help with foriegn currency

[matt at mattbostock.com]

Hi Beth,

Your guide is extremely helpful, thank you!

One question - when setting up 'Get Online Quotes', it suggests adding
'gnucash --add-price-quotes $HOME/gnucash.xac > /dev/null 2>&1' to the
crontab. Should the filename gnucash.xac be changed to the name of the
file that my accounts are stored in? I opened the gnucash.xac file after
running the command, and it didn't appear to contain any quotes:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<gnc-v2>
<gnc:count-data cd:type="book">1</gnc:count-data>
<gnc:book version="2.0.0">
<book:id type="guid">ede22881a07d206f975aac274dcbd2ec</book:id>
<gnc:count-data cd:type="account">1</gnc:count-data>
</gnc:book>
</gnc-v2>

<!-- Local variables: -->
<!-- mode: xml        -->
<!-- End:             -->

Many thanks,
Matt :)

Beth Leonard wrote:
 > It's not made entirely clear in the tutorial that you need
> essentially "dummy" currency accounts to set up the price
> editor to get the exchange rate correct, and that those
> dummy accounts need to be of type currency -- that is, set
> up two accounts:
> Assets:Current Assets: Currencies:Pounds
> Assets:Current Assets: Currencies:Dollars
> There won't be any transactions in these accounts.  When
> you highlight each of those two accounts from the accounts
> window and click on the "Edit Account" button,
> 
>   *** make sure the Account Type is set to "Currency" ***
> 
> and the Price Quote Source checkbox for Get Online Quotes is
> checked (you'll also need to have finance::quote installed
> on your system, that's covered in section 8.5)
> 
> http://www.gnucash.org/docs/v1.8/C/gnucash-guide/invest_stockprice1.html#invest_stockprice_auto2
> 
> Now when you make a transaction from
> Liabilities:Credit Card (denoted in USD)
> to
> Expenses:Books:Foreign Books (denoted in Pounds)
> 
> when you hit "enter" to save the transaction after entering
> the price of the book in pounds, the "transfer Funds" dialog will appear
> asking you what exchange rate you want to use to transfer
> currency from Pounds to USD.  You can specify the exchange
> rate (by default it fills in what you last got from
> the price editor) or you can specify it as, "my credit card
> company charged me $60 for a 7 pound book!" in the "to Amount"
> field.
> 
> I'm guessing that your currency accounts aren't set to
> account type currency, but if that isn't the problem
> write again and I'll think some more.
> 
> I also think that if you are just going on vacation,
> the easiest way is to do it as another writer suggested,
> and charge the expense as the amount of USD out of
> your wallet at the exchange booth, and credit that
> account again if you sell foreign currency back when
> you re-enter the country.   Likewise with using your
> credit card overseas.  Don't worry about how much
> the book cost in pounds (other than possibly in the
> memo part of the transaction), note on your expenses
> by how much the credit card company charged you in USD.
> 
> Have a great vacation!
> --Beth 
> +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
> +                             Beth Leonard                          +
> +       O say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave              +
> +       O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?        +
> +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++