Newbie Currency Questions

[Shayne Lennox]

Hi,

At 09:54 PM 23/08/2002, gnucash-user-request@lists.gnucash.org wrote:
>1) I am in Australia and my main currency is, of course, AUD. I also have a
>PayPal account which is in USD, and I'm confused about how withdrawals from
>my PayPal account to my AUD bank account will work. In Quicken, it simply
>involved a direct transfer from one account to the other, entering an
>exchange rate when prompted. In GnuCash, it seems I need at least one
>"intermediate" account. Unfortunately, the example in the manual (involving
>Francs) wasn't much help to me. Could someone explain to me what
>intermediate account(s) need to be created and what transactions I need to
>enter in order to move money from my PayPal account to my bank account?

Just wanted to report that, having done a bit more reading and fiddling, I 
reckon I've figured this one out. For the benefit of others who might 
search the list archive for answers to the same question, here is what I did:

1) Created a new account of type "Currency", named it "USD-AUD Trading", 
set the currency to USD, security to AUD, and made it a new top level account.

2) I wanted to withdraw $50 from my PayPal account to my bank account. 
Opened the register for the USD-AUD Trading account.

3) First thing is to buy some Australian dollars with the US dollars from 
my PayPal account. In Transfer I selected the PayPal account, entered a 
test exchange rate (0.65) under Price, and put 50.00 in the Buy field. It 
automatically calculated that I'd bought 76.90 "shares" (Australian 
dollars) which became the balance of the account.

4) Now to transfer those Australian dollars to my bank account. This time 
in Transfer I selected my bank account, entered the same exchange rate 
(0.65) under Price, and put 50.00 in the Sell field.

5) This left me with the correct amount in USD withdrawn from my PayPal 
account, the correct amount in AUD deposited into my bank account, and my 
USD-AUD trading account with a balance of 0.00.

Thanks,

Shayne Lennox
xonnels@netspace.net.au

PGP/GPG Key: http://www.netspace.net.au/~xonnels/pgp.html