Devisen
Dieses Kapitel wird zeigen, wie man GnuCash-Konten für Devisen anlegt.
Grundkonzepte
GnuCash unterstüt die Verwendung von mehreren Währungen in verschiedenen Konten.
Man kann beispielsweise ein Bankkonto in Euro und ein anderes in Hong Kong Dollars führen.
Einige der Fragen, welche aufkommen, wenn man mehrere Währungen verwendet, sind:
Wie transferiert man Mittel zwischen Konten mit verschiedenen Währungen?
Wie berechnet man den Gesamtwert, wenn man gemischte Währungskonten hat?
Wie gehen Berichte mit gemischten Währungskonten um?
Einrichtung der Konten
Die Standardwährung wird in Edit
-> Preferences -> Accounts
-> Default Currency gesetzt. Dieser Parameter sollte
korrekt eingestellt sein, da es viel Zeit ersparen wird bei der Einrichtung der Kontenstruktur.
When you create a new account, you have the option to define the
commodity. For currency accounts, you can specify any one of the hundreds
of currencies supported by GnuCash by simply selecting it from the
currency commodity list. You will notice that the default currency is
always whatever you have defined in the preferences. So, if you mostly
work with Euros, but have the occasional Ethiopian Birr account, be sure
to set your preferences to Euro.
As an example, let's set up a typical bank account scenario where
you mostly work in US Dollars, but do also have a European bank account
using the Euro currency, as well as one bank account in Hong Kong using
Hong Kong Dollars. So, setup 3 bank accounts, one using the Euro currency,
one in US Dollars, and another in Hong Kong Dollars. One possible account
structure for this would be:
-Assets (USD)
-Current Assets (USD)
-US Bank (USD)
-European Bank (EUR)
-HK Bank (HKD)
-Equity (USD)
-Opening Balances
-USD (USD)
-EUR (EUR)
-EUR (HKD)
Note: the currency of each account is shown in parenthesis.
Since in this example you mostly work in USD, all of the parent
accounts are set to USD. Of course, if you mostly work in Euros, you could
change the currency of these parent accounts to EUR. To totals shown in
the account tree window will always be converted to the currency of each
particular account. Notice, we also setup 3 Starting Balances equity
accounts, used to initially populate the 3 banks.
You could also setup just a single Starting Balance account and
use a currency transfer to populate the "different currency" accounts.
However, this is more advanced option, which is explained in a later
section (.
Below you see the result of this example, in which you start with
USD 10,000, EUR 10,000 as well as HKD 10,000 in the three bank accounts.
Notice that the total of the parent accounts only show the value of the
currency of subaccounts with matching currencies. In the future you can
setup the exchange rates between the currencies, and the parent accounts
will calculate the converted value of all subaccounts. See the later
section () on how to do this.
Initial multi currency Account Bank Setup
Initial setup of 3 bank accounts with different
currencies.
Notice that the "Total (Report)" column is being displayed. This is
configured in the column header row, select Arrow
down and select Total(USD)
.
GnuCash Currency Support
GnuCash supports over a hundred currencies, from the Andorran Franc
to the Zimbabwe Dollar. You will also find supports for some lesser
popular currencies like the US Dollar, Canadian Dollar, European Euro, and
British Pound.
Setting International Preferences
GnuCash allows you to specify the following international related
preferences
Default currency you want the newly created registers to
have
Default currency for the reports
Date and Time formats
Euro support
For a full explanation of the International Preferences available,
see
Recording/Updating Currency Exchange (How-To)
GnuCash allows you to update the Currency Exchange Rates in two
different ways, manual and automatic. In the following two sections we
will work through both ways.
Before we start, lets have a quick look at the Chart of
Accounts
Initial multi currency Account Bank Setup
Initial setup of 3 bank accounts with different
currencies.
Manually Updating Exchange Rates
Open the Price Editor by going to Tools ->
Price Editor.
Price Editor window
Price Editor Window.
Click on the Add button to add a new
currency exchange. A window will appear to allow you to select the
commodity you wish to define the exchange rate for. Click on
Select and set the Type to
Currency and the Currency/security to EUR (Euro).
This window should appear like this:
Select Euro Commodity
Price Editor Select Commodity Window
Click Ok and in the Select Commodity
window, set the exchange rate between the selected commodity and the
selected currency. In this example, you will set the exchange rate to 1
EUR to 1 USD.
Select Commodity
Price Editor Select Commodity Window
Price Editor Window
The Price Editor window after setting the exchange
rate between Euros and US Dollars
Chart of Accounts
Chart of Accounts after setting the exchange rate
between Euros and US Dollars.
