price.date, transaction.post_date and neutral time

[Wm]

On 14/02/2018 02:59, David T. via gnucash-devel wrote:
> Wm, Sebastien,
> 
> I profess to not paying too much attention to this thread, but IIRC, there was a time when the price entered into transactions was NOT entered into the price DB, which meant that users would often get useless reports on commodities, since the reports use price DB entries to calculate figures. The workaround was to add transaction-generated prices to the Price DB as well, thus (seemingly) killing two birds with one mouse click. I suspect that when John did work to decide on a new timezone neautral solution to the timestamp issue, he didn’t adjust this code as well.

IIRC it was meant to be one price per commodity per date [1]


> Given the nature of these entries (i.e., added from the transaction to document a price that was valid at some arbitrary point in the past), I don’t see how a specific time could be added (as it might be with F::Q prices). Ditto manually-added prices.

The understanding required is that the price db is occasional to 
transactions.

A real life tx may create a record in the price db, however, it was also 
discussed and decided that there would only be one price per commodity 
in the price db per day.

 From an accounting pov it doesn't matter which price was recorded 
yesterday as valuations depend on tax people, local accounting 
conventions, etc. and they mainly want consistency.

[1] I don't think the gnc price db is suitable [2] for trading intra day 
simply because the price sources are too unreliable (many apps use F::Q) 
and because exchanges put delays on prices, etc. it just isn't 
practical.  It is a square peg in a round hole issue for me.

[2] further, if you did want to record prices in more detail, there are 
other free ways of doing it without cramming your gnc db with stuff that 
is completely impersonal to you.  Remember, the price you bought or sold 
at is what counts and as a punter you are very unlikely to get the big 
market price anyway.

-- 
Wm