Multi currency discussion cont'd

[Jan Nielsen]

Hi all,

I have been testing some of the multi currency functionality introduced 
in gnucash after my initial observations about a month back.

Basically I think I understand the reasoning behind the current 
functionality, but I'm not sure it correspond completely to my 
expectations (maybe I have special multi currency problems, but somehow 
it seems unlikely...)

Disclaimer: I have accounts (as in bank, expense, income) in three 
different currencies, none of which are US dollars (which might be 
important for a couple of observations that I'll make). My typical use 
of these account relates to infrequent transfers between bank accounts 
of different currencies and expenses and income payed out from/into 
account of the same currency).

1) When specifying a transfer between two differently "currencied" 
accounts using the "To amount" mechanism I expected that it would be 
possible to go back and adjust one of the the sides independently of the 
other. An example would be that I make a transfer of 10 Euro from a euro 
account to a DKK account. In transfer dialog I specify 10 EUR going out 
and in the "To Amount" field I specify 75 DKK (which most often will be 
based on a guess, albeit a qualified one) coming in. When my account 
statement show up later for the danish account, it shows that actually 
my account has been credited with 70 DKK (they did not offer the normal 
interbank  rate, they stole some money, the transaction cost money, I 
had bad information, whatever). Now, I need to adjust the DKK account to 
reflect this, and simply change the 75 to 70. However, gnucash at this 
point also changes the amount that I have taken out of the EUR account 
to say 9 EUR instead of 10. But in my opinion this is wrong. If I 
understand correctly the transaction has been remembered by a calculated 
exchange rate instead of by the actual amounts.  

So one way of looking at this could be that transfers made with "To 
amount" should be tagged as such and not recalculated when amounts 
change on either side of the transfer.

The only alternative method I can see to get my transaction right is 
that I completely delete it when the statement arrives and then reinsert 
it with the correct numbers (which is what I do for now).

2) When making a transfer between two differently currencied accounts 
from the ledger gnucash apparently automatically finds some old exchange 
rate (probably from the pricedb, even though the price editor it empty 
(but then I might have misunderstood the use of the price editor)). IMHO 
it should at least be possible to configure a preference that a) 
automatically brings up the transfer dialog identical to the toolbar 
transfer button when making a transfer between two accounts with 
different currencies or b) do as it does now (even though I'm not really 
sure how it works, but it does not matter too much for me as I probably 
would use the other method anyway).

3) Reports:

In my installation (CVS 12282002) the following things happen :

 From the main window "Reports":

Account summary: All accounts are listed but with $0.00 as balance. I 
have my currency preference set to EUR and use locale C and I do not 
have a single $ entry in my data.

Transaction report: An account seems to be chosen and shown. However, 
which account is selected is not obvious at all. I would have thought 
that the highlighted account would be chosen, but that does not seem to 
be the case.

The unfortunately named "Sample and Custom: Welcome sample report": 
Again all numbers in account summary are $0.00 as above (at least it is 
consistent ;-) However, by selecting the by selecting the currency to 
EUR under edit options things starts working. Maybe the simple solution 
for now would be to default to the preference currency instead of the 
locale currency (which I am guessing is what is done now).

The expense and income accounts initially both reports "No data : The 
selected accounts contain no data/transactions (or only zeroes) for the 
selected time period". Now, I'm not sure in what sense I should have 
selected accounts andtime period, but it seems strange to me. When I 
then select "Edit report options" I get a) for expense accounts: "Badly 
formed options URL: report-id50" and b) for income accounts "Badly 
formed options URL: report-id51".  Again using edit options to change 
the currency things start working. So I would suggest the same solution 
as above. About the two badly formed option URLs I have no idea what is 
going on.

The top left pane which says: 

"Welcome to GnuCash 1.8!
GnuCash 1.8 has lots of nice features. Here are a few.

Edit Options   Single Report"

seems particulary useless to me. In general this report suffers from 
layout problems. The reports should be a easy to understand overview, 
but it is very messy. The pie charts are about 2 mm in diameter and the 
legend is so big that they take up all the available space. The top left 
space is completely unused.

