Multi-currency problems 1 of 2

[Oliver Kiddle]

Derek Atkins wrote:
> TC <tc at emailetc.co.uk> writes:
> 
> > PROBLEM: The resulting report shows that only the "US Dollar Bank" has
> > any money in it.

> > So, am I doing something wrong?
> 
> Nope.  At least, not really.  Do you have an exchange-rate set up
> between GBP and USD so that the report can compute the value in either
> currency?

I've had very similar problems. The solution seemed to be to click on
"Edit Options" below where the exchange rates are listed in the report
and change the "Price Source" from "Weighted Average" to "Most recent".

What is this Weighted Average doing? I initally had it not reporting
amounts in the second currency but now it seems to think that 1 euro
equals 17.5384 pounds (far from the real rate). I can't find a
transaction using any especially weird exchange rates. I'd have thought
that averaging transaction prices to get an exchange rate isn't
particularly useful anyway. For shares I've sometimes received bonus
shares or bought shares at well below the market price following a new
rights issue.

I've got a few more currency related points:

1) Is it possible to make gnucash use Finance::Quote to get the latest
currency exchange rates? I've got the share price updates working nicely
but I can't see how to make it also update exchange rates.

2) What does the "Enable EURO support" option in the preferences do? Why
not make it default and remove the option if it does something useful.
It is plain confusing given that gnucash is supposed to support all
ISO4217 currencies. It'd be nice if it used the Euro symbol instead of
"EUR" too but that's minor.

3) Can I suggest that instead of the "New Account Default Currency"
preference option, it'd be better if the currency was inherited from the
parent account. I've got quite a mix of pounds and euros so it is
annoying having to select the currency all the time. Repeating those
currencies which have been used at the top of the drop down currency box
would be another idea.

Oliver