Help with stock/currency changes

[linas@linas.org]

It's been rumoured that Dave Peticolas said:
> 
> Luke Diamand writes:
> > Hi!
> > 
> > I've just started to use gnucash in order to help me pay my upcoming
> > income tax.
> > 
> > The problem I have is this. Last financial year, the company I work for
> > changed from being a UK company to a US company. I had a handful of the
> > UK company shares and these were taken away and replaced with shiny new
> > US shares.
> > 
> > So - how do I represent this in gnucash?
> > 
> > It doesn't seem to want to let me just transfer shares from one stock
> > account (in GBP) to another (in USD).
> > 
> > So I tried pretending that I'd sold all my UK shares and then
> > transferred this to a currency GBP/USD account, and then bought US
> > shares (what exchange rate? what price?) but my head started to spin at
> > this stage.
> > 
> > Should I just not bother, or is there an easy way to do this?
> 
> There is no easy way at the moment, no.

Uhhh, are you sure? when creating a stock account, you specify a
security type as well as a currency type.   So, for example:
 old acct:   GBP   security XYZ
 new acct:   USD   security XYZ

since XYZ is common between the two accounts, it should be possible to
transfer shares of XYZ between them.   (you would still have to pick
some nominal price in USD, though.  You do want to ask your company the
question 'how much are these shares worth'?)

--linas