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

[Wm]

On 17/02/2019 19:50, Christian Kluge wrote:
> Am 17.02.2019 um 19:58 schrieb Wm via gnucash-devel:
>> On 15/02/2019 01:44, David Cousens wrote:
> 
>>> If I start in Savings RUB , select the Savings EUR account and enter
>>> 100 it
>>> is assumed to be in RUB not EUR as GnuCash operates at present. This is
>>> clear, both registers are balanced and it is clear that they are correct.
>>>
>>> I am presuming what you would like is to be able to start in the
>>> Savings RUB
>>> register, select the Savings EUR account, enter 100.00 as the amount and
>>> have that interpreted as !00.00EUR, even though the register currency
>>> is RUB
>>> and then when you tab to the next line select Savings RUB have the
>>> currency
>>> dialog popup, enter or fetch the exchange rate, and then display the
>>> amount
>>> against the Savings RUB account in RUB.
>>
>> Nope.  I normally know the exact amounts at either end of significant
>> tx, the exchange rate is implied from the numbers.  That *is* the right
>> way of doing the accounting.
> 
>> You start with 100 of some currency and end up with 2300 of some other
>> currency, the *valuation* is separate.
> 
> What about the situations you don’t know the exact numbers or if you’re
> allowed to usage average exchange rates for tax accounting. The real
> amount exchanged doesn’t matter there/will be sorted out with correcting
> expense/income transaction.

It is your (and my and everyone else's) personal responsibility to 
account correctly. You give an example below.

> It might be your so called valuation exercise, but it annoys me very
> much that Finance::Quote doesn’t fetch the daily average quotes from the
> ECB yet.

Any F::Q valuations should not affect your day to day life, I am well 
known for saying gnc is not suitable for trading.  Governments generally 
don't care about one up or one down in decimal points for most people.

> Often times with cash transactions it happens that people use simple
> exchange rates which are nowhere near the actual rates. So I might be
> paying 5 EUR for a service worth 20 PLN according to the receipt, so you
> might assume that the exchange rate is 1 to 4, but the actual rates are
> in a range of 1 to 4.2/4.3.

My advice is to record the actual values, forget the theoretical 
exchange rate as you are unlikely to get it.

> So unless we’re talking about bank transfers or exchanging real currency
> there are situations where you’d want rates instead of the actual
> amounts exchanged.

It seem stupid to me to account for what you wished rather than what 
happened.

Did you eat 5EUR worth of some food or 20PLN of some food?  The food has 
gone inside you and out by now :)

Accounting is not a youtube thing, you don't value something afterwards 
unless it has residual value.  Your poo is just that, your poo, no value 
in most currencies :)

> I also wanted to add that the bug with not being able to see the
> currency exchange rates in the price list also effects me running 3.4
> with the sqlite backend.

Most of that is fixed in the test version I am using.  There is a small 
bug left over if you need to change a price after it has been fetched.
https://bugs.gnucash.org/show_bug.cgi?id=797046
for reference

> I can however add the rates to the list and they’re used in transactions
> and listed on balance sheets if requested.

That is normal service :)

-- 
Wm