Inverted exchange rates.

[deane@gooroos.com]

I'm trying out gnucash-1.7.3 and I like the cross-currency transfer
function *much* better than having to fiddle with special currency trading
accounts.

However, there are a couple of oddities:

1) The transfer window seems to require inverted exchange rates.  For
   example, I am transferring US$100 to CAD account and the exchange rate
   that I got from the bank was 1.5 (i.e. each US$ bought me CAD 1.50).
   But if I enter '1.5' into the exchange rate field of the transfer
   window, it only credits my CAD account with CAD 666.67.  In other words,
   it has *divided* the source amount by the exchange rate rather than
   multiplying it.

   That's totally counter-intuitive.  When I go to the bank and ask to
   change USD into CAD, they quote me the exchange rate as a *multiplier*,
   not a divisor.

   Is this just a Canadian thing?  Do other countries really use divisors?


2) As someone else has already mentioned, the amount being transferred
   shows up in my CAD account as US dollars, which is very disconcerting.
   I have the habit of putting "(USD)" at the end of all my US dollar
   account names, so it's reasonably obvious what's going on, but for
   someone who doesn't do that, it'll look like gnucash is making errors
   because the numbers do not appear to add up properly.

   If I transfer USD into a CAD account, the transaction should show the
   amount in USD in the US account, and in CAD in the Canadian account.


3) Having made the transfer, is there any way to find out what exchange
   rate was used, other than pulling out a calculator and doing it by hand?

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  - deane                          Gooroos Software: Plugging you into Maya

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