8.2. Setting Up Accounts

To setup investment accounts in GnuCash you can either use the predefined investment account hierarchy or create your own. The minimum you need to do to track investments is to setup an asset account for each type of investment you own. However, as we have seen in previous chapters, it is usually more logical to create a structured account hierarchy, grouping related investments together. For example, you may want to group all your publicly traded stocks under a parent account named after the brokerage firm you used to buy the stocks.

Regardless of how you setup your account hierarchy, remember that you can always move accounts around later (without losing the work you've put into them), so your initial account hierarchy does not have to be perfect.

8.2.1. Predefined Accounts

To use the predefined investment account hierarchy, you must create a new GnuCash file. This will run the New Account Hierarchy Setup druid. After choosing the default currency to use, you will be asked to Choose accounts to create. At this point, choose the "Investment Accounts" option (along with any others you are interested in). Assuming only 「Investment Accounts」 were selected, this will create an account hierarchy as shown below.

Setup Interest Investment

This is an screen image of the "Accounts" tab after creating a new file and selecting only the default investment accounts.

You will probably at least want to add a Bank account to the Assets and probably an Equity:Opening Balance account, as we have done in previous chapters. Don't forget to save your new account file with a relevant name!

8.2.2. Custom Accounts Example

You can also manually setup your own investment account hierarchy. 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
 Expenses
    Investment Expenses
       Commissions
          I*Trade
          My Stockbroker
       Management Fees
          I*Trade
          My Stockbroker
 

There really is no unique way to set up your investment account hierarchy. Play around, try different layouts until you find something which divides your investment accounts into logical groups which make sense to you.