Observe that since you have no exchange rate for HKD, GnuCash do
not convert the HKD accounts to USD. This will be added in the next
section.
Automatic Updating Exchange Rates (How-To)
In the previous section you saw how you could manually define a
new currency exchange rate, but there must be an easier way to do it.
And there is.
Open the Price Editor by going to Tools ->
Price Editor.
Price Editor window
Price Editor Window before you obtain online quotes.
Click on the Get Quotes button to
automatically load the various exchange rates you need.
If the Get Quotes button is disabled,
that means that the perl module Finance::Quote is not installed.
For information on how to install it, please see
Price Editor window
Price Editor Window after we obtained online
quotes.
You noticed that GnuCash will download exchange rates for all
currencies you are using in your various accounts. This will happend
everytime you click on Get Quotes or have GnuCash
downloading quotes/exchange rates automatically as per
And if you check the main Chart of Accounts you now see that
GnuCash has automatically converted the HKD amount to USD amount on the
parent accounts that are in USD, as well as on the Total (USD) column.
Also the Euro accounts have been been updated with the latest exchange
rate.
Price Editor window
Chart of Accounts after we obtain online quotes.
How to disable currency retrieval
Currency Quote retrieval will start from the time you create an account
with a non-default currency. However, it will not stop when you delete these accounts
from GnuCash.
When you have deleted the last account for one particular currency,
and you do not wish to get currency updates for this currency anymore. Do the following;
Tools -> Price Editor
Expand the CURRENCY row
Double click on the Currency you want to disable Exchange Rate retrieval for.
Unselect the Get Online Quotes
Recording Purchases in a Foreign Currency (How-To)
You can do it in two different ways.
1) Use GnuCash build in currency exchange between accounts when you
do your transactions. This is mainly used for one time transactions, and
nothing which happens regurarly.
2) Use separate accounts for this Purchase, where all involved
accounts use the same currency. This is the recommended method, since it
allows much better tracking and follow up. In this way, you do one
currency exchange transaction, and after that you do normal
transactions.
The rest of this section will explain more based upon option
2)
Purchase of an asset with foreign currency
Your normal place of residence is in Florida, therefore you are
using USD as your default currency. But, you do like to travel to
Bahamas and go fishing. You like it so much so you decided to purchase a
boat there. To do this, you opened a bank account in Jamaica, moved some
money from US, and then purchased your dream boat (smallest
version)
To record this in GnuCash we use the following basic account
structure
-Assets (USD)
-Current Assets (USD)
-US Bank (USD)
-Jamaican Bank (JMD)
-Fixed Assets (USD)
-Boat (JMD)
-Equity (USD)
-Opening Balances
-USD (USD)
Note: the currency of each account is shown in parenthesis.
First you need to transfere some money ($10,000) to Jamaica, and
you use your normal US bank account (whith balance of $100,000) for
that. The bank give you an exchange rate of USD 1 = JMD 64, but charges
you USD 150 to do transfer the money.
Currency transfer
Transfer money to Jamaica
Select the Jamaica transaction line ($9,850.00), right click and
select Edit Exchange Rate
Edit Exchange rate
A dialog window where the exchange rate in a currency
transaction is specified
As Exchange Rate you enter 1 USD = 64 JMD, since this is the rate
your bank gave. Press ok in the Transfer Funds (Edit Exchange Rate)
window, and then save this split transaction. Below is how it now looks
in the main Chart of Accounts.
Chart of Accounts before purchasing the boat
Chart of Accounts before purchasing the
boat
You find the boat, and since it's a bargain at JMD 509,000 you
decide to buy it. To record this transaction in GnuCash, you will need
to enter a simple transaction in Assets:Current Assets:Jamaican Bank
withdrawing 509,000 and transfering it to Assets:Fixed
Assets:Boat
Chart of Accounts after purchasing the boat
Chart of Accounts after purchasing the
boat
The Chart of Accounts now reflects that your bank account has been
reduced with the value of the boat (JMD 509,000), and that your Fixed Assets
boat account has been increased with the same amount. If you also have turned
on the CoA (Column Choice) "Total (USD)" you will see the corresponding
value in USD. The USD value will always reflect the latest currency exchange
rate you have either automatically or manually updated GnuCash with.
Purchasing foreign stocks
A more complicated example
This example will show how to deal with having stocks in a
different currency than your normal currency.
In this example you live in America and therefore you have set the
default Currency to USD. You decide to purchase some stocks in Hong Kong.
You would also like to be able to track the various income and
expenses per stock and broker.
