multicurrency

[May Workman]

Thanks for your replies. That is helpful. I have a few more questions before launching myself fully into GnuCash. What I have been doing all these years is similar to what was suggested. I have kept my main currency as the one I am paid in, of course my bank accounts in their respective currencies and my budget reports have been also my main currency. Where I live is a different currency (than what I am paid in) so most of my transactions are in this second currency. I realise that it might make sense to change my main currency to the one where I live but I haven't decided to do that, yet!  
I transfer money from my main currency to my living currency once every 3 months so this exchange rate is in affect for a full 3 months for me. I am wondering what will happen in my expense reports. If most of my expenses are in EUR but all my expense accounts are in USD do I have to enter in the exchange rate everytime I enter an expense? Or would it use the latest exchange rate entered?
Otherwise if I do setup a EUR expense account and a USD expense account, Mike said I would have to establish and exchange rate when running the report, would that be just one exchange rate for each report or how would that work exactly? 
As you can imagine I don't want to get this setup so that I have to enter an exchange rate with each entered transaction. I am also concerned about changing my main currency, I don't know if I will always live in the EU, I have already moved back and forth several times, that is probably why I have kept my main currency in USD all these years. And, yes I do have to file taxes in both countries.
Thanks for all your help,
May


> From: list at achampion.net
> Date: Thu, 1 May 2014 13:11:38 -0500
> Subject: Re: multicurrncy
> To: rvklassen at gmail.com
> CC: mta at umich.edu; gnucash-user at gnucash.org; may_workman at hotmail.com
> 
> The only challenge is when you change your main currency, e.g. moving
> from UK to US. I have all the old income/expense accounts in GBP and
> the new accounts in USD.
> Currently I've just put all the old GBP accounts under my main 
> currency accounts, e.g. Expenses:Groceries has a sub of
> Expenses:Groceries:Groceries £.
> Converting can also be problematic if you are liable for tax in both
> jurisdictions.
> 
> 
> 
> On 30 April 2014 21:35, R. Victor Klassen <rvklassen at gmail.com> wrote:
> > The approach I've taken is that the choice of currency depends on the bank/credit card/etc. account, as well as the vendor in the case of invoices - I'm using the business features.   But the expense accounts are in the main currency.   So a foreign expense may be incurred in a foreign currency, and paid with a foreign credit card,  which, in turn is paid with a foreign bank account.  But when I get a report of the expense categories, they're all in the main currency.  If I need to transfer across accounts with different currencies, GNUCash will ask for the applicable exchange rate.
> >
> > On Apr 30, 2014, at 4:59 PM, Mike Alexander <mta at umich.edu> wrote:
> >
> >> --On April 30, 2014 2:20:15 PM -0600 May Workman <may_workman at hotmail.com> wrote:
> >>
> >>> I couldn't find any complicated examples as to how to setup my
> >>> expense accounts correctly. What I did last night was made "expenses
> >>> EUR" with groceries, auto fuel, telephone,...underneath. Then I made
> >>> a similar tree under "expenses USD". I attributed the imported
> >>> Quicken account to either the USD or the EUR expense account. The
> >>> other one is new.
> >>
> >>> Is this the correct way to setup my accounts?  I have 14+ years of
> >>> material to go through and I want to make sure I'm doing it right to
> >>> begin with. Will I be able to in the end track all my expenses in
> >>> either USD or/and EUR combining the two separate expense accounts for
> >>> each currency into one report?
> >>
> >> You can do it that way, I did for years.  However, I think it works better to pick a home currency and keep all income and expense accounts in that currency.  That way you establish an exchange rate when entering the transaction (assuming it's not in the home currency) instead of when you run the report.  Other accounting programs I've used force that behavior which is what led me to try it.
> >>
> >>         Mike
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