Invoices, foreign currency and profits calculation

[Mike Alexander]

--On April 19, 2007 4:18:40 PM +0800 Wouter van Marle 
<wouter at squirrel-systems.com> wrote:

> Hi list,
>
> I just ran into an interesting issue.
>
> I'm accounting in GnuCash in HKD (local currency), but invoices and
> bills are often in USD and some in EUR.
>
> The issue at hand:
> I get a bill in EUR, and enter this in GnuCash. The HKD value is
> calculated for that date if available (I use the "nearest in time"
> option - don't have the quotes of every single day), and based on that
> my profit is calculated.
>
> Now by the time this invoice is paid, the exchange rate has changed,
> and the actual gross profit in HKD is less than it used to be.

GnuCash, even version 2.0, doesn't handle multiple currencies as well 
as it should.  See 
<http://www.mathstat.dal.ca/~selinger/accounting/tutorial.html> for an 
explanation of one way to handle this properly and 
<http://www.mathstat.dal.ca/~selinger/accounting/gnucash.html> for 
hints about how GnuCash could work better.  I've been working on 
changes along these lines, but it's not clear they will be accepted. 
They certainly won't go into any version before 2.1.

-- 
Mike Alexander           mta at umich.edu
Ann Arbor, MI            PGP key ID: BEA343A6