Balance sheet unrealized losses

[John Ralls]

On Oct 30, 2013, at 8:03 AM, Paul Nadolny <pjnadolny at gmail.com> wrote:

> Thanks William.
> 
> The foreign assets are funds, for example in the States, that are waiting
> for me to transfer, exchange into the local currency (MZN) and then spend
> on the project. So I keep the original USD in the asset account so that it
> will reflect the new values as the currency rates change when I do reports.
> But I put the value in MZN as a liability for the project that will spend
> that money when it is transferred. So I do not manually calculate a
> gain/loss in currency when I do transfer and change the USD. It would be
> possible, (maybe too confusing for my level of skills) but I was hoping
> that GnuCash would give the value of gain/loss when I make a report such as
> Balance or Trial Balance...
> 
> I also have spent time looking at the "Editor of Quotations" under Tools.
> So when I make the reports I enter the currency value that I want closest
> to the date of the report. But I would be lost if I had to calculate all of
> the foreign currency asset accounts and the transactions within them to
> find a gain/loss in currency value. I know that I need that value, because
> the rates change and the original value of the asset does too in the
> report.
> 
> No, I do not see anything on the balance sheet report that would lead me to
> the huge "unrealized losses " value at the end of the Equity section.
> 
> I will keep trying to figure this out by the practice method. For instance,
> when I close one year and start another I resave the past year and start
> the new year by deleting all of the transactions. Then I begin filling in
> the "initial values" of the accounts. Maybe I should be "closing the year".
> Its strange that the "unrealized losses" show up even on January 1, before
> transactions begin.
> 
> As you can tell, I have not studied accounting, but have been learning
> through practice. Paul
> 

The unrealized losses are probably because you have either no exchange rate or a bad one for USD<->MZN in the price db. Try creating one in Tools>Price Editor.

Unrealized gains and losses aren't "on the books", they're the difference between the cost of acquisition of assets and their current market value.

Regards,
John Ralls