Trial balance failed!

[Miano Murage]

Hi, 
I found some information on the problem in the address below. 

http://www.mscs.dal.ca/%7Eselinger/accounting/gnucash.html

Any comment on the same?

Miano.

On Tue, 2008-01-22 at 08:39 -0500, Derek Atkins wrote:
> 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.
> 
> >> >> Please remember to CC this list on all your replies.
> >> >> You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
> 
> -derek
>