Foreign currency accounts and transactions.

[Adam Funk]

I'm experimenting with gnucash (1.8.12) to see if it will work for me,
and I need to figure out how to handle bank accounts in foreign
currency coherently.

In my test setup, the main currency is GBP and I have an account
'Assets:Current Assets:ABC Checking' of type Bank, commodity USD.  (At
this point, all the other accounts are in GBP.)  I wrote a check in it
for $45 and in the split balanced it with Expenses:Books.

In the account summary and in the reports I generated, ABC Checking
dropped by USD45.00 but Expenses:Books still showed GBP0.00.  How in
the world can this balance?

In the list archive I found a note [1] to the effect that an exchange
rate has to be set for every transaction.  So I went back into the ABC
Checking account, right-clicked on the Expenses:Books line of the
split, and used "Edit Exchange Rate" to set 0.55.  Now Expenses:Books
shows GBP24.75.

So I have a few questions:

Is it necessary to "Edit Exchange Rate" for every transaction that
isn't in the main currency?  Or should it pick up the previous value,
or the value from the Price Editor?

If I have to "Edit Exchange Rate" every time, can I configure gnucash
to remind me, so I don't get transactions that cost USD45 in one
account and GBP0.00 in another?

How in the world can the accounts balance when I forget to E-E-R?

Should a bank account in a foreign currency have account type Bank or
Currency?


Thanks,
Adam


[1]
https://lists.gnucash.org/pipermail/gnucash-user/2004-November/011992.html