Trial balance failed!

[Derek Atkins]

Hi,

Miano Murage <mianomurage at zinkdigital.com> writes:

> Hi,
> Actually, the trial balance is important to check whether the double
> entry is done correctly. The accuracy of all other reports including the
> Balance sheet will depend on the accuracy of the double entry system and
> hence the trial balance.

I believe you, but I've always just run the full balance sheet.
You can see from there if the double entry is broken.

> Well, the rates in the price editor in deed affect the trial balance. In
> the reports window under Options - Commodities - Price source, if you
> choose the option 'Nearest in time' the exchange rate to be used in the
> report is form the Price Editor.

ok.

> What i don't really understand is how gnucash computes "Unrealised
> gains".

I dont know.  The trial-balance was donated.  You could look in
'trial-balance.scm' and find out?

> For instance:
> My default currency is KES (Kenyan Shilling). I also maintain a US
> Dollar Bank Account (USD). The exchange rate is set at KES 66 per USD in
> the Price Editor. Thus far, the trial balance is Ok.
> When I credit the Dollar Account with the bank charges of $10 , (the
> BANK CHARGES account is a KES expense account) at a rate of 65 the trial
> balance goes off by an amount of KES 640(Dr. side exceeds the CR side).
> There is however an amount indicated as Unrealized gains of KES 650
> which obviously will not offset the imbalance!

Correct, because you need to manually account for the gain/loss of
the transaction.  If your expense account was in USD then this wouldn't
be a problem.  But because your expense account is in KES then you
need to manually account for the gain/loss of USD<->KES between
when the money was put into the USD account and when it was taken out.
For example, let's assume you put in $100 at 66 KES/$, so your $100
account is worth 6600KES.  Now you remove $10 at 65KES.  That means you
removed 650KES from your 6600KES, but you removed $10.  That means you
have 10KES "extra" in your account, which you need to account for!

> Might it be possible that gnucash can track the gains/losses in changes
> in currency exchange rate automatically like other accounting softwares?
> If yes, how do you activate this?

It should be turned on automatically IFF you have F::Q support, unless
you turned it off for your commodity or it can't find currency quotes
for you.

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-derek

-- 
       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