The stock you want to purchase are Beijing Airport (Hong Kong)
(Afterall the 2008 Olympics in Beijing should bring in a lot of business
to the airport)
The above stock (Beijing Airport) are just choosen
for this particular example, and should not be taken as any kind of
stock purchase advice
You need to find out what the stock ticker is for this
stock. To do this, you do a bit of investigation on the Internet, and
in particular on Yahoo! Finance - Ticker
Symbol Lookup (http://finance.yahoo.com/lookup).
This gives you the following:
Beijing Airport has the Stock Symbol
0694.HK at Yahoo
Since we wanted to be able to track all various incomes and expenses,
we come up with the following Account structure
Assets:Investments:Brokerage Accounts:Boom:0694.HK (Beijing Airport)
Assets:Investments:Brokerage Accounts:Boom:Bank (HKD)
Equity:Opening Balances:HKD (HKD)
Expenses:Commissions:Boom.0694.HK (HKD)
Income:Investments:Dividend:Boom:0694.HK (HKD)
The Chart of Accounts looks like this after creating all the
needed accounts
Chart of Accounts for international stocks
Chart of Accounts for international
stocks
The various commodities (Tools ->
Security Editor) looks like this
International commodities
International commodities
There is currently a small bug (
335101
) in GnuCash, that makes it impossible to buy a stock in a different currency than the default directly from the commodity account. The simple workaround is to open the associated bank account and enter the transaction from here.
If you have not moved some cash (HKD50,000) to the corresponding stocks bank
account, do so now. Either using the Equity (HKD) account, or by transfering
money from an existing bank account (Currency Transfer).
To record this stock purchase, you have to open the stocks associated
bank account (Assets:Investments:Brokerage Account:Boom:Bank), and there enter
the following information
Buy Stocks
Assets:Investments:Brokerage Account:Boom:Bank Withdrawal 50,000
Expenses:Investments:Commission:Boom_HKD Deposit 500
Assets:Investments:Brokerage Account:Boom:0694 Deposit 49,500 (16,500 shares)
If the "Exchange Data" dialog popup do not appear, open it
manually by right click on the last row, and select Edit
Exchange Rate In the following pop up window, enter the
actual number of stocks (16,500) as the To Amount:
Transfer Funds
Setting To Amount in the Transfer Funds dialog
When you exit the exchange dialog, and Enter this transaction GnuCash will
update the stock purchase transaction with all relevant data.
If you now go back to the main Chart of Accounts, you will see something like
this
Purchased international stocks
Chart of Accounts with some international stocks
As you can see, everything is in its own Currency, and this is because GnuCash
do not have any exchange rates between USD and HKD. To remedy this go to
Tools -> Price Editor
and click on the Get Quotes button to
automatically load the various exchange rates you need.
Tracking Currency Investments (How-To)
Currency investment is when you decide to invest in different
countries currency, and hope that their currency will raise in value
relative your own currency.
When you enter these transactions into GnuCash, you will have to
decide on how much details you would like to have.
If you are not interested in details at all, a very simple account
structure would be enough. Something like this;
Assets:Investments:Currency:Bank (USD)
Assets:Investments:Currency:XXX (XXX)
But, if you do want to be able to track the Capital Gains or Losses,
as well as the various fees, you do need a bit more complexed layout.
Something like this;
Assets:Investments:Currency:Bank (USD)
Assets:Investments:Currency:Currency Bank:XXX (XXX)
Expenses:Investments:Currency:Currency Bank:XXX (XXX)
Income:Investments:Currency Bank:Capital Gains:XXX (XXX)
Where XXX is the currency you are investing in.
There is currently (30 April 2006) a small bug (
340041
) in GnuCash, that makes it impossible to track currency investments
capital gains.
Purchasing a currency investment
A typical purchase order might be something like this, seen from
the Assets:Investments:Currency:Bank.
Buying a currency with a Split Transaction Scheme
Account
Deposit
Withdrawal
Assets:Investments:Currency:Bank
Invested Amount
Expenses:Investments:Currency:Currency Bank:XXX
Exchange Fee
Assets:Investments:Currency:XXX
Invested Amount - Exchange Fee
You should get an Exchange Rate window popping up when you
leave the last row in the split above (Currency Transaction). If this
window do not pop up, right click on the row, and select Edit
Exchange Rate. In the Exchange Rate window you specify the
exchange rate you got from the bank.
Selling a currency investment
Entering an currency you are selling is done in the same way as
buying one except the you are now transfering money from the Currency
account to your Savings account (very much similar to ().
The proper recording of the currency sale *must* be done using a
split transaction. In the split transaction, you must account for the
profit (or loss) as coming from an Income:Capital Gains account (or
Expense:Capital Loss). To balance this income, you will need to enter
the Currency asset twice in the split. Once to record the actual sale
(using the correct amount and correct exchange rate) and once to balance
the income profit (setting the amount to 0).
