8.2. Setting Up Accounts
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## 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). This will create an account hierarchy as shown below.

- Assets
- Investments
- Brokerage Accounts
- Mutual Funds
- Market Index
- Stock
- Bond
- Income
- Interest Income
- Bond Interest
- Dividend Income
- Expenses
- Commissions

You will probably at least want to add a Bank account to the Assets and probably an Equity:Starting Values account, as we have done in previous chapters.

### 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.

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