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

[Christian Kluge]

Am 20.02.2019 um 14:09 schrieb Wm via gnucash-devel:
> On 17/02/2019 19:50, Christian Kluge wrote:

>> 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.

Have I said anything about trading? Don’t try to interpret things. I
know that the ECB rates are suitable for this case however they are a
reference recording value.

>> 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 :)
> 

Let me expand my example:

Let’s say I’m doing someone else’s accounts and going through the
liabilities first and see an invoice for 20 PLN.
Then I don’t go through the bank statements first and try to find this
transaction for the real value transferred but use the (monthly average)
ECB quote.

I don’t know how it’s done in the UK but in the end a balance sheet has
to be in Euro in Germany, so it has to be converted anyway.

Kind regards

Christian Kluge