The Investment Accounts option of the New Account Hierarchy Setup assistant will automatically create a basic investment account hierarchy for you. To access the predefined investment accounts hierarchy, you must make sure your GnuCash file is open, switch to the Accounts tab, and choose Actions → New Account Hierarchy. This will run the New Account Hierarchy Setup assistant and allow you to select additional accounts to add to your account hierarchy. 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.

	Tip
	You can also run the New Account Hierarchy Setup assistant by creating a new GnuCash file.

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 Balances account, as we have done in previous chapters. Don’t forget to save your new account file with a relevant name!

If you want to set up your own investment accounts hierarchy, you may of course do so. Investments usually have a number of associated accounts that need to be created: an asset account to track the investment itself; an income account to track dividend transactions; and expense accounts to track investment fees and commissions.

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.

	Tip
	There really is no standard 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.