Three currency transaction?

[Derek Atkins]

Hi.

So, to help you parse this transaction....

Quoting "Stephen J. Gowdy" <gowdy at slac.stanford.edu>:

> Hi Derek,
> 	I used the UK Credit card in GBP to enter it. Here is the xml for
> it if that helps any;
>
[snip]
>  <trn:currency>
>    <cmdty:space>ISO4217</cmdty:space>
>    <cmdty:id>GBP</cmdty:id>
>  </trn:currency>

This means that the common currency is GBP.  All splits have a GBP amount
and the transaction is "balanced" based on that GBP amount.  I.e. all <value>
amounts are denoted in GBP.

>    <trn:split>
>      <split:value>991/100</split:value>
>      <split:quantity>1400/100</split:quantity>
>      <split:account
> type="guid">35f26b37201b8b0c19eb154136cac189</split:account>

This split is to some account (most likely your EUR account) and you spent
1.40 EUR which implies 9.91 GBP.  I'm assuming that the account currency
for the account with this guid (35f2...c189) is EUR.

>    </trn:split>
>    <trn:split>
      <split:value>-991/100</split:value>
>      <split:quantity>-991/100</split:quantity>
>      <split:account
> type="guid">b60a55e7293de9c707a65c7a08619372</split:account>

This is the balancing split; again for 9.91 GBP (assuming that the account
with guid 660a...9372 has a currency of GBP).

So, what you have here is a perfectly value multi-currency transaction.
When you view this txn from the GBP account it should should you 9.91.
When you view it from the EUR account it should show you 14.00.

> 	I was about to enter a new transaction in the Currency:Euros
> account to transfer the value to an Expense account and I noticed the
> amount listed there was a GBP number and not as I expected a USD amount
> (and that was also why exchange rate was the GBP->EUR instead of the
> USD->EUR one). I thought perhaps I should create a Currency:Eur-GBP
> account which was "trading" Euros but with a base currency of GBP but I
> don't see a way to do that.

Don't use Currency Accounts.  In general you don't need them, and most
of the time you're just going to cause yourself grief.

> 	To be clear, I'm talking about two different transactions with two
> currencies involved in each one. One is EUR<->GBP and the other EUR<->USD.

Why do you have the EUR<->USD?  In fact, why do you have EUR at all?
All your accounts are in USD and GBP.   One thing you could do is create
a EUR Asset account (NOT type Currency, type Asset, or Bank)..  And use THAT
to go between.  Open up your EUR account and create a split transaction..
One Split goes to your GBP credit card, and the other to the USD Expense
Account.
Then you'd get your two exchange rates (EUR<->GBP and EUR<->USD).

Note, however, that this might not work, as there are some known bugs
with multi-split multi-currency transactions.

-derek

> 						regards,
>
> 						Stephen.
>
> On Thu, 17 Nov 2005, Derek Atkins wrote:
>
>> There are some "known bugs" in tri-currency transactions..  Getting
>> all the corner cases right is... challenging.  So, unfortunately,
>> there isn't a good answer for you right now.
>>
>> What I /can/ say is that whenever you are looking at an account,
>> the values are ALL in the CURRENT currency, not the currency of
>> the split.  So if you open up the GBP account, all values will
>> be shown in GBP.
>>
>> I'll also note that Currency Accounts are... deprecated.
>> At the same time, there's a major question about how you entered
>> the transaction.  Which account did you use to enter it?  And
>> what is your current locale (LANG)?
>>
>> -derek
>>
>> "Stephen J. Gowdy" <gowdy at slac.stanford.edu> writes:
>>
>> > Hi All,
>> > 	I'm guessing this is unusual and that is why it doesn't seem to
>> > work. I have a UK credit card (GBP) that I used in Italy (EUR) and my
>> > expense accounts (and my default currency) are in USD. I have a Currency
>> > account in EUR which is how I usually deal with foreign transactions with
>> > my US cards (so I can express the EUR value somewhere).
>> > 	So I posted a transaction for 14 EURs to my UK credit card. THe
>> > card was debited GBP 9.91. The line in the Credit Card Account is;
>> >
>> > 10/7/2005 Rotunda	Currency:Euros 		9.91 <balance>
>> >
>> > then in the Currency:Euros account;
>> >
>> > 10/7/2005 Rotunda	Li..:Credit..  14.00 .707   9.91 <balance>
>> >
>> > So it is assuming that the 9.91 was in Dollars, even though the
>> > Li..:Credit..:MBNA has a GBP currency.
>> > 	Is there some way this is suppose to work?
>> >
>> > 						regards,
>> >
>> > 						Stephen.
>>
>>
>
> --
> /------------------------------------+-------------------------\
> |Stephen J. Gowdy                     | SLAC, MailStop 34,       |
> |http://www.slac.stanford.edu/~gowdy/ | 2575 Sand Hill Road,     |
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>



-- 
       Derek Atkins, SB '93 MIT EE, SM '95 MIT Media Laboratory
       Member, MIT Student Information Processing Board  (SIPB)
       URL: http://web.mit.edu/warlord/    PP-ASEL-IA     N1NWH
       warlord at MIT.EDU                        PGP key available