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

[Wm]

On 12/02/2019 17:29, Alex Aycinena wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
>> From: John Ralls <jralls at ceridwen.us>
>> To: Wm <wm_o_o_o at yahoo.co.uk>
>> Cc: gnucash-devel at lists.gnucash.org
>> Bcc:
>> Date: Mon, 11 Feb 2019 20:48:53 -0800
>> Subject: Re: [GNC-dev] book currency is what ... question mark
>>
>>
>>> 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.
>>
>> 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: 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.
>>
>>   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, a suspicion at
>> least somewhat borne out by the fact that Alex has been working at it for
>> at least 3 years.
>>
>> Regards,
>> John Ralls
>>
>>
> John - what you are saying is absolutely correct except for the part about
> working on it for three years. I did start it a while ago, but then other
> commitments have prevented me from working on it at all for a couple of
> years. The part you describe above will not be hard since the logic already
> exists; the integrated lot tracking, though, will be harder. I will shortly
> be able to get back to it though. Alex

I think this won't actually work.  I can see the idea but at a tx level 
it is broken unless you take a view that everything is worth something 
in my home currency at that exact moment in time and never changes again.

I think this is an absurd accounting view when fluid assets are available.

I think Alex has thought things through from *his* POV and agree in 
general that a person should support their irrational thieving 
government, if my government payed me to lie I'd propose something similar.

I am against what Alex proposes because it is so unclear what he intends.

Alex: let us know what you mean, then we can progress.

-- 
Wm