In short, a selling Currency transaction should look something
like below, seen again from the Assets:Investments:Currency:Bank.
Selling a currency with a Split Transaction Scheme
Account
Deposit
Withdrawal
Assets:Investments:Currency:Bank
Sold Amount - Exchange Fee
Expenses:Investments:Currency:Currency Bank:XXX
Exchange Fee
Assets:Investments:Currency:XXX
Sold Amount
Income:Investments:Currency Bank:Capital
Gains:XXX
[LOSS]
PROFIT
Assets:Investments:Currency:XXX
PROFIT (with To Amount = 0)
[LOSS (with To Amount = 0) ]
There is currently (30 April 2006) a small bug (
340041
) in GnuCash, that makes it impossible to track currency investments capital gains.
Reconciling Statements in a Foreign Currency (How-To)
Reconciling foreigh statement are done in the same manner as when
you reconcile your local bank statement. If you have created a Chart of
Accounts structure which allows you to have the same Currency per account
as your Reconcile Statement, it is actually exactly the same as
reconciling your local bank statement, apart from the fact you might need
a dictionary
If you have different currencies you might have to manually convert
the amounts from one currency to another while you reconcile the
accounts.
Putting It All Together (Examples)
In this Putting It All Together you will use quite a bit of what you
have learned so far in this guide with a bit of a twist. The twist beeing
a lot of different currencies.
Basic scenario
The following are the basic scenarios.
You live in Australia and use AUD as our default
currency
You win the lottery as well as inherit some money
You pay of your existing house loan
You purchase some stocks in Sweden using SEK (Ericsson
B-Fria)
You purchase some stocks in HK using HKD (Beijing
Airport)
You purchase some stocks in US using USD (Amazon)
You lend some EURO to a friend (Peter)
You borrow some money from a Japanese bank
You buy a house in New Zealand
You use a credit card in Australia
You would like to have maximum control of your expenses
Again these samples are not to be consider a valid and
accurate advice. They are only to be considered as an sample for
the techniques used in GnuCash, and not as a Invenstment Advice.
Please consult a proper financial advisor for more information
regarding international investments/loans.
Configure Accounts
This time lets start with a fresh and new GnuCash data file, so
File -> New, and edit
preferences (Edit -> Preferences)
to set Default Currency as AUD. Since you have
decided to be able to track as much of your various expenses and incomes
as possile, the following account hierarchy could be used;
Assets:Current Assets:Savings Account (AUD)
Opening Balance
You open the mail one morning, and to your enormous surprise find
that you are the last living relative of a very distant relative who
happend to be very rich. And also $500,000 AUD richer. That was not the
last though, another mail states you won the lottery, and got $250,000
AUD for that.
To record these transaction we need the following accounts
Equity:Lottery (AUD)
Equity:Inheritance (AUD)
The transactions you enter into your Income:Current
Assets:Savings Account should look like this.
You come into some extra money
Account
Increase
Decrease
Income:Lottery
$250,000
Income:Inheritance
$500,000
And the Chart of Accounts looks like this after above transactions have been entered.
Chart Of Accounts
Chart Of Accounts after receiving some money
Purchase a house
Atlast you can afford to pay of that house loan you had to take some years ago
(with a $50,000 deposit).
Assets:Fixed Assest:House (AUD) $300,000
Liabilities:Loans:Mortgage (AUD) $250,000
Expenses:Interest:Mortgage Interest (AUD)
Equity:Opening Balance (AUD) $50,000
After you have had a small chat with your Mortgage bank, they
agree to let you pay it all of in one go, plus some interest (AUD
30,000). You should enter the following split transaction into
Assets:Fixed Assest:House account.
Paying of the house mortgage
Account
Increase
Decrease
Assets:Current Assets:Savings Account
280000
Expenses:Interest:Mortgage Interest
30000
Libilities:Loans:Mortgage
250000
The Liabilities:Loans:Mortgage Transaction Ledger looks like
this after the transacations have been entered
House Mortgage
Transaction Ledger of the House Loan
Stock Purchasing
Since you quite suddenly have a lot of money in your bank account,
you decide to visit a Financial Advisor, and after his recommendation
(remember, this is fictional - Not a genuine stock purchase advice) you
decide to purchase Telecommunication (Ericsson in Sweden), Beijing
Airport (Hong Kong), and Amazon (USA).
The needed accounts to track these investments looks like
this.
