I thought the idea was that the asset account should reflect fair value of the assets? That seems to be supported by (my reading of) this link. Your answer has made me realise there are probably some big gaps in my understanding of accounting practice.

You'd pay half of that in taxes though, so it's not as good as it sounds

@keshlam I'm not sure what you're trying to say, but my point was that your (now highly rated) comment mistakenly implies that opening trades are the same as other trades except they happen to be the first of the day. This is incorrect. Regarding guaranteeing that you'll get matched at the open, you can raise your bid and you will get matched. This doesn't necessarily mean you'll pay more (or if you do, it doesn't necessarily mean you'll pay your bid price), depending on the auction rules and size of your bid relative to the order book.

@keshlam For most exchanges opening price is the price at which the opening auction settled. This is the aggregate of many bids and offers being matched up at a single price. In that sense there is more certainty in the opening price than intraday prices because it comprises many competing bids and offers.

...or you could just invest it. If you put it in an index tracking ETF the most likely outcome is that you'll be better off than putting it in a term deposit, to the tune of around 10% for something like the S&P500 based on historic performance. At current volatilities there is a 40ish% chance you'll come out in the red. You just have to decide whether that's worth it.

This got me what I needed, except it was called "Transaction Report" not "Account Report" in my version of GnuCash (4.6).

@Brondahl I think TonyK is pointing out that this is an XY problem. I happen to think it's a great answer.

So if I spent $10 on my shopping transaction (titled, say "groceries"), and $5 is attributed to a split in the confectionary expense account titled Nutella , then when I go to the confectionary account I would expect to see an item with a description "Nutella" with a value of $5. But instead I see "groceries" with a value of $5 which isn't very helpful. I have to then expand the split and find my Nutella item in there to figure out where the cost came from. It's very counterintuitive. It would be better just to see the description of the "Nutella" split.

I just want to see the description of the split item relevant to the account I'm looking at. For example, if you have a transaction with splits for confectionary, I'd want to see the confectionary item description when I go to that account. Instead I see the description for the transaction, which doesn't really make sense because the amount is for the split.

Hi Greg, thanks for your answer. My question is about seeing the detail of individual transactions within a split. I think you might be answering a different question.

@DStanley yeah that's right. I'm effectively left with a financial benefit of the asset (the tax savings) that are not being reflected in the income of my investment.