Book-currency feature and cost accounting

[Alex Aycinena]

On Sun, Oct 19, 2014 at 9:00 AM, <gnucash-devel-request at gnucash.org> wrote:

> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Wm <wm+gnc at tarrcity.demon.co.uk>
> To: gnucash-devel at gnucash.org
> Cc:
> Date: Sun, 19 Oct 2014 09:28:22 +0100
> Subject: Re: Book-currency feature and cost accounting
> Mon, 13 Oct 2014 10:04:35 <CACm7B=1hWDGmuLeEKxESo+
> DLMQO229M5sPxznDD79AJH8ExrqA at mail.gmail.com> Alex Aycinena <
> alex.aycinena at gmail.com>
>
> [cost accounting]
>
> I was using the term loosely, in the context of foreign currercies
> for: "accounting for the cost of foreign currencies in order to calculate
> gain/losses on dispositions". The work would also apply to
> commodities/securities, though.
>
> Re-reading your post at the top of this thread what is it that would be
> achieved by what you propose ?  <-- open question
>

Lot tracking for non-book-currency splits would be used in an integrated
fashion during data entry. This would allow the system to (optionally)
track costs for non-book-currency account balances with the lots and
calculate gains/losses for dispositions and generate the associated splits
while interacting with the user.

Some (most?) of these activities can be done with the system today by using
the lot viewer/scrubber. But it takes extra steps. You can also manually
make sure you have a cost in what you would consider a 'book-currency'
today by making sure you always enter a transaction from an account of that
'book-currency', even if no splits in the transaction involve the
'book-currency' (but you have to do some manual cost calculations before
the data entry in order to have the correct amounts ahead of time); you are
kind of 'faking out' the system to achieve this.


>
> If the gnc user has Trading accounts ON don't they have all the
> transactional information available to them to report on ? <-- is there
> something missing from what is recorded
>
>
Lot tracking is not integrated. Extra steps outside of data entry are used
to track costs and gain/losses.


> I'm wondering if this isn't so much a new feature so much as a report that
> wants to be written ? <-- did you try to write a report and gave up
>
> --
> Wm...
>
>
There is (at least) one report needed and I already have a working version.
To get the information on it to come out correctly, I have had to do all
those extra steps I mention above.

Alex