Assets:Investments:Swedish Broker:ERIC.ST (STOCK ERIC.ST Yahoo)
Assets:Investments:Swedish Broker:Bank (SEK)
Assets:Investments:HK Broker:0694.HK (STOCK 0694.HK Yahoo)
Assets:Investments:HK Broker:Bank (HKD)
Assets:Investments:US Broker:AMZN (STOCK AMZN Nasdaq)
Assets:Investments:US Broker:Bank (USD)
Expenses:Investments:Commissions:Swedish Broker:ERIC.ST (SEK)
Expenses:Investments:Commissions:HK Broker:0694.HK (HKD)
Expenses:Investments:Commissions:US Broker:AMZN (USD)
Expenses:Investments:Currency Transfer (AUD)
You decide to invest $100,000 into each stock, and to do this
we first do a currency transaction to the various bank accounts
associated with the stock.
The transaction you enter into your Income:Current
Assets:Savings Account should look like this.
Transfer money to overseas with a multiple currency transaction
split.
Account
Deposit
Withdrawal
Exchange Rate
Transaction Fee
Assets:Investments:Swedish Broker:Bank
100000
5.5869
35
Assets:Investments:HK Broker:Bank
100000
5.8869
30
Assets:Investments:USD Broker:Bank
100000
0.7593
25
Now when there is some money in the various stock brokerage
accounts, you ask each broker to buy stocks for the certain amount.
Remember to execute the transaction from the stocks associated bank
account, and if the Exchange Rate window do not pop up, right click the
row and manually start it. Enter the number of stocks you purchase in
the last entry (To Amount:).
Purchasing oversea stocks
Stock Symbol
Number of shares
Amount
Commission
ERIC.ST
15000
270000
400
0694.HK
70000
280000
300
AMZN
1000
32000
25
As you can see in the Chart of Accounts, you have now purchased stocks in three
different currencise (HK, USD, as well as in SEK), but the Chart of Account (as seen below)
do not indicate how much it is valued in your home currency, AUD.
Chart of Account after Stocks
Some of the accounts in Chart of Accounts after the stock purchase
Next section will ensure you get the various exchange rates so GnuCash can show your
total worth in the local currency (AUD in this case)
Get the online quotes
To get the current exchange rates and stock quotes, go to
Tools -> Price Editor and then
click on Get Quotes.
Lending money to a friend
Peter has run into some difficulties all the way over in Europe
Land. Since he is a very dear pal of yours, you decide to help him out
with a personal loan of 40,000 Euro.
Assets:Money owed to me:Euro:Peter (Euro)
Income:Interest Income:Peter (Euro)
Expenses:Bank Charge (AUD)
This is a
simpe currency transaction from your Savings Account (AUD), to your
Assets:Money owed to me:Peter (EURO) account. You got the exchange rate
of 0.606161, which means you need to withdraw AUD 65,989.10, as well as
pay the service fee of 35 AUD.
Buying property in New Zealand with a loan from Japan
Your long time Japanese friend offers you a Japanese house loan if
you purchase a property overseas, with only AUD 50,000 as deposit. After
having discussed this with your Financial Advisor in Australia and gone
through the various risks and benefits related to your situation, you
decide to accept his offer.
Again, this should not be taken as a financial advice. Please
consult with a registered financial advisor before undertaking
investing (or spekulating) in overseas markets, or local markets for
that matter.
A word of warning might be of interest here, taking a loan
overseas for a very low interest rate might seem like a very good
deal. Do keep in mind though that the exchange rate might change and
can change drastically. If you take a loan in your local currency, you
only have to worry about the interest rate. Taking a loan overseas,
then you have to worry about the interest rate and the exchange rate.
You found a nice small cottage in a small coastal town near
Auckland which would be a perfect summer house, and you decide to use
the money from Japan for this purpose.
We need the following accounts for this example;
Liabilities:Loans:Japan Loan (JPY)
Expenses:Interest:Japan Loan (JPY)
Expenses:Mortgage Adm Fees:Japan Loan (JPY)
Assets:Current Assets:Japan Bank (JPY)
Assets:Fixed Assest:NZ House (NZ)
Buying a NZ House Split Transaction
Account
Increase
Decrease
Assets:Fixed Assets:NZ House
300000 (NZD)
Assets:Current Assets:Savings Account
50000 (AUD) (1.18926)
Liabilities:Loans:Japan Loan
28000000 (JPY) (0.0137609)
Expenses:Mortgage Adm Fees:Japan Loan
300000 (JPY) (0.0137609)
Whats next?
As you have seen in the above examples you have only done the initial purchases.
The rest, that is various selling, and unrealized gains tracking is left for you to
ponder upon.