"Sample and Custom: Custom Multicolumn View" shows up as a completely 
 blank page. Again the name is unfortunate, and the fact that it does 
not do anything just makes it worse ;-)

"Sample and Custom: Custom Web Report" gets the gnucash.org homepage. 
But  either this report should have a different name (such as 
"GnuCash.org Homepage") or it should be removed. Most users expect 
gnucash be a financial program and not a web browser.

"Sample and Custom: Sample report with examples" probably makes a nice 
example for somebody who actually understands these things, but for a 
program that is getting ready for end-users it is a "must-disappear 
thing". If such an example must be included I would suggest a special 
"extend gnucash" menu somewhere where most users never arrive.

I think that most users would be happy only to have report options 
present in the menus that actually can do useful things for them (and 
then with clearly understandable names). The fact that new reports can 
be custom-made is very nice,  but not really an enduser proposition (as 
it must be written in scheme if I understand correctly).

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Assets and liabilities: Advanced portfolio": I cannot say much about 
this report as I currently do no track shares with gnucash. However, 
again here I think the default currency should follow the user preference.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Assets and liabilities: Assets Barcharts": I get a window with

"No data
The selected accounts contain no data/transactions (or only zeroes) for 
the selected time period

Edit report options"

Selecting "edit report options" gives me : Badly formed options URL: 
report-id110

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Assets and liabilities: Assets Piecharts" : I get a window with

Assets:
No data
The selected accounts contain no data/transactions (or only zeroes) for 
the selected time period

Edit report options

Selecting "edit report options" gives me : Badly formed options URL: 
report-id111

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Assets and liabilities:Average Balance": I get a window with

Average Balance:
No data
The selected accounts contain no data/transactions (or only zeroes) for 
the selected time period

Edit report options"

Selecting "edit report options" gives me : Badly formed options URL: 
report-id112

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Assets and liabilities: Investment portfolio": I cannot say much about 
this report as I currently do no track shares with gnucash. However, 
again here I think the default currency should follow the user preference.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Assets and liabilities: Liability barchart": I get a window with

"Liabilities Over Time:
No data
The selected accounts contain no data/transactions (or only zeroes) for 
the selected time period

Edit report options"

Selecting "edit report options" gives me : Badly formed options URL: 
report-id114

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Assets and liabilities: Liability piechart": I get a window with
Liabilities:
No data
The selected accounts contain no data/transactions (or only zeroes) for 
the selected time period

Edit report options

Selecting "edit report options" gives me : Badly formed options URL: 
report-id115

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Assets and liabilities:Net Worth BarChart" I get a window with :

"No data
The selected accounts contain no data/transactions (or only zeroes) for 
the selected time period

Edit report options"

Selecting "edit report options" gives me : Badly formed options URL: 
report-id116
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Income and expense: cash flow": All accounts are listed but with $0.00 
as value. Again here I think the default currency should follow the user 
preference. Particularly as there is no way of changing it.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Income and expense: Expense barchart"

Expense Over Time:
No data
The selected accounts contain no data/transactions (or only zeroes) for 
the selected time period

Edit report options

Selecting "edit report options" gives me : Badly formed options URL: 
report-id121
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Income and expense: Expense piechart"

Expense Accounts:
No data
The selected accounts contain no data/transactions (or only zeroes) for 
the selected time period

Edit report options

Selecting "edit report options" gives me : Badly formed options URL: 
report-id122
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Income and expense: income and Expense chart"

Income/Expense Chart:
No data
The selected accounts contain no data/transactions (or only zeroes) for 
the selected time period

Edit report options
Selecting "edit report options" gives me : Badly formed options URL: 
report-id123
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Income and expense: income barchart"

Income Over Time:
No data
The selected accounts contain no data/transactions (or only zeroes) for 
the selected time period

Edit report options
Selecting "edit report options" gives me : Badly formed options URL: 
report-id126
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Income and expense: income piechart"

Income accounts:
No data
The selected accounts contain no data/transactions (or only zeroes) for 
the selected time period

Edit report options
Selecting "edit report options" gives me : Badly formed options URL: 
report-id127
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Income and expense: profits and loss": All accounts are listed but with 
$0.00 as value. Again here I think the default currency should follow 
the user preference. Particularly as there is no way of changing it.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I have not been able to test the business reports !!!!

Thanx

Jan