multi-currency transactions
Jan Nielsen
nielsenjan@tin.it
Mon, 06 Jan 2003 12:55:12 +0100
Derek, Christian,
I am convinced that I am not able to follow your reasoning about this
issue ( I have a feeling that you are talking implementation instead of
functionality, but so be it).
I'll try to make a simple example again to illustrate what I think
should happen when editing transactions between two different
currencies. I realize that the situation is more complicated than what I
cover, but I still think simple things should be simple to do.
Assume the following simple situation:
2 bank accounts a) AccountUS with currency USD and b) AccountGB with
currency GBP.
On 2/1/2003 a transaction is entered in account AccountUS withdrawing
10USD and transferring it to AccountGB using a To-Amount mechanism
specifying that AccountGB will be credited 6GBP.
A ledger view of this might look like this:
-------------------------------------------------------------------
AccountUS
Date Desc Transfer Deposit Withdrawal Balance
2/1/2003 Tx GB AccountGB 10.00 10.00
AccountGB
Date Desc Transfer Deposit Withdrawal Balance
2/1/2 Tx GB AccountUS 6.00 6.00
-------------------------------------------------------------------
First observation: For my personal use of gnucash it would be preferable
that the transfer dialog is always popped up automatically when making a
transfer between two account with different currencies (independently of
whether it is a stored transaction or there is a price available from
somewhere). Now, I don't personally care too much about whether the
actual implementation underneath stores all this using exchange rates,
all in USD, some in USD, some in GBP etc. What I see in the ledger is
the above.
Now, for some reason I have a need to adjust the above transaction. My
typical need arises from having to adjust the "to-account", but I think
this might be immaterial.
In my example I need to adjust the AccountGB as the bank has
communicated that they have credited my account with GBP 6.15.
So _what I would like_ to see is:
-------------------------------------------------------------------
AccountUS
Date Desc Transfer Deposit Withdrawal Balance
2/1/2003 Tx GB AccountGB 10.00 10.00
AccountGB
Date Desc Transfer Deposit Withdrawal Balance
2/1/2 Tx GB AccountUS 6.15 6.15
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Observation 2: The simple way to achieve this would be to simply open
the AccountGB ledger and change the deposit amount to 6.15. However, in
current gnucash (CVS 28122002) this also changes the AccountUS as
follows (which I do _not_ like):
-------------------------------------------------------------------
AccountUS
Date Desc Transfer Deposit Withdrawal Balance
2/1/2003 Tx GB AccountGB 10.25 10.25
AccountGB
Date Desc Transfer Deposit Withdrawal Balance
2/1/2 Tx GB AccountUS 6.15 6.15
-------------------------------------------------------------------
I think the natural use of the to-amount functionality is that a change
made directly in the ledger should have the effect of simply changing
one side of the equation if the original transaction has been made using
"to-amount" (which by the way comes natural to an old Quicken user such
as me). I do realize that this requires a flag to store this
information, but then so be it.
3rd Observation: If this on the other hand is not possible I would think
that using the "Edit Exchange Rate" dialog, it should be possible to
simply change either the "Amount", "To Amount", or "Exchange rate"
fields to obtain the same result.
I.e. the dialog should really have a multi choice of "Amount", "Exchange
Rate" and "To Amount" where one of the three can be selected for editing
and one (another one) for keeping fixed. E.g. to make my example above
the method would be to select "To Amount" for editing and "Amount" for
keeping fixed. The result would be that the exchange rate changes and
that the resulting ledger would be as I would like:
-------------------------------------------------------------------
AccountUS
Date Desc Transfer Deposit Withdrawal Balance
2/1/2003 Tx GB AccountGB 10.00 10.00
AccountGB
Date Desc Transfer Deposit Withdrawal Balance
2/1/2 Tx GB AccountUS 6.15 6.15
-------------------------------------------------------------------
I hope this was clear(er)
Cheers
Jan