Currencies / the accounting equation.

Dave Peticolas dave@krondo.com
Sun, 01 Oct 2000 19:22:31 -0700


 writes:
> 
> They are interchangeable for the purposes of balancing, IMO.  A split
> with both a damount and a value is a concrete statement of a financial
> identity.  100 USD is equivalent to 107 EUR in that transaction (for
> example), and even stronger: 100 USD was exchanged for 107 EUR in that
> transaction.

I think this is where our understanding differs. I have never
understood the 'value' as something being exchanged. It's the value of
the 'damount' being exchanged in whatever currency you are doing your
accounting for that account. What you exchanged for that quantity is
in the 'damount's of the other split(s).

I'm not saying one way is right and the other wrong, but that we
should decide up front what the meaning of transactions will be,
otherwise we won't be able to write reports that combine transactions
together in a consistent way. Right now, it seems like we have
multiple interpretations for the same transaction and that makes me
uneasy.


> > What if we required transactions to have a common valuation currency?
> > What if the currency were associated with transactions instead of
> > splits, and we always balanced with the value?
> 
> That sounds more-or-less reasonable to me.  I need to think a bit about
> the user interface ramifications a bit... how would you figure
> out which currency to use in a transaction? 

I think we would have to let the user choose, with suitable defaults.
I'm not sure if this is really the right thing to do, I'm just trying
to come up with a consistent model that has an intuitive and
particular interpretation. There may be a clear way of interpreting
the model where currencies are associated with splits and I just
haven't 'gotten' it yet.

dave