also is it safe (acceptable practice) to combine transactions?
Example here i bought with buy limit order, and there are 2 transactions with same price (24.70)

2022-08-29 * "Buy; ACT GROUP INC"
Assets:Investing:CSchwab:ACT 25 ACT {24.70 USD, 2022-08-29}
Assets:Investing:CSchwab:Cash -617.50 USD

2022-08-29 * "Buy; ACT GROUP INC"
Assets:Investing:CSchwab:ACT 987 ACT {24.70 USD, 2022-08-29}
Assets:Investing:CSchwab:Cash -24378.90 USD

Can i combine them in one? I have similar example where buy limit order was spread into 4 transactions... want to keep things tidy.

Up to you really.

Personally I'd do this: if you actually initiated two sets of instructions, I'd keep them separate.

Especially if they have distinct order/transaction ids you can use as links.

However, if the execution was broken in multiple fills and the broker download provided them separately, I'd consider grouping them together.

Bman Q

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Sep 12, 2022, 7:15:11 PM9/12/22

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"Depends how you want to account for its P/L, i.e. do you have a way to group all the dividends and fees for a particular position/trade? See https://github.com/beancount/beangrow to learn more about this idea."

-, Beangrow is one of the reasons i am asking :)

I saw in beangrow docs example you are using 'general' (not separate per stock) expense account:

"Assets:US:BTrade:Cash
Assets:US:BTrade:VTI
Expenses:Financial:Commissions
Income:US:BTrade:VTI:Dividend"

But as i understand it worked cause this expense account was in transactions containing asset accounts (and thus beangrow was able to find it)

In the case of ADR management fee transaction is

DATE Description

Cash Account

Expense Account

(no asset account here)

Then to make it work with beangrow i should do

investment {
asset_account: "Assets:Investing:CSchwab:TCEHY"
cash_accounts: " Assets:Investing:CSchwab:CASH"

expense_accounts: "Expenses:Investing:CSchwab:TCEHY:Fees"
}

Is this right? (In docs i didn't see expense_accounts parameter, only asset_account, cash_accounts, dividend_accounts and matching_accounts parameters.)

Bman Q

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Mar 9, 2023, 6:16:06 PM3/9/23

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or i can try to use dividend_accounts parameter (cause dividend is same as expense, just differ in sign (plus/minus))

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