currencies

[Herbert Thoma]

Dave Peticolas wrote:
> 
> At last a response! I was beginning to wonder if my message got through :)

Well, the multiple currencies problem is quite complicated and
it needs careful consideration to give good answers :-)

Currency accounts in their current state are well suited,
if you treat currencies like shares: You buy some foreign
currency and after a while, when the exchange rate has
changed, you sell it with (hopefully) some profit.

The problems arise, when you have two (or more) sets of
accounts in different currencies and occasionally you
transfer some money between accounts with different
currencies. The problems are at least twofold:
 - the user interface is really not intuitive
 - it is difficult to keep the whole set of accounts balanced

BTW: With the current CnuCash you need to take care to
keep the accounts balanced manually, if you sell stock.
The engine computes a cost basis, but the UI does not
provide access to this information and does not enforce
a "capital gain" split.

I agree with Christian Stimming, that one single currency
for all accounts for valuation is not appropriate. If I
have sets of account with different currencies, then the
individual sets need to balance and if I transfer funds
from on set to another and bach later, there should be
a way to track capital gains/losses automatically to
keep the books balanced. The tracking may be possible
with the current system, but I won't be able to find
out how exactly to to this or implement this.

To improve the UI, I can try to implement a dialog which
pops up instead of the warning "Cannot transfer, different
currencies" and asks for a exchange rate and a currency account.

 Herbert.
-- 
Herbert Thoma
FhG-IIS A, Studio Department
Am Weichselgarten3, 91058 Erlangen, Germany
Phone: +49-9131-776-323
Fax:   +49-9131-776-399
email: tma@iis.fhg.de
www: http://www.iis.fhg.de/