Continuing saga - multi currencies - now unrealized gain disappeared

[Frank H. Ellenberger]

Hi William,

Am 05.04.2013 04:47, schrieb whwtan:
> For bunk3m's case, just like him I would have expected him to have
> unrealised losses given the CAD has been growing stronger against the USD.
> Am I mistaken?
>
> At the risk of opening a new can of worms, I'd like to find out exactly
> what does the option "Use Trading Accounts" do.
>
> GnuCash is the only solution out there in the world who takes multi
> currency in such a special manner I'm blown away; It allows you to
> decide which currency you would like to base yourself any time. [Even
> all the most popular commercial software prioritise IAS/GAAP and make it
> such that they lock you into one base currency]
>
> However trying to understand how it works sorta breaks my head in. LOL
>
> I understand from my own simple approach that if I paid for a product in
> USD using my AUD account on 1st Apr and the price is set, I should have
> zero trading when balanced out.
> However, if I owned USD and AUD, I would be getting different trading
> depending on the day and depending on when I value my money. [Since
> currencies change in value against each other by the day]
>
> Trading is used for unrealized differences between the currencies. I
> treat it as if you have bought shares in the stock market and the price
> fluctuates by the day but as long as you did not sell them everything is
> simply unrealised gains and losses.
>
> William

You can find some background in:
http://www.mscs.dal.ca/~selinger/accounting/tutorial.html
and
http://www.mscs.dal.ca/~selinger/accounting/gnucash.html

Frank