Currency accounts

[Conrad Canterford]

"J. Milgram" wrote:
> I entered this according to instructions, with a DEM account and a
> trading account with security "DEM". All well and good, and I guess
> the books balance, but now it occurs to me that this $50 is not
> captured as income anywhere. It might just as easily been a loss that
> I'd want not to be taxed.
> What's the correct way to handle this so everything looks right at tax
> time?
> thanks
> Judah

Subject to the standard "I am not an accountant" disclaimer, I would do
this by recording the entire sales (amount of money, exchange rate,
etc.) *at the date you actually received the US$*. I am assuming that
the entire sale is recorded in your income stream, so this would then
show up with the correct value in your income.

There is almost certainly a different way (and "better" way from an
accountants point of view) to do this, but this should be just as good
for occassional international sales.
If you are going to do this regularly, go see your accountant and ask
him/her how you should record it. It would probably involve an "Accounts
Receivable" journal and an "exchange rate income/loss" account or
something like that.

Hope this helps.

Conrad.
-- 
Conrad Canterford (conrad@mail.watersprite.com.au)
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