[GNC-dev] book currency is what ... question mark

[Wm]

On 12/02/2019 04:48, John Ralls wrote:
> 
> 
>> On Feb 11, 2019, at 6:49 PM, Wm via gnucash-devel <gnucash-devel at gnucash.org> wrote:
>>
>> at the risk of appearing to be an imperialist, what is "book currency" ?
>>
>> I think of "home currency" as whatever currency most people close to you (the reader) use to buy and sell ordinary stuff like carbohydrate staples (rice, bread, etc) and water
>>
>> in the UK that is GBP, in the USA it is USD, in most of Europe it is EUR, in other places, depending on government, it might be something else.
>>
>> my point is, unless your government is failing, you should be able to use the same currency for your home currency and your bookkeeping.
>>
>> presuming I haven't gone insane yet, does anyone know what a "book currency" is?
>>
>> If someone really wanted to run a set of accounts in another currency gnc isn't stopping them, the underlying transaction stream works perfectly regardless.
> 
> Book currency is the currency of the book's root account, which you set when you created the book. For nearly everyone it is indeed their home currency, but that's immaterial to GnuCash.
> 

OK I'll think about that.

Thought about it. Invalid.

The value is the same.

Ummm, JohnR I should not be beating you up on simple stuff like this.

> Suppose, though, that while your book currency is GBP, you have accounts in EUR and RUB and you do a transaction between those two. The transaction will set the transaction currency to the account whose register you use to create it and will balance the transaction in that currency: 

I don't think it does or should, I just want the tx recorded naturally,
I think John Ralls is a mildly naughty man making a point to a slightly 
younger man about an obscure point.  consider if the book should record 
ordinary numbers and currency

What do other people expect?

If you start in the RUB account then it will convert the EUR amount to a 
RUB value and check that the credit and debit values are equal.

it may for *some* value of equal.

IT OFTEN GETS IT WRONG BECAUSE YOU DUMB AMERICANS DON'T UNDERSTAND 
ANYTHING OTHER THAN USD

Since I have GBP, EUR and RUB it is ordinary for me to experience 
exchanges rates but I think my point stands, gnc isn't doing the sums right.

>   What Alex is working on is to instead use the book currency for balancing: GnuCash would in this example convert both RUB and EUR amounts to GBP values and balance the transaction in GBP. It's an interesting idea but I suspect that it will be very difficult to get right, 

Wouldn't that mean a book for each currency?

Umm, it is a nice idea and may work for some exchanges but near 
impossible for me

>a suspicion at least somewhat borne out by the fact that Alex has been working at it for at least 3 years.

Indeed.

I think the main problem will be getting more than one book to work 
together as one.  Easy if you know how.

-- 
Wm